Ashu Khanna: Leadership is about Self-Awareness and Observation

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]Leadership really begins with self, it starts with self-leadership of my thoughts[/pb_blockquote]

1. Why Arka Leadership? What motivated you to form the Arka Leadership?

You know everybody looks for happiness and success, these two are the fundamental needs of human beings. I am no different, I always thought about how to not have constantly shifting emotions like a sense of helplessness, agitation which everybody is experiencing, even more nowadays, the anxiety and whole fear of unknown. What I discovered through my search was that all answers lie within and happiness is who we are, which is something we all have heard before but we really don’t follow it, we all think happiness lies in action and the more action we take chasing it, the more we chase away the happiness. One thing to understand is how to make happiness a way of being, not just something that comes and goes and its always elusive is When I discovered that coaching was my calling and I started expressing if I look at all 4 parts of yoga and you say my karma or core has to be a coach but now to even deliver it successfully as a coach I have to make sure that I de-clutter myself completely to listen to my own inner voice and that of another and help another access their inner voice.

Little by little this whole journey has led to decluttering, detaching and expanding the observer within and not just discovering but realizing, acknowledging and accepting that we are all human beings. Happiness is a birthright for all of us and so is freedom and that possibility of exploring that infinite voice of wisdom internally and to be living a life of joy and miracle is what inspired me to be a coach and then to say that this is too big of a vision to do alone and that’s where the collaboration with other like-minded people has come into play. Arka leadership is a global collaboration of like-minded fellow learners of life, coaches, leadership experts, and people who are on a journey of unleashing their potential and living the life of a human being with joy and miracle. So, Arka leadership is an amplification of my vision.

2. How would you describe the term ‘leadership’?
For me Leadership really begins with self, it starts with self-leadership of my thoughts, my emotions, actions, my body, and my energy. Am I taking leadership of that? Only when I take complete leadership of myself. Effectively what I call the inner voice or the leader within is when i live in alignment with that leader within, that’s when I am a leader of my life, the rest falls into place of its own, it’s not for me to determine then.

3. What is the basic difference between Leader, Boss and Manager?
Anybody who you respect with more knowledge can lead you in any dimension of life, its doesn’t have to be work, your parents lead you in your value system, your teachers lead you in gaining knowledge of a subject, If I look at it, you are gaining knowledge from another, therefore allowing them to lead you to grow in that dimension of life, Now when it comes to boss and manager, the boss is somebody you have given authority to boss over yourself, Otherwise in a professional world, you are colleagues. The manager is someone who is managing people, a project, and has a responsibility to manage a situation, even a leader is a manager. Someone who is willing to respect you and listen to your opinions.

4. What is the difference between leaders of the present and the past?
Firstly, let’s look at the way your parents respected your grandparents versus you engaging with your parents is also different nowadays. Its a generation difference, its a time difference, its a values difference, that time we respected what they said as gospel truth, whereas today all of us are exposed enough to question. So, the difference is that earlier there were fewer leaders, nowadays there are more leaders, entrepreneurship and leadership are more prevalent. Now the difference in the quality of leadership is situational, you can not fix it or compare it necessarily. So, in those days, you had a Gandhi, who was needed to bring a country together. Today the Facebook has done the same thing of bringing the world together, technologically. Now, am not saying its the same sentiment at all. There was definitely a higher purpose behind the first one. But at the end, the objective of building a connection is getting achieved, now what happens is when there is a higher purpose attached to any objective, any business vision, it changes the context of the business. So, what really matters is that your vision is also the vision of the organization that you are running, and is it for the benefit of all or few or benefit of just one?

5. Is it possible to learn leadership? If yes, how?
I started the conversation by saying we all have a leader within. So, we can learn it. Our focus very often becomes limited to those who are visible out there. the pandemic is a classic scenario of showing the world that the whole space of leadership belongs even to those who we didn’t regard earlier. Leadership exists in everybody, its just that we have a very limited perspective of who we may regard as a leader but in reality we can learn from anybody.

6. What is a brand?
The brand is an experience. For eg, Apple has created an experience for the world, it has shifted the entire concept of the telephone into an instrument that could take care of your email, music, movies, and much more, Changing the entire experience of the phone. So, as a result Brand is an experience. Another example is Nike, it’s just a shoe company, but it’s about that experience that they are connecting to the rest of the world and are selling that versus just the product, this shifts it completely.

7. How brand is different from business?
All telephone companies are providing connectivity, if I ask what is it that Jio is doing differently from others? Biggest broadband! they have capitalized on that. it’s not about connectivity its about what the world is more interested in, that differs a business from a brand.

8. Why do you think, Indians are more obsessed with business than becoming the brand?
I think it comes from a place of short term perspective of wanting to make a profit. Building a brand is a long term investment with no immediate returns. A brand is like goodwill in your balance sheet, it takes time to build. Indians tend to believe that “People should see the value of my brand, Why should I talk about it?” We are coy about branding. it’s social conditioning, we don’t even compliment ourselves in our achievements. and that’s what brand is, it’s about being open about what you are producing. You get caught into the immediacy of delivering products rather than working towards building brand value.

9. How is it different for a leader to lead the business in comparison with leading the brand?

Let’s take Tata as an example, there is a certain association with the brand tata across all businesses. So, there is a consistency in communication and value proposition. You are constantly thinking of how its gonna get perceived and projected by the audience rather than just thinking that I have delivered the product I had to.

10. What is your message to the upcoming brands?

Coach is an observer, and the observer exists in everybody, so a leader also has to work with the same level of observership and objectivity. its a consistent discipline of stepping back when you are operating as a leader and getting back, so its a zoom in zoom out discipline that’s required rather than staying zoomed out or zoomed in and that is where self-awareness becomes very critical to say, what am I doing now? and how is it helping me in achieving my objective or helping my people or the situation? Hence, Self-Awareness is the key

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]A brand is like goodwill in your balance sheet, it takes time to build.[/pb_blockquote]