>> [MUSIC]
>> You're seven years old sitting in a classroom with 50 kids, you don't know.
The teacher is talking.
[FOREIGN].
You see her point at the blackboard.
You hear her voice but you do not understand a word.
And you have just a few months to pass an exam in this unknown language.
That's no nightmare.
That was my childhood growing up in India,
moving every few years from a state where everyone spoke Hindi,
to a state where everyone spoke Bangla to a state where everyone spoke Odia.
At seven, when everything seemed impossible, I wanted to cry,
I wanted to run away, I wanted to quit, but I tried my best.
To push away my doubts and fears and power through.
At 9 when we moved again, it got just a bit easier.
Even though I could not talk to my classmates for a while,
we connected over cricket and volleyball.
We shared delicious pranchas over lunch and we teamed up at scouts after school.
By 11, I was almost looking forward to the next move.
The promise of new friends, new rivals, new foods,
far outweighed the miscommunication.
Living this experience as a child was transformative.
Over time, I got better and better at shoving away my doubts and
fears and powering through.
Eventually the move stopped.
But left behind, was this strange tingling openness to try new things.
You've heard the cliches, take a leap of faith.
Jump into the deep end and learn to swim.
Fake it till you make it.
Nobody told me any of that back then.
For me it was simple.
The discomfort goes away if you just power through and power through I did.
Before coming to the GSB, I spent 15 years at a B2B tech company.
Starting as an engineer in India and pivoting over 10 times in those 15 years,
across roles, functions, teams, even geographies.
I went out of my way to master new skills,
working during the day and studying evenings and weekends for three years.
To get a business degree to pivot to marketing, learning Spanish for
presentations and deals in Mexico.
Traveling the world,
meeting customers to understand their pain points always at work.
I would settle for nothing less than exceeding expectations.
Powering through served me quite well, until it didn't.
When I got promoted to a manager,
I put the same pressure on my team to exceed expectations that I put on myself.
I was sure they would get through their discomfort by powering through.
So when the first 360 reviews came in, I was excited.
I remember running upstairs this corner conference room with frosted glass walls
to read in private.
And I opened my reviews one by one the first one read.
Such it should avoid being so pushy.
It was as if those frosted glass walls shattered around me.
I could feel my energy go away.
Who could be this malcontent?
>> With a little more hope I opened the second review and it read,
Such it should trust and empower the team more,
and let go of the details, no.
I could feel, the blood brain down my head as I slouched into my chair.
The reviews did not get any better from there.
By the time I got through them, I felt like that seven year old again.
I wanted to cry, I wanted to
run away, I wanted to quit.
And among those lines, one line stayed with me.
Such it needs to pause and smell a few more roses.
Was I missing something?
I realized not immediately, but over the next several months, that all
those doubts and fears I had shoved away were still out there in the shadows.
Powering through had a cost that I hadn't reckoned with before.
I had moved way too often to form long term and deep friendships.
I felt this awkward distance with people that others perceived as me being
disconnected.
The idea of home for me was not tied to a particular place but
only to a close group of people.
Eventually, the 11 year old in me took over.
I powered through once again and I reached out to a trusted mentor and coach for
help, who convinced me to pause and
reflect on the impact I was having on my team.
Gradually I learned to embrace the truth that each member of my team had more years
of experience than I did.
I learned to align each member's individual goals with that of the team and
the organization.
I organized team building exercises where there were no hierarchies.
I lean them to listen more to gain consensus,
to understand their perspectives.
But above everything I stopped expecting them to power through every
discomfort the way I did.
Standing here now, I know I talked to an audience of people who powers through,
who shoves away doubts and fears, who takes leap after leap after leap.
And even though it works for you, even though it works for us,
we need to remember as we try to change lives organizations and
the world, that not all the people we lead operate the same way.
We need to have empathy and understanding for
the people on our teams who may respond to discomfort differently.
We cannot push them as hard as we push ourselves.
It is also important to know that how we act sets an example,
for our colleagues, for our employees and
as I recently realized, even for our families.
The other day my wife Meenal,and I were discussing our next steps after
graduation.
We lived in Atlanta before we got to Stanford.
Should we go back or should we stay here?
So I turned to my almost nine year old son.
Ryan, what do you think Atlanta or California?
Dad neither, I think I want to try someplace new.
At that moment I felt overwhelmed inside.
So proud of his adventurous spirit much like me when I was nine,
yet concerned that he might also miss a place that felt like home.
There is a balance between always powering through and pausing to smell the roses.
Between moving on and enjoying where you are and what you have.
I wish I could tell you exactly where that balance lies, but
I'm still trying to find it.
So my ask of you today is this.
Keep in mind not only the benefits, but also the costs of
always powering through and try to find a balance that works for you.
And just as importantly for the people you lead.
>> [MUSIC]