After working with organizations and leaders for over two decades, the constant shortage of good leadership even while organizations are investing so much in developing leaders, continued to baffle Rhea D'Souza. She understood that the solutions offered in developing leaders and organizations quite often take a linear, Newtonian, cause-effect approach, which may be part of the problem - where leadership, teams, clients, other stakeholders, organizations, governments are not seen as separate parts but as a connected whole. Making an interconnected ecosystem possible, Kabila is Rhea’s attempt to bring the ‘unknown’ unconscious implicate order and the ‘known’ realities of the organizations, leaders, and teams, to the surface and apply the insights in workable ways through the application of design thinking.

Kabila is an organization and a movement committed to bridging the ecological, social, and spiritual divides to build an interconnected world of one leader, one team, and one organization. Rhea D'Souza, in an exclusive conversation with Women Entrepreneur India, takes us through her journey and highlights the uniqueness of Kabila.

Brief Us On The Concept Of Kabila Consulting.

Kabila means a Tribe believes in the adage “If you want to walk fast, walk alone – If you want to walk far, walk with people”

Kabila chooses to work with the problem of separation and divides and the catastrophic impact. It is all about how we relate with ourselves, our teams, our families, our society, and our planet. We attempt to change this old story of separation, of otherness to one of integration. We are doing this by, working with leaders and teams to find the alignment of their purpose with the organization's sole purpose. We are striving for working and building high-performing teams where Leadership is an emergent phenomenon, notjust a role.

Tell Us About The Factors That Incited You To Choose This Niche Domain And Ideate Kabila.

The Inception story is a blend of my personal story. I come from a family of Missionaries and Social activists - known for “Service”. Growing up with my grandmother, I was gifted with the freedom to choose, to speak, to question, to wonder, to wander, and to disagree. With this also came the responsibility of those choices and their consequences.

This changed a lot of my thoughts and way of thinking. I grew up in Mumbai but I was witness to a “village” coming together whenever someone needed something. I started the E-den software solution when I was 23, then the Paradigms Unlimited when I was 30. The central theme, ‘the Why’ was always solving the problem of People, Systems, remembering and accessing more of their potential. The ‘How’ kept changing.

With that said, four years ago three things happened. One, while facilitating a journey for young women leaders who were social entrepreneurs and experiencing the joy & camaraderie that was built in a short time - how they encouraged each other, had each other’s back, and were there in the highs & lows of each other. I felt a sense of “hollow” in my heart and realized a deep need to belong as they did to a Tribe. I stopped to look around, I was not the only one.

Two, I looked at the many “Leadership development programs” I had been part of and noticed while 65 percent of the budget of the organization was expended on leadership Development, there was a clear dearth of “Leaders”. Something did not add up. One of the two was ineffective, the design of the intervention or the hypothesis of the problem statement was incorrect.

“Kabila is an organization and a movement committed to bridging ecological, social, spiritual divides and developing purpose aligned leaders”

Three, my dad passed away, one of the reasons was “sense of Isolation”, on closer look I noticed many “senior leaders” suffered from mental health breakdowns which werenot talked about. There were so many cases of leaders who committed suicides or went into depression. The NEED for a sense of Meaning and Membership was evident at the heart of the wellbeing of Individuals and Teams. Organizations are being led by Leader and leadership who did not always felt a sense of meaning or Membership… trying to find some answers to these issues was why Kabila cameinto being .

Since Its Inception, How Has The Company Evolved?

When started in 2017, Kabila was 3 membered team, today, it is 11 members stronger. We have grown in-depth, working with the same clients on deeper engagements or different challenge areas. We have expanded to have a presence, in Scotland and the US.

We have been referred to as the trusted partner and have been given the carte blanche on a new engagements and have been asked to represent our client to another partner vendor. All of these speaking of the Competence, Trust, Integrity, and Friendship that is Mutual.

What Is The Roadmap Ahead? How Is Kabila Consulting Gearing Up For The Same?

We envision Partnering with Clients to embed “Leadership development”, Communication Transformation and Building a culture of Coaching within the existing fabric of the organizations.. so that hope fully in the next 10 years Leadership, team development and coaching will NOT need to be outsourced.

Create an alignment with the Purpose of the organization and build a culture of Authentic Communication.

Our other plans are to build BOT for driving High performing teams, Build Coaching Culture within organizations, Collaborate with Educational Institutions to front-load the Corporate Managers with “Aligned purposeful Leaders”, Build Tribes of Entrepreneurs, Young leaders, C-level leaders, etc., where people can find Membership and Meaning, and a sense of Solidarity.

Flagship Offerings

• Agile Leadership development

• Building High Performing Teams

• Communication Transformation

• Use Art based “Dialogue” methods for non-linear Problem Solving and innovation

• Executive Coaching

• Building a Coaching Culture within an organization (Leader as a coach)

• Enhancing Collaboration, Purpose focus, and Creative throughput of individuals.

Methodologies used in the organization

• Integral Theory (Everything is Connected) - Independency is a Myth

• Design thinking (Everything can be felt and understood)

• Quantum Physics (Everything is a Fractal)