Punit Dhillon - Catapult: How to Think Like a Corporate Athlete to Strengthen Your Resilience

How to Think Like a Corporate Athlete to Strengthen Your Resilience

Punit Dhillon

copyright 2021 punit dhillon

All rights reserved.

catapult

How to Think Like a Corporate Athlete to Strengthen Your Resilience

isbn 978-1-5445-2187-9 Hardcover

isbn 978-1-5445-2186-2 Paperback

isbn 978-1-5445-2188-6 Ebook

isbn 978-1-5445-2192-3 Audiobook

For Nina,

My better half. You make me laugh, make the worlds best chocolate chip cookies, challenge me in profound ways, and make me wholeyou are the chocolate chips to my cookie!

Section One: Game Face

Section Two: Together Stronger

Section Three: Rise Up

by DR. ANNALISA JENKINS

Global Biopharmaceutical Leader and Champion for Diversity and Inclusion in the Field of Global Health

Over the course of my career, people have often asked me what I think constitutes a great leader. After considering this question time and time again, I developed a response I feel defines exemplary leadership while offering a nod to the inimitable Albert Einsteins famous equation, albeit slightly altered: EMC.

Leaders must be able to envision, engage, energize, enable, execute, measure, communicate, and collaborate. Great leaders have a clarity of vision about the future they want to create and they engage others to follow them on that journey. They create energy around their purpose while identifying and removing things capable of draining energy from the people around them. They enable their team to get work done every day, and every day, they get work done themselves. They regularly measure their own progress and they are clear communicators and enthusiastic collaborators.

Punit Dhillon represents the next generation of great leaders. Through his own leadership journey, Punit has learned that the ability to build great teams and make a real, sustainable impact is rooted in purposeand he is not afraid of articulating that. Nor is he afraid of genuinely paying attention to people and finding ways to connect with and inspire them. As both an executive and an athlete, Punit does not shy away from pushing both his team and himself to reach peak performance because he knows there is no room for only practicing when you are trying to address the big issues of the world.

In these ways, Punit lives a life of thoughtful, measured fearlessness centred on strong values, unshakable authenticity, and passion for purpose. He works to be a source of light in his company by being constantly conscious of how his actions impact others and is committed to his community and the nonprofit sector.

Punit also understands leadership is not about a start, a middle, and an endit is a process of continual, lifelong learning that requires hard work, deep reflection, strong values, and an innate desire to motivate those around you. This book is a practical guide to embarking on that journey, equipped with as much foresight and understanding as possible, and I can think of no better time for such a book to exist. At the time of this writing (Fall 2020 ), we are experiencing a leadership crisis. We are living in the middle of a global pandemic while simultaneously witnessing profound changes to the earths climate. Challenges to the role of multilateral institutions have led to unpredictability and insecurity. The world needs to reset, and we know that shift is going to be founded upon the leadership of the next generation.

The best thing todays great leaders can do is coach and mentor those coming up behind them while building upon their strengths. The best thing the next generation can do is start the journey by taking the first few steps into the shadows armed with the experience of those who have already made taking on the worlds challenges their mission. Punit is not afraid of those shadows. He is ready to share some of his own light with you and coach you along every step of the way.

Roadmap

I am never going to make it to the finish line.

Hours into my first Ironman race, after swimming . miles, biking miles, and running almost miles, I had a mere meters left in the race. I could see the endit looked like a straight shotbut as with many things in life, the optics were deceiving. As the path softly bent toward the general direction of the finish line, blurry in the distance, it felt so close I could almost touch it. Then, ever so slowly, the road under my feet turned in the opposite direction, leading me away from the end of the race. I realized I still had a half mile to go. Everything I had worked for was right in front of me. The endless hours of training, the commitment, the sacrificeit was all about to pay off. All I had to do was keep going for a few more meters, just one minute more, but I was convinced I could not do it.

Halfway through the marathon, pain had started radiating from my feet. The extreme heat of the day had prompted well-meaning spectators to fire up their garden hoses and mist us runners as we passed by, offering some much-needed refreshment while simultaneously creating perfect conditions for blisters. I was numb from the pain, but now that I was nearing the end, the agony became unbearable. Every step was excruciating.

Something about that final length of the race sparked a sense of defeat within me. Mentally, it stretched on for miles with no end in sight and I was stumbling along so slowly thinking I would never reach the end. But I kept going, step by step, second by second, until finally, unfathomably, I crossed the finish line.

By then, my body was in such shock, the end of the race did not feel real. I frantically asked the people around me where I needed to go for the next part of the competition.

Nowhere, they said. You made it!

Several hours and some much-needed medical treatment later, I reflected on those last few meters. My wife had to replay the finish for me, so I could hear the famous words You are an Ironman! just to make sure I was not dreaming. It turned out that while I assumed I had been running at my slowest pace, I had actually been sprinting, the last mile being my fastest in the entire marathon. All my training had kicked in and allowed my body to carry me through to the end when I needed it the most. I had done the work and given myself a strong enough foundation that when things got rough, I was not only able to perform, but also do so at my best.

Once I was back in my right mind and realized what I had accomplished, absolute euphoria enveloped me. While it lasted, I felt invincible. I had extreme confidence in my ability to do anything and everything I devoted my time and attention to.

I have relived that race in my mind countless times. I come back to it any time I am experiencing hardship or questioning my capabilities. I think about it whenever I am doing anything to better myself or prepare for future challenges. When I returned to the office, the phrase Why not? became a persistent echo in my head. Everything felt like a possibility. I am told that when people undertake extreme endurance events such as the Ironman, they emerge with a similar mindset wherein every request, goal or dream feels within reach.