The Truth about Mentorship

I am probably the most misguided mentor ever.

No, really. I have no clue what I’d be doing if I ever landed a job as a life-coach or had to do this full time.

As with everything else in life, I do owe a lot of my ‘mentorship’ experience to luck and a great ecosystem. I am associated with two social organizations, do a bit of past-organization colleague check-ins where some folks of an old team I was part of, get together every month and we talk (one on one) about their goals (mine too), how far we’ve got along in the last thirty days or so, and how we can move the needle a little more in the next month.

It has been an experience of a lifetime. I’m learning so much, day in and day out. It is one of the most enthralling experiences of my life, so far.

In this quest of spreading learnings, experiences and knowledge, here are the top 9 things my mentors/mentees taught me through our interactions:

Storytelling

I’d never really thought about the meaning of storytelling when Jennifer Aniston (let’s use celebrity names, instead of real names) came to me and said, ‘Hey, I’d love to learn about Storytelling and how that’d help me in being a better consultant.’ I was intrigued. I started reading more about storytelling, discussing cases & scenarios with Jen, and growing into a better communicator, overall.

Storytelling is all about keeping the audience above everything else. Be it a pitch deck, a talk, an appraisal discussion, an interview or even a dinner you’re hosting at home. It is all about creating great experiences for the people you interact with.

As we’ve spent time diving deeper into the art of storytelling, particularly in sales & consulting, we’ve realised how exciting the art of communicating with stories is. And how the human mind is trained to connect and resonate with stories of other beings.

It is a blissful experience.

Leadership

Well, here’s something I just can’t get enough of. Shah Rukh and I decided to embark on this journey of understanding the essence of leadership. We both had this innate curiosity about the human mind and how it works.

Both of us are deep rooted introverts, trying (desperately) to gel well in this world of extroverts and ‘high-fives’. It’s been tough but it has been exciting too! Fortunately (or unfortunately) we’ve also been given teams to manage & work with, hence the need to be a ‘good’ leader.

What we’ve learned is that leadership is a whole lot more about ourselves than it is about others around us. If we can lead ourselves well — live a disciplined life, know when to be creative, when to be mindful and when to be assertive with our own selves, the external manifestations of these internal characteristics flow automatically.

Leading is all about being a good leader of oneself. Yes.

Decision Making

It all started with Tiger Shroff sharing a very intriguing yet personal story about how they’d have a tough time at home because they weren’t able to take decisions or stick by them. I connected instantly with the feeling. For a long long time, I was known to be someone who’d decide something in one moment and change the decision in the very next moment.

Tiger and I’ve laughed through our sessions, sharing anecdotes, understanding each other’s fears of decision-making and trying to be the moral support that we needed to weigh down our sinking ship of indecisiveness. (I am being positive in the last sentence).

What we’ve come to realise is that decision making is a lot about knowing (and understanding) the core ‘why’ of our lives. Even if is a random decision of whether to have ice cream after dinner.

If we are clear on your goals, ‘to have or not to have’ ice cream is actually a very easy decision to make. If you’re not clear on your goals (and also, values), this very decision can become a life-altering sequence of indecisive micro-decisions that lead you to an action that will, in the end, create more confusion than clarity.

Technically more adept

Well, wouldn’t we all like to know the ins and outs of NFTs, blockchain, AI & ML (aren’t they the same thing) and why everyone wants to get to Mars?

Aamir Khan and I didn’t have very elaborate goals for life but we wanted to make sure that we become a whole lot more technologically capable than we were (at the time). Truth be told, Aamir is way more technologically advanced than I ever will be (because Aamir is living & breathing software engineering).

But we both decided to have each other’s backs as we both embarked on this journey of becoming better (tech) versions of ourselves.

I must say we have been one of the biggest procrastinators of all time. But that’s the thing about technology, you can start and restart multiple times, and become a superior version of yourselves faster than earlier. Because unlike the real world where compounding works wonders, the world of tech has so many new developments every single day, you may very well be ahead of the curve even if you do one session on the latest AI platform in 2021 than if you spent weeks trying to understand what cloud is in 2010.

Does that make sense, Aamir (Or am I still just trying to justify what we haven’t done)? :/

Sales & Consulting

If there’s one thing I’m always excited about, it is this. Sales! What a wonderful world and profession to be in. Add a tinge of digital marketing to this and you have a recipe for success in any domain, across industries and borders.

Robert Downey Jr. (could be mistaken for radio jockey because of their amazing voice) felt that sales should be learned studiously. I never thought about sales that way. And I was so dumb not to. Thanks to Rob, we’ve been able to learn ‘sales’ scientifically, and psychologically.

Through Masterclasses, TED talks, online courses and our regular experience sharing sessions, we’ve come to realise that sales is a vast world of conundrums, idiosyncrasies and personalities. All in all, a space for creativity and growth.

There is just so much to think about, to learn about and to speak about. I couldn’t do justice to it here but I’ll say this — We are all selling, all the time. And as much as we’ve been tuned to think that sales is all about ‘selling’, it is actually not. Real ‘sales’ is all about understanding, about trust and about authenticity.

Sales is life.

Becoming better at what we do

Some of our mentorship sessions are quite abstract, quite open and quite life-changing. Saif Ali Khan and I couldn’t agree on one specific topic. And we’ve always been proponents of all-round development. (We both are also all rounders in cricket). Hence we decided to focus on simply ‘becoming better’ versions of ourselves.

We’ve tried to cover personal & professional facets of life and continued to focus on overall growth as we have progressed.

Also, sometimes you learn a lot more from the experiences of each other and empathise in a way that changes a lot about how you viewed the world. I think this has happened for Saif and me. We’ve understood new perspectives, broken down old thought processes and become a lot more mindful of ourselves, in general.

And I have to say this about Saif — There are very few human beings on this planet (at least out of the ones that I’ve known) who continue growing in life, thinking about everyone around them and trying to make the world better through small actions, day in and day out.

Digital Marketing

The world of digital is so exciting! I’m in love! There is so much out there — Programmatic, RTB, Digital Ads, Social Media, SEO, SEM, CTC, CTR, TOFL, BOFL, ROFL (Well, not that actually). But you get the point. It is such a wonderful world of data, consumer behaviour and guess-work.

I truly do not understand why anyone would worry about privacy. There is no privacy, just flow with it and let the cosmos hand you your best offers because your Alexa heard you talk to your parents about your next vacation. If that isn’t the best form of home service, what is?

Akshay Kumar and I love marketing, and love learning about marketing. It also helps that we’re in the world of B2B technology sales. Marketing becomes even more important but not as all-pervasive as B2C. Gives us a breathing space of sorts.

Even writing this about digital marketing makes me want to open another lesson on ‘advanced Google Ads’ and learn more about how digital platforms, marketers and technology enthusiasts are trying to learn more so they can target better. It is all about those multiple attributions that converge on to that one conversion. Ah, the romance of it all. Wow.

Mental wellbeing

You know how we all need that one person whom we can share our deepest insecurities with? And no, it won’t necessarily be your loved ones or your partner. Sometimes you end up sharing things you’ve never shared with anyone, with someone who has no connection with you. Just because you know that they’ll get it, and they won’t judge you.

It just feels very very free. No baggage.

In one of our first sessions Scarlett Johannson told me that they had no ‘big’ topic in mind but would love to chat about experiences. I didn’t understand at first but every time we met, I was able to share something of value, something I had been holding on to, and not letting go off. After every session I’d feel lighter and more energised. I don’t know how it happened (because I’d never really paid any attention to mental well-being) but I was amazed that it did.

The best part about these sessions is that there are no rules, no fixed formats and no expectations. We’ve not even met for the last few months but we do a quick check-in every month. All good? Yes/No? It will be.

I think each one of us should have an agony aunt or uncle. Someone we don’t know that well, and may never know that well but someone who knows enough to listen, acknowledge and never judge.

Ah, the peace of just thinking about this is making me smile. :)

Project Management

Finally, (and obviously) we end with a life skill, life hack and a profession, all in one — Project Management. Selena Gomez is a rockstar. Selena is making sure that I also learn how to be one.

Design, Sales and Project Management — Selena is creating a life centred around these three amazing avenues. And there’s so much to learn from this. Applicable across domains, across responsibilities and across relationships.

I’m now thinking about project managing almost everything. I write down steps, make Gantt Charts, time tables and add durations (with start & end dates) for all my tasks. It is refreshing, to say the least. I once read somewhere — ‘The only true way to be free is to be disciplined.’ That was profound.

Selena and I are trying to do just that, through our experiences, small positive changes in how we do things and how we handle situations.

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I can’t even begin to thank these mentors/mentees to have been such a core part of my life these past few months. Even though we met only once a month (or less), the fact that there was someone out there who was counting on you, making sure you could count on them and just being there, whenever you wanted to talk about anything, made the whole difference.

P.S. Dear Reader, feel free to get in touch if there’s anything on your mind about anything under the sun that you’d want to speak about. We’re all there for each other, always. :)

Cheers!