Storytelling and Aesthetics in Management and Leadership by Sanjoy Mukherjee (2025)

Art of Storytelling for Transformational Leadership

There goes an old saying – Those who can look deepest into the past can also see farthest into the future. So, I began my journey into the past but always with an eye to bring out something worthwhile for us in the present. In the last issue we delved separately into literature from the West and the East. This time we begin with a cross-cultural conversation that took place in the terrain of India millennia ago. The story unfolds like this.

Alexander the Great with his mighty army has come to the western part of the Indian landmass – the destination in his journey from Macedonia to conquer the world. The Greek contingent was camping on the bank of the river Jhelum in Punjab and gearing up for the impending battle with the Indian king Porus. Every morning the Prince himself would be seen on horseback leading the regular drilling process of the Greek army in preparation for the battle. The camp was laid on a vast field at the end of which there was a deep forest.

While Alexander was busy patrolling his troops with fire and vigour, a very strange sight caught his attention. Under a tree where the forest began, he spotted a ‘weird looking Indian’. This person had long hair with matted locks, a long unkempt beard and only a piece of loin cloth in his whole body. And there he would sit under the tree for hours in a particular posture always staring at the horizon. Alexander was deeply intrigued by this man and became curious to know more about him. One day he approached the ‘strange Indian’ and began a conversation with the help of local people.

“We see you every day sitting under the tree for hours looking at the horizon. What are you really doing?” The Prince asked.
There was no answer.
Alexander started getting impatient but kept his cool and asked again:
“While we are gearing up for the battle, we find you sitting here and doing nothing. What are you up to?”
The old man gave no answer.
The Prince now was on the threshold of his patience. Yet, he collected himself, came close to the man and asked:
“You can at least tell us your purpose in life so that you are sitting here for hours day after day doing nothing?”
This time the old man looks up at the Prince. He responds but only with a question:
“Will you please tell me one thing? What is your purpose in life?”
“You don’t know! I am Alexander the Great and I am out to conquer the world. That‘s why I am now in India.” Bold was the reply from the Prince.
“So, you will conquer the world? After that what will you do?” asked the man.
“After that I shall take all the elephants and horses from the vanquished lands to my country”. Alexander replied.
“Suppose you achieve that, Prince. After that what will you do?” the old man continues.
“After that I shall take all the men, the prisoners of war from these countries as our slaves and all the women to entertain us in Macedonia”, flaunted the proud Prince.
“What an ambition! All the men as slaves and women as entertainers!” remarked the old man. Then he asked gently,” Granted you achieve even that Prince, after that what will you do?”
Alexander was quiet, little puzzled as if looking for an answer. Finally, he said with a sigh:
“After that probably I shall sit on my throne and relax.”
“That’s what I am doing,” smiles back the ‘weird Indian’.

This is a classic example of an encounter between two different cultures with some powerful messages for all leaders and teachers of today especially in the context of globalisation. Let us try to unveil these messages for our personal and organisational enrichment.

Modern organisations operate in a world where there is a confluence of myriads of cultural entities each with its unique characteristics and values which may often conflict with each other. The episode above throws light on the mood, mode and tenor of conversations across cultures so that communication may flow smoothly without any deadlock.

Alexander is the supreme embodiment of an outgoing aggressive tendency dominant in certain elements of the Western culture that is all out to acquire, conquer and possess. The situation is very similar to the modern corporate leader with a compulsive drive ‘to kill’ and ‘win’. Single pointed focus on bottom-line at any cost with an eye only on financial parameters like profits, turnover, sales and market share, characterise their dominant mood and mindset. Any input on Ethics, Values, Cooperation or Sustainability sounds completely irrelevant and de-motivating for these go-getters of today. Like Alexander they are the repository of surfeit energy that is exteriorised and acquisitive in nature with no time and space for reflection. Now attention to critical issues like Values and Sustainability, Goodwill and Social Responsibility, Ethics and Quality of Life will demand some moments of reflection in our mind space that most of the dynamic leaders are unable to appreciate or practice because of their one directional thrust on numbers and results within a short-term time frame. In that kind of a scenario how does one inculcate a sense of values enduring and wholesome for the individual and the organisation?

The Indian sage in the episode is the manifestation of human energy drawn inward which opens our doors of inner perception through contemplation and reflection. This provides one insight into not only how to see the world in depth and totality, as it is, but also how to engage with the world even when it is hostile and different. The approach adopted by the sage is important to study and consider in this regard.
Since the beginning the old man had noticed that the dynamic Prince was impatient to know about him. So he chose to remain silent to the initial questions that were superficial in nature and asked in a hurry. Then he found Alexander getting close to him and asking a deeper question about purpose of life. The nature and very tenor of the question has radically changed by now. And the sage chose to respond but only with a counter question about purpose of life directed to Alexander. The initial responses of the Prince were symptomatic of his aggressive, acquisitive and externally directed energy and mindset - conquest of the world, capturing the horses and elephants, enslaving the men and women as prisoners of war and so on. What is interesting to note that never during this conversation the sage stopped this outward flow of energy to acquire but actually fueled it further to get the full steam out of the galloping Prince. Nor did he intervene in the outgoing movement of the Prince with sermons on Right and Wrong from his Indian point of view. That would have led to confrontation and the conversation would have come to a block – deadlock! But the sage kept the flow on smoothly and rapidly enough, Alexander went out of steam with no way ahead! Then the final answer came from the mouth of Alexander who uttered it with a sigh, almost pushed against the wall! The sage never gave the answer but consumed the entire energy of the Prince so that he is finally compelled to spell out the answer. The sage merely endorsed the same. “That’s what I am doing”.

This is the approach of a true Indian Master who never blocks the energy of the opponent or hostile force but uses the energy of the rival power to his own advantage and plants the seeds of transformation in the other. He achieves this by asking the deeper questions but never dilutes the conversation by giving quick-fix answers to the superficial questions. He keeps the conversation alive and flowing and helps the others find their own answers. This is Transformational Leadership par excellence!

Management and Liberal Arts Interface for Creative Excellence

Viktor Frankl, in his insightful book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ had identified in clear terms that the real problem of human beings in our modern world is not nothingness but ‘nothing-but-ness’. The implications of this diagnosis are deep and far-reaching. It stems from an uncritical bond signature to a world-view that celebrates and champions the logic of market economy, aggressive competition, linear undifferentiated growth, single-pointed drive for profits and relentless acquisition of material ‘goodies’. The phenomenon of ‘nothing-but-ness’ consists in powerful and systematic bulldozing of alternative models of progress and development in work and life that are still vibrant but beyond the margins. As the voice of the ‘other’, the alternative modes of thinking and living, increasingly faces the peril of fading into oblivion, we hear the burning question on choosing life from Erich Fromm: “To Have or To Be?” And the great poet T S Eliot makes the point sharp and clear in his three profound questions in the poem ‘The Rock’:
“Where is life we have lost in living?
Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is knowledge we have lost in information?”
Arts, Poetry or Literature in general in its pristine and sublime form, represents the voice of the ‘other’, sings aloud the song of the spirit and comes to us as a redeemer indeed!

What is the role of literature or for that matter any form of Poetry, Arts and Music etc. in Management Education and practice? The need for mainstreaming inputs from literature, poetry and music in MBA curriculum and corporate training modules rises from the acute inadequacy to deal with the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and turbulence in the business scenario today. The art of managing people is not a matter of deployment of a set of skills or use of stereotyped formulae but awakening and unleashing our creative potential energy in its deepest and widest sense. Thus the realization is slowly dawning in leadership consciousness that literature can enliven the spirit within or otherwise why should Prof. Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. at Harvard would be using Sophocles, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Miller in Leadership courses and late Prof. James Maarch at Stanford who delved into literature after a lifelong journey with Organisational Design and Strategy to unfold the myriad dimensions of life and human behaviour to the students and business barons before they deal with the multiple layers of reality within the self, the organisation and the planet at large. Literature does this awakening of spirit in an exploratory rather evolutionary and not a pedantic manner so that we can outgrow our conventional stereotypes of right and wrong, good and bad, black and white. “The colour of truth is gray,” was the revelation of Andre Gide, the Nobel Laureate French literary maestro.

In the Indian management academia, Arts and Literature are slowly finding space in the management curriculum by a few adventurer faculty members like Professor Manikutty in IIM Ahmedabad, Professor Ramnath Narayanswamy in IIM Bangalore (both retired by now). Professor Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozhikode and himself a Gold Medallist in English Literature from JNU, took the bold initiative to introduce a Full Post Graduate Programme in Liberal Arts. At IIM Calcutta and then at IIM Shillong we introduced a course on ‘Management and Liberal Arts’ to make a move in this direction. The response from the student community has been quite encouraging. At IIM Shillong there is an Academic Area ‘Strategy and Liberal Studies’ with dedicated Faculty to teach conduct research in this domain. A fortnight long Artists’ Workshop had been introduced in IIM Shillong where young artists from the East and Northeast create works of Art in our campus cafeteria premises under the able guidance of a renowned Artist cum Faculty of Creative Arts. These paintings are then displayed in the Institute main building and the auditorium for the students to learn, expand their mind space, stimulate their right brain and unleash their latent creative energy.

Creativity in literature is not amenable to numbers and quantification. It is an immersion in holistic perception beyond linear thinking and binary logic. A sense of such perception comes alive when one stands alone in front of the portrait of Monalisa by de Vinci. There is a palpable difference between the instrumental reason of a pragmatic protagonist of market economy and the critical reasoning of a philosopher or an artist. Perhaps the genius of Albert Einstein could fathom this mystery or enigma and advocated the primacy of ‘pictorial thinking’ that will finally find its shape and form in mathematical equations. To a Mozart or a Beethoven turbulence is as much a desirable part of creation, the final sublimation of which is in a transcendental experience of joy and enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not just a rendez-vous; it is a journey. Every moment in this creative odyssey comes with a spark. Each milestone in this journey is as much important as the one before or after. The magic words of Rabindranath Tagore come alive so vivid:
“My pilgrimage is not
At the end of the road.
My temples are there
On both sides of my path.” (Translation by this author
An old poem on Enlightenment comes to mind:
“Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.
During enlightenment, mountains are no more mountains, rivers are no more rivers.
After enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains, rivers are once again rivers.”

With the dawning of enlightenment, the phenomenal world does not change but what changes is our way of looking at the world – our perception. Arts and Literature make this happen by breaking open the stagnant chambers of claustrophobic structured management education dominated by linear thinking and binary logic and ushering in fresh air and new light. We learn to see the world and ourselves with an enlightened perspective.

Let me conclude on a personal note. In the summer of 2006, I was in Europe and found time to go up to the Vienna woods, the heaven of contemplation for many great masters. The bus stopped midway, and we got down. Walking a few yards, I found myself in front of a cottage. The writing on the front wall informed that Einstein lived here. I stood there for a few moments. Then I walked ahead to find a house where Beethoven used to live. In my mind’s eye I could see Beethoven in a pensive mood desperately searching for the notes in Vienna woods while Einstein playing the violin in a moment of retreat from Science. I stood still in ecstasy amid the enchanting smell of the vineyards, watching the Danube flowing and the panorama of Vienna stretched below from the hilltop. Science and Arts, in perfect communion, how could it be? From the depth of silence, the answer came to me from the theme of Beethoven’s last string quartet that I found in a book by Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of being:
“Muss es sein? Es muss sein”
Must it be? It must be.
It was a moment of Truth – ‘an instant made eternity’ (Browning).

After my return to India, I designed the course ‘Management and Liberal Arts’ for my students at IIM Calcutta. It has been two decades since, and I am still conducting the course at IIM Shillong. Two books are offered in this course to the students – ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint Exupery and ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran. The course begins with screening of the documentary on Tagore ‘Rabindranath’ directed by Satyajit Ray, covers the principles of learning and creativity of Leonardo da Vinci and concludes with Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ and Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Dreams’.

‘Dare to Dream and create History’ – is the motto of this mission.

[Note: The story of Alexander the Great and the Indian sage appears in the book. Leading Consciously: A Pilgrimage to Self-Mastery’ by Debashis Chatterjee, published by Butterworth-Heinemann in 1998.]

This article was originally published in "The Statesman Festival" Issue of 2025.