With the recent difficult times being a leader is extremely challenging and demanding and requires new leadership approaches and methods.
We bring you the inspiring story of a strong and passionate woman entrepreneur, who is on an entrepreneurial journey to bring in modern, unique and sustainable leadership concepts which are required during these ever changing times, and develop a strong foundation for existing leaders and create new leaders.
"Leaders don’t create followers they create more leaders”.
Meet Mamta Gera, CEO of “The New Leadership-UK”
Mamta is passionately working towards building modern, unique and sustainable leadership models for corporates and individuals which will bring in long term positive changes and is based on the mantra of “Lead Yourself”.
The New Leadership strongly believes that the foundation for all leadership is “personal leadership”. It is the key aspect to successfully lead others, reach your goals, create efficient and fruitful collaborations, enhance the feeling of involvement and respect, as well as contribute to a sense of security and well-being. They work with some of the top companies in IT ,Banking and other sectors. Deloitte, capgemini, swiss bank are some of their clients.
Her business philosophy aligns with her core values which are kindness,empathy,authenticity and fun. She finds her happiness,joy and meaning in her career by practicing these core values everyday. Her long term vision is to work and contribute towards development of children's emotional and mental health, and work with schools and colleges to build our next generation which is stronger and healthier.
Starting Up - The first few steps
Mamta’s journey from a software developer to an entrepreneur is filled with inspiring stories of hard work,self reflection, continuous learning and persistence. She began her career as a software developer at a law firm named Clifford Chance.
She wasn’t very interested in coding, but enjoyed people driven roles. Her great people skills inclined her interest in taking up roles in project management, and that career began at Virgin Media. There onwards, she built a strong career in delivery management working with companies such as the BBC, Sky and Amazon. With her hard work she carved a great career and climbed up to Director level before starting her own business.
Nearly 20 years ago Mamta had thoughts of becoming a coach but nothing had inspired her much to pursue her passion in coaching. From a software developer to a Director she built a strong and rewarding career. While she enjoyed her corporate journey and met some amazing people along the journey, she knew in her heart that her corporate career wasn’t something she was meant to do in the long term. Alongside she did small projects to fulfill her passion towards coaching. In 2013 she launched an emotional intelligence app for young children, just for fun.
It was in 2017 while she was working with Accedo she was inspired to pursue her passion.
Talking about this turning point in her life and what motivated her to start her own business. She shares an incident with us
“I was managing a large team of engineers and project managers across Europe but really struggling as a leader"
" I was bringing my people pleasing habits into the role, which was causing conflict in my team and also effecting the overall profit margins, as the team was not functioning optimally.
Accedo is a Swedish organisation and my HR Director in Stockholm suggested that I look into some leadership development. Together we looked at a couple of companies which also trained in English and the one I chose was 'The New Leadership' "
Unaware of what was ahead of her, she enrolled for the training course with 'The New Leadership' with an open mindset ready to change, grow and develop. She underwent extensive leadership training for 8 months. That training program changed her life completely. In her own words she says “It was literally life changing- I had been on numerous training courses but nothing like this. Not only did it help me develop my work goals, it also helped me with my lack of self confidence, the unproductive habits I had and how my health affected my work and home life.
"It was a truly holistic program and it made me realize that this is what I wanted to do. Once my program was complete I had made the decision to launch it in several months later in the UK”
She then informed her organisation and gave them enough notice. Her organisation was very supportive, and they gave her the required space to start the business while she was on her notice period. This helped her to acquire several clients before her exit from Accedo in September, which gave her a good baseline to get the business going.
The journey and lessons
She worked hard day and night to launch “The New Leadership UK”. She framed a strategy, drafted an extensive business plan, formed the limited company and business accounts. Post this she planned her launch through a event. In her excited voice she talks about the launch event, “It was also important to me to officially launch the business which I did via an event I had organised in October 2017. It was a great success and managed to also secure a couple of new clients. I also had to think about my social media channels. I ended up creating LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram but under estimated how much time was needed to keep updating them and producing new content. In the end I was stuck with LinkedIn and I feel this has given me the most benefit”
Mamta heads the UK division and is actively growing the business and envisions to transform the leadership world for corporates and individuals. They run various scholarship groups and contribute towards mental health of youngminds.
Having received extensive training in coaching, Mamta was excited about starting The New Leadership in the UK. While she had a great start, she did have her own set of challenges. Coming from a corporate career background she lacked experience in selling and marketing, which is one of the key aspects in growing business. But her passion kept her going, and helped her to overcome all the hurdles that came along her way. She had to unlearn, learn and go out of her comfort zone.
Contacting new people and facing rejection was one of the biggest challenges she faced along her journey. Talking about her experience she says ,
“ I had no experience in selling or marketing, and these skills were key to growing the business. I had to learn all of these skills from the beginning and it was incredibly daunting"
"I had naively thought that as I had a good network, this would be enough. But it wasn’t. I had to go completely out of my comfort zone and start contacting people I didn’t know and start to deal with rejection, which at first paralyzed me.
I took rejection so personally that I wouldn’t be able to send another email for weeks at a time. My own self image was starting to suffer and for the first time in years I didn’t have the confidence in myself”.
Mamta was passionate and determined to overcome all the challenges and take The New Leadership to next level. The first step she did was to get herself trained up. She started reading relevant books, watched webinars, completed a couple of courses. All of which led her to understand the basic principles of selling and marketing.
“Rejection doesn’t phase me at all now but it did take some time."
"I read a great Jack Canfield book called ‘The Success Principles’, which got me through my first year of business. His 18th success principle is to ‘Reject Rejection’ – in this he explained that on your road to success you are rejected a lot, but the key is to not give up”.
With a lot of courage and conviction she started practicing all that she learnt along the journey and put herself out there,asked and moved on if she was rejected. Two years later, she was invited to appear on Radio, TV and at various public events where she spoke in front of thousands of people.
She says “If you would have told me 3 years ago that I would have achieved this, I would have never believed you”.
Here’s a wonderful advice Mamta shares with all women entrepreneurs and aspiring women entrepreneurs:
"As Jack Canfield says – Reject Rejection."
"If you believe in your business, have a passion for it and know that it will make a difference, just keep on going. Being resilient and being able to adapt to change is incredibly important".There are so many resources, tools and people out there that can support you when times get tough. Don’t be afraid to learn new skills.
"For some reason, I thought I was only able to do one role as I did for so long. That is completely untrue and you can learn any skill, at any time. "
All of these things will get you through the first couple of years of your business”.
Talking about recent tough times she says, it is important for all of us to upskill ourselves. There are various courses and programs available online and we must acquire multi skills to sustain during these tough times. It is equally important to create a strong personal brand.
Knowing Mamta Better :
"My parents came from New Delhi to London in the 1960’s and I have one older brother, Sanjay. We are very close with one another and only live 15 minutes apart from each other still. My family are incredibly important to me and I love being close to them (especially my adorable nephews and niece).
What do you love about running your business ?
Just the sheer joy of making another person’s life better. To be able to help them to reach their full potential, work actively on their goals and dreams and create a joyful life. It’s the most incredible experience, being able to live my dream career and do the work I love. I also really enjoy growing the business. All of the things I was petrified of in the beginning I now see as a challenge. Bring it on.
When I face a big challenge
I move around it and think of all the ways I can overcome it. Then I get it done.
My greatest fear is : Losing my loved ones.
The most courageous thing I’ve ever done is :
At 40 years old, ending a successful career to start a new business.
If I could go back in time to when I was 20 I would tell myself :
I can achieve my dreams and I have the ability to create them.
I believe :
We can all create the life we desire.
The biggest lesson I have ever learned is :
To never give up.
My favourite business tool or resource is :
LinkedIn. It’s a great way to connect with people and has been incredibly useful for my business.
My favourite quote is:
‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams – Eleanor Roosevelt’
If you are interested in knowing more about "The New Leadership UK", please visit www.thenewleadership.com and contact them to know more.