Name: Rakesh Setia

Title: President - Sales & Marketing

Organisation: Keystone Realty Ltd.

Mr. Rakesh Setia has more than three decades of experience in Business Operations, Strategy, P&L Management and Sales & Marketing.

He has worked with some top consumer brands, such as Kodak, Reebok, Luxor-Parker, Hutch, Idea Cellular and Vodafone Idea Limited across multiple Indian regions.

Currently, he is working for a Mumbai-based Premium Real Estate Organization Keystone Realty Ltd. with the brand “Rustomjee” as President – Sales & Marketing. Over three decades, he has worked across various industries across the country. He has demonstrated success and has grown in every organization during his career. He is an avid learner with three post-graduation degrees - PGDBM from IMT, Ghaziabad (1997), MBA from GlobalNXT University, Malaysia (2013), and PG course in Business Finance from ICFAI, Hyderabad (1992).

He has also attended a 15-month ‘Advanced Management Program’ from INSEAD Singapore (2014). He is currently pursuing a doctorate in Business Administration” (DBA) from SP Jain Institute of Global Research, Sydney and has already submitted the thesis for examiner evaluation. He is also a certified Team Coach through a rigorous 12-month program by The Works Partnership, USA In Rustomjee, he is responsible for sales, marketing, CRM and strategy functions.

He is leading a team of 200+ people. His key responsibilities include developing a strategic outlook regarding the business, helping and assisting the board in developing long-term competence and business plans, evaluating projects and acquisitions, long-term strategic decisions with respect to product, pricing, velocity and cashflows, business automation and technical capabilities.

He is responsible for delivering business performance by meeting annual operating plans for top line, cash flows, sales and operating expenses by building strong business analytics and realization per square foot. He likes to mentor young professionals, students and also the start-ups

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

We’ve gone through the interviews and asked the best of the best to come back and answer 7 MORE Questions on Leadership.

I hope Rakesh's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. As a leader, how do you build trust with employees, customers and other stakeholders?

1) Being available - To begin with I like to be available for meetings - formal and informal both, with employees, customers and stakeholders. There's nothing like being available and accessible without any fuss. People should find you approachable, welcoming and easy to talk to.

2) Open communication - Additionally, I like to be open in all conversations. Listening to others with empathy, getting into their shoes, and understanding their perspective makes the other person feel comfortable, heard and encouraged. Listening for a major part of the conversation is crucial to build trust.

3) Share perspective - If asked and needed, I share my perspective with the people in an open manner. It may not match the other person's perspective, however, it needs to be communicated in a manner that explains the other side of the story and at the same time not be abrasive to the other.

4) Having a genuine interest in building mutual success - people regardless of age, experience and social background, understand even intuitively if the other person is building mutual success or playing hard to win. Such behavior does not build trust. Building trust is facilitated by creating a situation of keeping the other person's interest ahead of you and making it a mutual win-win.

2. What do 'VISION' and 'MISSION' mean to you? And what does it actually look like to use them in real-world business?

For me 'Vision' is the larger picture of what you want to create in the long run. It can be a picture of your own career, the organization you work for, or the team or the function you manage. It can also be the 'Vision' for personal or professional success or the future of the family that you wish to create. It's essentially a 'picture' that you draw for yourself or for the business in the long run and aspire to reach towards that 'picture'.

'Mission' to me is the impact that you want to create. It can be the impact that one wants to create as an individual or the organization during the process of realizing the vision. For example, a company engaged in the business of residential real estate can have the 'vision' to be among the top 3 organizations by turnover, profitability, or customer satisfaction in the next 10 years.

The 'mission' could be the impact that this company wants to create in the housing industry in the geography. They may want to create homes where the security for the family could be realized or the happiness could be enhanced by being in a congenial social setup.

Similarly for an individual, while the 'vision' can be to achieve a certain level in society or wealth creation or having a certain social status, the 'mission' would be the impact that this individual can create in the industry, society, or the larger family. The individual may have the 'mission' to develop next-level leadership, create a team to ensure continued success in the future or inspire youth in their career.

To summarize, a 'vision' is like a painting of a future state that you create for yourself or your organization, while the 'mission' is the impact that you intend to leave while realizing the 'vision'.

3. How can a leader empower the people they're leading?

Knowledge is true empowerment. Helping people to develop the capability to handle more complex jobs in the future and building more value for themselves is a step towards building an empowering culture. Being of help to people by supporting them in their own personal and professional growth lays a strong foundation to build feelings of mutual trust and respect.

As the team continues to develop a capability to handle more complex jobs, various approaches like controlled delegation, providing ownership, holding accountable, creating a learning culture, building a culture of cross-functional team building, working on projects to improve overall efficiency and effectiveness, leading by example, and demonstrating resolution to complex situations helps team members to broaden their perspective and build the skill sets to improve their own managerial skills and capability.

So, the empowerment goes concurrently with capability development where the team is set up for success and the leader is there to help them before the ball is dropped. Empowering before capability development may result in jobs done poorly or business failures, which may be counterproductive to team morale. Hence, empowerment in line with capability development is crucial to build success and happiness among the team members.

4. Who are some of the coaches or mentors in your life who have had a positive influence on your leadership? Can you please tell a meaningful story about one of them?

I have been blessed to have worked with various distinguished leaders during my career of over three decades. I have had the opportunity to learn various skills from these leaders like achievement orientation, resource utilization, aggression, humbleness, creativity, situational leadership, solution orientation, pragmatism, team building, planning and execution, self-improvement, and learning orientation to name a few.

Most of my mentors and coaches have been the managers that I have worked with. I have also been blessed to have been a part of an organization with a strong focus on learning and development, where I was assigned professional coaches to help me grow in my professional journey. I have enjoyed both the experiences of learning from line managers and also from professional coaches.

Some of my line managers have taught me the importance of focusing on long-term goals while delivering in the short term. While working in a Sales role early in my career, a manager taught me the importance of being profit-conscious as well and not overlooking the importance of cash flows and profitability.

Another manager had a profound impact on me later in my career and made me realize the importance of being creative and finding solutions or opportunities by being innovative and being a thought leader. Another manager taught me the importance of building trust, having a pragmatic approach and to allow for the team to develop and empower them.

Currently, I am blessed to have a mentor who has been a CHRO and advisor to the board of a large Indian conglomerate. I am learning the intricacies of dealing with board members, and independent directors and at the same time building the team for long-term, medium-term and short-term success.

Having a mentor is extremely important in one's career. And this point can never be over-emphasized. My career is truly an example of how to find mentors, use the opportunity to learn and build competencies for being relevant in a career spanning 3-4 decades. The period from the 1990s onwards has brought about a sea change in business practices, tools and technology.

The pace of change is only going to increase much more rapidly in the future. Hence, it is of paramount importance for young managers to have mentors in life who can guide them to build capabilities to stay relevant in the future.

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5. Leadership is often more about what you DON'T do. How do you maintain focus in your role?

It's very important to focus and not get distracted by the so-called 'noise' in the environment. There can be various meaningless noises in the surround, which may distract a leader and lose focus on their priorities. Corridor discussions, gossip, and dragging conversations are some of the meaningless activities that may distract people and they may lose focus on the job.

The current environment of over and excessive information available on social media may lead to information overload, which may distract the team. Hence, the message to the team to practice calm, quiet, mindfulness, and purposefulness should be some of the priorities for the leaders.

Also, dealing with youngsters or Gen Z is different as compared to dealing with other generations. This generation has been raised in a modern environment of availability of resources and access to information across the globe. Gen Z has aspirations with a focus on self-well-being. Hence, the priority for Gen Z is different as compared to senior leaders who may be millennials or Gen X.

It is important to lay down a strong foundation of organizational culture with the right focus on organizational priorities. At the same time, most modern organizations have to focus on nurturing talent for the future and providing them an environment of fulfillment, encouragement and enrichment. The ability to learn, earn, and grow is as important as the availability of personal time for recreation and rejuvenation for Gen Z.

To sum up, leaders need to lay down and practice the right organizational values and build a culture to take the organization forward in a highly competitive environment. At the same time, the leaders have to ensure to include and prioritize the requirements of Gen Z and provide them the opportunities to take forward the organization.

6. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Everyone plans differently. How do you plan for the week, month and years ahead in your role?

The job of leaders is to plan for building an organization for long-term success while delivering the goals in the short term. For long-term success, leaders need to plan for building organizational capabilities to meet the long-term challenges in the wake of technological development. The leaders need to ensure a finetuning organogram and build roles, people and skills to meet current and future challenges.

People need to be provided right opportunities to learn and grow and deliver on the job. Focus on technology, business automation, global perspective, and having an eye on geopolitical situations and macroeconomic factors are as crucial as business planning and building capacity. Building business automation, analytics and data mining, focusing on business strategy and allocating resources for these activities should be the priorities in the mid-term for the leadership.

Ensuring business performance, cash generation, resource optimization, investment decisions, and building partnerships and alliances are some of the priorities for the short and medium term. The annual operating plans need to focus on the next three years and the deployment of resources in people, practices and processes along with technologies. Every six months, the businesses need to look deeper into the next 5-10 years and view the emerging trends to make decisions on developing new capabilities or hive off certain laggard business practices.

The quarterly, monthly, and weekly plans need to focus on monitoring the availability of resources, enabling and working to the plans by the mid-level managers. And any course correction required by taking decisions or enabling the teams to make the decisions to meet sudden business requirements.