Nothing Less Than Amazing

SEALA 1, DAY 1

A dream comes true. After two years of planning, eight months of organization, and a week of on-site preparation in Chennai, India, the South East Asia Leadership Academy is ready for takeoff. We enter the final countdown in the Royal Ballroom of the magnificent Leela Palace Hotel.

With the clock ticking, SEALA engineers perform a last-minute check of the launchpad.

It is 9 January 2014, 08:59 and 59 seconds SST (SEALA Standard Time). The adventure begins!

Anand Sharma (Chairman & CEO, TBM Consulting Group) welcomes participants to a ten-day leadership journey of exploration and discovery. As SEALA's founding board member, he describes how his dream and conviction led him to spearhead the initiative.

SEALA will only settle for the best. Glittering with the region's brightest talent from Pakistan to Indonesia, could SEALA be anything less than amazing?

Rabian Abdul Rahman knows the answer to that.

Among the published "SEALA Rules of Engagement":
Express your point of view! 
Ask questions!
Engage with intensity! 
Susmita Malik demonstrates one of SEALA's unwritten rules: Enjoy the process! 

John King (CEO, Cultural Architecture) lays the foundations for the workshop by conducting an interactive inquiry into the nature of leadership. He notes that the amount of learning achieved is proportional to one's openness to be surprised.

Sadaf Mahmood and Ashutosh Athalye are pretty surprised at John's opening gambit, "What is two plus two?" Not to mention his provocative follow-up, "What is the nature of two?"

Priscillia Sanomo and Ravi Chandra are two. But what is their nature?

Anand's topic is the evolution of management from the industrial revolution to a 21st-century paradigm that has significantly altered the role of leadership. Today's leaders need to combine ambition and humility, discipline and innovation, and be able to communicate a crisp and compelling vision.

Thushan Majid demonstrates how to combine presence and approachability.

Food for thought.

Jim Crupi (President, Strategic Leadership Solutions) challenges some of the room's assumptions and beliefs, clearing the way to take their leadership to a higher level. Could your current thinking be a liability to realizing your full potential?

While shifting our ideas, we may as well move the room's furniture around as well.

Great leaders are great teachers. It's a quality that Navnath Tarle and Anil Shinde possess in abundance.

We are not at liberty to reveal what these people are doing, or why. To find out, you must attend SEALA. It's a trade secret.

Participant Paired Introductions. Over dinner, participants were paired with assigned colleagues and presented one another to the group at large.

Shadab Khan discovers that Sadaf is a very organized person – and a strict timekeeper.

Rahul Krishnarao and Ravi have compiled whole dossiers on one another.

Alok Datta and Izam Ismail uncover a host of similarities between them – despite first appearances.

Tanu Mukherjee reports that she almost felt like a lawyer was interrogating her. Naturally, says Anthony Tan.

We both love Thai food, grumbles Mike Spaur, but what is Su Aung doing that I'm not? Same input, different outputs.

Adeel Azhar introduces Prashanth Hallur's top-of-the-line 2014 handlebar moustache.

Gathered together privately after dinner, the India team is up to something. To find out what, tune in for future editions of the SEALA 1 blog!

Abundant thanks to all for a perfect launch and a wonderous first day of SEALA!