In a world of dynamic and ever-changing work environments, it is crucial to constantly grow our skill sets. While experience gained along the professional journey helps in gaining direction and vision, learning and development are equally important for any individual, if not more.
iLead is the leadership learning and development curriculum at the InMobi Group. It is a journey comprising of three pitstops: Milestone – A first-time people manager training program, Capstone – A training program for seasoned managers, and Keystone – A program curated for high-potential future leaders.
The iLead Milestone Program is one-third of the leadership learning and development curriculum at InMobi, curated to build and nurture people managers as they embark on their leadership journey. When talking about this one-of-its-kind program, Veena Sethuraman, Vice President – Learning and Organizational Development said, “We just didn’t want to solve for learning at a cognitive level; it needed to touch people’s feelings and make a real impact from an emotional intelligence standpoint.”
The Milestone Program is based on four InMobi leadership attributes, that reflect the InMobi principles:
Exploring how being bold and ambitious is what InMobi stands for and encourages across the organization.
Discovering how leaders inspire teams to take make those bold and ambitious moves and encourage powerful decision-making.
Inculcating a never give up attitude and believing how relentless aspiration for our goals gets us closer to our ultimate vision.
Developing a customer-centric approach and working towards building the best customer experience.
Spread over a period of four months, the program is run in annual batches by virtually accommodating InMobians across the globe. Each batch is then classified into smaller groups to facilitate a smoother learning experience.
The four-month course is crafted to focus on each of the earlier mentioned InMobi leadership attributes for a month. The curriculum for each month is a well-thought combination of self-paced learning as well as interactive group and live sessions. This encourages a holistic and free-flowing learning process and allows the participants to not only learn but also reflect on and apply the learnings. The attendees are encouraged to join and participate in Reflection Circles, a group coaching conversation, that is organized at the end of each month, for them to get together with their peers and reflect upon the learning of the past month and share what worked well and what are the key areas that perhaps requires a group discussion for a deeper and more substantial understanding.
The entire course curriculum planned by the Learning and Development team at InMobi is designed to ensure that the journey is conversational, fun and engaging. It is equally important for the participants to perceive the process in a psychologically safe atmosphere, and not feel pressured to undergo the program.
The program structure also inculcates the involvement of the participants’ managers throughout this journey. Managers receive monthly reports for their team members undergoing the training to encourage healthy and constructive conversations around their Milestone journey outside the program.
Learning & Development team at InMobi has seen tremendous success through this program in paving a journey for budding leaders as they shape their professional careers.
Here is what recent Milestone achievers have to say about the program.
“The iLead Milestone program was very special to me as I started my career as a manager. The program made me reflect and think deeply about how I want to be as a manager and what the key aspects are needed for a people manager. The whole program was very well thought out, and each level together formed an amazing package. Overall iLead was a fun, insightful and a cherished learning program which I thoroughly enjoyed.” – Manasa Deshpande
“The program helped us imbibe some important soft skills which should keep us in good stead, not only professionally but in some cases personally too. I realized that a lot of managers were facing similar problems in spite of being in different functional teams. Someone or the other was able to overcome these problems in their own unique way which was shared in the closed group discussions which I found very beneficial. This program is just one of the ways Inmobi as a company looks to invest in its people and I consider myself very fortunate to be a part of such an organization.” - Jacob Joseph
“Keeping aside all the lessons and skills I learned along the way of my iLead journey. For me, the most valuable gift was a bunch of new friends within the Inmobi family, who will always cheer along as we all reach for new heights in our careers. That's something priceless! Team iLead has made me firmly believe in learning from our difficult experiences and emerging stronger.” – Bodhisattya Chakraborty
“For me, the iLead journey was filled with self-discovery & a lot of relatable anecdotes from regular work-life. I must admit, it was a very-well devised program for any first-time manager & was filled with fun-learn. From the gamification of case studies to coming together as a team on Mural boards every bit was quite novel. Due to the diversity of audiences across geography, it was fantastic to get perspective from different folks and what struck me is that the problems that I face daily (personal & professional) exactly mirrored those of my colleagues in other geographies. Thus, making us believe that we are all in it together.” – Purnank Desai
“The iLead program has been a great experience for me. One of the key things I noticed was that even in the virtual world the participants were able to collaborate smoothly. In terms of my learning, each session gave me a different perspective altogether and which I consider one of the key advantages of this program. You get to meet and chat with so many folks from various domains and get their viewpoints on leadership styles as well as the pain points when it comes to leading people.” – Viraj Shrivastava
“The iLead Training program is intensive but very well structured. All the topics that got covered were relevant to the real world and were simple yet powerful rules for managing teams efficiently. The trainers were extremely enthusiastic and highly interactive with the groups. Ranging on a scale of good to excellent, the program was extremely relatable. I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of this program and certainly feel better equipped as a leader. A big thanks to the iLead team.” - Archana Kapoor
Watch this video to hear more about this program from the participants.
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