Enabling Risk Taking through Mentorship

Towards Great Leadership and Business Outcome

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Enabling Risk taking

Mentorship is about enabling leaders to achieve exceptional business and leadership outcomes. And there is no better way to do mentoring, than on the job. I share an example.

It was 2001 and I had joined as the CFO of South Asia for this global MNC. We had two distinct businesses – a small but highly profitable global brand on the one hand. And a Large, but unprofitable local brands business. The large brand was not just a P&L drag but also resource-intensive. 

Three months into my role, the Emerging Markets President visited us in Mumbai and announced that we would divest the domestic brands. My South Asia managing director had built the local brand and told the EM President that he would like to bid for the local brand.

This led to a unique situation where my South Asia MD could not exercise his role effectively of running South Asia, since he was a bidder. The President of EM and his FD (my functional head) turned to me and asked to act as the MD for the country even though I was just three months into the company!

What followed was an exciting period of one year, where I had to do three things – manage the local business (which was being divested), manage the M&A process, and separate the organization into who stays with the global brands business and who goes with the divestiture. Suddenly I was exposed to the whole multinational ways of working.

But right through the year, both the EM President and EM, FD were there for me – not micromanaging at all, but allowing me to assess the situation, recommend courses of action, and act on them. What was great was that the EM folks recognized that I knew the local context more than they could from a distance and looked up to me for advice on the right thing to do.

I recognized the weight of the responsibility placed on me through all of this. I had to take calls on different matters, but I always knew that the EM folks would have my back if things did not go as planned. I can certainly confirm that everything did not go according to plan, and we had to make changes, especially regarding divestment and separation of people.

Needless to say, this was one of my best periods of Personal Growth.

For me, this has always stood out as a great example of enabling great leadership and business outcomes – by allowing me (the mentee, even if I was not called that) to take risks.

Does this resonate with you? Please comment and share your examples – we will be happy to speak and perhaps publish a piece from you on this.

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