What Leaders Do –Leadership Lessons from ‘Winning’

Have you heard of the name Jack Welch?

It would be a pity if you haven’t.

Welch is often acknowledged as one of the greatest CEOs of the 20^th century and was named by Fortune magazine as the ‘Manager of the Century’ in 1999.

He was the CEO of the GE Corporation between 1981 and 2001 and his impact was such that GE’s net worth grew by over 4000 percent during that period!

His innovative and unorthodox management practices, though occasionally scrutinised, became the stuff of legends. It was his successful adoption of the six-sigma program in 1995, and the success GE reaped from it that lead to six-sigma becoming a global improvement practice that every other organisation started adopting later.

Welch was given a severance pay of $417 Million at the time of his retirement and it was the largest ever such pay-out in corporate history – such was the level of his impact on GE.

Following his retirement, Jack Welch did many things – he founded the Jack Welch Management Institute, became a public speaker and taught seminars (apparently more than 35 CEOs of major global corporations were taught by him). He also wrote the #1 WSJ and New York Times Bestseller – ‘Winning’ – a book that captured the gist of his philosophy, thinking and management practices during his time at GE that made him a superstar CEO.

‘Winning’, published in 2005, is regarded today as among the best contemporary management books there is and has been showered with lavish praise by the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (who implied that the book was the ultimate book on management when he said “no other management book will ever be needed”).

I had read the book many years ago and recently bought a copy again for a second reading. Years ago, I had adopted the practice of candour at work, following some advice in the book, and that one practice helped me achieve a level of team dynamics I could never have achieved on my own. There was so much I learned from ‘Winning’ back then and when I started reading it a second time, years later, I realised there was still much left to learn.

One of the book’s chapters is dedicated to leadership and it has some fabulous insights that I thought would be worthwhile to share in this post.

Welch describes the attributes of a leader in 8 points under the sub-title ‘what leaders do’ and here are those 8 attributes, filled with some of my personal take on them too.

1. Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence.

Jack Welch emphatically states that a leader has to evaluate (make sure the right persons are in the right jobs, supporting and advancing those who are and moving out those who aren’t), coach (guiding critiquing and improving people) and build confidence (through words of encouragement, care and recognition). And these are things that a leader has to do throughout the year, at every interaction and not just at appraisal time.

Think about the times you’ve been in the following situation.

You go sit for your annual appraisal meeting. Your appraiser – your manager, who’s facing you, hasn’t interacted much with you outside routine work discussions the past year and you haven’t been given any feedback, mentoring or critiquing (the constructive kind). He hadn’t done any real evaluation of your skills, or contemplated where you need help or where your help could have been leveraged.  But right now, he has conjured your KRA scores and is now trying to work backwards to justify those numbers (he has to fit his team on the dreaded ‘Bell Curve’). You listen and sometimes object and fight, or if you’re experienced enough, you sigh and think “Whatever, just get it over with, man” and then just practically nod to everything. At the end of the meeting, the manager walks out with a load off his chest (phew! No more appraisal headaches for another year), you shake your head and walk out thinking maybe it’s about time you looked at other options, or just give up get on with the remaining tasks for the day, knowing nothing’s going to change.

In my time, I’ve had some good and bad appraisals. The best manager I had in my career, once pulled out a notebook in which he made notes to discuss with me. He was the kind who took time out to talk to each of his team members periodically and when he spoke during an appraisal, it was not a routine yearly exercise, but a constructive session in which both he and his team member introspected on the past and set a vision and target for the future.  That leader was instrumental in making winners out of anybody with the slightest potential because he knew how to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence among his subordinates.

The role of a leader is like that of a gardener who constantly waters his crops and fertilises them. While he has to occasionally pull out the weeds in between, he mostly needs to just tend and nurture. And in due time, he will see his crops yield returns.

2. Leaders make sure that people don’t just see the ‘vision’ but live and breathe it.

If you pull out 10 people at random from around you right now and ask them, “What’s our company’s or our team’s vision”, how many times would you get a convincing and correct response without hesitation? I’ll bet a wager that 9 out of 10 times you won’t get a convincing answer.

It is said that leaders often communicate their vision to their closest colleagues but that vision doesn’t filter down to the lowest levels of the people in frontline positions. And sometimes even when it does, it doesn’t stick.  If the face of a company that promises the quickest and most customer oriented service are customer executives who argue and debate with a customer for hours without seeing the customer point of view – how can that  company’s vision be ever realised?

Probably the company’s vision wasn’t shouted loud and strongly enough in their direction, or even worse, employee rewards weren’t aligned with that vision (so why would employees care if realising the company’s vision doesn’t directly benefit them too?)

Welch states “if you want people to live and breathe the vision, ‘show them the money’, be it with salary, bonus or significant recognition of some sort”. While a vision is an essential element, it is worth nothing unless it is well communicated, reinforced and bought to life with rewards.

If an employee, when pounded with a vision,  asks himself “what’s in it for me?” and gets a satisfactory answer, he’ll start living that vision too.

3. Leaders get into everybody’s skin and exude positive energy and optimism.

I had once remarked in one of my earlier articles that organisational culture seeps down from the top. It is something that resonates with Jack Welch’s line of thought also and he brings a common saying – “The fish rots from the head down” to make his point.  Simply put, it means the effect of a bad attitude or politics on the top of any team, large or small, goes down to infect everybody else.

Look around and you might just always observe that an upbeat or positive leader who exudes positivity throughout the day somehow always manages to end up running a positive and optimistic team while a pessimistic grump always seems to be leading a sore group of people.  Think about your own experiences – on the day you are enervated and brimming with joy, you would definitely notice that positive aura around those under you and the days on which you behave like a sourpuss, they might seem the same.

A leader’s job is not just to fight the gravitational pull of negativism (and that pull gets really hard at times), but to also energise and enervate those people who he works with.

The right attitude can make a difference to those below and it’s about time you made it yours.

4. Leaders establish trust with candour, transparency and credit

Candour is the quality of being frank or candid and this was one of the most important lessons I learned and imbibed when I read ‘Winning’ many years ago.

So, what on earth does candour and transparency achieve?

Trust!

People would not trust a leader who is known to hide information from them (especially that concerns them) but will appreciate a leader who will tell them undiluted news upfront – even if the news isn’t good.  Ever heard the casual cafeteria remarks on the likes of “that guy is at least honest and straightforward and so I guess we can trust him”?

Candour does that.

Giving credit where it is due is another way by which leaders establish trust. They don’t steal others ideas and claim it as their own and don’t “Kiss up and kick down” because they have enough maturity to realise that when their team is successful, they too will eventually get credit for it.

Leaders take responsibility when things go wrong, and in good times, are generous in passing around the praise.

5. Leaders have courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls

Welch describes how many people naturally lean towards ‘consensus’ because they long to be loved by everybody. However, every leader at some point will be forced to make decisions that won’t be popular. Welch states that in a situation where a leader is forced into making an unpopular decision,  he must listen to his subordinates patiently and then clearly explain the decision himself, but he should not walk away or move back from that decision.

Gut calls are equally hard. A gut call is a decision based on something that a leader feels strongly about though it may appear against rationale decision making on the surface. Never shy away from such decisions because gut calls are essentially an experienced person’s subconscious pattern recognition skills at work.  If you are an experienced leader about to hire somebody who ticks all the right boxes but still gives you a very uncomfortable feeling without you being able to point out precisely why, it would be better not to hire him.

That gut feeling is probably because of you observing/ understanding a particular trait of this person subconsciously that matched with others who you knew previously and who didn’t turn out too well – implying that this person has all the same reasons to be that way too.

[PS: A slight deviation from the original topic: I once read a fascinating book called ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell that sheds a lot of light on how an expert makes instantaneous decisions, often against accepted rationale that turns out to be dead right. If you want to know more about how that works, do read that book!]

6. Leaders prod and push with a curiosity that borders on scepticism, making sure their questions are answered with actions.

It is said that when you are an individual contributor, your job is to have all the right answers, but as a leader your job is to have all the right questions – “Why”, “Why not?” or “How come?”

The questions are obviously for a constructive purpose to trigger debates, decisions and ACTIONS that lead to better solutions.

When a leader prods and scrutinises a proposed solution, the team members start thinking of whether better or more cost-effective alternatives to a proposed solution exists, thereby leading to better quality of work solutions every time.

7. Leaders inspire risk-taking and learning by setting the example

I have worked with teams that range from top-class to less-than mediocre and one thing that has always separated the outstanding teams from poor ones was the risk-taking ability of  those in the poor teams.

I have seen how in a really good team, nobody really fears failure because they know somebody’s got their back in case they do fail, but in the poor teams, it’s always a case of ‘let me just make sure my sorry ass is safe’.  Every single time I have encountered the latter behaviour, it happens the team members either work for, or worked for inept people managers who inspired no trust and tended to lambast those who encountered failure.

So how does a leader inspire risk taking? Welch states that the right way is by getting leaders to freely talk about their mistakes and then about what they learned from them.

I used to often talk to my old team about the one project I once failed miserably in – and at times even joked about it and also how in the end how it helped me do things much better in the years that followed. The free admission of my mistakes not only opened up my team members to me, but also gave them reassurance that I could empathise with failure and that failure was acceptable as long as they learned from their failures and didn’t repeat their mistakes.

8. Leaders celebrate

Jack Welch staunchly advocated that leaders celebrate their teams’ victories and achievements no matter how small or big. It would be understandable if all companies can’t send employees and their families to places like Disneyland (like Jack Welch suggests) but, teams can celebrate with an outing to fun place once in a while.

Sometime back I worked in a team that took time out to celebrate, once every quarter – that day of celebration was meant to just have fun outdoors. The stress free environment did more than just relax people; it fostered greater bonding in a day than what months of working together couldn’t achieve.

Like Welch says, celebrating makes people feel like winners and creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy.

Why wouldn’t anybody want that?

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 Do you consider yourself a successful leader or do you want to be one?  If this article inspired you, do not just nod your head and continue to do what you have always done.

Make a change, and practice bringing these lessons to life; it could make a world of difference to you and those who are under your wing.

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The Unspoken Lessons from Mom

For most children (leaving out those who grew up without one), their most influential teachers aren’t the ones they saw and listened to in school. They are the ones who the children watch and emulate at home – their parents. The thoughts, belief systems and convictions of parents are more often than not reflected in the thoughts, beliefs and actions of their children – irrespective of whether good or bad.

The influence that a mother has on her offspring is often subtler than that of the father though it is no less impactful.

I know there will always be countless people who are and will be in awe of their mothers. And more often than not, that admiration has more to do with the nature of the relationship than anything else. Children love their moms simply because they are their moms! But when it comes to objective qualities, not every mother can be a role-model.

I am one of those lucky ones who can convincingly state that his mother is a role model.

I don’t bestow my mom with that title on the virtue of she being my mother, but because of the values she upheld throughout her life.

My mom is closing in on 70. She is a little woman – a couple of inches under 5 feet in height, hard of hearing on one side and has a little stoop. She’s old school and has never used the internet and probably never will. She oblivious to the existence of internet blogs and that’s why I know she will never read this post (or even know about it probably). Knowing her, she’d probably not appreciate me writing about her – she’s never been somebody craved to be in the spotlight.

Yet, I recently realised how the little things she influenced me throughout life. And that forced me to sit down and write about some of the best lessons I learned from her. Perhaps you can learn from them too! Here are those lessons.

LESSON 1: WE ALL HAVE A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

It was 1989 and I was 8 years old.  Back then, I was laying in the general ward of a government hospital in Kuwait with my body completely immobilised because my leg was in an immovable traction (the first of the two long treatments I underwent for my faulty leg in my childhood).

My mother worked as a nurse then, in a different clinic. She couldn’t take time off to stay with me the entire day on her working days and so what she’d do instead was to finish her long shifts and then came to sit at my bedside. My father’s visits were less frequent (he had to come from afar) and I was alone most of the day.

My mom, as soon as she finished her shift at the clinic would then come directly to the hospital (without changing her working clothes) and be with me for a few hours, in the late evening, before she left.

There were often other patients in the same ward, who needed the attention of a nurse (hard to get on time, during late evenings or at night) and when they spotted my mother, they would call her or wave to her to attend to them.

She would uncomplainingly rush and attend to them leaving my bedside– despite having no obligation to do so (she didn’t even work for that hospital, was often tired after her 9-10 hour shift, and she could have simply waited till the hospital nurses arrived).

There was an Arab boy who lay two beds away who my mother attended to many times and I am certain that he may have wondered why the Indian nurse spent so much time with the Indian boy in the ward without realising she had no more an obligation to attend to him than his mother had to attend to me.

I asked her once why she kept going to them (yes, I remember things from that age still) after she attended one patient, and she replied nonchalantly then “they see the uniform and wouldn’t realise that I don’t work here; but I am a nurse”

I was too young to understand it then but realised later; my mom had a tremendous sense of duty, not just to that uniform but as a responsible human too. She’d go out of her way to help some of our relatives who’d have fallen on hard times despite not being asked and at a time she’d not be living in luxury herself. The only thing she got in return was the gratitude and respect of those people.

That’s something we could all learn from, reaching out to help a fellow being in need without being obliged to after all, isn’t a quality that’s in abundance in any society these days. Make a difference. 

LESSON 2: EVEN WITH LIMITED MEANS, YOU CAN STILL SAVE FOR THAT RAINY DAY

20 years ago, most commoners didn’t know about financial planning. Mutual funds were almost unknown and the best people did with excess income was to stash it in a savings account till it was depleted.

Despite the appearances we kept of a well-to-do middle class family, with an NRI breadwinner for a father, we just had enough to get by. And it was my mom who did the bulk of financial toggling with the limited amount of money we had for our expenditure.

My mom came up with a solution for those days when there was nothing to fall back on. She found a lady who used to be part of a small local chit fund (run by some co-operative movement) and contributed a trivial Rs 5 everyday (or sometimes Rs 10). The lady used to come and collect the money from my mother everyday around 4 in the evening.  My mom would sometimes put a little money away in another co-operative also. My father himself wasn’t aware of these savings which accrued in time, and came to our aid when we least expected it.  My mother practiced diversification of investment without knowing the term itself.  She pledged her gold at the cooperative when interest was very low and borrowed money which she often paid back in installments.

My idea of keeping a ‘rainy-day fund’ came from there and I almost never dip into it, unless it is the direst of circumstances. I had it almost from the time I started working – and yes, the few times I was almost bankrupt (following many months of joblessness following my post-graduation a few years ago) that money came to my rescue.

If you read the financial planning guru, Robert Kiyosaki, he too advocates putting aside a small portion of what you earn every month for long term gains.  Do it. It might be something that saves your day, someday.

LESSON 3: ACKNOWLEDGE THOSE WHO PLAYED A PART IN YOUR LIFE.

I had started teaching the CCNA course (I was certified while still at undergrad college) at a Training Institution in Kochi less than 2 weeks after my last Engineering examination. My first salary in 2004 was a very modest 3000 Rupees.

When I gave my first salary to my mother, while she was happy with the gesture, without taking anything for herself, she set aside a part of it to give to the church (she’s deeply pious) and then advised me to gift a part of it to my aunt.

From the age of 1.5 months (yes, months) till the age of three and half, I had lived with my paternal grandmother and my then unmarried youngest paternal aunt, who took care of me, before I finally went overseas to live with my parents (that period lasted till the Gulf War of 1990).

My aunt was extremely touched by the gesture, and it was a lesson to me to not forget those who played their parts in my upbringing.

Nobody really makes it completely on their own, there will be some who had directly or indirectly made that road easier – acknowledge their contribution.

LESSON 4: SHOW EMPATHY – TREAT THOSE THE WAY YOU WISH TO BE TREATED

Last week, I saw my elderly arthritic mom take pains to go and make a cup of tea for a beggar. You’d only understand the significance of the latter part of the statement if you understood caste and racial systems in India, and the attitudes of the upper/forward classes towards the lower classes/dalit communities. The vast majority of well-to-do people wouldn’t drink from the glass they serve their domestic help, let alone serve a drink to a beggar.

My mother would never show that discrimination. On top of it, she never turned away a beggar who asked for food or drink. In my school days there even used to be regulars (there was this old beggar with long matted hair and a foot long beard who came every week and asked for 2 Rupees and tea, and another chap who come for food periodically because he knew my mother would always feed him).  The hired domestic help who visits our house (she’s been around for more than 20 years) is never treated any differently from any other guest and is welcome to sit at our table any day.

Not long ago, I had written a blog-post about the domestic help who comes to my place once a week and about her fondness for me because of the little things I do for.  She’d never know it was another woman who taught me that by setting an example herself.

Unfortunately, the working class in India, in most places are seldom shown humanity and worse still; the treatment they get from their own kin is often despicable. In a society where classism is the norm even today, I do not know what I’d have turned out to be had it not been for the example set by my mother at home.

Treat the less fortunate with respect. We didn’t choose the house, class, community which we were born into, neither did they.

LESSON 5: VALUE THE EFFORT BEHIND THAT MONEY

16 years ago, when I packed my bags to leave for the adjoining state to do my B. E degree, my mom pulled me aside and told me.

“I’m not asking you to not drink or smoke because it is wrong (there was this common notion that students take up both once they start college as a sign of rebellion and independence, more than anything else). You know how much money we have (contrary to popular notion, we barely had enough to get by) and spare a thought for your dad who is working night and day and often overtime (he worked on heavy machines in a steel factory) to afford whatever we have. ”

I promised her I would not squander his money while at college.

I kept that promise for all the time I was in college, despite all the jokes on me behind my back. I didn’t do what I did because of any high moral or religious ground. My thinking was simply based on what my mom told me – respect the source of the money that was being given to me and the person who put his blood and sweat behind it.  My abstinence was solely based on the principle my mom instilled in one line.

I had my first full beer after I started working (and even today I drink only at social events, a couple of times in a year, in moderation) and well, I always found the smell of cigarette smoke suffocating– so smoking wasn’t a temptation anyway.

If well-to-do teenagers burn money like they would burn paper today, it is probably because they never realise the effort of the ones who earned them that luxury. If they did they’d value it more. A person values only that which he could never have or that which had to struggle to get.

If you were fortunate to have grown up having access to education, and have lived a life without struggling too much for food or finances, you probably got a headstart on account of a parent’s or a grandparent’s efforts in the past. Respect that.  

LESSON 6: NEVER TAKE YOUR FOOD FOR GRANTED.

In the two and half years I have been in a steady relationship; I fought with my girlfriend at least 3 times for wasting food. I think it’s probably one of the most orthodox Indian thoughts – never waste food because you never know who could’ve benefitted from that food you threw away half-eaten.

I’ve thankfully never had to think twice about buying food in many years. But there was a time when my mother could barely get by with the money that she had.

My mom would be bargaining with the fishmonger to get 12 sardines (the cheapest salt-water fish one can buy) instead of 10 sardines for Rs 10. She’d then ration the sardines 2 pieces for each meal and that would be the entire meat we’d have for the week. For many of those years, meat (chicken or beef) was bought only on special occasions or during the time of my father’s annual vacation.

My mom never complained about not having enough money, she’d just do with whatever we had. She improvised and bought the in-season vegetables that didn’t cost too much, she made sure whatever vegetables grew in our fields were put to good use (no wasting even jackfruit seeds) and she used to walk through damp fields during the rainy season searching for fresh mushrooms. She would cook any vegetable she came across and that was probably why she could cook an array of dishes really well. We weren’t  ‘poor’ but our limited means meant we had to master frugal living – which was enough to give me an appreciation of the food on my plate.

Seeing food getting wasted still gives me knots in my stomach (and an immense sense of guilt) and that’s probably why I never leave a morsel of food on my plate and usually, I’d be cleaning off my girlfriend’s plate too (after giving her a lecture about wasting food) if it came to that.

I had shared this thought with a friend who didn’t mind leaving food on his plate. His justification was “my stomach isn’t a dustbin” – a fair counter-opinion, though, given a choice, I’d never put anything on my plate, I can’t consume in the first place.

I suppose, I’ll have a really hard time if I were to ever live in the USA (reports show that 30-40% of food is wasted there).

LESSON 7: DO THE RIGHT THING, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH HELL FOR IT.

Many years ago news of my cousin’s relationship with a girl (who was a distant relative too) broke out in the open. My cousin had been living with us and was particularly close with my mom (his paternal aunt).

When my mom came to know of the relationship, while she wasn’t initially gung-ho about it, she eventually decided to lend her support to my cousin and the girl, when my mother realised how devoted they were to each other and the two of them would never live happily were they to be separated. The couple went through hell (for breaking social norm) and my mother was ostracised and verbally abused by her own family for lending them support (her eldest brother, who she adored, and his family didn’t speak with her for years).  She felt terrible about how her brother and the rest of her family treated her but did what she had to.

Many years later, that couple, now married, lead a happy life and are doing really well on all fronts– they now have lovely 2 boys too. My mother’s brother made his peace with her before he passed away and the girl’s mother (who cussed and swore and disowned the couple) made her peace too.  Not to say, my cousin and his wife adore my mother and still remain ever grateful to her.  Looking back, I’m certain my mom doesn’t regret what she had to go through because it was the right thing to do.

This is probably why, when I hear the voice inside that says do the right thing – against my natural instinct, I find it very hard to ignore it.

LESSON 8: GIVE – FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

My mom used to support a number of charities (though I don’t live with her now, I’m pretty sure she still does) but back in my teenage days, there were quite a few ‘Pentecostal Pastors’ (Christian preachers from the Pentecostal community) who’d come and talk with my mother,  mutter a prayer, extract some money and be on their way.

I didn’t really appreciate giving away money to their lot (especially since we didn’t even have much anyway those days) and used to point out to my mom those chaps were frauds. “They go to only well-to-do Christian households holding a Bible and then blurt out some nonsense they memorised guised as a prayer and then ‘earn’ their money”.

My mom then used to say, she knew that and still gave them money. The way she thought was different.  She took the case of 2 specific preachers and told me about them.

The first one was over 70 years old, he came from a scheduled caste community, had no family and no way to support himself. He was too old and weak to work and would probably starve if it had not been for what he gets from people like my mom. The only thing he knew was to mutter a prayer and that’s what he did for a living.  The story of the second preacher was not very different. He too bordered on his 70s, came from an impoverished background, and was a converted Dalit whose children had left him to tend for his own.

My mother told me the little money we gave them wouldn’t make much of a dent in our lives, but for them it was sustenance. She was just tending to their need. I never forgot that lesson.

A few years ago, I was sitting in my rented house in Bangalore when a man from a particular small charitable organisation for disabled children I supported from time to time came and I wrote him a crossed cheque for a few thousands. A friend of mine, who was at home that time, was shocked and asked me what assurance I had that my money wouldn’t be misused. I shrugged told him that I came to trust that person and in the end quoted my mom, “worst case scenario, that amount of money will hardly make a dent to my life. But it could make a difference to theirs.”

My advice to anybody reading this, if what you give away, no matter how little, has a much greater chance of making a difference to somebody that it would with you, you should go ahead.

PS: That doesn’t mean I give to anybody or everybody who I come across. I recently excused myself from a very charming lady who came to my door (she was extremely pushy and wouldn’t take a donation less than 1800 for her organisation– that’s definitely not a sign of real need.)

LESSON 9:  ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

My mother is a soft spoken woman and her voice is often drowned in the booming voice of my father – somebody who is used to dominating any conversation he is part of.

Nevertheless, it was how she conducted herself throughout the years that stood out and not what she said.

I’ve seen countless people who proudly state they don’t care about wealth and then behave in way that sharply contradicts their statements. My mom, on the other hand, irrespective of how we were doing, just made it a habit to live a very simple lifestyle – her wants were little. She happily wears the same old saris for years.She wears minimal jewellery, her watches (that one of us gifted her) are used till they finally stop working, her choice of sandals is simple and her spectacles are the kind made from inexpensive plastic frames (I tried to get it replaced once, but she declined when she got hem tested them at an optician’s and found that the lenses were fine). Sometimes when I do buy her something as trivial as a handbag (because her old one would have worn out), she’d tells me in confidentiality to buy my father a shirt or a T-shirt as well because he’d feel left out otherwise.

She never talks her charitable actions but has always been an out-and-out giver.  The only few times she asked for something from me was when she wanted us to help out a less-fortunate relative who was due for a heart by-pass surgery a few years ago and in dire need of money, or when she wanted one of us children to give some extra money to our domestic help or the relative of ours who comes and helps with domestic chores from time to time.

Her acts were selfless and seldom known to others because she never made a show of it. But the genuine love and adulation she has earned from her various beneficiaries is testimony to the impact she has had on their lives.

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There were many things I learned from my mother often unwittingly, and looking back, I think the ones I wrote earlier were the things that probably distinguished her the most. My mother still may not have been perfect and might have had her own small flaws, but her minor vices were far outnumbered by her virtues.

I know for certain that I would have probably been much less of a human being had it not been for the unspoken lessons from my mom.

The values, belief-systems and even behaviour of a person, to a huge extent are dictated by the values, belief-systems and behaviour of his/her parents. You are often what you are because of what you observed and learned while growing up.

I am often saddened when I see signs of religious bigotry, racism and general apathy in people I come across every day and feel further saddened when I realise that these values were passed down to these people from their parents. The worst part is when these distorted values get passed on to their next generation too.

To sum up this post, none of us have the luxury to choose our parents and it was only the lottery of life that gave me a good mother.

Nevertheless, we all have a choice – we have a choice to set the right example with our lives for our children, and the ones who look up to us.  And we shouldn’t refrain from making that choice.    

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