Session Title

Emergent Leadership

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis is dictating a new normal across all domains - spanning healthcare, governance, education, national economies, crisis-response, finance, community work or just managing one’s daily life, everything has changed overnight. It is quite likely that there is no going back to the old and familiar ways of doing things and responding to situations.

The pandemic has, like never before, forced us to confront some of the realities of human life: our priorities, our vulnerability, the importance of our health and that of the planet, the interconnectedness of people and, importantly, the inevitability of death itself.

Within public life, organizations, communities and in our own personal spaces, it will take an extraordinary kind of leadership to help us navigate these times. The solutions are unlikely to be available within the traditional framework and understanding of leadership which fundamentally revolves around looking to one person, the so-called ‘leader’. The pandemic has created an opportunity to examine the idea of leadership from an issue-centric perspective. This new kind of leadership – or Emergent leadership – turns the focus away from externalities and the ability to influence or control events and people outside of us, to a more reflective space; from an individualistic paradigm to a collective one, opening up limitless opportunities to not only understand oneself but also participate in taking humanity towards a better world.

Bio

Having embarked on his journey in the development sector by living and working for several years among remote forest based tribal communities in the southern Indian district of Mysuru, Dr. R Balasubramaniam (Balu) is a widely respected development activist, leadership trainer, thinker and writer. After his MBBS, he earned his MPhil in Hospital Administration & Health Systems Management from BITS, Pilani. He has a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. His living habits were greatly influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and at the age of 19, he founded the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement based on the principles of Ahimsa, Satya, Seva and Tyaga. He has spent the last 36 years of his life in the service of the rural and tribal poor in the forests of India. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement, a public policy thinktank in India.

Dr Balu embodies a rare blend of grassroots and macro perspectives and policy through his multi-faceted experience of more than three decades. He is a Tata Scholar, a Mason Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Hauser Center for Civil Society, Harvard University.

He is currently a visiting professor at Cornell University, USA and at IIT-Delhi, India where he teaches courses on Leadership and Human Development. He coaches and mentors senior leaders in the non-profit, corporate, government and educational sectors globally, apart from running leadership workshops for people from these sectors. He is also a member of the Technical Group set up by SEBI for setting up the Social Stock Exchange in India.

He has authored seven books, both in Kannada and English. His latest book, ‘Leadership Lessons for Daily Living’ has just been released. More about him, his work and books are at www.drrbalu.com