Leadership qualities I inherited from my former managers

Over the last 9 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with three distinct B2B tech companies. I started with Wingify, the bootstrapped poster-child of India, followed by Belong — which boasted of the most exceptional assembly of startup talent under one roof, and finally Hiver — which had just the perfect blend of great work culture, growth opportunities and lips-smacking lunches.

Not coming from a conventional marketing background, I have relied on on-ground training and personal learnings all through my career to be a better marketer. While 9 years of work does get you to a certain level of competency and talent, we rarely just end up acquiring skills and talents in an organization. A company and its people (especially managers and leaders) have a far bigger impact on our thought process — though we might not always consciously realize it. We inadvertently pick up some traits and qualities from our leaders (especially if we happen to like them) that stay with us over the course of years.

I’ve been lucky to have worked under some really smart managers and leaders who’ve had a profound impact on me — not just in terms of honing my marketing mind but by the sheer example of their leadership styles, subtle mannerisms and human traits and qualities — all of which I have shamelessly tried to copy.

In this post, I list down a few of these people and the reason why they left a lasting impression on me. While there are many more colleagues who’ve had an influence on my career, I am just listing the few whom I’ve worked most closely with over the years.

Paras Chopra, Founder and Chairman at Wingify: Though I never directly reported to him, I joined Wingify at a stage where I could just pass by Paras’ desk and start a conversation.

Paras’ one quality that always fascinated me was his authenticity and self-awareness. There were so many moments where we’d (fresh marketers) go to him with gimmicky marketing ideas and he’d calmly question their basis and reason with the self-awareness of someone who knew who they were and how they wanted to do things.

I remember early in my days at Wingify, I went to him all excited — as if I had the most brilliant marketing idea ever. I had binge-watched the entire first season of House of Cards the night before and I was feeling particularly powerful, schem-ish and invincible. I reached the office and dashed off an email — ‘Paras you should write a book — you write so well, you have such a great following, and it would give our marketing a huge boost”. He replied very kindly to my email.

“Mohita, thanks for articulating your idea so nicely. That’s a great thought but I think a book’s purpose should be more than just marketing, one should not write just for the sake of writing — but when we have something important to say.”

I was embarrassed. But it also made me smile. It was everything I believed in but had momentarily forgotten in the adrenaline rush. He saw a great idea but was able to take a pause and see it from the vantage point of his values — authenticity — without getting influenced by my very excited email.

Wingify’s path to bootstrapping instead of taking funding from external investors is also owed to the clarity with which Paras knows he doesn’t want to play the funding game.

It requires incredible self-awareness to say no to investors when everyone around you is preparing to raise the next round.

Siddarth Deswal: He was my manager at Wingify. He hired me, trained me in marketing and became a cherished friend. He is the reason I am a marketer today, but more importantly, he is the reason I’ve taken risks and been okay when those risks have not paid off.

The most important quality I learnt from him was to be okay with imperfection. That might not sound like much. But if you get to live in my head for a day, you’ll realize how life-saving inheriting this quality has been for me.

I have a problem chasing perfection. I obsess over details, go over something a dozen times, constantly weighing each word, not writing because it’s not the right words, not speaking because those are not the most accurate thoughts, holding back, and censoring my own creativity and talent because of some false ideas of perfection.

Or, I’d say I used to do all those things. I am relatively better now. And Sid has had a huge role in helping me be okay with making mistakes. Because when you fuck up and you are beating yourself about it, but your manager comes and says — “Hey, that’s alright. These things happen,” then it’s really hard to keep criticizing yourself.

Sid was exactly the manager I needed. He taught me to be okay with making mistakes, to not take myself too seriously, to not kill myself over every task, and to celebrate the small victories. To publish now instead of taking two more days to make it perfect. Speed, iteration and constant progress is what I learnt from him.

To be comfortable with chaos, ambiguity and too many open threads — the default state of a startup.

Kaushik Satish: He was the VP Marketing at Belong and my manager. The single biggest quality I learnt from Kaushik was compassion and empathy. The way he conducted himself with the team, the way he gave feedback, the choice of words, the articulation — it was always direct but never abrasive. Even if he had edited and changed half of your article in front of you, it never felt like a criticism — in fact it almost felt natural. He was a manager who worked with you, spoke to you and not at you.

Whenever I want to give feedback to someone delicately, I look back and wonder what Kaushik would have said. He is the kind of manager whom you can always trust to have your back. Trust his intentions to have your best interests in mind instead of just the company, and care personally.

Niraj Ranjan, CEO and co-founder at Hiver: I reported to Niraj for close to 4 years at Hiver. The thing about Niraj is that he has a rather uncanny casual demeanor and it takes time before you truly grasp his personality. When I think of what I learnt from him, there are two things that strongly come to mind.

First is his ability to truly delegate without interference and trust you with the job he has hired you for. It’s the dream, but it’s also scary. It’s like being thrown in the deep end of the pool. You have no fucking clue how to swim but you know this is the only way to learn really really fast. My learning process was on steroids in the process.

I found my leadership style, formed my own business instincts and carved my own path. With just gentle nudging support, nothing too overbearing — you really come off your own and shine. I really hope and wish I can offer similar unobtrusive support to my team and help them grow the way I got the opportunity to grow.

The other thing that is striking about Niraj is his ability to remain calm and centred in the worst of storms. His ability to be kind and zen when all hell is breaking loose is just commendable. There have been so many times when I had to break to him some bad news, dismal numbers, updates about a campaign that was a disaster. I dread such meetings out of habit. But not once did the meetings go as I anticipated in my anxious mind. He’d calmly listen, take it all in and would immediately look at next steps — ‘what can we learn from this’, ‘how can we apply these learnings the next time and ensure we don’t make the same mistakes’. And that would be the end of it.