Somewhere in my mid-20s, I found a book by the legendary leadership thinker and writer, Warren Bennis. That day, I discovered leadership! He made a big impact on my mind. I knew, sitting in a hot and towering library back in India that leadership was going to be my thing. I didn’t know how, but it was.

That didn’t mean I became an effective leader myself. That would take many more years – and the journey continues. What helped was taking on leadership responsibilities at work and teaching leadership as part of my work. That proved the training ground to listen to the many leadership challenges experienced by leaders. And what they thought they needed to get through those challenges. I had found my passion in leadership development.

Two decades ago, I began travelling extensively around the world to US, Europe and Asia, teaching team leaders what I knew of leadership and what could enable them to become better leaders.  

Those enlightening first-hand cultural experience started my diversity and inclusion journey! It wasn’t possible to teach leadership without also talking about who was being led, what they needed from leaders and what could help people experience inclusion at work.

My biggest leadership test was when I became a team leader myself. That raised my awareness, challenged hidden assumptions and elevated my understanding of inclusive leadership. I can safely say that when I chose to improve my own leadership, I also became a better facilitator and person. 

I am continually inspired by the transformational and career-changing impact inclusive and effective leadership can have on teams. I am a firm believer that without leaders working on themselves first, putting pressure on teams to do any better is mostly unproductive. Most leaders are capable of difficult change – if it serves a purpose bigger than hiding from our insecurities and flaws. 

The process of unlearning and relearning continues. I feel energised about going further along on this path through my dedicated work in leading with inclusion and creating safe, respectful and caring work cultures where people can belong and do their best work.

I make a daily effort to be learning agile, stay open to new influences and deal with some of the discomfort that comes with it. I can tell you from repeated experience, the discomfort of raising your leadership awareness is temporary, and gives way to renewed leadership fairly quickly.

Through my work in leadership and inclusion for over two decades now, I have been on a journey to interrupt biases, challenge assumptions and undo unhelpful conditioning, so we can ask ourselves tough and important questions as leaders. When a small voice inside nudges you to rationalise and move on, keep persisting and do what aligns with your chosen leadership values and not your borrowed beliefs from the past.

I am passionate and inspired about helping leaders and businesses navigate the modern workplace, so everyone can benefit and create a more fulfilling, inclusive, safer, equitable and respectful work environment. You may agree, everyone deserves and needs that at work.