Lessons in Leadership

When I finished college and came back to India, I knew I was in for a wild ride, but no amount of anticipation, preparation and education can compete with experience, with learning on the job.

Still, over the last 36 months (about 3 years) I have been able to test three fundamental beliefs that I have about what it takes to be an effective leader and I believe these principles have helped me navigate my way through sometimes turbulent waters.

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Lead by example and get involved on the frontline

It is important to confront problems head on. Leaders must be unafraid and ready to comply with the new ground rules. Perhaps It was simpler, in the past, for a leader to outsource problems and escape being exposed or placed in a vulnerable situation. Today, I believe, leaders must be willing to explain decisions, address questions, and take responsibility for results, whether positive or negative. It is about being transparent. By observing Adani Group leaders, I am starting to understand that effective leadership is not about sitting back and waiting for issues to be handled by others. Instead, leaders get involved. They are action-oriented, stepping up to set examples for their teams and colleagues. It is important to get your hands dirty.

Be a ‘Warrior,’ not a ‘Worrier.’ ?

The pandemic has been a strange and disorienting period for everybody. All the things that businesses took for granted were upended and reversed. All of us had to learn new ways of collaboration and teamwork and getting things done. I saw in the leadership examples that were set for me in this period the importance of decision-making. A leader who is always worrying may come across as thoughtful but is just indecisive. What matters is taking a decision and then working as hard as possible to back that decision up. At the Adani Group, the leadership were warriors during the pandemic, immediately switching their focus to how it could help the nation and prioritizing employee safety. I learned that decisive, effective leadership is about resilience, adaptivity, and a can-do spirit. Even in the face of overwhelming problems, I saw leadership that was imaginative and solutions-oriented. Fretting, hand-wringing, and negativity were simply not options.

Dream Big ?

The world is in flux. But times of uncertainty are also times of opportunity. Increasingly, the world is wary of putting all its eggs in just one or two baskets. India can do very well in a multipolar world and achieve its ambition of inclusive development. Our ambitions of creating the world's largest green hydrogen ecosystem, connecting 1 billion users with our super-app, converging India's biggest cities and surrounding towns with best-in-class airport infrastructure and allied services, and helping create a manufacturing-led aatmanirbhar India are all big dreams underpinned by audacious, yet calculated risk-taking. Taking carefully calibrated leaps into the unknown is a strength of the Adani Group. That and our commitment to nation-building. Over these last three years, I have been privileged to witness at close quarters what it means to be bold and to dream big and how crucial that kind of optimism and self-confidence is to success.

I want to take this opportunity to thank my family, my colleagues, our business partners, our customers, and the people in the communities where we operate, in whose lives we make a positive difference. Thank you all for your continuous faith, belief, and inspiration.?