Sudhanshu Palsule

Sudhanshu Palsule is an award-winning educator, consultant and leadership coach, regarded as one of the leading thinkers in the field of Transformative Leadership. He teaches at Duke CE and at other business schools including the Indian School of Business and the Helsinki School of Economics. His globally run leadership workshops are renowned for their transformative impact and the creation of change.

Sudhanshu’s work on leadership is a unique combination of three decades of the exploration of human cognition and behavior and the new research emerging from neurology and psychology coupled with his training in quantum physics. The notion of  “self-ware” coined by him – the program of thinking, emotions, and beliefs that drives us – remains central to his work on leadership. Only high-grade self-ware is capable of the three requirements of leadership:  clarity of thinking, mastery of emotions, and the choice of enabling beliefs.

For this, self-awareness is critical: “Leadership is about doing two things simultaneously: observing the world through your eyes and observing yourself through the eyes of the world”. Without awareness, one risks impoverished action and powerless behavior. Addressing this failure of leadership, Sudhanshu’s CAB model of conversations, actions, and behaviors is one that has been adopted by thousands of executives as their developmental mantra.

Sudhanshu’s clients include several Fortune 500 companies. He works with senior management teams assisting them in creating breakthroughs in their thinking and in the way they operate. With a natural gift for facilitating difficult conversations, Sudhanshu guides and coaches executives to overcome their obstructive assumptions and practices and lead effectively. His stint in the industry, first as Head of Organization Development for Anglian Water, and then as a Senior Advisor for Leadership Development to the UN, keeps him firmly grounded in pragmatism. The tough, straight-talking approach coupled with his spiritual presence, compassion and humor, along with his mentoring and public speaking skills, has endeared him to audiences around the world.

He has written several books including Managing in Four Worlds and The Ecology of Organizations. His new book, Self-ware, is due for publication at the end of 2009. Another book, Reclaiming African Leadership, is scheduled for release by mid-2010.