5.0 out of 5 stars
A Transformational Leadership Journey!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 8, 2022
Hitendra Wadhwa’s Inner Mastery, Outer Impact offers an eloquent, candid, and much-needed discussion of how we can synchronize our desire for success in our lives—in work, school, relationships—with a rich, fulfilling inner life. These two ideals of inner success and outer success, Wadhwa stirringly argues, never were at odds with one another in the first place; I cannot help but think he has offered us a rejoinder to the pervasive rhetoric of “selling out” (i.e. putting personal morals aside) at work or in school to be successful. Rather, in his book, “inner mastery,” the development of energies of love, purpose, wisdom, growth, and self-realization, drives “outer impact.”
I felt as if I was left with a powerful new life philosophy, as well as an array of practical tools to apply to improve my relationships with others and leadership of a team—learning how to defuse an argument and turn it into an opportunity for mutual collaboration, for instance. These tools are vividly illustrated with a series of stories, some taken from the lives of historical figures, and others from Wadhwa’s own life, or from those of his former students, colleagues, and family members. This was another part I enjoyed about the structure of the book: Wadhwa is at once a clear analyst and a gifted storyteller, offering well-thought-out models for how to achieve “inner mastery,” alongside stories to demonstrate how these models have been applied. In addition to these, he draws on available scientific evidence from disciplines such as psychology, shedding new light on current paradigms and major developments (I found his discussion of transcendence in Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs especially interesting near the end of the book).
I will say, finally, that I'd come to a book like this with significant apprehension. I was (and I doubt I am alone in this) somewhat tired of coming away from countless mandated leadership trainings and talks only to notice that my life carried on unchanged. Even the best of leadership trainings that might have sparked a new idea in my mind during a weekend retreat or group activity never translated into my actual life. And perhaps, that was because they weren’t designed to do so—because they operated within an idealized work environment that was very disconnected from my day-to-day realities.
What I enjoyed about this book, in turn, was that it did not feel oversimplified—it did not feel as if Wadhwa was operating in some kind of idyllic world where if we just learnt how to ‘be more vulnerable,’ or ‘be more confident,’ or ‘be more understanding,’ or ‘set clearer boundaries’ (and this list could go on), we would all be better leaders. Instead, he acknowledged from the book’s inception that leadership asks of us something that current leadership trainings cannot give: “to be everything—and the complete opposite,” as he puts it. If we are to be ‘vulnerable’ in one moment and ‘confident’ in the next, for instance, we cannot learn these as distinct skills that are to be taught and practiced separately, the way current “bite-sized leadership” trainings teach us through a modular approach. Instead, we have to think about a more thorough-going journey towards “inner mastery,” which is precisely what he takes us through in this book with a transformational journey through “five core energies.” I could not recommend this book enough!
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