Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 18

How to Mentor More People Without Getting Burned Out

Premise: One of the things that all leaders, sorry, all good leaders, get asked, is to mentor someone. The better the leader, the more such request that we tend to get. However, the time that we have for mentoring is fairly limited. While the mentee’s benefit a lot from the mentoring, there are reasons to believe that mentoring also benefited me as much as a mentors. So, it is in our best interest to mentor as many people as we can, given our limited time, and do so in such a way that we don’t b...

Story of the Creation of the Humble Mouse as Narrated by Steve Jobs and Its Lesson in Leading Innovation

Earlier today, I stumbled upon a video of Steve Jobs talking about the creation of the humble mouse and why he had to go to David Kelly Designs (which later on became IDEO) to get it done. You can watch the video here. In the video, he shares that content is more important than process, when it comes to innovation and creativity. The question is what does he mean by content? He is not talking about the content that we refer to. He is talking about the sum of character, knowledge and the curiosit...

PBTO: Mindsets to Become a High Performing Leader

In this live presentation that I delivered at an event, I introduce a model or a framework of leadership that I have created – The Butterfly Model of leadership and then go in detail about one of the key pillars of this model, which is “Leaders Mindsets” which allow them to perform at a very high level. “Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way” – Carol Dweck, Author: Mindset – The New Psychology of Success. As Carol said above, ...

PBTO: What sort of Leader do you want to be with Lisa O’Neill

This the first episode of the current season of my podcast – Pushing Beyond the Obvious and I am super happy and excited to kick off the season with none other than Lisa O’Neill. She is a self described energy and human expert. In this wide ranging conversation about energy and leadership, she shared a lot of great insights on leadership. Here are some of my takeaways from the conversation: She shared insights about the importance of knowing ourselves. If we do not know what kind of a leader we ...

“To Learn is to Live”

Earlier today, I was invited to attend the “DIGITAL ECONOMY WHITEBOOK LAUNCH” hosted by the EuroCham Singapore. One of the highlights of the event was a Fireside Chat with Minister Gan Kim Yong (Minister for Trade and Industry), moderated by Dr Lovneesh Chanana, Chair of the Digital Economy Committee. While the entire conversation was very insightful and wide-ranging, there were a few things that I found extremely insightful shared by the minister. I wanted to share the top 3 learning from the c...

Insanely Interesting People who Influenced Me #17 Joseph Campbell

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

Changing Beliefs Vs Replacing Beliefs

A couple of days ago, I took a flight from Mumbai to Delhi for work and when I was stepping out of the flight in Delhi, I saw the pilot for the next leg of the journey walk in. He then did something that was totally out of context but showed his culture and character. He bent down and touched the entrance of the aircraft and then with the same motion, touched his forehead. For all the Indians out there, you know exactly what this means.  He was praying to the aircraft. In Hindu tradition, you to...

Insanely Interesting People who Influenced Me #16 Dave Snowden

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

Reinventing Ourselves

There are times when the environment that we operate in changes so significantly that it requires us to reinvent ourselves (as individuals, leaders and teams). There could also be situations that we end up in which requires us to rethink and reinvent ourselves if we are to remain relevant in the new environment. I currently find myself in one such cross-road where I need to reinvent myself if I want to remain relevant, which I very much want to. This led me to start thinking about what it takes ...

7 Character Traits of Leaders worth Following

Yes and Mindset The best leaders are those who understand the importance of accepting what’s happened and decides to move forward, irrespective of what has already happened. They may feel frustrated for a moment. They will take that moment and deal with their frustration and find a way to learn from what happened and make an intentional choice about how to respond to the situation. They do not dwell on the past (successful or otherwise). They know that both success and failure are not permanent....