Category: NEWS

Election 2023- Leadership Opportunities

October 31, 2022

Dear ASEI Members,

ASEI continues to build and grow on its foundational principles of nurturing, mentoring connecting, and developing networks of technology and STEM professionals. The ASEI National and Chapter Boards are now taking nominations for 3-year board membership, starting in the calendar year 2023.

Those who may be interested in serving in leadership positions in the different chapters or at the National level, please approach your chapter leaders. By the ASEI constitution, we will appoint the Board members to the Election Committee soon who will carry out the election/nomination process.

There will be additional information on the nomination process forthcoming

Asei Simplifies Annual Professional Membership – By Jwalant Lakhia

October 31, 2022

If you are not a Lifetime member of ASEI, this is a great time to become one at a one time $500 .

The next best thing is to become a Professional Member of ASEI and still enjoy all the benefits ASEI offers. Why you ask? The Professional Membership dues are a bargain at just $50 per annum.

And the timing couldn’t be better than now! We have made a change in the way this annual professional membership is considered valid. It used to be that this annual membership would expire on December 31st of the year regardless of when someone became a member. We have changed this to a rolling membership which means that members will get one full year from the day dues are paid. This will allow the members not to lose the benefits of ASEI membership on December 31st. We look forward to seeing everyone taking advantage of this change and not holding out from becoming ASEI Professional Member. ASEI membership provides a unique opportunity to be a part of many activities such as Mentor Connect, University Connect, National ASEI Conventions, ASEI Chapter networking events, and many more. For more details and to sign up for ASEI Membership, please visit http://www.aseiusa.org/Account/CreateMember

– Jwalant Lakhia

Treasurer – National ASEI

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwalant-lakhia-6b83274/

Asei Youth Corner: Meet University connect Ambassador – Ashdeep Seth

October 31, 2022

Ashdeep Seth is an independent designer, engineer, and educator who works on social innovation projects in Africa and Asia, with a focus on India. She designs and develops hardware and software technologies in agriculture and healthcare for low-resource communities. She is also a university connect ambassador for ASEI and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Development Engineering at UC Berkeley.

Ashdeep is North Indian; born and raised in Dubai, she moved to the United States in 2015 to study Product Design at Stanford University. She discovered her passion for social innovation while at IIT Madras Research Park working in their Healthcare Technology Innovation Center. Her motivation from working at IIT spawned her interest in several other similar projects. Currently, she designs affordable greenhouses for Indian smallholder farmers in association with Kheyti in Hyderabad. She works with Clinic+O in Guinea developing a mobile application used by a network of local community health workers to provide primary care services to marginalized communities. She is also a Senior Expert Fellow at Engineering for Change.

As Ashdeep says, growing up in an international expat area like Dubai allowed her to encounter various cultures and outlooks at a young age, and made her wonder who she wants to be. Her parents’ work as architects and community builders also laid her career foundations and made her realize what she wanted to do, what her interests were, and how she wished to apply herself in society. This foundation has eventually led her to apply herself at the intersection of technology and social impact.

Her message to young people is to ‘stay hungry and stay humble’: be deeply curious, be grounded, find opportunities, especially amidst seeming difficulties, and nurture relationships. She attributes her success to the great relationships she has developed over the years. If you wish to take her advice, ASEI is one of the organizations that can help you build connections with industry professionals and leaders.

Website: www.ashseth.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashdeepseth/

* This Article is contributed by Aditya Guthey – ASEI youth coordinator. He is available via linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityaguthey/

ASEI Awards For The 35th National Convention

October 25, 2022

The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) is a national organization of professionals of Asian Indian diaspora in the USA that shares knowledge among its members, shapes the next generation of engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists and technologists and performs community service helping the disadvantaged and underprivileged.

American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) is hosting the 35th National ASEI National Convention focusing on Emerging Technology Innovations. This virtual convention will be held on Dec 10, 2022. The objective of this convention is to provide a forum to promote and share advancements related to technologies that contribute to our society with innovations. Keynotes, Fireside chats and Panel discussions covering some of the most pressing problems our world is facing today. The convention is expected to be attended by over 1000 professionals including scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders across the USA. This convention will feature multiple interactive sessions with prominent business owners, technologists, media personalities, educators, policy makers, and venture capitalists. This event will be covered by the local and national media outlets and leading social media platforms.

The convention will culminate with award announcements where those who have made outstanding achievements in engineering and technology and those who have contributed to society at large and to ASEI organization will be recognized. An award dinner banquet shall follow keeping current pandemic protocols in mind.

Nomination Process

Please fill in the appropriate nomination form and send it in with a bio and other supporting documents such as press cuttings of any achievement or previous awards. Nominations can be for self or by a colleague, except for ASEI Service Excellence and Lifetime Achievement Awards, which have to be nominated as instructed in the nomination forms. All nominations must be received before November 10th, 2022.

ASEI Lifetime Achievement Award

This award is presented to an individual who has been a member of ASEI for at least 15 years, served and participated in various capacities in the activities of local and national chapters and contributed significantly to promote the vision and goals of the ASEI organization. This candidate is selected by the recommendation of the Award Committee and approval by the Chairman of the ASEI board.

ASEI Professional Excellence Award Categories

ASEI Entrepreneur Of The Year Award

This award recognizes the achievements of an ASEI member, who best exemplifies the ideals of entrepreneurship by starting and successfully managing one or more businesses in a way that demonstrates notable entrepreneurial characteristics and achievements. An Intrapreneur who works along the same line but within the umbrella of a larger organization and has scaled innovations and business may be considered as well.

The company should demonstrate profitability.
The company should demonstrate significant growth and long-term potential.
The entrepreneur should note contributions to the community through charitable or leadership roles.
The company should demonstrate innovative employee programs and corporate culture.
The entrepreneur should demonstrate the ability to overcome adversity.

Engineer/scientist Of The Year Award

The nominee should have demonstrated significant achievements in cutting-edge technology in their field of engineering or related science, managed and directed an organization or founded a company and made noteworthy contributions in design, manufacturing, production or service through the use of engineering principles and applications.

Asei Service Excellence Award

This is the highest recognition that ASEI bestows upon an individual who has exhibited exemplary leadership that has benefited ASEI organization and ASEI members at large. The recipient should have been responsible for one or more major initiatives, which have resulted in notable and/or highly innovative achievements or expansions of the ASEI mission (ASEI Mission: “To promote growth and development of programs and initiatives that foster career and professional development for ASEI members and cultivate engineering, scientific, and technical exchanges between USA and India”). The recipient is required to have served in one or more responsible positions within ASEI. The award honors an individual who has:

Played a key role in establishing and building the ASEI Value.
Made notable contributions to the advancement in the field of engineering.
Given selflessly his/her time and energy to the ASEI national and local chapters.

ASEI Founder’s Award

Open to the ASEI national officers and committee members. The person who has contributed the most in the previous year will be recognized. Recommendation has to come from previous year’s officers as well as current officers and sent to Dr Neeraj Bindal and ASEI National President to finalize the award. The award consists of a plaque, memento and a cash award of $1,000 presented at the ASEI Annual National Convention banquet event.

ASEI Corporate Excellence Recognition Program (Cerp)

Developed in 2005, the CERP awards are a result of ASEI collaborating with leading US corporations. The vision of CERP is to salute the innovative strength that comes from a diversity of human capital. This award recognizes corporate excellence of outstanding engineers of Indian origin who are employed in industry, academia or government entities. Candidates are nominated by their managers and approved by their Human Resources department.

The CERP awards are presented for five categories as follows:

Corporate Engineering Excellence Award (Professional achievement)
Corporate Woman Engineer of the Year Award (Gender specific)
Corporate Young Engineer of the year Award (under 35 age, less than 10 years experience)
Corporate Outstanding Achievement Award
Corporate Service Excellence Award

The CERP awards criteria is based on achievements, innovation, leadership, teamwork, integrity, community service, and leadership roles in other professional societies such as SAE, AIAA, ASME, TiE, ISSIP etc.

Instituted in 2005 by the ASEI board, these awards are administered under the auspices of the ASEI Award Committee and in cooperation with the Corporate Selection Committee. The awards will consist of a plaque and recognition during the ASEI Annual National Convention banquet. Applications for the CERP awards are submitted by the sponsoring company.

NCWIT Aspirations In Computing Awards Nomination Due By Oct 27

October 16, 2022

ASEI mentors have supported NCWIT Aspirations in Computing (AIC) program for several years now producing several winners amongst our high student members. For those who wish to know more, here is a primer.

Who is NCWIT?

NCWIT (National Center for Women in Technology) is a non-profit community that convenes, equips, and unites change leader organizations to increase the meaningful participation of all women — at the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability status — in the influential field of computing, particularly in terms of innovation and development.

Before NCWIT was chartered in 2004 by the National Science Foundation, programs focusing on women and computing existed mostly in isolation — without the benefit of shared best practices, effective resources, communication with others, or national reach. Today, these programs are part of the NCWIT community, creating a far greater impact than if institutions acted alone.

What is AIC?

The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing (AiC) honors 9th-12th grade women, genderqueer, or non-binary students for their computing-related achievements and interests, and encourages them to pursue their passions. Award recipients are selected based on their aptitude and aspirations in technology and computing, as demonstrated by their computing experience, computing-related activities, leadership experience, tenacity in the face of barriers to access, and future plans. Since 2007, more than 20,000 students have received an Award for AiC.

The multi-tiered award structure includes Winner, Honorable Mention, and Rising Star designations at National and Regional Affiliate levels, serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, all U.S. overseas military bases, and Canada. Regional Affiliate Award programs are hosted in 79 locations nationwide by NCWIT Alliance member organizations—a powerful, national network of universities, companies, non-profits, and government organizations working to increase the influence and meaningful participation of girls and women from every community.

Why does ASEI partner with NCWIT?

ASEI promotes youth empowerment in STEM and stands for gender equity and non-dicrimination.. We encourage our community to get active and be seen. We highly encourage High Schoolers all across the US to apply for the Aspirations in Computing award 2023. The deadline is now extended till Oct 27th.

Makes Grassroots Level Inroads In Stem For India

October 10, 2022

This grassroots impact program is being championed in collaboration with an Edtech company {igebra.ai} as a pilot. We welcome any suggestions from members on scaling and collaboration opportunities that further ASEI’s mission.

Our research shows that many students at the grassroot level across the world don’t receive even the necessary math education. The Indian education system in rural areas has its own set of challenges like lack of teachers, right studying material, quality of lesson delivery and many more which leads to increased fear of math and eventually kids either fail or leave math after 10th grade.

A lot needs to be done to provide better quality math education for all children at the grassroot level. Because the importance of math in the modern world cannot be overstated. It has applications in every profession, scientific discovery, digital data and AI apart from daily life.

ASEI in the past conducted a few STEM workshops in the US in collaboration with {igebra.ai} which has recently initiated the “Math4ALL” grassroots impact program which aims to solve the above pressing problem by providing well trained teachers who care for kids and make them fall in love with Math.

ASEI is strengthening partnership with {igebra.ai} to take “Math4ALL” outreach to the next level by bringing awareness of this collaboration with members of ASEI and enterprise leaders and Corporate Social responsibility initiatives.

Along with providing math education at grassroot society this partnership is also creating local employment opportunities to the unemployed youth. {igebra.ai} will recruit, train and deploy hundreds of math teachers at grassroot level schools to achieve the outreach mission.

Recently, team {igebra.ai} with support from ASEI conducted a successful Math4ALL workshop in a government school at Bendapudi, Andhra Pradesh, India.

The program also got the attention of collector of Kakinada district Dr. Kritika Shukla, IAS who invited the {igebra.ai} team to meet and understand the program. Dr. Kritika Shukla, IAS was thrilled by the feedback and extended her support to implement the program across the district.

ASEI and {igebra.ai} are in discussion with supporters and exploring the possibility of implementing across the district in phases. Here is a small glimpse of these Math4ALL workshops and kids sharing their experiences.

Bendapudi Math Workshop

ZPHSl, Kammeta Math Workshop

The mission to make math inclusive has just begun! ASEI and {igebra.ai} are exploring partnerships with interested organizations and individuals to reach out to more schools and communities across India and US to Make Kids Fall in Love with Math/STEM.

* Contributed by ASEI Lifemember Sreeni Vemula, who has been on the Silicon Valley Chapter board for several years and also served as founding treasurer

Customer Experience (Cx): Focusing On Outcomes- A Blog By Surbhi Kaul

September 30, 2022

As a CX leader, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to build customer focus in our products and solutions as well as how to delight our customers. I want to ensure that our customers can trust us and rely upon us with their business critical networks and infrastructure. How can I achieve that? Do I have to simplify my products to 1-click installations or ZTP (zero touch provisioning)? Do I have to make the buying journey really simple? Should I focus on post sales product installation and adoption through amazing customer success teams? And we cannot lose site of omnichannel personalized interactions.

Well, the simple answer is that it has to be all of the above and then some. The way we do it is by focusing on the business outcomes – not ours but our customers. What do I mean by that?

Well, our customers don’t want to run the network or manage the infrastructure anymore. In the age of automation and self-driving cars, expectations from the underlying networks & infrastructure are set very high. It should just work! Self driving networks like self-driving cars should assess network health, predict anomalies, take corrective action and hum like a well oiled machine with no need for operators to be constantly tinkering with CLI, UI, or any control point software that gives observability or telemetry.

So if we only focus on personalized omnichannel engagement, product experience improvements, and easy buying journeys, we are missing the big picture of the customer’s business outcome. Don’t get me wrong – each of those aspects is critical and needs investment of company funds to achieve CX leadership in the market. However, to be a true CX differentiator, we have to up-level that thinking to focus not on just on those touchpoints or own business outcomes. We need to take it a step further and into understanding and co-owning the customer’s objectives and goals. Building real empathy for the customer’s business challenges and focusing on the impact that we can have on their bottom line is essential. The focus on delightful and impactful experiences we can bring to our costomer’s customers is an absolute must!

Recently, Juniper CDO, AE Natarajan shared a story with me that brought this point home. He was on a business trip to meet one of his customers and decided to pay a visit to his old aunt who happened to be in the same town. She gave him an earful about all the challenges she was having with her mobile service, her internet as well as her TV cable company – all of which happened to be served by the customer that he was visiting. Little did his aunt know that the ability to impact and maybe improve all of those aspects is a responsibility we vendors share with our customers.

So the plan to achieve CX impact is by keeping the focus on the end user. In consumer companies and B2C models this is a given as companies can see the direct impact of their products on consumers and end users. But it becomes a bit trickier for B2B companies that traditionally have focused on their customers and how to engage and provide good CX to their enterprise customers. But today, we are not just B2B (business to business) anymore but stepping closer to the end user and expanding our customer empathy to the end customer (business to business to consumer). The goal has shifted to strategic alignment with our customer’s business outcomes and building empathy for their customers.

Product management as well as engineering teams need to be cognizant of that mindset during product design and development as well, understanding where and how our products are having that end user impact through usability and serviceability aspects of the products.

One of my customers put it very succinctly, “the network needs to be an enabler for my business”, ensuring that its not depleting resources in upkeep and maintenance. By changing the focus, we become a partner and a trusted advisor to our customers. If we can give that assurance to our customers, we can free them to focus on their business. They can invest their time and effort in their area of expertise whether its healthcare, retail or education and providing better CX to their own users. It’s a beautiful CX cycle that we have set in motion!

Surbhi Kaul is an ASEI life member serving on the ASEI Silicon valley and National Board. She is active with non-profits in the community as well as currently serves as Vice President at Juniper Networks, having had successful stints at iconic companies like Google,Youtube and Netflix among others.

Asei University Connect Makes Companies And Students Come Closer Together

September 30, 2022

University Connect is one of the pillars of our strategy to help students and early career engineers by forging strong relationships with Universities, student bodies and academics hailing from the Indian diaspora. As part of our focus on youth empowerment and helping them find internships and jobs, we have been organizing events across many of our chapters over past years.

As Mother Teresa aptly put it once:

“I alone can not change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples”

So we at ASEI Silicon Valley Chapter thought of making a bigger ripple impact by coordinating a Career Fair across multiple campuses and got many of our professional chapters including Washington DC, Dallas and SoCal reach out to universities and academics in their region and beyond to come together along with inviting recruiters from several companies. The result was an engaging program with 6 speakers and multiple recruiters from our sponsors and supporters.

The students were thrilled to know about open opportunities while recruiters were able to showcase their companies and the process to go about applying to those. At this event, we were fortunate enough to get the support from Juniper Network’s CTO Dr Raj Yavatkar who shared tips from his illustrious career journey as he rose from an engineer to a technology manager to a powerful silicon valley executive across iconic companies such as Intel, VMware, Google and now as CTO at Juniper Networks. A holder of 45+ patents and 60+ publications and a book, Dr Yavatkar emphasized the importance of saying yes and developing soft skills in addition to strengthening the technical competencies.

Diliip Saraf, who is also an IIT alum has had the distinction of reinventing himself and pivoting 6 times before becoming “Linkedin’s #1 Leadership reinvention guru /coach” and now advises senior managers on their journey to executive and C level roles. He talked about the “The Magical Power of Storytelling” in communicating professionally, especially making oneself more attractive to prospective employers. The frameworks and ideas he shared are useful to not only his paying clients (a few of them were actually in the audience!) but also to students and early tenure ASEI members.

Since Linkedin is a tool that most job seekers and recruiters rely on in today’s world, we had a career coach Padma Kulkarni from Canada share her tips on optimizing resumes and profiles on Linkedin. Padma used her own profile to make a point how even students with limited experience can make their profile attractive by including volunteer and professional affiliations (such as ASEI ) in their profiles. As it is, employers today prefer a strong personal brand and encourage “bring your whole self to work” so it was quite nice to hear the reinforcing messages from recruiters from Emerson, Veridic and Juniper as well in that context.

Veridic Solutions’ CEO Vikas Aditya while giving an overview of the cloud technology innovation solutions startup that he leads made an offer to provide free platform for career building – AI driven job search, resume building and technical assessment tools to attendees and anyone affiliated with ASEI as they opened their cutting edge internal tools to benefit our student members. Veridic also sponsored $25 Gift cards to 10 lucky attendees while O’reilly was kind enough to sponsor books for five of our winners.

Emerson was represented by Vice president Sam Ladva and Smita Patel who in turn talked about what their company does and how they have been able to successfully recruit ASEI members in the past and offered a glimpse into the plethora of career options they provide. Romi , Hong Trinh and Benjamin Chong from Juniper’s HR team shared their opportunities as well. After the formal presentations, the students had an opportunity to interface with the recruiters and company representatives in smaller groups both online and at our in person locations. Our biggest in person location gathering was at UT Dallas facilitated by Prof Gaurav Shekhar and ASEI Dallas Chapter president Pueet Dixit. The students were able to network with recruiters from Veridic Solutions as well as ASEI Board members present

As former US President – Ronald Reagan said “We can’t help everyone but everyone can help some.” In that spirit we will continue to make a difference one event , one step and one student at a time and encourage you to join hands in this mission to make a positive impact.

Here is the list of winners of door prizes.

Ten Winners of $25 Amazon Gift Cards sponsored by Veridic Solutions:

Sachin Chodavarapu
Amith Inturi
Keerthi Reddy Jagapathi
Chetana Anand
Anjali Murthy
Sreedevi Rajitha Malladi
Suhpriya Venkateshwaran
Sai Tara
Nihar Khillar
Siddhi Wadgaonkar

O’REILLY Book Prize Winners need to confirm your book choice per the notification:

Our announcement on Linkedin garnered some good community reactions and we encourage you to share your views too there. – Piyush Malik

Did You Miss The September Newsletter?

September 21, 2022

The latest edition of the newsletter was sent to all members during the first week of September but the online edition is available here. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society.

Here are the highlights from September newsletter :

BioEngineering gets a massive boost with AlphaFold AI – A recent upgrade to solve one of the grand challenges to understand 3D structure of 200Million proteins
ASEI Celebrating India at @75 with celebrations with Indian Ambassador Amb Sandhu and Consul General TVN in Sanford & Fremont and Amit Kumar in Chicago
ASEI President Piyush Malik honored with NAAAP100 award by @NAAP for exemplary leadership and contributions of profession and Asian community.
“Reshaping the World in Transition” Musings from the IIT Bay Area Alumni Conference by Piyush Malik with ASEI members @surbhi Kaul @nidhi Mathihali and awardees @jyoti bansal Shalini Govil Pai.
Climbing greater heights – ASEI CERP awardee NASA;s @kavya Manyapu climbs virgin peak on a trailblazing mission in Ladakh and gets to name a mountain.
Engineering tales #7 with ASEI Awardee Padmasree Warrior.
Breaking the Glass Ceiling – a panel discussion with Aastha Verma Geetha Ravishankar Rosemary Cox ,Archana Gharpuray, Alka Bhave , Neeta Pavle, Lorrie A Krebs at UMD moderated by Sujita Venkat and DC chapter team
Pack a Box Community activity in Orange county with SoCal Chapter @sanjay Dalal @vrinda @mahesh reddy @jay patel
Mentor Connect Fireside chat between Rpphin and Preetha by @divva ashok
- Upcoming Event : ASEI Golf outting Sept18
- Upcoming Event : ASEI UniversityConnect Multi Campus Event Sept19
- Do provide feedback in the comments below as to what activities and programs you would like to see more of.
- Also, do tag your friends and ask them to follow this American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) page so as not to miss any of our upcoming exciting activities and updates.
- A big THANKS to all our achievers, expert speakers, content contributors, community builders and collaborators highlighted in August :

Editorial /Content team

Sunita Dublish Vatsala Upadhyaya Puneet Dixit Amrish Chopra Devika Dixit Surbhi Paul Syna Sharma Krrish Mujjoo Isha Jagadish Nidhi Mathihalli Muthu Sivanantham Santosh Ankola Raju Shreewastava

#engineeringexcellence #leadership #mentorconnect #youthempowerment #newsletter

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team.

In case you are not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate

Asei Mentorconnect – Fireside Chat With Rophin Paul And Preetha Ram

August 31, 2022

We had a wonderful fireside chat with Rophin and Preetha as part of the ASEI MentorConnect program on Saturday, Aug 27, 2022.

Divya Ashok, VP of Strategy and Innovation at Salesforce kicked off the meeting by sharing the vision of ASEI and its programs. She shared details about MentorConnect as one of the four focus programs of ASEI, which serves as a platform to connect its members to help each other as both mentors and mentees in their professional success.

Today’s panelists included Rophin Paul and Preetha Ram. Rophin is the CEO of Wipro Pari Robotics, USA, a company that works with key automotive partners in providing manufacturing automation. Preetha is a member of the ASEI National Board and also a VC, Educator, and Entrepreneur. Both have a passion for travel to Europe – Rophin to get close to nature and Preetha for its history, food, and culture.

Here are a few highlights from the chat:

What is one lesson learned in the context of leadership and mentoring based on varied experiences?

Rophin: Integrity is at the absolute top of the list and shows how you work with and uphold the team. It often comes into play when you are pressured

Preetha: Creating an inclusive space is a key observation. This helps bring the conversations open and helpful

On how culture plays a role in mentoring.

Rophin: Culture plays an important role based on Eastern or Western origins. Eastern culture emphasizes the leader and mentor as the sage. One follows the leader for their deep experience and insights learned – more as followers. Western culture is based more on being open and communicating. Many questions from the mentees are very relevant and the relationship is successful when there is openness and learning in both directions.

There is an element of match-making between the mentor and mentee. What makes for a good relationship?

Rophin: Map your values and your goals from both mentor and mentee perspectives. Try to get alignment in 3 or 4 and that will work well. The alignment of goals between the mentor and mentee is the most effective method for a good relationship. If in the first couple of meetings, you don’t get that alignment, it’s okay to move on and look for a different mentor/mentee.

Preetha: Make a 3-point set of goals and get an agreement at your first meeting. At the end of a relationship, this will help to understand if the mentoring relationship was successful.

Is any time too early to be a mentor?

Rophin: Some leaders tend to naturally influence like a captain without actually being called a mentor. It is never too soon to take an active role and help someone else.

Preetha: Peer-to-peer mentoring can work very well if the mentor-mentee goals are matched.

How do you deal with a leader you do not agree with in a corporate setting?

Rophin: Disagree politely, articulate your position, and lay the facts out there. If there is still disagreement, you have to go with the leader if they are the decision maker – don’t get emotional. If you are the decision maker, let your values guide you.

How do we work with people that don’t report to you and still solve difficult issues?

Rophin: First align people to the problem, either the business or a bigger picture issue. Put yourself in their shoes and understand that they might have unique problems themselves. Play the role of understanding both sides.

What sort of difficulties do mentors face?

Rophin and Preetha: The mentee is not stepping up and taking actions to recommend. Articulating that delicately is important. It sometimes gets trickier if it is across teams. Sometimes mentees do not show up for a meeting or cancel at the last moment: both parties need to understand and respect each other’s time. Another challenging situation is when mentee does not articulate their goals well – this is when some time needs to be spent on alignment and clarification.

Any take on small-group mentoring v/s 1-1 mentoring?

Rophin and Preetha: Both have their space. Small group mentoring is more generic advice. It also creates a bonding between the mentees. It is very effective for entry-level employees. It is almost like coaching as you are broadcasting and creating high-level goals. 1-1 mentoring is targeted for career goals and personal development. When the mentee’s success becomes the mentor’s success that will provide the best outcomes.

Read the insider scoop and key takeaways in this candid blog by ASEI President Piyush Malik