As the Business Development and Product Strategy at Mapbox, Abhishek Arora is driven to be a great leader. To maximize his personal and professional potential, he applied to attend the Program for Leadership Development (PLD) at Harvard Business School (HBS). In this interview, he highlights some of the program’s key benefits and discusses how it changed the way he thinks about leadership.
I have a lot of great memories. One that comes to mind was my participation in a negotiation exercise. Everyone in the class took part, and I was one of the top performers in that exercise. The interesting thing for me was that I had to keep an open mind and think through a lot of scenarios. This helped me develop expertise in a few areas that I had not focused on in the past.
After I graduated from engineering school and entered the professional world, my career hit a plateau because I was looking at problems from a one-dimensional perspective. PLD enhanced the critical-thinking process I use to solve business challenges and develop other management skills, and it helped me learn how to influence others and drive change. Applying what I learned to my everyday work has helped me excel personally and professionally. The interactions I had with my living group gave me greater confidence as an individual, and the personalized coaching and intense reflection were extremely valuable for me as a leader.
PLD is designed to help individuals recognize their strengths and weaknesses, both personal and professional. It makes executives more self-aware and enables them to make decisions more efficiently. The most interesting part of the program is the case study approach to learning, which allows participants to dive deep into organizational issues, finance, negotiation, and management. In PLD, executives can interact with elite peers from various cultures and companies all over the world. The program allows everyone to share their thoughts and expand their professional networks while developing business strategies and leadership skills.
This program is a great way to refresh your thought process as it relates to leadership. You will be blown away by the professors' knowledge and experience, and what you learn from your interactions will enable you to become a better decision maker. By gathering various perspectives and participating in multiple brainstorming sessions, you will learn to solve complex problems very efficiently.
