Prologue – The Myth We Grow Up Believing
Leadership is one of the most romanticised ideas in the modern workplace. Books glorify it. Conferences intellectualise it. Social media turns it into nicely packaged quotes. But behind the applause lies a far quieter reality:
Leadership is emotionally heavy, disorienting, and often painfully lonely.
It demands conversations that feel personal, decisions that feel unfair, and maturity that arrives only after internal conflict. Leadership is not about having a vision.
It is about staying loyal to that vision when emotions and relationships tempt you sideways. Over decades of leading, coaching, and observing leaders, one metaphor revealed itself as the clearest representation of leadership’s inner evolution:
The drive from Shimla to Mysuru.
A journey that begins with tight, dangerous curves opens into wide highways, tests your loyalty at crossroads, and tempts you with comfort just before the destination. What follows is not a story about roads. It is a...
