In this episode, dive into Harit Bhasin's journey of becoming a successful Tech Leader.

Learn the importance of embracing conflict and building trust, as well as the value of a 'can-do' attitude, continuous self-learning, and personal branding. Discover how integrating diverse knowledge and fostering a growth mindset can lead to professional success. Gain insights on effective networking, mentorship, and balancing various perspectives within an organization.

This episode highlights key leadership principles such as empathy, active listening, and resilience in both startups and large enterprises.

Links:

Harit Bhasin

Rob McPhillips

00:00 Understanding Conflict in Leadership

02:25 Personal Leadership Journey

05:46 Career Growth and Networking

10:36 Entering the IT World

12:12 Challenges and Resilience

16:56 The Importance of Mentorship

22:48 Beyond Expertise: Expanding Your Knowledge

24:35 The Drive Behind Ambition

25:13 The Importance of Continuous Learning

28:51 Balancing Priorities and Consistency

32:56 Empathy and Leadership

34:26 Common Leadership Mistakes

39:18 Mentoring and Coaching

40:30 The CEO Mindset

42:22 Final Thoughts and Advice

Conflict is very common and gaining trust is also another

thing which is not so easy.

People who are new into leadership They don't know sometimes how to bringing the

trust level and to resolve those conflict.

The old leadership or the people with the experience also struggle To get into

a conflict engagement because they're scared of any kind of a conflict.

They say okay If this person is causing trouble, let's stay away keep him away

and no conflict live a happy life But that's not the good way of leadership.

I have faced conflict starting on my leadership journey.

It gave me a tough time.

I started wondering like, why this guy is like that?

Why is he behaving like that?

Why is he always challenging me with my thoughts?

Is he not liking me or is he having some personal problem with me?

I had a discussion with this guy one on one and I say, Hey, you are a very

senior experienced person and you should support me in bringing some good

leadership changes in the team which will help you help me as well as the team.

And he was like, I don't give a damn.

I don't mind about the people.

I'm only worried about myself.

And then I found out he was not so comfortable with the

transformation changes are coming in.

Just imagine people are working from last 20, 25 years, at least

in Germany, people stay at one place forever for their whole life.

Not at least in Asia, where you keep on looking for new challenges

or new jump in two or three years.

And he was not comfortable how the dynamic world is changing He started working with

the old way of working and now the agile, now this thing, It AI blah blah blah.

So he was confused So I understand you need to buy in you need to bring him

also on the table and make him feel safe That your expertise are still very

valuable No, I started loving this guy.

Trust me I started loving this guy because this guy made me to think

out of the box When I go into a some transformation change and I said, okay

this will do but how about this guy?

Is he going to ask me this question?

Yes.

Let me prepare myself for that answer.

Also.

Let me think from that angle So he made me help to think more strategically.

I never told him, frankly speaking, that he's helping me out, but I trust

him like one of my hidden wisher who is guiding me to go beyond my expertise

and bring the best out of everybody.

So I welcome the conflicts.

And I always encourage people to welcome the conflict because it gives you

more power to become better yourself.

We think that people are against us, but they're actually for themselves.

And it's just finding their motive and their fear or the

thing that they're looking for.

So what I like to do in these is we don't know each other much

more than beyond our profiles.

So can you give me a bit of an insight into what you do and then we'll look

at your journey to where you are now.

Yeah, absolutely.

I have been working in this it world.

I'm from IT for the last 17 years and have taken all those with startups.

So in startup, you have to do everything by yourself.

And when you have to do everything by yourself, you learn a lot by yourself.

Also seven and a half years back, I moved to Germany through

one of the startups itself.

And you don't know what are the pros and cons of startups.

You have a high risk and high return, though you're paying you good, but you

also have a high risk of getting fired.

Same thing happened with me within three months of being in Germany.

They asked me to go back because they decided not to go ahead with this project.

I was in a lonely land and without any German skills and without knowing how

the thing's working over here, I was still settling down myself over here.

And Things totally changed.

I was always a high achiever, always very ambitious and this thing never

happened with me in my life, but this made me realize what I should do next.

I was happy.

I had support from my family and I'm very happy that I always believe

in making a strong relationship.

What you are teaching to your leaders and that is what we don't understand

the importance of those relationship.

I had some network and I started approaching them and

I say, Hey, you're in Germany.

I'm in Germany.

I'm in soup.

Help me out.

Within seven days, I had a job within seven days.

And when I went to this person who hired me, he was also a startup, but he knew

more than I expected him to know about me.

So he did his research and he knew what I'm bringing it on the table.

And he hired me on the same dinner table.

And since then I was very passionate about, growing myself and I was

very passionate about leadership.

So down the line, I have moved to this ERP company, one of the

world's biggest ERP company.

And I have tremendous growth over here.

I have shown a lot of leadership skills here, bringing a team, bringing all

the people together, empowering the people, because I strongly believe.

One of my leader came to me and he said, Hey, you need to stop

working on this and take this.

I know you will not be happy living this because this is your child.

You have grown up making it this pool and I said, no, I'm more than happy

because I strongly believe you grow when you make others grow on this topic.

I'm going to make somebody capable of coming on this level.

And when I find my substitute, I will go to this level.

Never, ever, get scared off that somebody can replace you.

You need to make yourself so comfortable and so capable that somebody must

replace you so that you can grow to the next challenging position.

So these resilience and these hiccups I have received, made me

it really polished what I am today.

Right now I'm a product leader.

I lead a product over here in my organization and I'm

passionate about leadership.

So within and outside my organization, I try to mentor, I try to coach them so

that they can also grow in their career.

I strongly believe if you have some strong skills and clear

vision, you may not get stuck.

Pros and cons, the rollercoaster ride keeps on coming, you may go up, but then

you will stagnant probably you go down and then you go up again but you should have

some strategies to keep on growing it.

So this is what I do it in my organization also, as well as outside.

Also, I try to guide people so that they can empower themselves to keep on growing.

So what are the areas or the focus for your growth at the moment?

I strongly believe in networking and personal branding, and I think these

are the two things which people don't do because they said, Oh, I got promoted.

I'm fine.

I'm going to do my 9 to 5 job, but they totally forget that apart from 9 to 5.

Nobody knows you.

If something goes wrong.

Nobody knows you, which has happened with me.

If I didn't have those relationship and those networking with those

people and made my brand, because as I told you, he knew more about me,

then I was expecting him to know.

So he knows about me because I have promoted myself.

I have told to the world, this is what I'm bringing it on the table.

So people are not doing it.

What I strongly do and keep on doing is networking and personal branding.

I meet a lot of senior executors, a lot of board members also in my organization.

I don't expect that they're going to promote me or they're going

to promote anybody immediately.

But this relationship takes time.

You need to have patience over there and you need to keep on watering your garden.

You need to keep on making this relationship and continuously doing it

so that Once either there's opportunity or once you are looking for it, you

have somebody to approach for it So these are two things I strongly believe

in and continue to do it myself And I always advocate others also to do it.

First of all what exactly is the product?

I'm in ERP world, which is called SAP.

So in SAP, I'm into product development on financial consolidation.

So this financial consolidation, what does it do?

If you have big companies, group of companies, and you want to consolidate

their whole financial records at one place without doubling their income.

For example, you have an organization in the UK and you have an organization

in the US also, but in the end, the revenue of the US and the revenue of the

UK are also interacting with each other.

They're doing in house businesses.

You can't say, hey, in the US I have grown 10 percent and in the

UK also you have grown 10%, but no.

On the group level, you have the revenue in between.

So you can't consider your own revenues between UK and US.

So you need to eliminate those revenues also.

So it's a pretty big product on a financial side.

So I take care of it.

I do not take care of the whole product.

It's a huge product.

So I take care of one critical component or the four critical

functionalities on those products.

I'm very strategic person.

And I'm also a visionary.

So I love working on the strategic and visionary products.

So right now, I'm also working on another functionality, which I'm adding

into it on sustainability because you can't run only with your money.

You need loyal customers who keep on working with you or love your brand.

So sustainability is the next important thing.

I'm very glad actually, because of this sustainability feature or

the criticality we are adding it.

Last week, I presented this topic to more than 300 plus people.

The internal and external vendors, partners, customers and The employees

who are really interested in this finance and the combination of the

integration of the sustainability.

So this is what I do.

I need to talk to marketing people, sales people, because we need to

increase the adoption, increase the revenue by these products.

So I do a couple of things over here.

Okay.

Sounds interesting.

In terms of building your personal brand, given that you're strategic,

is there a longer term plan?

Or is it just to lead to the next opportunity?

No, absolutely not.

As I said, this personal branding opportunity is a long game.

You can't have it for your next opportunity.

If you are doing it for the next opportunity, then you are opportunistic.

Then you're only looking for the opportunity and people will not trust you.

You need to make a brand and this is what we have been learning and teaching also.

When I'm making my personal brand and when I'm making connections,

I'm not making it for my benefit.

I always believe in giving it first.

I'm all big believer of giving it back to the society in any form.

Even my in organization, I do coaching, I do mentorship.

It's not about getting any gain out of it.

I'm not doing any personal branding over there.

I'm giving back to the society, whatever I have learned during my experience

through books, through some of my own mentors I'm just giving back to them.

So when you're personal branding or networking, I would consider

these two things separately.

Personal branding, when you are promoting yourself.

Networking, when you are making a new, strong, trust based relationship.

And this trust based relationship has a two way direction.

You support them and sometimes they support you back and you can't

really just stay back and say, okay, I'm going to support them only,

but you don't expect it in return.

If you're thinking in that direction, then you're fooling yourself.

But in the end it starts from you giving back to them and then probably someday

you expect some returns from them also.

Yeah, I like that.

It reminds me of.

The quote, something like a great society is one where old men plant seeds of trees

that they'll never sit in the shade of.

Yes.

It's the view of being a custodian of knowledge rather than a hoarder of it.

Exactly.

So I'm interested in young Harit and how did he get into IT?

It depends.

If you're talking about the young talent, I would take it as a young

talent into into a leadership position.

Because if you're considering only a young talent, then we can talk about

it just getting into a IT but if you're talking about leadership, then

it's a totally a separate ballgame.

Let's start right from when you were young.

What was the path into it?

Why IT

Very interesting question and I would say.

Probably in most of the Asia, how things work, why IT?

Because whole world was doing it.

And I was, nobody was perfect from their childhood.

Everybody learns on their journey.

And I was like, okay, yeah, everybody is doing IT.

Probably this is the one thing which I could also do, because

I'm very good in programming.

I'm very good in mathematics.

I'm very good in statistics.

So this is what I want to do.

And at that time, you don't think too much about the passion because

there's Social pressure also where they say, Hey, this guy got a job.

Why didn't you get a job?

And you don't know why you didn't get a job.

So you get this social pressure where you want to get your job immediately.

So when I saw whole world was doing and I said, okay, probably I also wanted to do.

I don't regret.

Because I feel if I was not doing this, I don't know what

I would be doing it till today.

I can see my passion into leadership.

I can see my passion into technology because this Motivates me.

This is what it gives me pleasure when I go back home.

I can see yes, I have achieved something so this is how my journey started in it.

I don't blame others, but I would say It was culture which

brought me to the IT world.

And how was your initial journey into IT?

Was it quite smooth?

No, it was not smooth.

Again when you are young when you are a new Person in some domain, whatever

domain, it could be whether you have a 10 or 20 years of experience.

If you try to get into a new domain people take you as a novice.

People don't take you as a senior person, don't take you as an experienced

person, so they take you for granted.

They will ask you to do this.

You have to do this because you are new to this world.

You are new to that world and you are there to learn.

And this is what happened with me coming into IT world.

I got a job.

They said, you want to do this, but that was not matching with my passion.

They were not matching with my Knowledge my skills and the education I have

received and I was struggling over there I was not motivated for sure.

Then I had to take my career on my own hands I took a challenge and I said

hey I'm going to take a one month of sabbatical and I want to do something new.

I wanted to learn something new because in this world you're not making me to do what

i'm liking it As I said, I'm more into a technical side on a coding on programming

when I was doing my journey 17 years back But they were not giving it to me.

They were giving me the things which more on the administration level

I'm not saying administration is the wrong thing, but I was more ambitious.

Instead of just working on excel sheet I wanted to do real work

Which impact the real world.

And then I said, okay, fine.

I'm going to take charge, because my career is in my hand.

I can't leave it to my manager.

I can't leave it to my VP.

I said, okay, I want a sabbatical.

I went out one month, day and night, trust me.

I was doing one certification 17 years back, which they said is one of the

toughest certification in the it world to get the job in this organization

where I'm working right now, that was famous and it was very costly.

At that time, I would say it was.

Four, five, 6, 000 euros at that time, it was pretty costly being just

coming out of the college, you don't have 6, 000 euros in your pocket.

I somehow managed it, but I didn't want to take a chance.

I said it's do and die.

I want to do it right now Whether I need to do hard work whether I need to do smart

work Or whether I need to have late night.

I have one month Only dedicated to this thing and changed my career.

I got certified and since then I was trying to get more and

more details of this particular ERP world or this IT world.

So my journey was like most of us.

It's not a smooth journey.

It was a roller coaster, but the only thing which I had with me and

still have its can do attitude.

I don't give up.

I said, you can do it.

People in my surrounding, they said, Oh, you are young.

You can do it.

I said, fine.

Then I feel myself young till I have this attitude.

Let me do it.

Probably after 20 years I will retire but probably after 20 years

also I have that this attitude.

You don't have it right now but I may have it in the future also.

I don't know about the future.

Future can change.

Uncertainties can happen but for today I know I can do it.

So I will do it and I don't know the consequences of it, but until unless

I try you will never get to know if you are capable of that or not,

I'll give you another story.

This last year I was working with a very senior executive over there.

I was working in our program, on the strategy program on

an organizational level.

So you can imagine what you're going to do.

It's going to affect more than a hundred thousand people.

So I was working on those programs, but I was always hungry.

I was always looking for something which can challenge me, bring

my capabilities to a peak.

Then I can say.

Stop.

You can't do beyond that.

I was handling three programs at that moment.

And there was a personal situation at my home also.

I went to this guy to the very senior executive and

say, I think I'm not done yet.

I want something more.

You can imagine he was a senior executive and he was seen the world more than me.

And he said, Hey, don't do that.

You have a personal life at home.

Three programs already.

You're taking care of it.

Fourth one will mess you up, will put you on the top.

You will burn out.

I said, no, I want to do it.

At least I want to feel whether after four programs will I be burned

out or I still have the capability or capacity to do beyond that.

I took that challenge.

He was surprised.

I delivered all those four things all together.

And that's what I'm saying.

You need to have a can do attitude.

You need to have your own capability.

You will grow only when you challenge yourself.

If you're sitting on a relaxed chair and then you say that opportunity comes

to you, you will grow by yourself.

No, you need, this is the moment, the personal branding.

I showed my brand to this guy.

Hey, I can do those challenges.

I have those capabilities.

Trust me.

And I will deliver it.

I made it and this helped me making a strong relationship also I'm pretty sure

this guy may not forget me even in the hard times because he Guided me not to do

it, but I still challenged him and did it.

So I think this really helps when you have to do these things But I

also want to add another thing What I did It's not I have done it alone.

I was doing a lot of my own self learning.

I'm a very continuous learner So i'm doing a lot of self learning and you

need a mentor also who can guide you.

Also showing the correct path I always recommend people that you can do it

yourself, you know the very common term do it yourself and then get a mentor

There's a difference between those two.

If you do it yourself, probably you'll do it in two weeks.

If you take a mentor with an experienced person who knows about

it, he can help you out in doing in two days, probably four days also.

It always depends about your goal and how fast you want to run.

If you say, I want to do it yourself, probably you will take so many months,

probably years to reach that level.

But if you have a mentor with you, he can guide you and he can tell

you where's your gap and what is the direction you should pick it up to

reach to that goal as fast as you can.

That's important actually, you must have a mentor.

Whether you are a fresher in any industry, or you are a CEO of any organization,

you must have a mentor with you.

Okay.

So what I'm picking up from that is there's three keys to your success is

first, you had the drive and an ambition.

Second, that you had a base of confidence that you believed and

third, the continuous learning and the input from a mentor.

Yeah.

So what was the biggest lesson that you gained from your mentor?

The biggest lesson I have learned from my mentor was gain a diverse

knowledge don't stick to one Domain experience or expertise because when you

have to grow from expert to generalized.

So when you are working here right now, if you are an expert in some

domain, for example in telecom I'll come to you rob and say hey,

Tell me about this telecom problem.

Yeah, but once I keep on growing, I should know about the telecom.

I should know about the finance.

I should know about the IT.

I should know about everything so that if person is coming to me,

I should have the general answer.

If I don't have it, it's okay because I'm not the expert

at this leadership position.

I can have my own experts where I can delegate to them

and I can check with them.

Accepting you don't know is a blessing.

If you think that you are a leader and know everything, then you're,

living in an imaginary world.

So you should always be open to seek as a continuous learner.

You should be open to seek learning from anywhere.

So I'm very open when I'm sitting with any of my junior colleagues,

I'm very open to listen to them.

What are they going to talk?

Probably you get some very beautiful ideas because they are coming freshly

from university or they have something different which you can't think of it.

So keep yourself always open for new learning and go

for your diverse direction.

One thing which again I would tell you the mistake one I have done is about feedback.

So as a new leader, you should know how to give feedback and how to receive feedback.

Those two things are most important.

There are so many ways of doing it.

But if you are very generic and just giving feedback, you didn't do a good job.

You didn't do this.

You didn't do that.

And you are not good.

You need to be very careful.

You should have empathy while giving feedback, whether it's critical

feedback, constructive feedback, or good feedback, you should have an empathy.

It should be very specific.

And one thing which I'm missing majority of the people I have met.

Whether you are a leader or you're not, how to receive feedback.

If somebody gives me critical feedback, I more welcome it than supportive feedback

because this critical feedback helps me to learn further, find out my gaps.

If somebody is giving me critical feedback and then I say, How

can he say like that to me?

He doesn't know anything about me.

I know what I'm doing it.

And then you start challenging that guy.

Hey, no, I did it like this.

You don't know this.

I have done that job.

No, I have done like this.

You know what?

You're missing it.

You're not welcoming the feedback.

This guy will not come back to you and give you a feedback because you are

hesitant to learn about those things.

So he will say, Hey, this guy is not very supportive on feedback.

So you are missing the chance of learning new things, finding

your own gaps, and then you are also spoiling your relationship.

He was trusting you to give you feedback, he will not give further.

The way of taking feedback is, just grab it, understand it, keep it with you.

And consider it's his or her perspective of looking at things.

He is not trying to tell you, you are right or wrong.

He's trying to tell from his perspective that you didn't do this thing well.

But you know it, whether you really did it rightly or not.

If you didn't do it rightly, or probably you didn't think in that direction, which

this guy is thinking, you need to take his perspective, go back home, think about it.

Why did he say like that and find out the different ways.

And I'm pretty sure you will find a gap.

That's why this guy is giving you this critical feedback, take it and improve it.

But don't challenge him right on his face and say, Hey, you don't know about me.

I'm doing the best job of it.

You're spoiling the whole relationship.

Everyone's got a different perspective.

It's not necessarily a right perspective, but it gives you a different perspective.

It's all about your ego not being invested whether you're giving or receiving.

Even when you're giving feedback, when it seems to come from your ego,

people are less likely to take it.

Whereas if it's dispassionate and it's just your perspective on the situation,

then it's much easier for someone to take.

Just to go back to when your mentor talked to you about diversity of

knowledge so what they were talking about is being an expert, but be able

to put it in the context of finance, be able to put it in the context of

someone else, so that you're able to be at a table with other people in

other disciplines, and you're able to relate your knowledge in their context.

Is that right?

So what he meant by saying that diverse knowledge, he said, okay.

There is a certain time where you want to behave like an expert.

Okay.

Probably as a fresher till decade of experience or one and a half decade of

your experience, you would work as expert and where people can approach you with

your expertise, with your experience.

Then they ask you to solve this problem.

But as you keep on growing in your career, you can't be an expert whole of your life.

If you want to become a leader, then you want to Go beyond expert.

People can trust you on your people skills, on your leadership

skills, not only on your expertise on one particular domain.

There you start need to get onto a different domain experience.

So as I said, once you are having finance, then you should also know

how the sales are also working.

You don't need to be a sales guy who is going out in the market and

selling the product, but you should know how the sales team is behaving.

What are their pain points and how you can resolve it?

How the sales and finance can work together.

If you're only finance guy, sales guy will tell you anything

and you will just say yes.

But if you have a knowledge of sales as well as finance, not an

expert, but as a good experience, you can challenge things also.

You can say, Hey sales, you're telling me like this, but it

should be done also like this.

I'm not a hundred percent sure, or I'm not fully agreed.

If you can go back and cross check, I will also cross check with my team and

tell you how we can do it together.

So that's the diverse knowledge I was talking about.

That's the best knowledge Guide or tip he gave to me that you need to think

beyond your comfort level Whether it's sales, finance or probably when

you go into internal IT also You don't know how things are working.

Another example, I can give you if i'm making a product right now, I

know only about this product So when I go to my team or some internal IT

and they said, okay, they want to use this product, but they, you don't

know the downstream and upstreams.

Can you really justify if you don't know your downstream and upstreams?

You cannot.

So you must know about your downstream as well as upon your upstream also.

That's the diverse knowledge you need to have.

You can't be like this.

You can't be like this.

You need to broaden your perspective also.

The journey from being a doer to being a leader is you need to

know how to integrate and how to become a node in the wider network.

Something that I'm curious of, we talked about your learning, but there's this deep

drive, this ambition that drives you, and I'm wondering what the source of that is.

What is the thing that's motivating because you're very

driven, you're very ambitious.

What powers that?

That's a very interesting question and I don't ever

think about what Motivates me.

A couple of things which Really motivates me when i'm supporting

somebody when I can think that I Have helped somebody to achieve something.

You know when I have empowered somebody to achieve something So that

is one big thing which I always feel.

Whether it's on my leadership side.

Whether it's on my technical side.

Whether it's on my product side.

So that's one thing which motivates me another thing which motivates me I

learned it, back in my college days itself from one of my friend and I'm very

happy that he just gave it in jest, in fun that I want to know everything so that if

somebody asked me some question, at least I have a one single line answer for that.

So if Rob is asking me something which I really I don't want to just say clueless,

I should have some things so that we can continue the discussion about it.

That's the one of the motivation I have it for the continuous learning.

I do it every day without fail, 30 minutes to one hour of continuous learning.

Am I reading new skills?

I'm reading it.

How to coach people.

I'm reading it about my product.

I'm reading it about anything, but I'm learning without fail every day.

So that is one thing which helps me.

This gives me a motivation that I have learned something.

I have delivered something.

I have supported something.

So that's one thing.

Second thing about ambition is As I said, I wanted to check my capabilities.

So one of my friends said, Hey, you want to be a CEO?

I said, yeah, why not?

I want to be a CEO.

Do you know the pain points over there?

You will live no life.

There's a lot of burnout, no family.

You're traveling here, traveling there.

Customer is shouting at you fine, but let me try it.

If I don't try it, I will never understand if I deserve this position or not.

So testing the waters.

Putting my legs inside the lake is the thing I wanted to do it.

I wanted to try it out.

So those two things are going hand in hand.

If somebody coming to me, I should have the some point of discussion.

I should not be a blind on the other side.

I should try it out before I compare and I can tell somebody over there.

That's interesting because when you say that I want to have something to

say, it reminds me a little of Einstein, basically he was asked why he did

physics and he says, I don't do physics.

I'm trying to understand God's thoughts.

And I think that outlook of curiosity is the basis that leads

you to that continuous learning.

See

again, all of these things, you are not born with that.

As we always say, leadership is not born.

You are not born with leadership.

You learned it.

Even the curiosity some people have curiosity when they keep on asking

questions and they keep on asking to learn something But sometimes you

embed it in what you try to do by yourself And once you get this habit

of learning, this curiosity come by you automatically So this is one thing

which I can give a solid advice Make some good habits of continuous learning.

You can't do it every day.

Fine.

But at least keep small goals, keep small actions where you can say,

okay, this is what I'm going to learn.

I'm going to try to experiment and see the benefit of it.

And then I will, restart the cycle and learn something new.

So when you get this habit of continuous learning, curiosity comes automatically.

When you are using skills you have learned and you start using skills, you will see

progression and growth in your career.

As soon as you see progression and growth in your career, you

automatically become a high achiever.

Because you start getting the taste of success very frequently.

So when you start getting the taste of success, you always feel

like, okay, I want to taste again.

I want to go again.

I want to try again.

You may fail.

You come down, you may fail.

It's okay.

But this is also learning from failure.

You learn something again.

As a continuous learner, you learn something out of your failure and

you're trying to improve it further.

So curiosity and short goals with success really helps a lot.

It's like the flow state, isn't it?

There's a ramp up to get up to the flow state.

And then once you're up into it, it flows where people often expect it

to flow before they've done the ramp.

Yeah, absolutely.

So there's something I noticed it when you first said

it and then you reiterated it.

But you have there's a discipline of planning that every day you're

going to spend 30 minutes so how how much is discipline and how

structured do you make your week?

I would say again.

This is a habit which you can learn.

I'm very well structured.

I'm very well planned I can't do things.

I mean you ask me let's go for a run.

No.

Because I have some plan which I have already scheduled, planned,

I can't put anything immediately.

If I really need to do, I need to find out the priorities of all of them, what I have

to do, so that I can, shuffle over there and juggle and put your stuff over there.

When you were asking me before that only I wanted to raise it that,

consistency is most important thing.

You need to do these things consistently and you need to plan things.

For me, planning and consistency and doing these things are most important.

How do I do one of my junior asked me and he said, how can you do that?

How much time do you have?

It's all about priorities.

What do you want in your life?

Do you want to go for some streaming website and watch hundreds of episodes?

Or you want to improve yourself?

I'm not saying you improve yourself to become a huge leader or so.

Improve yourself to have a better life.

You learn something for your better understanding so that you can see the

world from a different perspective.

You do something more relaxing, which helps you to reduce your

burnout, to relax your mind.

You do something which gives you a better idea for your next product.

So this is the consistency you wanted to have.

How do I do it?

I plan my things.

I prioritize.

What are the two or three most important things in my life?

One, my health.

I get up early morning.

I do some kind of exercise because that is the time I can

do when my family is sleeping.

Next, my family, when they get up, I spend time with them.

I do my office work.

I spend time with them.

So I'm giving time to my family.

So that is the second thing.

Third is my continuous learning.

Once my family I don't go and switch on my TV.

I don't go and switch on any website.

I don't go and switch on any social media.

I spend time for my learning 30 minutes.

You just need to make a habit.

30 minutes.

I do more than that, frankly.

But if somebody is watching this and he wants to learn,

30 minutes is what you can do.

Make a habit.

I think I learned it somewhere.

Personally, I believe if you do it for 21 days, It became a full time

habit, but somebody also said, as you long do it for 70 days or 90

days, then it's more beneficial.

I can guarantee you, you will see the difference in yourself.

We are thought processing.

Also, when you start learning something out of any book, you will see this, what

this person is talking about and how you start changing your mindset to the

growth mindset or the productive mindset, and you start doing things differently.

So you just need to prioritize your things.

Okay.

One more question on this.

So the third element that I see is the confidence.

And where did that confidence come from?

Like you're looking to test your capabilities.

You're looking to push your boundaries.

So where does that belief in yourself come from?

Absolutely.

You already said it.

I believe in myself.

I wanted to challenge myself.

So that's how you do it.

When you have knowledge, when you have your own surety that you can do it, that

attitude, if you have it, that you can do it, you will keep on challenging yourself

and you can keep on testing the waters.

So the only thing I would say, don't fear failures, because if you always think

about the fear of failures, then you will never try that you will get failed.

Another thing which I've improved in myself.

At least I have improved is Perfectionism.

I always believe in perfectionist.

I always say if I want to do, it should be perfect.

I don't want any mistake in that.

I don't want any wrong thing in that.

And that was causing me a lot of burnout Because I was doing so much into one

thing, which was like If something goes wrong, so I change my attitude.

I mean it's all about how you want to think.

As I said If you want to have a can do attitude, you can do it by

taking a small actions small goals and once you start achieving that,

then your goal will become this big.

Your action will become this big.

So that's the can do attitude.

You need to have it.

And another attitude which I have changed it from perfectionist To a normal person.

So here, even if I'm making a mistake, let me just do it and make a mistake.

There's no harm in making a mistake and there's no harm to deliver it first time.

You try your best.

That's all I could say.

Very true.

So you talked about when you were in IT and people didn't believe in you.

What I would say is perhaps your time of struggle.

What comes to mind is if you were the leader what did you see?

Do you think that your managers and leaders around you, could

they have been more empathic?

Could they have been more supportive?

What would you do differently if you were them?

Yeah, absolutely.

You need to check out the strengths of everybody, the

native genius, which I call it.

What I have learned about native genius that you need to find out

the native genius of somebody.

There were people who are very good in Excel, but there were

people who are not good in Excel.

You need to find out what are they good at.

And give them opportunity where they are good at it.

So finding a native genius is the most important thing I would say to leaders.

And obviously empathy and active listening, you need

to really listen to people.

If they're talking, if they're telling something, what are

they really wanted to do?

Everybody doesn't want to do what you're asking them to do, but they

have a different career aspiration.

They have different career growth or mindset.

So you need to think and help them as a leader.

You need to make sure how you are empowering them or how you

are creating future leaders.

If you are not supporting them, what they want to be, they will be

behaving like that in the future.

Also because they have seen leaders like you who are not supportive,

and in turn, they will also become non-supportive in the future.

So you need to put yourself in other shoes, show them empathy,

and be a great leader and empower them to be their best future.

Okay.

So of all the leaders that you've seen, what do you see is the biggest mistakes?

You seem to have a clear purpose of leaving a legacy

of creating better leadership.

What do you see is the biggest problem or top three problems in your experience

and observation of other leaders.

Yeah, let me give you a top three, one by one.

First of all, when you become a new leader, as I have shared

earlier in my example, you become leader from an expert to a leader.

You have to prove yourself as an expert and show some skills to become a leader.

That's the one thing you need to give back or give up.

You can't be expert whole life.

If your team is doing something and you say, hey, I'm the expert because I

have done this thing from decades and everything has to be routed through me.

You're doing the biggest mistake of your career or your leadership.

You're not trusting your team to deliver their best and what will happen.

They will not trust you back either.

So trust again.

It's a combined efforts from both direction.

So you need to trust your team so that they can trust you back.

Give them authority, trust them, give them ownership to take decisions

delegated to prove that you trust them and they can do their job.

You don't need to come in between.

So that's the point.

Number one, I would say forget or give up your expertise.

Second is from IC, from individual contributor to a leader, when

you are in IC, you look in one direction, I need to deliver this.

But when you become a leader, you need to think from all the direction, all

the stakeholders, all the people who can influence you, your team vision, your team

goal, and who can influence your decision.

So you need to understand each and every stakeholders who are connected over here.

So you need to think broader, not as a IC person who has a one record of delivering

this Technical object, for example.

But you need to think if my team delivers this technical object, if somebody

from outside can influence it and say no, don't deliver it, deliver this.

So you need to understand your stakeholders very nicely and thoroughly.

Another third point, which I would tell you is, which I have seen very closely.

And recently I'm mentoring one of the person and who had the same problem.

As a leader, you always expect your team to go beyond the

expectation, exceed expectations.

But what are you doing it in return?

Are you exceed expected as a leader?

You need to lead by example.

What you are expecting from your team, they expect back.

So you need to go beyond the terms as a leader and support them and empower them.

You need to make sure your work is not only to take care of their team, to

take care of their sick, their leaves, or their money, or their things.

You need to empower them.

You need to make sure about their growth.

In most of the cases, team members are not fully aware of their own development

goals, about their own career growth.

You need to be a coach over there.

You need to be a mentor over there.

You need to find the native genius of those people.

What do they want to do it?

How they want to do it?

If you just sit, relax and say, they will come to me and they will talk to me.

You're making a mistake.

Then you are just meeting expectation.

If you go to them and support them and what they want to achieve,

you're exceeding expectation.

So this is what you also need to take care of.

Just don't sit, relax and do your nine to five job or whatever is required,

you need to go beyond expectations.

So that is third advice.

I would give it to them.

Fourth advice, if I can give, which I have been raising it again and again,

which I have been doing it myself.

Once you become a manager or once you become a leader, you say, okay, my

life is set now I'm leading a team.

My career is fine.

I will grow now.

But you will not grow.

It's not easy to grow once you have reached some level, you need to create

your personal branding and networking.

If people don't know you outside your team.

Outside your board area.

Outside your line of business, they will not hire you.

They will not give you opportunity.

So don't forget to keep on making your personal branding and networking

within and outside the organization.

That's four great pieces of advice.

I think the first one to go from expert to leader, that's not

something that you can just step into a job and have that perspective.

This perspective comes through the challenges of the job.

You have to drop your identity of where your sense of pride, where your sense of

confidence, your base of what's got you to where you are to let go and you're

starting a new rung of a new ladder.

That's tough for a lot of people to take.

Again, the focus on what you're doing to understanding where you fit in the

bigger network of the organization.

I love the exceed expectations.

One it's about initiative, isn't it?

Both that, and the personal branded are about when we're

part of the team, we rely on.

We are held accountable and we expect the leader to take responsibility.

When we're the leader, we need to be the one who starts the fire.

We need to be the one that makes sure everything Is done.

Yeah.

Okay.

Mentioned your work in mentoring and coaching.

Is that people within your organization or is that something that you

offer separately and externally?

Yes I do for both within my organization and outside my organization,

both within the organization.

I do it because I want to give back to the society.

So one of the reason because I work for this organization and as a leader in

this organization, my responsibility to make more leaders in this organization.

So I do mentoring for a couple of people over here and I also support

people outside the organization also.

So what kind of person?

Is it someone in IT or is it generally someone in leadership.

What kind of person would you help?

What problems might they be facing?

My niche is in IT but outside the organization, I have supported

people, who are not from IT also.

I keep talking about leadership and when they saw me and they approached me and

they asked me, okay, can you mentor me?

Can you coach me?

I was like, yeah, fine.

I can do that.

And let's work together on this leadership journey and see how things are working.

And I'm more than happy that it worked with that person.

So as I said, my niche is in IT, but.

I have got a request from people outside the IT industries also.

Okay.

One last question.

So you talked about your, you have an ambition to be a CEO.

And if this was your interview.

Your pitch to be a CEO.

What would you bring?

Because I have an insight and I'm sure people watching and listening

have an insight of what makes you.

And so it would be interesting to understand what would

you bring to that role?

And what would be your mandate?

When you become a CEO of a company, it's not an easy role.

You need to take care of mainly three pillars, your

customers, your stakeholders.

And I would say most importantly, your employees also.

So these are the three pillars you really need to take care of it.

If one of them are not going well, it means you're not doing your great job.

And I learned it starting on my career.

And everything starts from the employees.

If your employees are not happy, they are not productive.

They are not giving their best.

If they're not giving their best, your customers are not

happy for various reasons.

The product, the service, the after service, the pre service,

the customers are not happy.

If customers are not happy, your stakeholders will not be happy for sure.

So these are the three things which I would say we need to keep

that in mind and make sure that these three people are happy.

The fourth thing, which I brought it up, Which I'm very close and passionate

about it and I'm working on it right now is about giving back to the society.

So when you're working on something, you need to make sure that it's not

affecting the environment outside.

It's not affecting the people outside.

If I'm going to creation of my product, I need to make sure that AI

is coming and people are talking about with AI, a lot of CO2 is being out.

So we need to make sure how we can compensate over there.

How we can be carbon neutral.

That is a fourth pillar, which is very close to my heart is how I am

giving back to the society to have a stable, healthy and positive society.

That's a great pitch.

I'd hire you.

Thank you very much.

I've just got one more question which is is there anything I've missed that

I should have asked you, or would you have a message for anyone listening?

I have done this and I have seen it several times.

And the only message which I wanted to give to everybody who is listening and

watching this is you can do it yourself.

However you want leadership.

If you want to get into leadership, don't worry if you don't know anything.

Most leaders right now in the world didn't bring it from their birth.

They learned it.

Be a continuous learner.

Learning new things you can learn about leadership But if you do it

by yourself, you will take ages.

If you have a mentor with You can do it fast.

So it's all about how you want to grow in your career So have a mentor with you.

You will be much faster than if you do it yourself

Perfect perfect advice to wrap up.

Thank you so much for sharing.

It's been a pleasure to listen to you.

Pleasure

talking to you, Rob.

As I said, we have been knowing each other for long, but this is the first

time we are talking and I had a great time talking to you and answering your

questions and sharing my feedback.

And I think this is what we have to do.

Just share our experiences and our learnings so that everybody

can get benefit off of it.