Catalytic Leadership – Being Inclusive

Being inclusive is an important trait for a leader to build a great team. It goes beyond personal preferences to include the right people for the team regardless of their age, experience, levels etc. That said, each person has unique capabilities. So, having the right mix and choosing the right person for the right task is crucial.

Let’s see a story that illustrates on what it means to be inclusive

A young prince got crowned as the King after his father passed away as a king. He, being young and energetic, wanted to be reformative and implement new ideas and thoughts for the benefit of his subjects.

Soon after ascending to the throne, he felt that the elderly people are a burden to society and the kingdom.  So, he came up with a new law that all the elders over 60 years of age should leave the kingdom and will have to live the rest of their lives in the forest. He was not cruel to kill them however he wanted to get rid of them all. Anyone who violates the law will be punished.

The people of his kingdom, though dissatisfied, obeyed the new law and left their elderly in the forest, leaving them at the mercy of the treacherous forest and the fruit bearing trees to support their lives.

Some time passed and there was a visitor to the kingdom. The visitor was an educated scholar – who went to different kingdoms making intellectual challenges – wanted to challenge the scholars in this kingdom as well.

He said to the king that he has 3 challenges. If no one in his kingdom is able to solve it, then the king will have to sign that his kingdom is intellectually inferior to the scholar’s knowledge in a palm leaf and also affix the kingdom’s seal.

The foreign scholar added that he will open up the second challenge only after the first is solved. The third only after the second is solved.

The king sent a  message about the challenges to all the people in his kingdom and whoever solves them would be rewarded.

The foreign scholar revealed the first challenge

The challenge was to weigh an elephant and tell how many kilos it weighed.

Hearing the challenge, the scholars were puzzled and had no idea about how to weigh an animal so huge. They were at the verge of surrendering.

That’s when a young lad appeared in the king’s court that he could solve the challenges but he said he would need a day’s time for each challenge to think and come up with the answer. Both the foreign scholar and the king agreed to that. The first challenge about weighing an elephant  was revealed to the lad.

The young lad went home and came to the kings’ court the next morning. He asked the king to arrange for a coracle to hold an elephant and come to the lake.

People were curious on how he was going to weigh the elephant using a coracle.

The young lad asked the empty coracle to let afloat in the lake. Once afloat, he marked the level at which the coracle was just at the surface of the water.

Next he asked the elephant to be let inside the coracle.The coracle went down a bit because of the weight of the elephant. Now, the lad marked the level as he did before and asked the elephant to be alighted out of the coracle.

Now he turned back to the king, and told, that the coracle be filled with the bags of sand of 100 kgs each to be filled inside the coracle until it sank to the second level marked. And he said, “That my king would be the weight of the elephant”

The foreign scholar, the king and the people around were amazed at the wisdom of the lad.

Now, the foreign scholar opened up the second challenge.

There were two identical blocks of wood, however, one was made from the root of the tree and the other one from the branch. The task is to find which one is from the root and which one is from the branch.

The lad appeared again the next morning with the answer to the second challenge. He asked for a pail of water. Then he took the two blocks of wood and put them in the water. The block made from the root sank to the bottom and the one from the branch stayed afloat. Thus the second challenge was solved.

The third and the final challenge was to make a rope out of ash.

For the third challenge the lad brought in a metal container. He opened the metal container, and to everyone’s surprise there was the rope made out of ash. When asked how he managed to twist a rope out of ash, he said  that he put a rope in the metal container and burnt it thereby all that remained was the ash in the form of a rope.

The foreign scholar, amazed and at the same time happy that the young lad was brilliant to solve the challenges, wished him and the king well, and went back to his land.

Now, the king surprised by the wisdom of the lad, asked how he knew the answers to the challenges.

The young lad replied in a confessing tone, that he was not the one who solved these challenges but his elderly father whom he sheltered secretly in spite of the law to evict the elderly to the forest.

The lad continued saying that the elderly people are not a burden but they are our beacon of wisdom, experience and knowledge.

The young king realised his mistake,learnt the lesson on inclusiveness and asked his subjects to bring back the elderly.

Catalytic Leaders are always inclusive. They don’t discriminate against people based on experience, age or other factors. They understand that, just like different sized gear wheels are required for the smooth functioning of any machinery, a great team needs a mix of people with different capabilities.

Image Credits: Pixabay