Running on faith is a value that we share across the organisation: Mansi Jain

We, at Adgully, have always saluted and honoured women managers and leaders across diverse fields. W-SUITE is a special initiative from Adgully that has been turning the spotlight on some of the most remarkable women achievers in M&E, Advertising & Marketing, PR & Communication industry. In the refurbished series, we seek to find out how women leaders have been managing their teams and work as well as how they have been navigating through the toughest and most challenging times brought about by the global pandemic.

As Vice President & General Manager at Roposo, Mansi Jain has been spearheading the creator-led live entertainment commerce platform. She has more than 13 years of experience in strategy and driving businesses globally. Over the past nine years, she has held several leadership roles at InMobi as well. She was Head of Global Strategy and Partnerships for the InMobi Group and has also been Vice President, Content and Revenue for Glance. Before InMobi, she was a consultant with Bain & Company.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Mansi Jain speaks about how successfully women leaders have been able to handle the COVID-led disruptions in their organisations, have found work-life balance in the new normal, as well as guiding and motivating their teams to remain productive in the crisis times.

How do you think the role and scope of women leaders has widened in the post-pandemic world?

Women leaders had been leading from the front across industries in the pre-pandemic world. It has been heartening, as well as inspiring to see that trend grow over the past two years. The COVID-19 pandemic had put us in an unprecedented situation, where we had to adjust overnight to a virtual way of working, while also dealing with the stress of the pandemic itself. Women were not just quick to adapt to this, but also seemed to thrive in this situation. Many of my women leader peers and colleagues have mentioned how the virtual set-up helped them to manage both professional and personal time better and that it worked to their advantage.

The rapid transition to digital, an uncertain economic landscape, charting unknown waters, working from home – how have you been navigating during the COVID-19 times? How are you maintaining work-life balance in the new normal?         

The COVID-19 crisis has been hard for teams and leaders across the board, to manage between work, health and taking care of families. For me personally, the support from the company, team, peers and family really helped in maintaining sanity in these unprecedented times. At InMobi and Glance, we evolved rapidly to adjust to the new reality. We took several steps to ensure that employees have all the support they need to manage the anxieties of life and work during this period. For instance, we started several programmes to provide support – medical, financial, infrastructure – for all employees to assure them that nobody was alone during this phase. We also gave employees 21 days of COVID/ wellness leaves so that they could take time off whenever they needed to care for themselves and their loved ones. These things have gone a long way in helping all of us deal better with work and life.
Multiple studies have shown how women leaders performed better during the COVID-19 crisis. According to you, what makes women the best in crisis management?

I feel both men and women leaders had to undergo a massive transition in effective management and leadership. Empathy and compassion became highly critical. More than ever, leaders needed to effectively balance between driving results and creating a healthy work environment focussing on mental wellbeing. Women tend to be inherently more empathetic and that could have played a big role in this situation. However, I have been pleasantly surprised at how every leader has risen to the occasion and operated from head and heart combined. In this company, I experienced an enormous amount of compassion and empathy across every layer of leadership without impact on outcomes. In fact, we saw growth in every dimension of business and high retention. Most of all, there was great camaraderie with everyone looking out for each other.

What are the five most effective lessons that you have learned as a woman leader?

  • Faith over fear: At times we are blocked by our own fears – fear of failure, fear of judgement – which result in us operating from fear rather than faith. Belief and faith always work in unblocking our own minds, in ways that have often surprised me. Running on faith is a value that we share across the organisation, and it shows in the way we innovate so often. For instance, we were the first to launch creator-led live entertainment commerce in India through Roposo last year. It was a blue ocean market, and it took a lot of faith for us to say let’s do this.
  • Focus on your strengths: We all are WIP – I often used to focus on things that I had to work on rather than operating from a space of my strength to help lead teams. While we all should seek to continuously grow, I have seen the power of operating from one’s strengths, while also being very open to constant evolution.
  • Empathy and compassion are not at odds with results: Often women leaders feel that if they are empathetic and compassionate, it might come at the cost of the ability to drive results and outcomes. From my experience, I have seen empathy creates a healthy and safe work environment, leading to better results and outcomes. At InMobi and Glance, these are highly valued traits.
  • Find the balance within: We often struggle with work life balance and constantly trying to walk the fine line between the two. One of my mentors told me that the balance comes from within. That has really helped me become a better leader in a way that does not compromise my time with friends and family.
  • Doing what you love is key!

Gender sensitivity and inclusion in the new normal – how can organisations effectively encourage and groom women leaders in challenging times?

At InMobi and Glance, I had the opportunity to grow and flourish as a leader. Currently, women hold close to 30% of the leadership roles across the organisation. In my nine years here, I have had multiple mentors and leaders who have helped me grow professionally and influenced the evolution of my identity.

There are a few practices we follow at InMobi and Glance to enable this environment:

  • Always giving a very safe environment for everyone to share their views and opinions, irrespective of gender, role, seniority.
  • Giving women a space and environment where they can lead without compromising on their families. I have seen women leaders at Glance/ InMobi being supported through multiple initiatives that really matter- whether it is flexible work from home for new mothers, bring your kid to work, space in office for kids and mothers. I have seen peers, managers and teams support women to make sure that they don’t have to compromise on any aspect of their lives, while giving their all at work as well.
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