What is intelligence? What is time? What is energy?
For most of us, these are abstract ideas.
For Mani, they were living questions. Questions that pulled him deep into the fundamentals — not just of science, but of life itself.
I first knew Mani as a corporate trainer who built a leadership programme called Eagles for our company. But by qualification, Mani was a metallurgist. He worked with iron, tungsten carbide, cobalt, ceramics...
And in working with them, Mani noticed something unusual: men and metals behave alike.
He describes his turning point like this:
“I thought my job was to produce materials. But I realised no one really cared about iron itself; what they valued were its properties. Then it struck me — we love people not for what they are, but for the properties they display.”
That realisation changed the course of his life. Mani left metallurgy and dedicated himself to people development and the practice of Learning Engineering. His workshops became poetry — a strange alchemy of science, story, and soul.
Here are a few sparks from his forge:
- “For steel to become harder, you must rearrange its molecular structure inside. For people to grow, you must modify their beliefs.”
- “Hardening without tempering makes both metals and men brittle & inadequate.”
- "Nature made iron & oxygen a couple, they love each other. We want to separate them because we love Iron's properties when its alone. Rust is the greatest metaphor for true love!"
- “Forging requires careful engineering of heat & pressure; so does people's personal growth.”
- “Highly melting materials are difficult to work with; so are some people. You must understand who they are, and then you can work them well.”
This was wisdom born not from books, but from furnaces, anvils, and sparks.
In Greek mythology, Hephaestus — the god of the forge — shaped weapons for gods and mortals alike. Mani, in his own way, carried that torch. Except his forge was not fire and hammer, but curiosity, conversation, and compassion.
He forged not metals, but leaders.
👉 Dear Leaders: What if you looked at your organisation as a forge? Which beliefs must you heat, temper, or alloy today — to bring out the best properties of your people?
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