My Cheerleader

This past month, at work, I’ve been attending a leadership masterclass that I was nominated to attend by my former boss because I expressed interest in growing my leadership potential. This class talks about many concepts in becoming a person of influence, following the concepts written by John Maxwell in his book “Becoming a person of influence”. It talks about connecting with people, listening to people, having faith in people, working with integrity, understanding and empowering people and finally nurturing and enlarging people. The masterclass is basically structured in a way that a small cohort discusses their views on what was said in the chapters and in the teaching videos that the instructors release before the classes. This is an interesting concept and a great way to share. However, personally, like other “classes” on soft skills that I have attended, I did not really take anything specific away from it. It just reinforced my inner feelings that all of this is just common sense.

Its common sense that you need to connect with people, understand them and listen to them if you want to build a relationship with them. Its common sense that you need to build a relationship with someone if you want to work and co-exist peacefully. Its common sense that you need to trust and have people trust you, in order to work effectively and if you have integrity, people automatically begin to trust you. But there are hundreds of books out there, including John Maxwell’s book, which talk about this. John has made a career out of this. So, I guess, this is not really all that much of common sense. So, once again, I walked away from a training without much benefit except the observation that I was always leading the class, by getting the discussions started, something that I have never done before. Historically, I have never been the person (in a group) that initiates a discussion. I also, in almost every class, raised a question that kept the group going for over half an hour, indicating that I raised meaningful questions. Interestingly enough, almost always, the theme of the answers thrown back at me revolved around empathy. It irked me to no end because empathy is what naturally comes to me and it has most certainly not answered my questions which is why these questions exist in the first place. This leads me to another very important self-reflection.

In all the personality quizzes I have taken so far (thanks to my MBA school), my strengths have always revolved around empathy and being a team player. I have always been disappointed that I have no active strength like an achiever or a go-getter. I’m always seen as someone who is an excellent team player and will chip away at things quietly. When it comes to authority, I can be walked all over. I admit it, I avoid conflicts and am deeply uncomfortable in situations where a strong personality and I come into conflict because my natural tendency is to back off and that means I lose out. The point I am making is that there is no way I can ever really feel valuable unless I get that externally. It doesn’t help that I am always struggling with the impostor syndrome because I always feel inadequate when it comes to skills, indicating a really low self-esteem. This would mean I will never really be considered for leadership positions because the idea that my work will do the taking for me, doesn’t get you anywhere. There will always be people who will overlook me altogether because there are those shining examples of people pleasers and aggressive go-getters that will always overshadow me. That brings me to the original reason of my article.

I need a real mentor, someone who believes in my capabilities, a cheerleader of sorts, who can watch me in my everyday life and show me how I could change my approach or behavior in such a manner that people see me as their equal and someone with great potential. Whether it is at work or even in our personal lives, this person can help me build my confidence and approach things with a different mindset and help me overcome this constant feeling of inferiority. There was only one person, that I knew of, who would have had the time and been invested in doing this. She left me 5 years ago. The funny thing is, I don’t miss her all the time like I probably should. She would be extremely disappointed to hear this because just a couple of days before she left me, she was lamenting on the fact that if she did ever leave, no one would really miss her. I had jumped in and said of course we, her family, would. But her express words were that even we would move on. In these past 5 years, I have built a new life which didn’t involve her from day 1 so it was easy to decouple those memories and start afresh. So yes, she was right. But it’s those deeper moments of self-reflection that bring back memories of her stories, bring back her teaching moments, her incessant need to make me a better person and make me become a good human being. It makes me acutely aware of how co-dependent I have become, to that nagging voice in my head that just doesn’t exist anymore. That void is something I am desperately trying to fill and the sad part is, no one will ever be invested in me as much as she was, to actually make an attempt to fill that void. She was my cheerleader in the truest sense. In the 5 years since she left, I may have moved on but I’m still stuck on that one conversation that she and I would repeatedly have growing up; she would say she could leave anytime but I would always say she was responsible for me and until I was completely self-sufficient, she couldn’t leave. I never became completely self-sufficient and she left anyway.

Feature Image credit: http://www.yummymummybeauty.com/a-mothers-and-daughters-the-beauty-bond/