Ramesh Ramachandra
Singapore
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Rising to the Leadership Challenge
I took on the project to transform the ways people relate to being an
entrepreneur. I developed a government funded training program and wrote and
published a book about the subject. The courage and focus to do all that came
right out of my participating in The Landmark Forum.
Because of the enormous difference The Landmark Forum made in my life, I wanted
to make the program available to people in Singapore in a big way. The game I
took on playing was to transform the lives of families and communities in
Singapore.
I immediately enrolled my sister Poorani Thanusha to do The Landmark Forum in
Manila. When she came back, we put together a small team of graduates who also
committed to bring The Landmark Forum to Singapore. Some had participated 10
years ago and some just a few months ago, but everyone got breakthrough results
out of being on the team.
Although I am an accomplished business woman, I learned a lot about leadership
from being part of this team. Spearheading bringing The Landmark Forum to a new
country was a big job - one that, in my mind, should warrant a title, position,
employees, a budget. But that was not the case. I had to give up my notions that
leadership was about domination and control. I had to learn that it was about
enrollment and inspiring the best in others. All the things that allowed me to
be effective in the past - my ability to delegate, hiring the right people, etc.
- that whole world just wasn't working here. I had to invent a new take on
leadership - on who I was, who others were, and how together we were going to
create the future and fulfill on it.
I started sharing myself - not something I ordinarily would do. I had always
considered sharing about breakdowns a sign of weakness. Yet here I found it gave
me a lot of space to be myself and gave the team space to be themselves. I had
no prior track record with these people, and there were times when the whole
team looked like they were not going to support me in my leadership role. But,
bit by bit, I learned about empowerment. People started stepping forward. They
began to own and take on the vision of what we could make happen as true
partners.
Many remarkable rewards come when you're part of something like making The
Landmark Forum available to people. You see the program's impact right before
your eyes. Seeing the difference a program like this makes in the lives of
participants is a great gift.
As just one example, we had a mother and a son do The Landmark Forum. She then
enrolled her husband and her kids and her ex-husband and his kids. This mother
has spoken about how she was estranged from her older boy because of the
divorce. But here they were - this older boy with both his fathers - stepfather
and his natural father, and a sister as well as a stepsister. In The Landmark
Forum, the son saw what his attitude was costing him and his family. He
acknowledged the love he had for both his natural father and his step-dad.
For the first time, the whole family came together from love and joy rather than
bitterness and disappointment - this was unimaginable previously. To see a
different kind of future become available for each family member made everything
we worked for - all the energy we put into it, all the lessons we learned -
worthwhile beyond any words I could ever say.
Seeing again and again the enormous difference The Landmark Forum made for
people had me realize that I wanted to make an ongoing commitment to having this
be available in Singapore and an integral part of my life. I'm thrilled to say
that Landmark opened a permanent office in my country and I am now a staff
member of Landmark Education, the one heading up the operations here. My life
has taken a whole new turn - how fantastic it is to have my work and my life so
enriched and to make a difference in the lives of others at the same time.
See more articles about Grads Breakthrough Stories.