Kaustubh Arranging Shrimant & Aarti's Marriage

    When two employees wanted to marry but their families couldn't agree, Avinash called in his friend Kaustubh — and watched real influence, not authority or pressure, bridge two stuck families to a wedding.

    Kaustubh Arranging Shrimant & Aarti's Marriage

    Kaustubh Arranging Shrimant & Aarti's Marriage

    Two of my employees, Shrimant and Aarti, wanted to marry. They had already agreed between themselves. Their families had not. I was stuck, out of moves, and about to let a good match die over a negotiation neither side knew how to have. Then I called my friend Kaustubh — and watched a masterclass in influence unfold in real time.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Influence is the eighteenth trait in Stars at India Inc., and it lives on the Relationship Intelligence — right — side of the Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). RQ is what turns the trust you build with people into outcomes: agreements, buy-in, cooperation, change. EQ helps you understand what someone feels. RQ, and specifically influence, is what you do with that understanding. Without it, insight stays private. With it, insight becomes movement — two families moving from "no" to "yes."

    The problem I could not solve

    Shrimant and Aarti worked for me. Good people, sincere at their jobs, and I could see — the way you sometimes can when you know your team well — that they would make a good match for each other. I spoke to each of them separately first, carefully, the way you have to when you are their employer and not just a bystander. Both agreed. They liked the idea. They said they needed time to get to know each other properly, which was fair and sensible.

    The harder wall came after that. Their parents and guardians could not agree on the terms of the marriage. I will not pretend I know every detail of what was being negotiated on each side — dowry expectations, logistics, family standing, timelines, the dozen things Indian families weigh in a marriage conversation. What I did know was that talks had stalled, both families were digging in, and two people who wanted to be together were watching their families fail to agree on their behalf.

    I felt stuck. I was close to both employees, invested in the outcome, but I had no real standing to negotiate a marriage between two families. I did not know what to do next.

    Why I called Kaustubh

    Kaustubh is a friend of mine, and if you have ever watched him work a room, a negotiation, or a difficult conversation, you know exactly why I thought of him first. He has a gift — not a title, not a position of authority over anyone involved, just a genuine skill — for getting people who disagree to find a way to agree. I had seen him do it in business contexts: difficult sales leads that looked dead, employee salary negotiations that had turned tense, conflicts between colleagues that nobody else wanted to touch. Marriage negotiations between two families were a new arena for him, but the underlying skill — reading what people actually need and building a bridge to it — does not change with the setting.

    I reached out to Kaustubh and explained the situation: two good people, two families stuck, a good match at risk of falling apart over terms nobody outside the two families fully understood. He agreed to step in.

    What Kaustubh actually did

    He did not walk in with a script or a set of demands. He took the initiative to talk to both sets of parents and guardians — separately, first — and his real work in those conversations was listening. He wanted to understand each side's perspective and each side's needs, not just their stated positions. Families rarely say exactly what they need in a negotiation like this; they say what they think protects their dignity, their comfort, their sense of fairness. Kaustubh's job was to hear past the position to the actual need underneath it.

    Once he understood what each side genuinely cared about — which was rarely identical to what they had been arguing loudly about — he used his influence skills to find a solution that worked for everyone. Not a compromise where both sides lost a little, but a real solution built around what each family actually needed to feel the marriage was being done right. That is the difference between mediating and influencing: a mediator splits the difference; an influencer finds the third option nobody on either side had proposed, because nobody on either side had truly listened to the other.

    The result: Shrimant and Aarti were able to get married later on. Two families that had been stuck for weeks found their way to agreement, not because anyone forced a decision, but because someone took the time to understand both sides well enough to build a bridge between them.

    This was not a one-off — it is how Kaustubh operates

    I want to be clear that this was not a lucky, one-time trick. This is just one example of how Kaustubh has used his influence skills to achieve positive outcomes. He has demonstrated the same ability in difficult sales leads that other people had written off, in employee salary negotiations where both sides had staked out hard positions, and in workplace conflicts where colleagues had stopped speaking to each other productively. The context changes — a marriage, a sales deal, a salary review, a fight between two team members — but the method is consistent: understand both sides deeply enough that you can see a path neither side can see from where they are standing.

    Influence is a skill, not a personality trait

    It is tempting to look at someone like Kaustubh and conclude he was simply born persuasive — the kind of person people naturally listen to. I do not believe that, and neither does the research behind the Winning Kite framework. Influence is the art of persuading and motivating others to take a specific action or agree with an idea, and it is a skill you build through specific behaviours, not a trait you either have or don't.

    People who are good at influencing others share a few concrete abilities: they get others to genuinely agree rather than merely comply, they make presentations and arguments that are actually interesting to the listener rather than just correct on paper, and they know how to build consensus indirectly — through conversations, coalitions, and trust — rather than only through direct argument. Kaustubh used every one of these with Shrimant and Aarti's families. He did not walk in with a PowerPoint of reasons why the families should agree. He built consensus the slow way, one conversation at a time.

    Three habits that build real influence

    The chapter breaks influence-building down into practical habits, and Kaustubh's approach with the two families demonstrates all three.

    Active listening. Paying close attention not just to what someone says but to their tone, their body language, the things they circle back to. In a meeting, this looks like nodding, maintaining eye contact, and asking open-ended questions instead of jumping in with your own solution. With the two families, it meant Kaustubh spent his early conversations almost entirely listening, not proposing.

    Finding common ground. Identifying shared interests, experiences, or beliefs that create a sense of connection before you try to move anyone's position. Both families, whatever their disagreements on terms, shared the same underlying interest: they wanted their child to be happy and well settled. Kaustubh's solution worked because it was anchored in that shared ground, not in who could out-argue whom.

    Being authentic. Genuine, honest, transparent interactions build the trust that influence depends on. Nobody trusts a negotiator who is performing concern. Kaustubh's credibility with both families came from the fact that he was not on anyone's side — he was simply, visibly, trying to help two young people he did not personally benefit from helping.

    The line between influence and manipulation

    The same chapter that tells Kaustubh's story also draws a sharp line between two very different people: the Machiavellian manipulator and the true influencer. The manipulator is self-centred, disrespectful of the people below them in any hierarchy, focused on personal gain and status, and willing to use charm purely as a tool to extract what they want, often at the other person's expense. The true influencer builds relationships, listens first, and looks for outcomes where everyone genuinely benefits.

    Kaustubh had nothing personally to gain from Shrimant and Aarti's marriage going through. That is precisely why both families trusted him enough to open up about what they really needed. If he had walked in pushing his own agenda, the families would have sensed it immediately and closed up. Real influence, the kind that gets two stuck families to a wedding, only works when the influencer is not trying to win — they are trying to find what both sides can actually live with.

    This distinction matters enormously at work too. I think of Ishan and Dipalee, two managers I describe elsewhere in the book, both leading similar teams with very different results. Ishan built rapport, listened, and created a compelling shared vision that pulled his team through a difficult client project. Dipalee pushed hard, lacked empathy, and ended up losing both her team's trust and the client. The gap between them was not talent. It was influence — or the absence of it.

    How to build this at work

    You do not need a marriage crisis to practise what Kaustubh did. The same three habits — active listening, finding common ground, staying authentic — apply directly to the situations every manager faces: a salary negotiation that has stalled, two team members who have stopped cooperating, a client who is quietly unhappy but has not said why, a cross-functional project where two departments each think the other is the obstacle. In every one of these, the instinct is to argue your position harder. The instinct that actually works is to understand the other side's position better than they have articulated it themselves — and then build from there.

    Psychologist Daniel Goleman's work on emotional and social intelligence makes a similar point: influence is one of the social competencies that separates people who merely have good ideas from people whose good ideas actually happen. Kaustubh had no formal authority over either family. What he had was the discipline to listen before he spoke — and that discipline is trainable, not innate.

    At our corporate training sessions, I run influence and negotiation exercises built directly from stories like this one — where the skill being tested is not how forcefully you can argue, but how precisely you can understand the other side before you try to move them. It is one of the most requested modules inside our broader Signature Programs, because every manager eventually hits their own version of "two families who cannot agree."

    What I took from watching Kaustubh work

    I did not solve Shrimant and Aarti's situation. I recognised, correctly, that I was not the right person to solve it, and I brought in someone whose skill I trusted more than my own in that specific moment. That, too, is a form of influence — knowing your own limits and knowing who can succeed where you would fail. Kaustubh did the rest with patience, genuine curiosity about both families, and a complete absence of ego about whose idea the final solution was.

    Two people who wanted to build a life together got the chance to, because someone took the time to understand two families well enough to bridge them. That is what Trait #18 looks like when it is done right — not persuasion as pressure, but persuasion as purpose. If you want your team to build this same skill — real influence, not manufactured charisma — that is exactly the kind of capability we build inside a session with Avinash Chate.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the Kaustubh, Shrimant and Aarti story from Stars at India Inc about?

    It is a real incident from Avinash Chate's book where two of his employees, Shrimant and Aarti, wanted to marry but their families could not agree on terms. Avinash's friend Kaustubh stepped in, spoke separately to both sets of parents, understood what each side actually needed, and found a solution both families could accept. The couple married. The story is used in the book's Trait #18: Influence chapter to show what real influence looks like in practice.

    Where does Influence sit on the Winning Kite framework?

    Influence is Trait #18 in the book and sits on the Relationship Intelligence (RQ) — right — side of the Winning Kite. RQ is one of the three sides, alongside Emotional Intelligence (EQ, left) and Productivity (PQ, bottom), that hold up Success at the top. You cannot influence people you have no relationship with; influence is RQ turned into outcomes.

    What is the difference between influence and manipulation?

    Avinash Chate distinguishes the Machiavellian manipulator from the true influencer in the same chapter. The manipulator is self-centred, uses charm for personal gain, and disregards the other person's interests. The true influencer, like Kaustubh in this story, builds genuine rapport, listens for what each side actually needs, and looks for outcomes where everyone wins. Influence serves the relationship; manipulation serves only the influencer.

    How can I build the kind of influence Kaustubh showed in this story?

    Three habits from the chapter: practise active listening so people feel heard rather than managed, find common ground before you try to change anyone's mind, and stay authentic rather than performing authority. Kaustubh did not pull rank on either family — he understood their perspectives first and only then proposed a path forward. Avinash Chate's leadership and EQ workshops build this skill through role plays drawn from exactly these kinds of real workplace situations.

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