The occasion has me thinking about what is emerging for leaders in India – and Hinglish leaps to mind.

It’s the language of the future I am told – a combination of English and Hindi.

I even met one man in India who told me that English was no longer “yours but ours” because “we are the biggest population in the world speaking it” and it will be increasingly Hinglish.

At a course day a group of participants started explaining Hinglish to me. They showed me how they could switch their phones to HING.

And me, who is so famously haphazard about my use of English, got all offended. So this reminded me that leaders need pushing just a bit sometimes.

I spoke to the participants again and they pretty well told me that I needed to get real. English was their language now and soon most English in the world will be spoken in India. And its Hinglish. The British could get all purist about it, but if they did, they would be left behind.

Bear in mind that I was educated French and am very conscious of failing a language by being too purist.

I heard it spoken and understood two thirds. Some highlights were…

• “Hungry kya? (Are you hungry?)
• “What your bahana is?” (What’s your excuse?)
• “Prepone” (i.e.  dinner plans – if you can postpone them, you can prepone them.)
• “Yeh Dil Maange More.” (The heart wants more.)
• “Life ho to aisi.” (This is what life should be.)

Then a few weeks later I got an official letter from an Indian accountancy firm on and remember reading it and instinctively wondering how poorly educated the author was. Then I realised that it was in Hinglish.

I was watching my sons play and one of the kids had the role of an owner of a corner shop, and he had chosen to put on an Indian accent. As I watched it I thought the boy was playing a pretty cheap caricature, little did he know we was actually speaking the English of the future.

Our UK course participants have discovered that Hinglish is a language that they will need to learn, and not the pigeon English that they currently associate with corner shops. They can see that they better start to understand it.

“I knew I was a leader at work but not for a minute had I thought of myself as a leader of Bangalore”

This says it all. What Common Purpose is about. What has happened to democracy – even a young democracy – that young leaders don’t know that it’s not just about voting but about standing up too. And most of all it says what democracy is. He got it, was up for it and knew he could lead.

India and the UK have much in common. One may be an old democracy and the other quite young, but they have much in common. Leaders have a deep sense of responsibility and possibility in both countries that it does not take much to awaken. They understand the deep cultural implications of one person – one vote, accountability, commitment to transparency and a sense of justice. And they understand frustrations, short-termism and the discouragement of difficult decisions.

That’s why there is such a special relationship between the UK and India that will benefit both. That’s why Common Purpose will continue to grow in India and connect with Common Purpose in the UK.

I reckon I did once. But that over the years I have made so many mistakes – sometimes bad judgements, sometimes because I was over-stretched and didn’t make a judgement – that I have had a lot of practice apologising. Partly because when you are always asking people to do things – as you are in any charitable role – you sort of can’t afford it.

But I have found myself in numerous situations recently when I have had to double take. And spend an enormous amount of time going round the houses concocting ways forward so that people don’t have to back down or admit that they are wrong. So that they keep their pride. The trouble is that it takes so much time and so often delays decisions.

Expressing my frustration the other day to colleagues, they just laughed at me. All much younger than me they seemed to have got their heads around this before they were 52.

He said that there was a “deep commitment to intellectual excellence in a bubble”.

We went back through the words:

Deep, don’t underestimate how deep and in the depth lies the apparent arrogance and underlying confidence of investment bankers.

Commitment, they are committed sure to making money and also to bringing something they value to the chaotic world.

Intellectual, they were educated to value this above everything, intellect is what got them there ( I remember someone from another investment bank telling me that they employed people with brains the size of planets) and it’s what is missing in the world. The rest matters but this is the core central pilar.

Excellence, this goes with the commitment, they thrive to excellence in a really inspiring way, they never sit back and get lazy.

Bubble, they do become disconnected from the world that surrounds them and that fails constantly on excellence and intellect.

I found this very helpful. We need them. But not in a bubble.

It’s all about how you ensure that the boards of the future protect us from the disasters over the last couple of years.

I too believe that diversity is one of the keys. Homogeneous boards are complacent and risky. Complacent because it means that the organisations are careless about understanding the modern world and don’t care enough about their brands to adapt and stop hiding behind the old excuses like: “oh but we try so hard but there just aren’t enough people out there”. Risky because homogenous boards develop group think and don’t see some things coming.

But there are two forms of diversity that always seem to be forgotten: age and language.

If all your board is of one generation it will miss things that are intuitive to other generations. And on language: how may British international boards speak enough languages to really claim to be international?

-    Julia Middleton was recently interviewed by Knowledge Peers on managing and sustaining effective boards for not-for profit organisations. You can sign up for Knowledge Peers membership here.

-    About Time is a multi-faceted campaign supported by the Government Equalities Office, Anchor Trust and Common Purpose in the UK. The campaign will increase the number of people involved in public life across the UK, by overcoming barriers that get in the way of participation. At the core of the About Time campaign is the notion that diversity is critical to a board’s ability to spot issues and trends.

Just because they grow up to trust their instincts, use words with values in them, take the trouble to build relationships with colleagues and judge situations through a feel for people and not just facts, does not mean that they have become feminine.

At the moment I am having to work – yes I mean having – with a group of four men who deeply offend me. They reject my very language as over-emotional. They can’t see why a logical strategy simply won’t work just because the people involved won’t go for it. They can’t see that if you build trust amongst people then almost anything becomes possible. They dismiss my passion…actually that’s not fair, they admire it and dismiss it almost at the same time. They sneer at what they see as my over-emotional approach.

Why does trust building, intuition backing and values language have to be written off as over-emotional – ergo feminine? For that matter why isn’t under-emotional as much of an insult as over-emotional?

On Monday I am going to another think tank about what leaders need these days. I would never normally say it, but maybe we need more men to be confidently feminine. Except that it’s not feminine – just human.

It’s “yes” means “maybe” and “maybe” means “no”.

We were at Zeche Zollverein all day. It used to be the biggest coal refinery in Europe, serving the steel makers of the Ruhr. We were at the center where the coal came up and was treated , where all the mine shafts meet from entrances all around the focal point , many of them miles away.

Apparently you never say “Goodbye” in this region, you only say “Gluck Auf” meaning “come back up safely”. As we approach the end of a very tough and successful (through very hard hard work from all) year like so many others, I think maybe I will use “Gluck Auf” more often!

The patt response they had been given was that you had to learn to delegate, but they are not stupid. Even if you delegate you still risk drowning from the things you can’t delegate. We ended up talking about how to make space for quiet moments. My father used to tell me that I should never trust a leader whom you didn’t occasionally find with their feet on the table, staring at the ceiling, thinking, maybe dreaming – but not asleep.