On learning to lead unapologetically - and how you never "really arrive"

Disclaimer?: This article is written is in my personal capacity. The opinions may not represent the perspectives of my employer. All mis-representations are my own. This is a post to my young self , and how I saw the world .

It's 9 pm on a regular weekday in 2007, and I just finished a documentary on Iron curtain. Over the last few weeks,?I had seen documentaries on the fall of Soviet union, the crisis in Cuba, on Einstein, and how our brains activate pathways to learning & many replays of famous speeches “I have a dream, I have a dream, I have a dream..”?

But the backdrop of this started with what happened in the preceding years. Indra Nooyi and Vikram Pandit had just been named the CEO's of Pepsi Co and Citi bank respectively and this to a young self, trying to make sense of what we were taught at grad school vs what we did - stood at odds and symbolized the true boundless ambition & grit of humble beginnings. And keeping my own focus on humble beginnings has been a focal point of my own life, growing up back in a lower middle class family in Kanpur.

In some ways, I was with lucky & bored during this time at work.?Lucky because I had an advantage in starting leg, which has stemmed from my childhood where I would accompany my parents to people houses & devour whatever it was there to read while waiting for my parents to be done with their business at this person's place.

Bored because, I was aware that I wasn't using the full spectrum of my abilities in my day job, and there was so much more in me that I wanted to nurture & nourish - without knowing how the path. And in this process, I became my own path. And this post is about what I learnt in that process.

1. If you want to excel, you have got to badly want to know more (and toil more) about the world than most of people . This is because there will come a stage when you will draw so much from your life experiences, than actual aging facts & information we use everyday. By knowing more about the world, travelling and continual learning, you will eventually draw the connections & become incredibly self aware, and knowledge will come from outside of you, within you. Life is Interdisciplinary - but we falsely insist on making it otherwise.

The first tenet of a good leader is self awareness, without that, nothing else can make home in you. And self awareness starts with plunging into deeper recesses of "your own world", through life's lens'es.

Depth comes from the ala-carte experiences you have had , experiences in real places, with real people, who give you a part of their lives, that lives in you. The only question is - will you be ready when it comes to you, or too busy, too distracted in your own small shells of marginal tangible benefits in your day job ?

As I was closing my last semester during my masters in Frankfurt, I invested that time in travelling 6 countries, knowing the world, learning from people who had dramatically different value systems than my own, debating in board rooms, playing karoke & gorging crazy food at Nighmarkets in Taiwan, and lots of diverse reading from Cultures, History, World war, Spirituality, Business, Persuasion & Story telling.

Did it make sense back then ? Definitely, no. But I knew I wanted to understand myself, through the world around me. But, now, it all does.

All these experiences shape you for diversity. So, always seek them proactively.

2. Be a strategic outlier and try to develop yourself holistically. For years together, you will not see any obvious benefit, in-fact you will see people?outdo you in all axis that may matter temporarily - promotions, monetary metrics et al - but know what YOU WANT - and then gun for that with so much clarity that nothing else matters.

If you do this right, you will invariably go through a period of identity crisis - but be willing to embrace it gracefully, to be as much a part of you . Discount/disregard any "physical manifestation of unfairness" that may be blinding you. When I decided to pursue my masters in Quantitive economics after Computer Science, I figured that I was neither a great Economist, not a great Computer Science grad - but it wasn't until much later that it all started to add up, in multiplier effects. Be patient with your goals, and toil away. You don't have to make people understand your goals, you just have to make yourself understand yours .

So, why short sell yourself in market for lemons ? When you can play long short.

3. Know your own value system?- and protect it even when your world is falling apart . Like a tree going through multiple seasons you will wither all the time, feel uncomfortably excited , stretching, but learn that you are growing - and keep chugging at it. What this meant for me, was having many uncomfortable discussions as I was planning my own career growth - because I knew what I wanted with so much clarity & conviction - that I became a missionary in my own right.

Your value systems are like the most sacred seed, never short-change it for anything if your inner voice tells you that you shouldn't. There's a reason why it starts from the gut. Don't kill that voice that wants to help you .

4. The only person you should compete with is yourself, because only person will keep you grounded even after you have achieved all you thought you had set out to, and yet keep upping your personal Himalaya. There was a point I realized that compared to my other Architect peers, I would have failed miserably to chase someone else’s goals . I am glad I had the conviction to be not guided by fear, insecurity - because that lack of self worth is not just caustic , but feeds on itself like a habit formation model.

5. On building people : Our own success is a natural byproduct of people's success . So, build & invest in them - because with them, we will rise together. And, who likes working with solo jerks !!!

Earlier this year, I inherited 11 folks at InMobi who self-selected on wanting to invest in their future self. Each of these 1:1 discussion was so enriching - and it gave me a perspective that mentorship is a bi-way relationship - and I learnt so much more about what I knew about my own growth, challenges, and my younger self.

When we become truly invested in others, the Cosmos starts to reverberate with the most divine energy for each other. And this divine energy seeks out and builds character in us, and them.

With them I realised that all I ever wanted to do was to "die empty" - spend all that I was born with, all that I picked up from people who have ever invested in me, all their conviction that lives in me. Because when you invest in people, they form Tribes, and change takes a deeper seed.

And, who wants to die with so much unfulfilled within them ? Here are the folks I coach at InMobi .

6. Try to build purpose and fulfilment in your work and life. Because then you will go through all the troughs even more stronger and unharmed. And purpose will lie at the heart of everything you do. As you grow, life will also be about doing things that you don’t want to do, with equal grace and candor. So, build that goal muscle for "purpose".

7. Be OK with not knowing the path, but NOT OK with not trying to find it - something that has consistently helped me get sponsors across all the roles I have had, because that drive & consistency is infectious.

It's one thing to find faults in others who did not open the doors for us, quite another to honestly ask ourself - if we knocked enough doors, even after being turned down ?

8. When you can give back, GIVE it. Like karma reverberating in the Cosmos , it will come back in surprising ways. It will disorient people, but over a period of time, you will establish trust, and your genuine intent / investment in other's will shine through. Be willing to be mis-understood often.

9. Delay gratification. Period. Leave the crown in the garage, or whatever it is that strokes your ego. Because that same ego will eat you up for breakfast, lunch & dinner . There's a reason why the best of Leaders are incredibly self-assured, and humble. Be that person, in you. Because only you can contain the demise of living in "what once was".

Everyday as Day 1. And insist compulsively on treating it so.

10. Being respectfully outspoken is far more better than being no-one, and a people -pleaser, also because we are paid to do the right thing. Leadership especially as you go further on in your professional journey is like HD makeup. And a bad makeup not only amplifies, but falls through the day. For everything you are doing, or not doing, people will use your example, so speak up, and own it up, and minimise the blast radius.

Provide cover for your team, for people/voices not in the room that will never be represented - because it's your moral obligation. Try to see through other people's vantage point by asking why do you not see what they see, and then generate the buy in outside of the group, with the new found information you now have. And it all starts with willing to be uncomfortable, even singled out.

11. The hard(est) thing about hard things - is that no matter what you do, there will always be broken hearts, disconnects, a feeling of disorientation even after you "feel" you have given all of your soul to people. Stay consistent, authentic, raw, yet fluid.

Life is true Yoga just unfolding before you. And in this process you will go through a lot of inner conflict, and want to give up. Except that when you don't - life becomes a fulfilling journey in itself, and success itself doesn't even matter. An unconditional excellence becomes your only goal - because in that most Supreme work, Divinity emerges .

Accept that possibility that something may be both true and not true at the same time - and learn to let go of the rigidity masking it for your own belief / value systems. Leadership at large is a hard game. Learn to shoulder it well, because in that process, “character arrives”.

In the old rituals of india, the king sends the prince’s to Gurukul. It is easy for the king to bring the Guru in the palace to educate the prince’s - but the prince goes through this journey with men of other class - because it builds character. So, always remember the true purpose of this stretch,?of grit - and then keep going to your own Gurukul for Life .

Try to always rise to your highest level of incompetence. If you have gotten there and your world is not falling apart, it may already be too late to start here .

.. Because when learning stops, growth stops - and who wants to get sucked into the siren song of mediocrity !!!