Eleven months
Mr Ribhu Nath Lavania was the Global Head of Quality at Headstrong when I had the opportunity to report to him.
I worked with him for only eleven months.
I find myself returning to that number because it feels too small for the influence he has had on my life. We often assume that the people who shape us must have been beside us for years. Sometimes they were. But time alone does not explain why one person remains present in the way we think, decide and treat others long after a role has ended.
Those eleven months have stayed with me for the rest of my career.
Knowledge held lightly
Ribhu carried a wealth of professional knowledge, but it was never the kind of knowledge that made other people feel small.
That distinction mattered to me.
There are people whose expertise enters a room before they do. It establishes distance. It tells everyone else to listen carefully and speak cautiously. Their knowledge may be considerable, but receiving it can feel like being reminded of how much less you know.
Ribhu was different. He held what he knew lightly and shared it generously. Someone less senior could walk into his office with an idea and receive a thoughtful, patient hearing. He did not begin by establishing why he was right. He made space to understand what the other person was trying to say.
I remember how unhurried his attention felt. His schedule was busy, but when he gave you his time, you did not feel as though you were borrowing something that had to be returned immediately.
That taught me something I could not have learned from technical instruction alone. Knowledge becomes far more powerful when another person can approach it without fear.
What people learn while we are not teaching
His guidance was firm without being heavy. His work ethic was evident without being performed for an audience. His values were not announced in speeches or displayed as principles on a wall. You understood them gradually through the consistency of his choices.
One detail has never left me.
On more than one occasion, while travelling to work, Ribhu encountered an accident victim by the side of the road. He did not drive past. He stopped, took the injured person to the nearest hospital and stayed until emergency care had begun.
There was no professional advantage in doing this. No colleague needed to know. The person he helped could do nothing for his career. He acted because another human being needed help and he was in a position to provide it.
When I think about character, I think about such moments. Not the values we claim when people are listening, but the choices we make when inconvenience is the only likely reward.
I admired Ribhu as a leader before I fully understood that his leadership came from the person he was.
Influence does not follow the calendar
Many working relationships last longer than eleven months and leave behind little more than a few completed assignments. Others are brief but alter our sense of what good leadership looks like.
The difference is not always a dramatic lesson. Often, it is the accumulation of ordinary experiences: being heard without being made to feel junior, receiving guidance without being diminished, and watching someone behave with the same decency inside and outside the workplace.
We may not realise, while these moments are happening, that we are carrying them forward. Years later, we notice ourselves trying to offer another person the same patient hearing. We make time when it would be easier to appear too busy. We remember that authority does not require distance.
This is how a leader's influence travels beyond the period in which they hold responsibility for us.
Some relationships continue to teach us
More than two decades later, Ribhu remains someone I turn to when I need advice. Despite a schedule that is still busy, he has time for me.
There are people whose role in our lives ends when the organisation changes or one of us moves on. Then there are people whose influence outlives the structure that first brought us together.
Ribhu has been one of those people for me. Some people are a blessing in your life. He was, and continues to be, one of mine.
Writing this is partly an expression of gratitude, but it is also a reminder. We do not always know which parts of ourselves another person is quietly learning from. A colleague may forget the presentation we reviewed or the target we helped them meet. They may remember that we listened, that we made knowledge feel accessible or that our private actions matched our public values.
Eleven months can look like a small part of a twenty-five-year career. In my life, those eleven months have never felt small.