Author: Mukesh Gupta

Leadership

Destroyer of Dreams = Worry

STOP!!! DON’T WORRY!!! No matter your situation; No matter how bad you feel; No matter how bad it might seem; don’t worry!!! Instead Do something!!! Anything!!! Anything, that can make things better; Or not!! What matters is that we believe that we have the agency to do something to make things better and exercise that agency to ACT! And NOT TO JUST WORRY!!! Worrying doesn’t help anybody and increases the probability of things getting worse!! So, dont worry.. Take action instead..

Leadership

Do Something

Yesterday, I watched something that I thought was special. I watched Michelle Obama issue a rallying cry to Americans, “TO DO SOMETHING”, which resonated with the audience enough to get them chanting – “DO Something”. You can watch her full speech here. I always wondered why is she not going after the office herself, but I guess we will see about that. Now, I believe that the difference between a leader and someone who is not a leader is that leaders “Do Something” about things. When you see injustice and you do something about it, you are a leader. When […]

Leadership

Three Lessons in Effective Communication from a Funny Ad

I stumbled on to an ad on my Instagram feed, that I had found very funny when it originally aired. You can watch the ad here before we go any further. When I rewatched this ad from the lens of what can I learn from it, I found it had a lot of lessons for us as leaders and as communicators: Lesson 1: Setting the context Whenever we are trying to tell a story, it is important to set the context within which the story is going to play out. The idea here is to make the context as familiar […]

Leadership

Lessons in Leadership from the movie “Raayan”

I recently watched the Tamil language movie – Raayan and really liked the movie. It is a typical commercial movie, following the life of three siblings with the eldest one trying to protect the younger one’s. Here is the plot according to Wikipedia: The film follows Kathavaraayan “Raayan”, a fast-food hotel owner in North Chennai, who begins to protect his family when they inadvertently get muddled in a war between two rival gangs. Here are a few lessons in leadership that I took away from the different characters in the movie: Patience Vs Definitive Action Patience is a great virtue until […]

Leadership

Bullet Point Meetings and Campfire Conversation

I was watching a recording of the highly energetic and insightful anthropologist Jitske Kramer, delivering her keynote at the Nordic Business Forum 2022 and was stuck by one of her insights: Bullet Point Meetings: These meetings are all about taking actions and tactical thinking. These meetings are about listing down what needs to be done and checking them once done. This is all about day-to-day activities that needs to be done to keep the lights on for our businesses. These meetings are all about behaviours, norms and rituals that we follow when we come together. In these meetings, you optimise […]