Lessons from the kid: The power of empathy

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about." 

Angela Schwindt

When you were three, Mom and I sat with you in your playroom. There wasn’t anything magical about that day—no special date or occasion that I can remember. But I do remember Mom and I having a disagreement. We had promised never to have full-blown arguments in front of you, so I know it was relatively mild. But after a few tense words, Mom left the room to keep it from escalating.

As soon as she left, you came over to me, pointing out the window. Your small hand stretched beyond the sill, past the lawn, toward a flower bed near our neighbor's fence. You were showing me a cluster of sunflowers, their yellow petals turned toward the sun.

“Dad, you see those flowers over there?”

“Yes, Lyla, I see them. What about them?”

“Did you know that each one needs a different amount of sun and water to grow?”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said, curious where this was going.

“Well, Dad, you and Mom are like flowers. You need different amounts of sun and light, but you’ll still both grow into flowers.”

It stopped me in my tracks—how you, at just three years old, managed to see through the disagreement and offer an analogy that would take most adults a lifetime to come up with.

That night, I asked Mom if she’d shared that thought with you, but she hadn’t. To this day, we still don’t know where it came from.

What I do know is that your ability, even at that young age, to see through emotions and offer such deep wisdom is a gift. As an eight-year-old now, your emotional intelligence is even more incredible. I had to study and practice emotional intelligence before I felt confident in how to connect with others. Yet here you were at three, showing me how it’s done.

I’m writing these lessons for you, but I realize how much you’ve already taught me. As you get older, you might forget some of the things you’ve naturally known all along—and that’s okay. Sometimes we need to relearn what we already know. But never forget who you are, Lyla. Trust your instincts, your intuition, and never hesitate to guide others, just as you’ve guided me.

The power of representation

“You can’t be what you can’t see.”

Marian Wright Edelman

Wednesday mattered.
 
In 17 years in media and advertising, I've worked for four agencies—holdco and independent, media-only and full-service—in Chicago, Austin, and Dallas. As a part of that, I've worked for so many truly outstanding managers. But there was one commonality: none of my managers looked like me. Not my manager's managers. Not my manager's manager's managers. Not a single one was a South Asian man.
 
However, I never considered it. I had excellent mentors to help me along my path.
 
Early in my career, my director told me Rishad Tobaccowala would help us with a client project. I never met or spoke with Rishad, but that's when I learned about him. I've "followed" his wisdom since then.
 
Rishad's book, Restoring the Soul of Business, has many great lessons, but one tale struck me. Rishad’s director told him, "“I am sorry to say that you are unlikely to be as successful as your skills and drive should ideally make you, because you are too different and people will not be comfortable with you.” The implication, of course, was that my dark skin and Indian ancestry would work against me as I attempted to move up the career ladder."
 
Reading this section of his book, I felt seen. I was seen by someone who had never met me. I was seen in a way that I feel no past manager of mine has ever seen me. It made me think back to all my past managers and realize I never had a manager who looked like me.
 
I feel incredibly lucky to be where I am in my career and often wonder how I even got here. I often remind myself that I am "just a guy," understanding that I am one person working with brilliant individuals to generate incredible solutions for our clients. I dread introducing myself by title. I tell people I learn a lot about someone by how they treat me without knowing my title or position. But what is unsaid is self-promotion is discouraged in my culture. The group means more than the individual. I battle with the fact that modesty and humility are ingrained in me, but in my field, self-promotion is required for advancement. Many cultures value humility, but it's nuanced, and I wish I had a mentor early in my career to help me navigate those nuances. When success required changing ingrained values, talking to someone like myself would have been good.
 
In the moments when I questioned if someone like me could make it in this industry, seeing Rishad’s success helped me push past the mental hurdles required to achieve my own. I recognize that Rishad’s strengths, struggles, and story are different than mine in so many ways – but the point is that each of us has pieces of ourselves that can inspire. When people are generous enough to spend their time and share their wisdom with a community they might never meet, it creates possibilities that might not otherwise be possible.
 
Never underestimate the extraordinary power of mentorship, representation, and generosity.
 
Wednesday was my first time seeing Rishad speak in person.

Always bet on yourself

“The difference between who you are and who you want to be, is what you do.”

Bill Phillips

I just made the hardest decision of my professional life.

I decided to leave a company that has given me the best years of my career.  I’ll be leaving a situation that didn’t just bring me joy but allowed me to thrive, to grow, and to flourish. I’ll be leaving a place that I have already proven myself in—knowing full well some of my success was pure luck, and knowing luck doesn’t always strike twice. Knowing most of my success was simply a product of the incredibly brilliant, hardworking, and dedicated people I was around. I’ll no longer be working with people that I believe will be life-long friends. I’ll no longer be supported by what has become a tremendous host of advocates. I’ll no longer be around so many people that I care so deeply about.  And frankly, I’m probably walking away from a more lucrative financial future for us in the next couple of years.

And I decided to move toward the certainty of new and potentially higher pressure, require paying dues again, which will take away from our family, and put me in a role where I don’t know if I’ll be as successful.  

And the scariest part: if I were to fall short of my current position’s goals, I know things would still be great. But in my new role, if I fall short--and worse, even if I succeed, it is entirely unknown if great is even possible.

The easy and safe decision is to stay. The hard decision is to leap towards a potential of greatness. Not that the situation is more remarkable, as I have no idea. But maybe, just maybe, through great success or catastrophic failure, it teaches me the life lessons necessary to be the professional and leader that I want to become.

There is so much more to this than just the above, and I’d love to tell you all about it one day. But, to me, it all rolled into one concept: follow my true north.

Sometimes it takes a while to find a true north; it certainly did for me. But, I have a direction I want to move towards, and I believe that this new path is the best way forward for you, mom, and me.  And the best part is, it’s going to be the best path forward no matter what because you can’t walk down two paths at the same time.  I felt incredibly fortunate to be in a position where both paths could take me in the right direction, but the advice I’d give to you is not to be afraid to fail, to always bet on yourself and your capabilities, and know that greatness doesn’t just happen—you have to make it happen. So I’m going to live that too.