Your host, Sri Chellappa, talks with the Author, Speaker, Mentor, Trainer, and Podcast Host of The Connected Leadership Podcast, Andy Lopata. Drawing parallels between professional athletes and their coaches, Andy explained the critical role of mentors in guiding and training professionals. Andy emphasized that mentorship is not exclusive to the early stages of a career; even seasoned professionals can benefit from the fresh perspectives and wisdom a mentor brings. The concept of a "team of mentors" particularly resonates, as it suggests a more dynamic and multifaceted approach to mentorship, where different mentors address various aspects of one's professional journey.
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[00:00:16] Welcome to the People Strategy Leaders Show.
[00:00:20] I'm your host Srikant Chellappa, founder and president of Engagedly
[00:00:24] and a serial entrepreneur in technology, films and music.
[00:00:28] We talk to people leaders, business strategists and organizational savants about leading in the time of change.
[00:00:34] What is working? What is not working? And more importantly, what we should be thinking about.
[00:00:40] Stick around to the end of the show. We will reveal how you can be our next guest.
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[00:00:46] Hello and welcome to People Strategy Leaders Podcast.
[00:00:50] I'm your host Srikant Chellappa with Engagedly.
[00:00:54] I am joined today with Andy Lupada.
[00:00:56] My guest is a world renowned expert in professional relationships.
[00:01:00] The author of six books on the topic Forbes calls him a master of networking.
[00:01:06] He's the host of the Connected Leadership Podcast and has a blog on psychologytoday.com
[00:01:12] and his sixth book, The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring has just been published.
[00:01:18] Welcome to the show, Andy. It's a pleasure to have you.
[00:01:20] Thank you for inviting me on, Sri.
[00:01:22] Yeah, the mentoring is an important topic. Everybody has or should have mentors.
[00:01:28] I should say not everybody does, which is a problem into itself.
[00:01:32] And I the closest analogy that I have and I use that a lot is we need to think of ourselves as professional athletes.
[00:01:40] Our sport is our profession, whether for me it would be something like being a CEO or a leader of a technology firm in HR, for example.
[00:01:51] Or if somebody else could be being a professor, somebody else could be being a financial analyst, whatever that is.
[00:01:58] And then like every coach, every athlete has a coach, they have mentors, they have training programs, they have certain motions they do,
[00:02:06] they prepare and they dedicate their life and their energy to the sport.
[00:02:10] And mentoring is an important aspect of that, of being in that athlete in your sport.
[00:02:18] So first of all, can you talk a little bit about the importance of having a mentor?
[00:02:23] And should everyone have a mentor or does it only make sense when you are in more leadership or other type of positions?
[00:02:31] Yeah, of course. There's a couple of things that couple points you've made, one deliberately, one a little bit more inadvertently that are both really important here.
[00:02:40] The inadvertent point you made is you started out by saying everyone has a mentor and then you corrected yourself.
[00:02:45] And the statistics that show the number of people who see the value in mentoring is far greater than the number of people who actually follow through and have a mentor.
[00:02:57] So we see the value in it, but so many things in our professional lives, we get so busy with other things that we don't follow through.
[00:03:05] We need to be aware of that, more cognizant of the support that is around us that we're not tapping into and be willing to do.
[00:03:14] The second thing is your metaphor of the sports coach. And it's absolutely spot on. It's one that I use.
[00:03:22] And this goes to the question of should everyone have a mentor at certain stages, because there's certain stages where I think we don't need or we don't qualify for a mentor when we absolutely should have one.
[00:03:33] And one of those is when you're at the top of your game.
[00:03:36] There's almost a curve where people think I get mentored now a mentor and that you switch. That shouldn't be the case.
[00:03:43] I don't see the top athletes say now I've reached the NFL or now I've reached the NBA or in my parlance, the Premier League.
[00:03:53] Yeah, I don't need coaching anymore. Now I'll coach someone else that invest more time in being coached.
[00:04:00] The top golfers and tennis players will invest more of their winnings in being coached than people much lower down the ladder.
[00:04:08] And there are always things you can improve. There's always blind spots that you need someone else to be aware of.
[00:04:13] There's always a new challenge you haven't faced before, but someone else might have done or may just give you a different lens through which to approach it.
[00:04:21] So the metaphor of the sports coach is a really good one.
[00:04:26] And to answer the final part of the question, should everyone have a mentor? The answer is yes.
[00:04:32] I've already pointed out that as we get into more senior and more successful stages of our career, it's tempting to think I no longer need a mentor.
[00:04:41] Now is my time to give back. But even the top CEOs have coaches or mentors. We have those people who support us.
[00:04:52] And another point early in your career is to say I look forward to the day when I'm ready to have a mentor.
[00:04:59] I know school kids that get mentored. I mentor a 17 year old student myself.
[00:05:04] There's no starting point. There's no point before which you need a mentor and mentor someone to advise you and help smooth the path ahead.
[00:05:12] And wherever you are in your career, there are challenges you're going to face that you're going to find easier if you get the support of other people around you.
[00:05:20] Yeah, yeah. And I think the more senior you get, I actually think you need a mentor even more because there are less people willing to challenge you at that point.
[00:05:33] So you actually have a lot more blind spots because nobody is challenging you because they assume as a CEO or as any C level person or leader that whatever you say is gospel and can be challenged.
[00:05:46] People just assume that and then you start believing it. And then it's a vicious cycle after that.
[00:05:52] So the value of mentoring, obviously I have a couple of mentors. I work with three different mentors actually.
[00:05:57] And there's a team of mentors concept that has lately I've been hearing that a lot. You don't get one mentor. You get a team of mentors.
[00:06:05] I want to come to that topic in a minute, but I want to talk about something that you mentioned in our last discussion we were talking about,
[00:06:12] which is that we recognize a lot of people recognize the value of mentoring.
[00:06:17] Like you said, there's more people who actually want to be mentored but don't have a mentor.
[00:06:23] But we don't actually do it correctly or do it effectively and necessarily don't have a good approach to it.
[00:06:32] So what is can you elaborate on that and exactly what's wrong?
[00:06:37] Yeah, before I do, I just want to underline your point about blind spots for leaders and the fact that when you're in leadership positions, people say what they think you want to hear.
[00:06:48] And you need to create a space where people know that they feel comfortable that they can be safe, telling you what you need to hear not what you want to hear.
[00:06:56] And so sometimes it's about having a mentor from outside the organization where they're safer and being objective and honest with you.
[00:07:03] But also coming into that equation is reverse mentoring, where the leader gets mentored by someone further down the ladder than them who is more in tune with what people are thinking, what they're saying and how the policies that the leadership are introducing are actually landing in a day to day run of the work of the business.
[00:07:25] So I just wanted to underline that point.
[00:07:26] So I think that it's a really important one in terms of an effective mentoring relationship, like most things in business.
[00:07:33] It comes down at its heart to do you know why you're doing it? What's your outcome? So setting really clear objectives at the beginning, not just finding a mentor because you've heard a podcast where people have spoken very persuasively about the importance of mentoring or your company is or organization of introduce a mentoring program and you've been put forward for it.
[00:07:53] Or your boss and your appraisal has said you need a mentor. It's actually about being a lot having a lot more clarity about why and understanding what your mentors purpose is, and then communicating it to them.
[00:08:08] And that feeds into the mentoring team as well, which, as you said, we can go on and talk about because you may have different mentors for different objectives, different purposes, different different backgrounds and perspectives they can bring to your journey.
[00:08:21] So the first thing I would start with is that clarity and communicating the clarity. And then once you have that clarity, you then need accountability. So we know what we're trying to achieve. Are we on track?
[00:08:33] And each stage of the process. Let's reflect back on what we've talked about. How is it relevant to what we're trying to achieve? Are you what are you committed to taking action to?
[00:08:45] And, and are you taking the action? Have you taken the action? And then each stage, you're constantly reviewing and reflecting and then potentially adjusting those objectives based on the conversations you're having based on the experiences that have come out of your actions.
[00:09:02] So I will start with the clarity and communicating the clarity, then it's accountability. And then the third thing I would say, and there are many different ingredients, but I'll just pick three for the purposes of this is vulnerability.
[00:09:15] And it's vulnerability from both parties, not just one. So it's easy to see why the mentee needs to be vulnerable. Because if you try and impress your mentor too much, and you hide what's really what you're struggling with, then they can't help you.
[00:09:33] So you need to feel confident and comfortable that you can be open as a mentee. And you need to be able to share without fear that your that will rebound on you in some way. And that's why it's important that in a particular formal mentoring relationship, your boss isn't your mentor or anyone in your reporting line, you need someone who has that lack of conflict and the ability to be objective so that you can feel comfortable being vulnerable.
[00:10:02] But it's equally important for the mentor to be vulnerable, partly because we learn from others mistakes. So if the mentor can share their mistakes and what they learned from it that can sometimes be more, more impactful for the mentee.
[00:10:16] But also there's research that we share in the book that shows that people are more receptive to your message. If you don't portray perfection, all the time. And if you constantly talk about how wonderful you are people aren't interested they don't listen.
[00:10:38] Funnily enough, just about an hour before we're recording this I've just recorded an episode of my own podcast and I asked my guest about how she looks for people who will make a good addition to her team.
[00:10:50] And she said that if she's interviewing candidates, and she asks what their why is.
[00:10:57] And if they're wise all about their success and their achievements and everything that's perfect.
[00:11:04] She doesn't recruit them, because there's something missing there and they don't quite get it and they don't see the full picture the big picture in her words.
[00:11:13] If we talk to people and they share their strengths and we can learn from those but they also say yeah but this is where I struggled along the way.
[00:11:21] Their message resonates more with us because we can relate to them better.
[00:11:26] Because we're all flawed. And if we can share those flaws, then we can connect on a human level, when we connect on the human level we will listen and we respect their advice.
[00:11:38] So, the mentor needs to be as vulnerable as the mentees.
[00:11:42] Yeah, and I think it's even harder.
[00:11:46] If you are doing reverse mentoring, then you have to be really be vulnerable to receptive to ideas that may challenge your own core belief and approach.
[00:11:58] I want to talk a little bit about reverse mentoring, a little bit, which is as a CEO or an executive. If you're getting reverse mentored by one of the people in your organizations.
[00:12:11] Is that really that effective because that person is going to be very nervous about are afraid about saying what they really think, or what the other people's think about the company's policies and approach and their approach as their executive, because it could
[00:12:27] negatively impact their careers potentially.
[00:12:30] What are your recommendations on that?
[00:12:33] The effectiveness is down to the environment that you create for that conversation.
[00:12:41] We hear a lot these days about psychological safety, have to create a safe space for that reverse mentor to be able to be open and lump with you.
[00:12:52] And so you have to have an open and honest conversation with them at the beginning about what you want from the relationship, what you're looking for, what their expectations are, and actually address the elephant in the room and ask them how they feel about being open and honest with you.
[00:13:08] You need to. I don't think you can create a safe space for conversation just by saying this is a safe space for conversation people don't trust that you have to demonstrate it's a safe space you have to demonstrate trust.
[00:13:20] And so that's where as a leader you can show your vulnerability.
[00:13:24] And you show it in your actions in your questions in your responses and in how you act after the meeting.
[00:13:32] What action you take.
[00:13:34] So, just, I had another, another podcast guest a few months ago Daniela land her who used to be global head of talent at Google, who came up with this wonderful phrase she said we talk about EQ and IQ we should talk about LQQ.
[00:13:49] Learning quotient. And she said we should stop trying to be the person who knows everything and become the person who wants to learn the most.
[00:13:58] That's the mindset you need to take into any mentoring relationship but particularly a reverse mentoring relationship, and demonstrating genuine curiosity.
[00:14:09] So I think one of the core ways in which you can reassure your reverse mentor that you're serious about this is not by not being defensive.
[00:14:18] So I have a rule I run mastermind sessions on some of my programs, masterminding is a form of peer mentoring, similar to action learning sets.
[00:14:28] And the solution phase is where the group who are not the ones bringing the problem but the ones helping find solution, come up with their suggestions and the solutions.
[00:14:46] And the only words that the person with the problem with the challenge can use in reply, or thank and you.
[00:14:55] They're not allowed to be defensive they're not about allowed to explain we've tried that before why it won't work.
[00:15:01] And I think that thank you mindset is a great starting point, you can expand it into a curiosity mindset where you can't say that won't work but you can interrogate you can ask questions.
[00:15:14] But that only works if you're doing so from a genuine state of curiosity.
[00:15:19] If you're asking questions, like a lawyer, trying to trip them up or prove them wrong it's not going to work that's the same as saying that won't work.
[00:15:28] But if you are saying okay that's an interesting idea.
[00:15:32] Let's take a scenario how would it work if with a genuine intent on seeing how it would work if then that works. And I think it's that type of engagement that can give the confidence that this is a safe space to be honest.
[00:15:46] Especially if you're trying to be confrontational or defensive than the other person is just going to shut down, you know, make any progress.
[00:15:55] Why do most mentoring relationships fail.
[00:15:59] Because a lot of mentoring relationships start with the right intent and the desires are there. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I've been a mentor to a seat maybe three or four times maybe something like that, not, I'm not an experienced in that sense,
[00:16:14] but I would say it's only been one case where it truly succeeded the relationship. I feel like the other ones just fizzled out.
[00:16:22] Yeah, I think fizzled out is an interesting term, and I think it sums up probably why many fail, because in my experience, a lot will fizzle out and it comes down to one word and that's commitment.
[00:16:35] But the commitment reflects back to my earlier answer, which is about having clarity of your objective and what you want to achieve. So I think the two things are very closely aligned.
[00:16:45] If you lack clarity, and you lack the communication and that constant reflection and review, you're going to fizzle out because you have a law of diminishing returns from every meeting while until you've forgotten the whole point you were there in the first place.
[00:16:59] That's probably where things have fizzled out. Most people are busy, and particularly people who are on a good career trajectory, successful career trajectory, who are the ones more likely to have mentors.
[00:17:13] They are equally more likely to volunteer for other things, and they will tend to be busier generally. And therefore, you're juggling balls, and it's easy to let a ball drop.
[00:17:24] And if you don't have that clarity and you don't have that commitment, the ball drops. I think the mentor plays a role in that, but with a lot of mentoring being voluntary, particularly inside an organization, it should be the mentee that drives it in that case.
[00:17:38] So that's where the commitment rests. I think the mentor has a role to play in that. If the mentor doesn't have commitment, it can equally fizzle out.
[00:17:45] But I think the burden of making it work should be on the mentee unless it's a paid mentoring engagement. But it is about having that clarity, reflecting and reviewing and always reminding yourself why you're there.
[00:17:59] Mm hmm. I feel like that's an important one because any of the my mentors that I've had in my life, they always give me time. It was always up to me to drive the conversation.
[00:18:12] Occasionally, if I wouldn't talk to them for three, four, five, six months sometimes, they'll be like, I haven't heard from you in a while and everything. Okay, then I just send a quick note and I'll be like, yeah, I probably should contact them because I've been struggling with some of these issues that I want to bounce ideas with them.
[00:18:27] But on the other hand, when I have been a mentor, the mentee starts the conversation. We have one or two meetings and then it fizzles out. And then the reason it fizzled out if I come down to it was because there was no clarity of purpose.
[00:18:46] Because one of the questions I always ask is what are you trying to accomplish from this? So if they answer that I want to get better at my job and I want to understand what my expectations, my role are, I'm like, that's not a mentoring relationship.
[00:19:00] That's more performance coaching, which is slightly different or maybe not quite different, quite different depending on who you talk to.
[00:19:07] And that's a different discussion. I'm happy to help you with that. A mentoring is really more about personal development and growth and talking about a lot of vulnerable stuff as well.
[00:19:16] And I think they just don't know, at least my experience, they didn't know how to address that part of it.
[00:19:22] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And when I talk about clarity of objective, part of the mentor's role is to distill it down to something really tangible that you can work towards.
[00:19:33] Now some goals are tangible, you can measure the success tree, I would like to be on the board of directors in the next five years. And I'd like you to be my mentor to help me do that. You've got a clear objective you can work towards there are clear steps that you can carve out towards that and you can work towards that clear tangible objective.
[00:19:51] Sometimes it's less clear so I would like to be a better presenter, for example, overcome my fear, and you can create certain milestones that you can tick off on the way that if you tick off those milestones, you're going to be making progress towards your overall objective, even if it's a less tangible objective than I want to be a director in the next five years.
[00:20:14] So, I think that you may have a mentee come to you with a vague notion that they need help, but not really understanding what their help and support looks like. Yeah, that initial meeting should really be about carving that out.
[00:20:30] And even if someone comes to you with a clarity of objective in the first place, I think a good mentor would still interrogate that objective. Because I found it personally that actually what I thought was my objective when someone challenged me on it made me question it, and maybe perhaps change path.
[00:20:47] Change path. So good mentor isn't just about you want to achieve this okay, but actually understanding is that the right objective for you in the first place and maybe there are different things different approaches you could take.
[00:20:59] Yeah, yeah. The one thing you mentioned in our last discussion we were having is mentoring is set up as a hierarchical construct, but there's more to it. Can you elaborate what you meant really meant by that?
[00:21:16] Yes, we've touched actually on other models already in several ways. So when you talk about mentoring being a hierarchical construct, in the book, we shared different models of mentoring and the common one that springs to everyone's mind when most people's mind when you hit the term mentoring is what my co author Ruth Gautian and I call traditional hierarchical.
[00:21:36] So traditional hierarchical is the mentor is senior older, braille, wiser than the mentee who sits at their feet and learns. And there is still a place for that but that's not the sole model. We've talked about reverse mentoring that's an alternative model and it's the inverse.
[00:21:53] And really the core there is that it's not about your, it's not about your seniority and role. It's about your experience and expertise towards what the objective is. So with reverse mentoring the objective may be to understand how decisions are having an impact day to day in the business.
[00:22:14] If it's reverse mentoring, the objective may be there are six different five or six different generations working together in the workforce for the first time. How millennials and Gen Z's thinking about different things where if you're a boomer or a Gen X or senior leader, you may not quite understand that mindset and your senior mentor, traditional hierarchical mentors not going to help you with that.
[00:22:38] It may be what's what's coming in terms of the digital world and AI. Again, you might be better talking to a 20 year old than a 60 year old when it comes to that conversation.
[00:22:48] So you're also can get great insights into that I'm generalizing, but you may look for reverse mentoring. Then I mentioned masterminding briefly you got peer to peer mentoring so peer to peer mentoring can be where you're both at a similar level.
[00:23:03] You've both got something to offer each other and you may really be tuned into the technical space. For example, three I'm developing a tech product, but I don't understand the technical world.
[00:23:15] So you may be able to mentor me and then I may have something different to offer you so we can support each other. So often you find people who are on the same journey as you where you can support each other.
[00:23:27] So a good example of that is a number of years ago I was delivering a talk at the offices of the UK or European headquarters of an Australian bank.
[00:23:37] And the CEO of the bank came to introduce himself to me before the event started, and we were talking about what I was going to be presenting.
[00:23:45] And he said, Are you going to talk about this and he went to a flip chart, and he got a pen out he started drawing on it and drew a pyramid.
[00:23:52] And he said when I started out in my career, and he drew a little circle at the bottom of the base of the pyramidal triangle. He said, I was surrounded by lots of people to learn from, and he put lots of other little circles there and he said, as I went up through my
[00:24:05] And he drew circles a little bit further halfway up the pyramid. He said there were fewer people at my level.
[00:24:12] And then now I'm here when he drew at the top of the pyramid. There's no one else in the bank for me to talk to.
[00:24:18] And then you're another pyramid, and he said so I talked to people outside banking, and I said and sometimes you talk to people out outside the industry, he said, sometimes it's other banks, but he finds peers in across the sector and in other sectors that where they can share those
[00:24:33] challenges together, particularly if you're a new a CEO or a newer leader. And as you said earlier, it becomes more isolated as you go, go higher up within an organization and fewer people will share with you so you need your support elsewhere.
[00:24:48] Another example of that I started out in this world. I'm celebrating 25 years in professional relationships, and I started out in May 1999 it with my father's. My father six months ago had founded a business networking organization.
[00:25:04] And our focus was local businesses coming together for referrals. A few years later, I was running some training for some of our members, and I was teaching them how to get referrals and one of our members ran an alpha Romeo service center.
[00:25:19] And he said to me I don't need referrals. He said I get my referrals from alpha Romeo dealerships and alpha Romeo clubs and alpha Romeo magazines, he said but I have a team of 17.
[00:25:31] And when I go in I can't tell them if I'm having a bad day.
[00:25:35] I can't tell them if I don't know how to deal with a challenge, all they expect from me is leadership and direction. So I come here each week to meet other business owners in a sense he was using it for peer group mentoring.
[00:25:46] Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:48] And then the other one is similar is reciprocal mentoring so if we take that reverse mentoring relationship. It could be reciprocal mentoring where the CEO is being mentored by the junior person in terms of understanding what's happening on the front line for example
[00:26:03] as we've talked about before, but the, the junior person could be benefiting from learning from the CEO as well. Yeah, yeah. Excellent. This has been a wonderful discussion.
[00:26:14] So talking about your new book that's out the Financial Times guide to mentoring. Can you talk a little bit about what's there a lot of books and mentoring out there, what is special about this book, what's the message you want to get it get out there with
[00:26:26] this book.
[00:26:27] When my co author with coaching and I looked around, we didn't really find anything in this space that gave that comprehensive view overview of mentoring, quite a lot on how to be better men team fewer on being a better mentor.
[00:26:43] And it's similar when you look at organizations where the training is a lot of training is for the mentees and not for the mentors. I think there's an assumption that you're a senior leader you know what to do, but that doesn't mean you're a good mentor.
[00:26:57] So we approached it from that perspective. We approached it from looking at trying to create as comprehensive a guide to mentoring as possible within a readable book, it needs to be something that people are going to be happy to pick up and read and not be put off by.
[00:27:14] So it's not the biggest book in the world 200 pages, it's very accessible. But we've covered quite a lot of ground within it, predominantly on looking from the mentors perspective we do also look from the mentees but because we've covered a lot of the ground.
[00:27:30] A lot of the boxes are ticked by the time you get to the mentee section we've ticked a lot of the boxes already. We also look at it from an organizational perspective which isn't often talked about, but is key. So how do you advocate for mentoring How do you engage people in your mentoring program had you run a successful mentoring program.
[00:27:47] And in fact why is it important in the first place so we've tried to take.
[00:27:51] Excuse me, a comprehensive overview from that perspective. The other thing, a couple other things that we tried to achieve in the book number one I think that there's a really good balance in co authoring when I felt this was the next natural book for me to write my last book was about vulnerability.
[00:28:08] So mentoring, you said so why seeking support is your greatest strength was it subtitled books.
[00:28:14] So mentoring formalizing that is is an actual extension of that. And I thought of the people in my network that I knew who also speak on mentoring or active in mentoring and in this space and I felt I haven't co authored a book since 2006, unless you include the second edition of that book in 2011.
[00:28:35] But this felt like a good time to do that.
[00:28:39] Different expertise and what we found I think is a partnership that really works because it's always a plunge into the unknown when you collaborate on something like that particularly we'd never met each other until after we finished the book because Ruth is in New York and I'm in London.
[00:28:54] And what we found is that I feel that we really complemented each other but we brought different things to the table. So Ruth is for she's an academic, which I'm not. I'm a storyteller.
[00:29:06] So she brings that to the table. But what she brings that I wouldn't have done personally to the same level is the research, the data and really making sure she comes at it from an academic perspective where everything has to be validated and verified.
[00:29:28] And whereas I've included citations and so forth in all my previous books, Ruth is far more robust in that process than I would be because she's an academic but she doesn't write like an academic.
[00:29:40] So I felt that there was we complemented each other in style. But also we come from different perspectives. I come from someone who sells mentoring as a service who runs his own business and works in the business of mentoring.
[00:29:55] He runs his own business and works with all manner of large organizations coming from an external perspective. Whereas Ruth comes from the academic world, and I come from a UK approach to mentoring.
[00:30:08] Ruth comes from a US approach to mentoring, which aren't holes apart. But there were a couple of differences which caused debates between us and that debate improves the process of writing a book because you're not just plonking your assumptions onto the page.
[00:30:22] You're having them challenge all the time and coming up with the best response. And then finally, as with certainly my last book, but I tried doing a lot of my work and Ruth as well.
[00:30:33] We interviewed experts, we didn't just rely on the two of us. So when it came to addressing imposter syndrome for mentors, we talked to an expert on imposter syndrome when it came to mentoring neurodivergence, we interviewed an expert on neurodivergence when it came to the impact of AI on mentoring, can you guess what we did?
[00:30:51] So it's, it's comprehend we try to make it as comprehensive and as detailed as possible, but still being accessible and very readable.
[00:31:00] Yeah, yeah, that's definitely 200 pages to condense that much information. It's got to be a challenge, but I look forward to reading your book. Thanks again, and it's been a pleasure talking to you and wish you the best.
[00:31:15] Thank you very much.
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[00:31:58] Want to know more? Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter at Sree Chalapa. Thanks for listening. We will see you next time. And thank you to Patrick Ramsey sound engineer at Kalinga production studios for recording and mixing the show.