I have been writing regularly, documenting my experiences, interviewing several accomplished leaders during my travels, worldwide. From 2014, I started contributing to our Talent Development and Business Leadership community through my posts, articles and speaker assignments across the globe.
This has served multiple purposes-
- Writing on my experiences has helped “reinforce” learning for self
- With amazing platforms such as LinkedIn, my writings have triggered great responses and inputs from peers and leaders that helped enhance learning and validation.
I was quite delighted to note that some of my writings not only garnered a great response, one of my blogs on future of learning got published on Forbes India online edition in 2016.
This encouraged me to kick start a project on experiential learning and to write
a book. This book is slated to be launched in January 2019.
(A candid frame captured by student at a Graduation Ceremony @Welingkars Business School- Bangalore in 2014 )
Why have I written this book?
I strongly believe everyone has a book inside of them. There are people seeking insights and waiting to read the book you write. Isn’t it interesting that our words in a book travel to places we will never travel in person? I think this is one of my big motivators!
My life has been full of new experiences, stories and informal learning. This book is to reflect on all the new opportunities that came my way and how I took on multiple challenges, risks, successful sometimes and succumbed to failures many a times. At that stage I never clubbed them as experiential learning. Now that I have completed almost 30 years into my corporate journey and on my own, felt this to be just the right time to reflect, compile and articulate my thoughts and share with aspiring, young and mid-level Leaders.
Objectives:
· Share my diverse experiences which can trigger insights that are generally not available in academic learning environment
· Share best practices and areas where I could have done better- readers could learn from my mistakes
· Support my thoughts with a rigorous well researched articles, interviews with great leaders, questionnaire-based research, books and related resources
· Provide a well curated resource bank for leaders for future reference
Approach:
Introduction to the topics is made via my personal anecdotes and the stories I have lived with over my last 30 years of corporate life.
These experiences are further validated and academically curated by my experienced co-authors and talented learning professionals, Mrinalini Sharma and Surbhi Sharma.
The use of illustrations help providing a visual dimension and hopefully, a few smiles.
My Co-Active coach training course mate and a great illustrator, Katarzyna Nowacka (Kasia) and an accomplished cartoonist have helped with book design and the interesting and thought-provoking visuals.
Finally, a comprehensive resource section will provide the readers with links to the various books, articles, blogs, whitepapers and video links that one can refer to anytime during reading and post reading pursuits.