Today Jolly Kunjappu, a 58 year old world traveling Indian who moved to Germany in 1970, held a speech here at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam. Some of his former clients are BASF, Bayer, BMW, Hewlett Packard, IBM, L’Oréal and Lufthansa.

He talked about how knowledge, courage and respect can lead to success. Although he was praised as one of the top of the speaker scene I got confused by his style of presentation. Looking at his reference I believe CEOs and managers love that.

I guess his prime concern was to teach us that people around us, cultures, societies and religions tell us what is right and wrong. They convey values. Their values. To become free of necessity you have to revalue everything in your life. That might be frightening because you have to stand on your own feet and can not rely on the leadership of religion, politics or your parents anymore.

You choose for yourself what is good and bad for you, what opinion you have on certain topics. You think for yourself and do not let others dictate directly or indirectly your behaviour. “Men do not cry!”, “I real Indian does not behave like that!”, “Women can not do this!” are not valid anymore.

He also emphasized that intelligence or brilliance alone do not make a great leader. You need emotional as well as spiritual intelligence, too.

For me it is hard to judge his speech. He did not tell me anything remarkable new, he mainly confirmed my thoughts.

Do current executives really need to be told what Mr. Kunjappu told the audience today?

(Mr. Kunjappu talked about more than I have picked up here.)