March 11, 2017, Saturday 7 am
“Amazing things happen when women come together.”
I had the good fortune of experiencing the power of the quoted words when I joined the Vital Voices Global Mentoring Walk today at Joggers park, Kalyani Nagar.
My dear friend Sweta Mohapatra and her company ‘Diversity Vision’ had organized this Mentoring Walk. It’s a unique concept initiated by Vital Voices, where 15 experienced and successful senior corporate women act as a mentor for 15 aspiring and ambitious corporate women, who have relatively fewer years of experience. Each mentor is paired with a mentee and they walk together in the park for an hour. The mentee is free to discuss the challenges she may be facing at the professional/ personal front, seek guidance for career progression or learn about general work-life integration.
Vital Voices recognizes that while women need professional support and advancement, they also desire personal and emotional support from other women. Which is why they offer this platform to both mentor and mentee to forge new connections and networks and broaden their horizon for personal and professional achievements.
During the introductory session, each mentee spoke briefly about their backgrounds, challenges and what they looked forward to learning from the session. A few wanted to learn how to get more assertive at work and achieve work-life balance, others wanted to learn about political astuteness to maneuver through office politics. There were some who wanted to know how to deal with women bosses/colleagues, who were at times tougher than their male counterparts.
Someone also commented that she cannot imagine a group of 30 men discussing work-life balance. Why even in the 21st century, it falls in our kitty to find the elusive solution to this issue. A very valid point for all (read men) to reflect upon.
After the initial ice breaking round each mentee was assigned a mentor. Sweta had gone out of her way to find a renowned author Sujata Sabnis for me. I have been looking forward to publishing my graphic book for a while. So it was extremely kind of Sweta to find the perfect mentor match for me. Sujata is an experienced journalist with 3 books in her kitty. Her latest book ‘Songs of Stone’ has some incredibly good reviews. She discussed with me the creative writing process, how one must let the characters come alive in one’s head and gave suggestions for reading a few books to hone my craft. During the one hour time that we spent together, she acted as a friend, a guide, a philosopher, a teacher and a critic all rolled into one. She asked me to be resilient and have patience as my time shall come too. One of the best advice she gave me was to strengthen my creative writing process. I don’t think that I would have gotten the opportunity to spend time with a senior writer via any other platform. Thank you, Vital Voices, and my dear friend Sweta.
While Sujata and I were engrossed in our discussion, we also walked past the other 14 mentor-mentee pairs and could see how deeply involved each pair was in their discussion. The mentor more than willing to give and the mentee wanting to absorb as much as possible.
Post an enriching one hour walk, we all gathered for a group photo. It didn’t look like that this group of 30 women had just met an hour ago. Each mentee was busy chatting with other mentors to network and gain more.
By this time, tummies had started rumbling so Sweta took us to Café Columbia, a chic coffee shop just opposite the Joggers park. At the café, we had a power packed session with the corporate leader Madhavi Dhanukar, Sr. Vice President at EXL Service, who spoke passionately about the ‘Big Picture thinking.’
Madhavi had also brought in her 18-year-old daughter. Reason – She wanted her to learn from other women who have more experience than her. She said one should not reinvent the wheel and learn from others who have gone before us. Smart mommy.
Madhavi started her talk on the ‘Big Picture thinking’ with this quote -
‘One should not lose sight of the forest while focusing on the trees.’
She highlighted the importance of being assertive for women to get leadership roles. She gave us 5 very simple and practical areas, we should focus on for personal growth and other 5 to develop the leader in us.
5 areas for personal development:
1. Core competency: Whatever your area of expertise, become the best in it so that you are the go-to person in the organization for that need.
2. Communication skills: It’s important to develop communication skills so that you can market your talent and do it articulately.
3. Confidence: Women are extremely smart. They need to be a bit more confident in their own skin.
4. Gain Knowledge by investing time in yourself: As you climb the corporate ladder, it becomes important to keep learning and gaining knowledge. She suggested books like the ‘Blue Ocean strategy’ which each woman who aspires to be a leader should read.
5. Personal SWOT Analysis: (I liked this point the most). She said we should do a personal SWOT analysis - Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat Analysis every year. You will not be able to implement the above 4 points if you do not do this. Because this is the real eye opener. Do it with brutal honesty and you will know the areas you need to focus on your growth.
5 areas to focus on developing the leader in us:
1. IQ - Intelligence Quotient
2. EQ – Emotional Quotient
We are aware of both these so she quickly moved on to the next three.
3. SQ- Social Quotient: To increase your Social Quotient, make connections outside your team, make a deliberate effort to have lunch with new faces, talk to people in the elevator and ensure that people not directly related to your work also know you.
4. OQ – Organizational Quotient: She stressed that informal hierarchy dominates in most organizations. Therefore, we need to be aware of our organizational hierarchy and know whether decisions are being taken in conference rooms or in smoke breaks and coffee sessions.
5. PQ – Personable Quotient: Personable Quotient defines how affable you are. I felt this to be my most important takeaway. This quotient shapes your personality, draws people towards you and gets you more opportunities vis a vis others.
What an excellent framework explained in such a simple and practical manner. We then had a Q & A round.
Toshiba Tiwari, a Corporate trainer, was also with the group to encourage the mentor-mentee relationship. For whatever little time, I met her, I could gauge that she is a wonderful champion for women leadership and empowerment. She spoke about how she is raising feminist sons in her house so that the next generation of women have it easy. She shared how the other day, her 17-year-old son made a breakfast when she had to leave for work a little early. She shared how she has such an open relationship with her sons that they discuss everything under the sun – from bodily changes to homosexuality. Got few lessons in parenting too!
Although it was already 11, but it seemed that none of us wanted to leave as it was such an enriching session with so much positivity. Sweta assured us that she would create a group on social media so that we can continue our conversations. Madhavi had underlined the importance of building an ecosystem where we can support each other. I could sense that ecosystem forming right there for each one of us.
Madhavi concluded it so beautifully that in each family, there is one rebellious generation that paves the way and makes things better for the next generation. She left us with this question –
Can we be the generation that changes things for the next generation of women?
Yes, we CAN and it’s time we should!
Special thanks to Sweta, Toshiba, Madhavi, each mentor and mentee for the positive vibe we all contributed and of course to Vital Voices for the brilliant vision of empowering women leaders.
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