At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring to our community some of the finest stories from the entrepreneurship world. As part of this endeavour, we invited yet another passionate women entrepreneur – Roli Kesarwani for an exclusive interview with us. Roli is an Entrepreneur, Coach, Mentor, Leader, Change Maker and Growth Strategist. She is a Certified Leadership/Career Transition/Women Enlivenment/Parenting Coach (PCC, ICF). Besides this, she is also a certified Design Thinker and NLP Practitioner. Let’s learn more about her inspiring journey, background, and advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Roli:
Talk us through your background and your journey, please.
My journey is well mix of professional and personal growth over the period of 24yrs and has helped me cross-pollinate ideas across a wide variety of industry sectors, including ITes, Travel Food, Banking, Facilitation & Coaching in many different industries.
Going back to my childhood where I had seen my father conducting training, I got fascinated to be a facilitator in MNCs and when I grew up in my career I wanted to lead and manage my work my way.
Today, this idea of managing my work my way led me to start my own consulting and service for coaching and a start-up in progress.
Worked in India for approx. 8 yrs. in ITES organization before going for the MBA in the UK. I learnt, owe and proud of my strong professional value from GECIS first BPO in India having GE as a parent company and then moved to WNS as AM -Training and moved to London for my PG.”
After my MBA from Buckingham University UK, I joined a charitable trust started by Queen Mother in 2nd world war as internee to have exposure to non-profitable or social enterprise and this opportunity gave me the access the Lords and Dames who were the patron of the charitable trust, attended the OBE celebration party at Prince William’s palace and be guest to the House of Lords. This experience of Royalty was out of the world.
At the same time, for a salary, I joined the travel food organization in London. I completed some long unfinished work which helped me gain the confidence of my Senior management in me which gave me the opportunity to handle the manager’s office on Ad-hoc basis and I was able to manage the HR Audits without any NCs which happened for the 1st time, improved the VOC of products, project on revenue generation and home office challenges.
Thereafter, I decided to return to India and work for myself and started the journey of becoming a coach.”
Currently, I play a role of facilitator and coach in the domain of Leadership, Career Transition, Woman Enlivenment, Parenting and working on a start-up which is a one-stop solution for elderly people – “Parenting Elderly Parents” provides daily essential along with emergency support at the comfort of their home when their children are staying far away from parents.”
How did you discover your passion in ‘Coaching’?
I am an incredibly supportive and Inspiring person naturally, was always people-oriented and passionately engaged in co-creating paths for the challenges with my team members even before realizing that the way I work is known as coaching. Collaborating with teams and senior managers in a Travel food company in London made me realise that I have the potential to be an effective coach.
Post coming back to India I did research and started my journey to be a coach and today I am a certified PCC from ICF, TLC certified Leadership accessor, NLP Practitioner, Parenting Expert and Design Thinker and work in the domain of Career Transition, Leadership, Woman Enlivenment and Parenting.
I am incorporating family coaching for elderly people and their children in my start-up – “PEP – Parenting Elderly Parents” to sensitize society about the needs of the elderly people’s desire to lead their life according to their desire and with respect in their own home without being judged and not staying at the old age home if they do not wish to stay in their children’s house and it is ok.
With so much going on, how do you start the day to keep your passion alive?
My belief is that my internal energy comes from the blessing of the Universe, my parents, ancestors, and angels.
Eternal passion to inspire people drives me to be on the path I am on.”
I use the power of visualization, communication to express myself to the universe of what I desire to do for the passion I hold.
How can leadership qualities help with your career or business growth?
Leadership qualities of growth mindset, Agility, mindful listening, Empathy, collaboration are essential skills in addition to the knowledge and expertise of the domain for exponential growth.
However, all the qualities needed must be put to ACTION.
Thinking and planning is great quality as a leader but without putting the plan into action nothing is achievable.”
Given the rapid pace at which the world is changing, what are the leadership traits that are necessary for success?
Agile mindset – To adapt to new change and ability to see the continuous change
Resilience – Bouncing back to start the process again despite the failure gives strength to stand once again
Awareness – Become aware of your strength and ability to see others strength and areas of development and extend support to them will help you build a cohesive team
Collaboration – Alone growth is possible but to have exponential growth collaboration is a must and a leader must have an eye to identify the collaboration opportunities and grab it.
Empathy – Today more than process and procedure, people are valued. If a leader can feel what their people are going through and is able to be with them then the leader is bound to influence people and it is a success.
In your opinion what is the meaning of success?
Success has a different meaning for every soul and to me, success and growth go hand in hand, and it means taking courage to stand for yourself is success and the rest will fall in line for growth.
Please share with us – what has worked well for you so far?
Listening, empathy and communication with the courage to express what feel is fair and right have been supportive to me and others have worked for me.
What are the keys to success?
(1) Self-awareness,
(2) Unbiased,
(3) Courage,
(4) Consistency,
(5) Empathetic,
(6) Soulful
(7) Self-assurance
We know that you are continuously engaged in helping others achieve their goals. Why do you do that?
Firstly, I am a giver by nature and so I believe in facilitating and sharing whatever I have with the seekers around me.
My strong belief is to “Make the future generation compassionate and responsible to make wiser choices and continuously evolve a better version of self and society.”
Secondly, adding value to someone’s life and returning to society is a way to show my gratitude and this feeling gives me inner peace.
What about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
When I see my students, team and client shift in their life and evolving from a stuck position to the next point in their journey of life and/or professional, through my coaching sessions/programs amps up my energy to deliver more value to them and bring in the satisfaction.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
Today’s generation is impatient and wants everything at the click of the button but there is nothing like Instant success.
My advice to the students would be mindful. Being mindful is difficult however possible.
By saying mindful in their successful career, I mean:
(a) Do the groundwork so that when you are managing the work you are aware of what is making sense and what is not.
(b) Have resilience – have the ability and strength to bounce back after failure
(c) Acceptance – There are equal possibilities of failure as much as success so accept it and yourself.
(d) It is OK to not be perfect. As soon as you become ok being you not perfect, you have created a way for improvement and the possibility to become successful increases.
(e) Identify the key skills and personality traits to succeed.
(f) Successful career requires a student to have a clarity of what they want, identify the skills and knowledge they have, find the value-added if any to acquire in terms of skill set or certifications and research the industry in accordance with their potential and desire and then prepare diligently to achieve their goal.
(g) In case professional support is identified then one must approach a professional as it brings in confidence and strength to enhance the performance at work.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
