Mommy's Love

 I carried you within and brought you forth and watched you grow.  It has been a few decades and together in all these years, together we laughed, cried, traveled, ate, slept and bonded.  If I knew love, I knew it through you and when I discovered what it meant to love deeply and eternally, it was when I watched your little presence become a large part of my life.

Many have written what it is to be a mom, what it is to love a child and about that love you feel deep in the pit of your belly as the events of life unfold – good and not so good.  And today, as I write these lines, my story is not a fabric of the imagination but a fabric of real life.

I have always loved you and wished you always smiled, always found happiness and always loved others and I never imagined I would have to see you in pain as I did.  In your moments of pain, the pit in my belly overflowed with even more love and my earnest desire was to take your pain and fold it into my being. But you were strong, so ladylike and brave and you forged ahead as we tried to find the reason for your pain and when we did, I wondered why you.  Why at this age.  But it was better to have known and find the cure so you can smile again.  It is what mothers do. 

And you are smiling again.  I know love and I know the anguish of a mother watching her child in pain.  I will be there, I will always be there because I am your mommy!

The Stretch Assignment - A Powerful Growth Opportunity

What is a stretch assignment and what does it really mean?  Put very simply, a stretch assignment could be seen as taking a risk… taking a chance to fill a chair long before you are really ready and equipped to do so.  Is it a risk worth taking?  Absolutely!  And do you have to fear failure or think you will have to perform at that level all on your own?  Absolutely not!

In career management, a stretch assignment can be the experience that gives you the opportunity to underscore your pinnacles and readily identify your foothills. It is the fastest way to realizing your passion, strengths, tolerance for stress and ambiguity and very importantly, areas for development. It helps you to create greater self-awareness.

Career development usually follows a track – moving from one level to the next upwardly or laterally.  Most often, we tend to move up and on few occasion take a lateral move to gain broader knowledge in another area.  Either way, learning is to be had once we are exposed to new and more challenging tasks. Or sometimes, just simply working under or with different leadership and mindset generates new thought processes of our own.

Recently, I survived an acquisition and had two offers – both of which were stretch assignments for me.  One involved relocation while the other kept me where I wanted to be.  It was a tough decision but I settled for the position that did not necessitate a move.  So, my challenge was not only taking on an assignment beyond my current experience but it was also managing through shades of grey, adapting to new management, learning the processes and culture of the new company and getting up to speed with the new business area on a global scale.  In a global operations role, I realized that I didn’t necessarily have to know everything but I needed to build strong networks, create great working relationships and be able to leverage people, processes and time to deliver against very demanding deadlines and to gather data I needed. And through all of this I would build new global business knowledge, critical analytical and leadership skills.  While I had some exposure to operations, this was at a much higher level and the supporting organizational structure was not like I was accustomed to having – for example, dedicated HR and finance business partners.  This time it was more of a shared services model and therefore operations had to do much more.

It has been a year since and as I reflect back on my pinnacles and foothills, I have no regrets.  In fact, if there is any fast way to develop professionally, it is through a stretch assignment.  Today, I can clearly see who I am, what I love to do, the kind of leadership I like supporting and the important factors or values in a job, such as autonomy, flexible work arrangements, creativity  and the opportunity to innovate even if it means failing because failure is an important step in our learning process.  As we say within the organization, a winning culture allows room for innovation and tolerance for failure in the discovery process because it is from failure that we also learn. Understanding why and where one failed leads to more innovation.  Telling someone there is no tolerance for failure is like telling a scientist that every compound must produce a success. 

Innovative medicines are a result of many experiments involving failures and disappointments but using new knowledge from the process to keep the experiments going until success is achieved.

As we all progress up the career ladder, we are constant experimenters.  We will have those pinnacle moments that set us apart and make us to feel great and we will also have set backs in the foothills.  But that is part of the growth process, the discovery that will produce professional growth and greater self-awareness – giving us sense of how far up we want to aim and help us to become more agile learners. And, agile learners have great success ahead of them!

Discovering through Dance

The old adage that one never stops learning is so true.  Every day we all learn something new or discover something that was there  – be it a personality trait, a skill or some other potential. And these discoveries can happen in the places we least expect them to.  And, it is such a discovery that leads me to write this blog.

Ever since I was a young teenager, I loved to dance.  I loved drama classes and I was never shy to take the stage.  While I had acting and dancing abilities, I had not even a 1% ability to sing. So I never pursued singing.  I always firmly believed that to be successful, it is better for an individual to tap into their strengths rather than try very hard to improve the weaknesses. And so, since I loved dancing and always admired those that danced so exquisitely, I decided to take Ballroom dance classes.

When it comes to ballroom dances, I knew only the waltz – the name that is … I could not do a proper waltz! That was nine months ago.  Today, I can actually tango and believe it or not, I learnt that there is the Argentine Tango and the American Tango.  I learnt the latter which allows the dancers to maintain some distance as opposed to the former where dancers have very close body contact throughout the dance. Both styles of the Tango have beautiful deliberate moves, great posture with strong, sharp movements of the legs, hands and head. It is a theatrical performance of a couple in a fight – the ebb and flow of emotions.

After nine months of dance lessons, I can waltz, foxtrot, swing, cha cha, rhumba and even do the hustle! But it was nine months of discovery and learning. It was learning to dance and discovering how passionate I was about being perfect and eager to do things well;  to take every task seriously.  What exactly did I discover?  Well, I will tell you!  In the field of dance, the female is always the follower – the man leads and as a follower, your steps follow those of the leader – he moves you, sways you, turns you, pulls you close and lets you go! As a female, if you have the innate ability of a leader and you love to lead projects and take the initiative to get things done, then as a beginner dancer, you will get very frustrated and your frustration will mount if your dance partner, the gentleman, is also learning.  The point is, as the dance instructor pointed out, men take a bit longer than women to learn dance but once they start to improve, their dance skills improve much faster than the women. So that was my first discovery – I was never a good follower … I always wanted to lead and waiting to be led while I was ahead on the dance curve caused numerous fights between my husband and I.

I discovered my impatience and, my desire to always lead. And, I also discovered the perfectionist that I am … when I could not get the steps perfectly, I was angry at myself ; I pushed myself to practice harder and concentrate more.  And, instead of having fun in the dance classes, I was angry, serious and impatient – how horrible!  I thought if I did not take it seriously, then I would never improve and my husband would remind me that this was not my job – he was right but this is how dance allows you to discover who you really are … your personality traits.  You come face to face with them as if looking in a mirror.

Today, both my husband I are better dancers and since I truly understand that the beauty of dance can only be with a leader and a follower, I now have settled into the follower’s role on the dance floor.  I relax more and have fun; but the next challenge now is that with the knowledge of over five dances, a guy must remember which steps and positions belong to which dance and how to smoothly transition from one position to the next.  This now is our new challenge and when as the follower you love a certain style and move and your dance partner does not give  you the pleasure of dancing those moves, you unfortunately cannot lead the dance so you stick with what the poor guy remembers to do … until he becomes an expert!  Then you are delighted to be his dance partner!

I invite you to dance and discover!