Women's Day-2022

March is the month which brings everyone together to celebrate International Women’s Day. We are indebted to all women, who have impacted us in many ways.

In this article, I am writing about my 76 years old mother and 4-year-old daughter who pierced through my cloud of ignorance and now reminding me every day to act on certain things through their conduct. Let me share more about it…

I have been buying mobile phones which has buttons to operate, for my mother, and she has been using it for a decade now. Little over a year ago, she insisted on having a smart phone and I was not convinced on her ability to use it. I didn’t take it seriously. But she kept insisting and she said, all my children and grown-up grandchildren are busy with smartphones. They use it for exchanging of messages, seeing pictures, commenting on it (she was referring to WhatsApp and Facebook). She further added saying, if I can use, I will be able to interact with you all in real time and most importantly I won’t miss you. Finally, we got her a smart phone, and she took 1-2 months to learn, use the features of WhatsApp, messages, camera, record videos and photos. I think she really worked hard to learn it. She would ask me, my wife, my siblings, her grand children and keep figuring it out on how to use it. Many times, she must have asked the same thing, again and again as she would have got confused or forgotten with just one time execution. With all these efforts, today after close to a year of using smart phone, she sends messages, photos, records and sends videos to her kids, grandchildren, new friends, and relatives. If I miss to connect with her in the morning, I will get a message saying “good morning” or how are you!?If not a WhatsApp message at lunch time to check if I had lunch. She found a way to stay connected, stay relevant to younger generation.

I was surprised with this progress of my mother, but the significance of this progress hit me only when I was talking to one of my coaches. My coach said his biggest strive for today is to stay relevant to his children and he was learning Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) languages to ensure that his children find him relevant, when he talks to them about AI and ML.

My second impact recently has been from my daughter. Whenever I want to talk to her, I have to approach her by saying - hey what are you doing- how was your school today- did all your friends come to school- what did she learn in school today, which she can share it with me- like this it has to be on humble inquiry mode. Without this if I barge into what she is doing or tell her that lets have food or do something which is of my interest it will lead to rejection, or she will just ignore what I speak. I took the approach of asking, to be part of her world. I embraced this approach as I wanted to be in her world. There were moments, where I felt, hey my daughter doesn’t listen to me, and she is just a small kid- why or how this is happening to me. But this approach which I took has been there since the time she was 2 years old. Again, this didn’t add any significance in my mind till I read recently, the book – Humble Inquiry – which talks about the gentle art of asking instead of telling! Post reading of this book, I was able to relate a lot on how I was coming across to my daughter and the efforts I took to build relationship with her.

At work, the last 18 months has been a rollercoaster ride for me while working with people, who are younger and elder than me. Looking at the number of people with whom I have built relationship, with who I did not and with who I lost, there was a huge scope to reflect and learn. ?For some of the learnings in life, you need to let go of ego, respect everyone, invite new views from people of all age groups. True care (connecting back to my first article on leadership and care), sincerity to build relationship and humility to learn will take everyone far and together.

With the picture of my mother and daughter (above), writing a note to thank them who made this learning as a strong lesson for my future and to celebrate the International Women’s Day-2022!

#internationalwomensday