MY LEADERSHIP GURU…MY MOM

Today, as we celebrate International Women’s Day and the inspiration we get from women around us, I thought I’d reflect on the woman who most helped me become a better leader. It wasn’t a Professor at Business School or one of the many amazing women bosses or mentors I’ve had in my career of almost 24 years. She was a remarkable woman who never got an MBA or ran a company, but taught me a lot of what I know about being a great leader.

She was my Mom, Sunanda.

Here are some of the lessons I learned from her on leadership.

Value and nurture how your people want to succeed, don’t just impose your definition of success on them.

Many leaders fall into the trap of thinking that being successful requires being like them or that their definition of success is the only right one. That’s what leads to unconscious biases which become a barrier to diversity in the workplace and indeed what leads to many leaders and companies trying to force their employees into conforming to a uniform mould instead of bringing their authentic selves to work. In simple terms, they assume that there’s only a certain ‘how’ (style, approach, personality, background, and indeed gender) to deliver the ‘what’ (whatever metrics are important to the business). Great leaders go beyond the superficial differences and see those who diverge from the group norm not as outsiders but an asset since embracing diverse thinking allows them to get differential thinking to the table, often resulting in much better results than everyone thinking and acting the same way.

Growing up as a young kid in a middle-class Indian family, academics was perhaps unsurprisingly a key focus area. However, I was unlike most other kids I knew. Sure, I did well in studies, but from a young age, I loved making stories up. We lived in Canada when I was between the ages of 9 and 13 and during that time, I had an imaginary friend who sat next to me in class for a couple of years (I wrote his exams after finishing mine- always making sure he got a few marks lower than me) and I wrote a diary about the end of the world (a mix of an alien invasion, a meteor strike and a world war, if I recall) which I buried in various places in the front yard, hoping to mess with the minds of future historians who would find it (and, inadvertently, that of my Dad, who wondered for some time which animal had been digging up our yard). My teachers called my Mom to talk about Freddy (my imaginary friend) and my Mom surprised me by not simply dismissing it as a distraction. However, she told me that if I loved making stories up and using my imagination, I should channelize that in a way that helped me get those stories to others when they would enjoy them- as a writer, and that I would be a writer when someone actually read my work. At the age of 11, I stapled some poems I had written with the solutions to the next term’s Maths textbook (thereby hedging my bets as I wasn’t entirely confident anyone would want to buy my creative work) and sold it to my classmates at 50 cents a copy as my first ‘book’. The $12.50 I earned was my first ‘royalty’ and I used it treat my Mom to ice cream. 

My teachers were happy to see me channelize my creativity more constructively (and perhaps, just happy to be rid of Freddy) and when I graduated from Secondary School, they called me up on stage twice- once to collect my Diploma and once for Freddy. My Mom didn’t react to the surface deviations from the norm, but saw the potential within and helped me channelize it. As a leader when you see someone in your team who is very different from the others, resist the temptation to judge them as ‘not likely to succeed’ or a ‘poor fit’. Dig deeper, learn what makes them tick and you may be surprised at what you may unleash. That’s what my Mom would have told you.

Know when to tell your people to dream big and when to join them in the trenches to help them make those dreams come true.

Most average leaders can articulate a strategy and a vision, and set goals that will hopefully get their teams to stretch for more. However, where I’ve seen many leaders fail is that they stop there. They aren’t in touch deep enough into the organization to see where their teams need help to achieve those goals, where capability or talent gaps may exist, and indeed, where they need to step in and help by getting more hands on versus directing the show from a conference room or from their office. That gap between a powerful strategy deck and executional reality and the gap between articulating a strategy and knowing what help teams need to deliver against that strategy is what often marks the difference between success and failure- and the difference between a good leader and a great leader.

In my first year of college, I wrote my first book (co-authored with a friend in class). During the time I was writing it, my Mom played the role of a leader who encouraged and supported me. She encouraged me to make time for it, she brought me coffee when I was up late at night during Delhi winters working on the book after all the homework, quizzing, playing gully Cricket and all the other stuff college kids did back then, and she nudged me whenever I thought of giving up by reminding me that to be a writer, someone had to read my work.

The book was done, and then I had no idea of what it took to get it published. That’s when my Mom sensed I needed help, and she jumped into the trenches with me. She would go with me to publisher’s offices, asking them to take a chance on kids who had written a book, asking about contract terms and encouraging me when the first couple of publishers said no. I still remember her berating a publisher by telling him that many people who made it big were once kids whom someone had taken a chance on. She knew nothing of the book business, but she knew instinctively that this was where I would be lost without support and she stepped in to stand beside me. My first ‘real’ royalties I received were spent on a brand new saree for my Mom and a lavish dinner treat for my parents. The next two years’ royalties more than paid for my college fees with some to spare to treat my parents to the occasional gift or special meal. Before you start wondering, I didn’t earn that much- college fees back then in India were pretty low, but I remember feeling ten feet tall when my Mom told my Dad (who wasn’t that kicked about the idea of me being distracted by writing a book on top of my studies- for that matter, he hadn’t loved the idea of Freddy either!), that I had not just become a writer, I had grown up into a man. My publisher, a lovely old man, would tell me jokingly that my Mom was tougher than any agent he had ever met as she would follow up to ensure he was paying all my royalties on time and that he was not taking me for a ride!

Years later, as a business leader, when I set stretching goals- of entering new categories, of turning around a tough business, of doing what’s never been done before, I can see the excitement in the eyes of young team members who want to break new ground, but I always remember what my Mom taught me. Not to stop there- but to dig deep and understand where they need help, to walk the trenches with them to know where I need to help them versus just telling them what needs to be done. Perhaps those values are part of why I’ve never had a cabin or fancy office in my career- I like sitting among people, understanding how I can help, and I like spending most of my time with those who are actually making things happen- in stores, in plants, with consumers and partners versus sitting in a big cabin or at a desk by myself. For that, I have my Mom to thank for the lessons she taught me early on.

Help get your people back on track in a way that lifts and inspires them versus crushing their morale.

Every leader has times when they see employees go off-track. For most leaders, the solution is giving feedback to help get that person back on track. However, most average leaders focus on the task or deliverable at hand, and at best, they help the employee to get back to delivering the here and now. At worst, they fail to understand what’s actually derailing the employee, and they end up totally demotivating the person.

My Mom showed me that it’s possible to course-correct someone and inspire them at the same time. At that time, I was 27 years old, having worked for 5 years. I think I was doing pretty well in my career, but as I look back at that time, I wasn’t happy. I had totally lost touch with my creative side as I had got caught up in the rat race of work, promotions and moving ahead in my career. Part of that was driven by what was happening at home. My Mom had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer and had been waging a brave battle against it. My father was amazing in the way he supported her and took care of her. He had been a Police Officer and then served in the Indian Government for years. Like most such jobs around the world, there’s a lot of honor and pride, but not a huge amount of money. He had sold our home to pay for Mom’s treatment and I was acutely aware that I should help out more to try and take some of that burden off him. That was driving me to try too hard to succeed, to try and deal with the stress I had all by myself. I was trying too hard, drinking too much and rapidly burning out.

My Mom sat me down one day and told me that I would do amazing things in my career, that I would do big jobs and earn money. But she also told me that I wasn’t born to run in a rat race, I was born to help others fly. She told me the only way I could do that was to bring back joy in my own life. She wanted me to promise her that I would bring back the joy she had seen on my face when I had been a little boy who used to make up stories. She wanted me to write and through that find an outlet for what I had in my mind, and to inspire others. That was a wake-up call for me, and reconnected me with who I had been, who I was meant to be. I promised her that I would write one book a year till I died. 

In telling me who I shouldn’t be, she inspired me to become who I could. That conversation was a turning point in my life. It made me realize who I was and made me embrace myself in totality. I realised that getting back in touch with my creative self helped me actually do better at work, by applying more lateral thinking to work issues. Using storytelling to think of how to build brands and inspire teams and people made it more fun for me and also allowed me to shine in a differential way versus just doing what everyone did. Whenever I felt bothered about anything, writing became my catharsis, leaving me with positive energy for all the things I needed to do, all the people I needed to show up for. Most importantly, it allowed me to bring my full, authentic self to everything I did, making me happier and more fulfilled.

That was one of the last conversations I had with my Mom. 

Ma passed away on September 1, 2001. 

I’ve been privileged to work with, around and for many wonderful women in my career, but if I think of the person who really taught me what it means to be a great leader, it was my Mom. She taught me that, at the end of it all, what makes you a great leader is not just your ability to be smart, strategic, visionary, or deliver the numbers, but it’s the ability to connect with people, to understand them at a deeper level, to know when to help them, to lead by example- and most importantly, to define your purpose not as your personal success, but to help others fly. 

I hope today you also reflect on those remarkable women in your own lives who have inspired you, shaped you and helped you fly, at work and outside, and share their stories so others can be inspired by them.

Happy Women’s Day.