Every step on this list was planned.
This one, you name yourself.
Somewhere around 40, the calendar stays full and the questions get louder. This circle is for the ones who've stopped pretending those questions don't exist.
You started as an engineer. Curious, a little hungry, eager to prove yourself. You took the technical path — individual contributor, then team lead, then manager of managers. You grew. Some of you got a CTO title. Some got Director. Some got Head of. Some are managing India. Some are managing a GCC. Some are Indians building things abroad that Indians back home will use in five years.
You did all the things you were supposed to do.
And then — somewhere around 35 or 40 or 45 — something shifted. The calendar stayed full. The Slack notifications never stopped. But there was this quiet, persistent sense that something was still... incomplete. Not broken. Not wrong. Just incomplete.
You didn't tell anyone, obviously. Leaders don't say that sort of thing out loud.
So you did what any self-respecting engineer does when they encounter a problem they don't know how to solve: you looked for a solution. You reached for the magic pill.
For many of us, the pill was an ISB program. Or an MIT course. Or an IIT executive certificate. (No judgment — the credentials look great on LinkedIn.) The cupboard filled up. The question didn't go away.
Because the question was never about technology, or strategy, or leadership frameworks. It was simpler and harder than any of that.
Even when you're surrounded by people. Especially then, sometimes. You're in rooms full of smart, driven, successful human beings — and you're the only one who seems to be wondering whether any of it is actually what you wanted. Or at least, the only one willing to wonder out loud.
You realise you've been optimising for metrics that were never really yours to begin with.
Is this rat race what we actually want?
In our ISB CTO batches, we met every Saturday for six months. Sunil Rawlani was our mentor — patient, incisive, and possessed of an uncanny ability to turn every question you asked right back at you. Maddening, at first. Then you realise: that's the whole point.
He didn't give technology answers. He held a mirror.
When the program ended, the Saturdays stopped. The group scattered back to its calendars. And we felt it — a vacuum. Not because we hadn't learned enough, but because something else had started. A habit of reflection. A trust in each other. A willingness to ask the uncomfortable questions out loud, with people who actually got it.
So a few of us decided not to stop.
Shiva, Roopa, Santosh, Sree — with Sunil's continued presence — kept it going. The Conscious Leadership Circle, the Sangha, was born from that decision.
It is not a program. There are no certificates. (We have enough of those.)
It is a circle. A group of technologists who have agreed to be honest with each other — about what they're building, what they're feeling, and what they actually want. It meets. It listens. It asks the questions that don't fit in a 1:1 or a board deck. It is still early, still finding its shape. It will grow as much as the people in it want it to grow.
CLC began with a small group from the ISB CTO cohorts who refused to let the conversation end when the program did. It is slowly expanding beyond that original group — to others asking the same questions.
The fullness. The questions. The sense that something's still incomplete. This circle might be for you. It grows through people — if someone here knows you, they can bring you in. If this resonates and you don't know anyone yet, reach out to Sree or Sunil directly. No form. No pitch. Just a conversation.