Whenever I am asked to write on leadership or give advice to young aspiring leaders, I get a bit nervous. Neither have I followed a leadership model nor have I read books that shaped my thoughts or followed a guru’s advice. For me, leadership has always been a state of mind and not a skill to be learnt.

Every once in a while when I have a little spare time on my hands, I like to free surf the web - without any agenda. Inevitably, I emerge inspired at the limitless sea of young innovators, free and fearless minds creating powerful solutions for a new world.

In my last blog, I spoke about MAD LTD and the exciting ‘mad’ness of our youth leaders. Just last month, 15 of these ‘MAD’ leaders came together at a Grand Finale of the initiative, selected out of over 500 ‘MAD’ ideas for the exceptional leadership and commitment they displayed.

‘Whatever you are doing, make sure you are so passionate about it that you’d be happy doing it for 10 years even if you didn’t make any money from it.’ I didn’t say this. Neither did any management guru. These are the words of Tony Hsieh, 37 years old CEO of Zappos.com, a billion dollar online shoe retailer. Pretty unconventional wisdom from a man in his thirties; wouldn’t you agree?

Those of you who have been reading this blog since last year might remember the video of Rahul Ganapathy, a young leader at HCL Tech and a role model, who inspired colleagues to look beyond work and add value as a brick in the construction of society.