INSIGHTS FROM GLOBAL LEADERS - ANJALI RAINA

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Insights from Global Leaders: Anjali Raina, Executive Director, Harvard Business School

24 Mar 2022
- admin
- Leadership & Management
Learning means being connected both through the brain and through the heart, Anjali Raina: Executive Director, Harvard Business School

Anjali Raina, Executive Director of Harvard Business School, spoke about her life experiences and learnings, as well as her passion to help people learn, in a conversation as part of the SOIL Institute of Management’s webinar series, ‘Conversations that count.’

The old Chinese proverb shows the importance of the senses in the learning process. The five senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell are the primary means we use to gain new knowledge. From birth, children are experts at learning with all five senses active. People of all ages learn best when involved in meaningful experiences. Using many senses to gain information helps learning to be more meaningful and useful.

In a conversation with Anjali Raina, Executive Director of Harvard Business School, as part of the institute’s webinar series, ‘Conversations that count’, she spoke about her life experiences and business lessons.

On Her life learnings

She grew up in a factory town where she and her family were the only Indians in a gated community, which instilled in her an unconscious bias.

She further said “There were three things/people who shaped her as a person.”
1. Professor Gorongo Chattopadhyay of IIM Calcutta was one of them. He helped her discover the unconscious biases in her mind that were preventing her from becoming a fully evolved person. She worked with him on these and shared the fact that everyone has unconscious biases that vanish once you become aware of them.
2. She further said that her father has been her greatest inspiration, and that “my father had an eye of equality toward everyone and how he taught me to relate to people as human beings, not their position.”
3. The last thing she shared with the students was the concept of having no roots, given her background as refugees.
On her fascination about learning

Two defining experiences, according to Anjali, helped her recognise what her true passion for work was.

One of them was her big job at Greenlee’s Bank as the head of HR for South Asia at the age of 32, where she discovered that she was unhappy because she was not a service oriented person and that, while it was a powerful job, it was not power that could keep her going. And that led her to consider a marketing job at Citibank, which brought her back to where she belonged, and when her boss discovered her section’s employment score was very high due to her passion for training and learning, he offered her a position as the head of training and development. She was initially unsure about the role, but she soon realised that it was a very lucky choice for her.

On The essence of learning or how to learn

Anjali discussed three vital experiences that shaped her approach to learning and how they’ve influenced her personal and professional journey.
1. Active & Accelerated Learning – A learning method in which we participate actively or experientially in the learning process. She applied these principles as a business leader to coach and mentor her team at Citibank. The tagline she used was –
  “Learn faster. Remember more. Apply it all with fun.”
2. Transformational Learning – She used the example of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly to illustrate how to embrace the opportunities that come with change. She emphasises how no one is able to grow unless they embrace change.
3. Thinking about Learning – Not just on an intellectual level, but also on a heart level by forming bonds with others based on compassion, love, and generosity. She shared that learning meant being connected both through the brain and through the heart.
And finally she also shared that she believes that the key to leading a life filled with learning is to develop a skill of integration of connecting the dots, seeing the patterns, building the meaning and learning the skill of critical thinking.

We thank Anjali Raina, Executive Director of Harvard Business School, for her valuable insights and teaching our students about her life lessons.

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