Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 13

Addressing the Elephant in the Room

Premise: One of the responsibility of a leader is to be able to tell people what they think about them, their potential, performance and presence. Sometimes it is good news and sometimes not so. It is easy when we it is good news. So, we tend to share this often and easily. However, it is difficult to share the bad news and many leaders tend to post-pone this conversation as it is uncomfortable, both for them and to those they are delivering it. However, the more we delay sharing the bad news, t...

Masterclass: Leading Large Scale Transformation

In this masterclass, I share my insights on some of the most important things that we need to keep in mind when we are leading large scale transformation efforts. (You can watch the recording here.) Once the transformation is initiated (inspired or for survival), there are 4 phases: 1. Initiate: This phase is all about explaining the reason behind the transformation, recruiting your change agents, identifying the different stakeholder groups and understanding our own apetite for change or transf...

Failed Leadership

There has been enough said about the post office scandal in UK. Dave Trott talks about his perspective on the same here. You can read more about the scandal on BBC’s site here or watch the documentary here. Seven HUNDRED innocent people were accused of fraud or outright theft. A few of them gave their lives out of shame, some served prison sentences, a lot of them paid from their own pockets {out of shame} and a very few fought against the allegations and proved that the entire issue was due to ...

Impact of Culture on our Thinking

The teacher, philosopher, J Krishnamurthy’s insight on the impact of culture on our thinking is deep and I believe right on target. We are social beings and our evolutionary biology still plays a significant role in how we show up, think and act in social settings. This in turn has an impact on what we think about, how we think about it and what are the boundaries within which we think about it. It is very rare that someone is able to go beyond these boundaries and think outside the cultural nor...

Turning Status Quo into Your Ally

I recently read a blog post by Seth Godin titled, “The four cohorts of the status quo“. It reminded of the fact that as leaders, we need to understand the concept of status quo, how to leverage it and deal with it, as appropriate. This ability to not allow status quo to hinder our pursuits is a high leverage or impact skill for any leader. In the post, Seth talks about the four kinds of people and their relationship with Status quo – those who actively benefit from it, those who care about the s...

Instead of Firing Employees, It is time to Love them!

For a lot of people around the world, today is a day that marks the celebration of love and lovers. The origin of the festivities are not clear though. You can find a lot more about the potential origin story of the day here or here. There has been a lot of people being let go from their jobs in the last few months. On top of that, given the current socio-political-economic situation that we are living in, I would not let any opportunity to celebrate go by. So, the question I want to ask or expl...

PBTO: Stepping into a World of Exponential Possibility with Sophie Krantz

In this episode of the podcast, we host the inimitable and unapologetically ambitious, Sophie Krantz. We had a conversation about leadership and the need for economic growth and opportunity. We discussed the possibility of creating positive change in the world through frameworks like exponential organization (ExO) and coaching ordinary people to do extraordinary things. In this wide ranging conversation, we discussed – The importance of seeing the world as one and the need to overcome fears and ...

Lessons in Life and Leadership from the Game “Snakes and Ladders”

When I was young, we used to play this game of Snakes and ladders. It was one of the best pastimes I had. So, I look at it with a lot of fond memories. Yesterday, I stumbled onto this version of the game and it made me think a lot about how insightful the game was at multiple levels. The game offered insightful glimpses into life, risk and a lot more. As I have mentioned before, as humans, we are meaning making creatures. As leaders, we would all do really well to make our own meaning of this ga...

Becoming Leaders worth Following: The Importance of Nuance

Premise: If there is one thing that we lack in our society and as an extension within our organisations is nuance. Almost everyone is polarised on almost every issue. We forget that there is not many things in the world that can be binary in nature. However, almost all the conversations we are having in public or private seems to be binary in nature. In terms of good and evil. In terms of left or right. In terms of oppressors or oppressed. In terms of aggressors or defenders. In terms of right o...

Imposter Syndrome

Premise: One of the things that I have experienced myself and heard from many other leaders is the feeling of being an imposter. Everyone of us at some point in time, have felt the feeling of being an imposter. Sometimes it could be because, we don’t see what someone else sees in us, as capability and/or potential. Other times, it could be that we are not sure if we deserve the leadership position that we currently occupy, specially when we see some really good people on the team. This is self-d...