Which piece of advice from a mentor has remained with you?

In the early days of my career, my first ever mentor said, ‘Humbly articulating the good work you do is as important as doing good work.

BENGALURU: In the early days of my career, my first ever mentor said, ‘Humbly articulating the good work you do is as important as doing good work. If you don’t let others know the difference you make, how would you pull that one more person up struggling to achieve the same milestones.’ This really touched me and I realized that along with being our biggest critics, we also need to be our most enthusiastic supporters.Since then, I have always strived to pat myself on the back whenever I achieve something big or small and proudly share these stories with whoever I can.

Another advice I received from her was, ‘Identify your strengths and make it a habit to focus on honing them. By doing so, you will achieve a lot more success than working on your weaknesses.’ As an entrepreneur, this has helped me focus more on what I am good at instead of letting my shortcomings hold me back.

Based on these two pieces of advice, I always make sure that I am mindful of my strengths and expressive about the milestones I cross by putting these strengths to use. These have helped me grow and become the best version of myself – and for this, I cannot thank my mentor enough. – Dipali Mathur, CEO and co-founder, Super Smelly

My teacher once told me that no matter whatever you do or become in life, make sure that you are giving your 200 per cent attention to it. Since you are dedicating your crucial time on it, every minute is worth.

So, if you reduce the effort you are putting into achieving your ultimate goal, you will only end up cheating yourself. I established Catalyst Group with the same thought process and till date, I have carried this advice throughout my professional journey. It has pushed me to take bold decisions with confidence and gives me the motivation to give my best shot in every field that pays today.

I believe that each one of us is created with different characteristics and with a definite purpose. It is good to get inspired by successful people but to create our own identity we should find our very own path to success. I strongly believe that teachers define our future and without them, life would have no class.
– Akhand Swaroop Pandit, CEO and founder, Catalyst Group Online Learning Platform

One leadership advice that I got from my boss Wali, while I was working in JK Lakshmi Cement Ltd, was to trust and delegate your work to people having good mix of sincerity, talent and hard work.
This has been with me since the beginning. Whenever I am confused about delegating work, I ask these three questions - what to delegate, how much to delegate, whom to delegate. 

The best thing about the learning was to decide how much to delegate in a startup as there are so many things and every single thing is important. Every product, every customer, every team member is important. Hence, delegating becomes even a more complex problem to solve here.

There should neither be any conflict of interest nor be any hard feelings nor be any sense of not giving the right opportunity among the team members while delegating the work.This advice from my mentor has been working really well for me in my journey and I always keep learning leadership qualities from him even after three years.– Shrey Kumar, co-founder, Aadvik Foods

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