Here's how Mainak Dhar’s new launch aims to close the ‘Mentoring Gap’

Author Mainak Dhar’s new launch aims to close the Mentoring gap. Published by Bloomsbury India, the book, Leadership in 100 Words, is inspired by a popular series of Dhar’s LinkedIn posts (#leadershipin100words), which garnered over one million views. 

The idea struck the author amid the COVID lockdown as it made Dhar more interested in mentoring as many professionals were facing difficulties and uncertainties in their career. Dhar started mentoring people and soon it became very popular That experience led him to write a book, Brand New Start, also published by Bloomsbury India, which equips people to create an authentic, compelling, and differentiated personal brand as a cornerstone of career success.

Dhar explains his experiences “I realised that many people needed the benefits of mentoring but did not have access to mentors. I did a survey on LinkedIn, which revealed a ‘mentoring gap’. I found that those with mentors reported higher satisfaction with career progress and work-life balance, but 51% of those surveyed did not have mentors. While almost all of these (98%) said they would like to have a mentor, their biggest barrier to having one was a lack of access to senior leaders.

The author explained how he came up with the book “To be honest, I hadn’t planned on a book emerging from these, but several people began asking me on LinkedIn why I didn’t pull this thinking together in the form of a book, which would give readers these thought starters in an accessible form whenever they needed advice to common challenges. That was the spark which led to the idea for the book. My publishers at Bloomsbury, who had published my last book, Brand New Start, were enthusiastic about the idea, shared in the vision behind the book and the need it was satisfying and did a fantastic job of bringing the book to life, and it was great to be able to launch the book on International Mentoring Day on January 17.”

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Dhar has worked in the corporate sector for over twenty-five years, with blue-chip multinationals like Procter & Gamble and General Mills, and is currently the CEO for India and South Asia with a leading multinational. He is also a prolific author, with more than twenty books to his credit. His last book, Brand New Start, won a Gold at the Non-Fiction Awards and a Bronze at the Reader’s Favorite Awards in the United States. Leadership in 100 Words is available on Amazon and other online retailers and in leading bookstores.