The first and last of the two stories on appreciation and thanking

As promised in December last year, here's the first and last of the two stories on appreciation and thanking.

A couple of months ago, I was invited to engage with the senior management of a company as their managers were embarking on a very interesting journey ahead.

One of the things that came up for discussion was the importance and need for the senior managers to role model the culture of appreciating and thanking the good work done by their junior managers.

Now, some people had a concern about appreciating and thanking and understandably so because most of those senior managers as well as I had grown up in a generation where our parents and especially fathers believed that any kind of appreciation would spoil us and that the only way we would develop would be by keeping us on our toes and edges all the time and by holding back any kind of sincere and genuine pride they felt about us and our work.

The late Rishi Kapoor was a self-admitted example of this where he never appreciated his son's work except when he was shown the trailer of Sanju and for a moment he genuinely thought that it was Sanjay Dutt who was coming out of the jail and not his own son. Rishi Kapoor had spoken for so many fathers when he said that it was difficult for him to appreciate his son as he himself had never received it from his own father - the legendary film maker Raj Kapoor.

Now, that's where Bollywood came to my rescue once again.

It so turned out that most of the senior management members had watched the 1982 Dilip Kumar-Amitabh Bachhan starrer movie Shakti - written by Salim-Javed and directed by Ramesh Sippy.

And then I asked them to recall the most iconic scene and dialogue between Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachhan from the movie.

The head of the organisation was able to do so well: the scene where Ashwini Kumar the character played by Dilip Kumar - an upright, principled, no-nonsense police officer fires at his own truant son after warning him enough.

As Vijay, the character played by Amitabh Bachhan collapses after being shot, his father rushes to hold his dying son in his arms.

After a life-time of confusion, hurt, pain, bitterness, estrangement, separation and truancy-by-choice; finally in his dying moments Vijay tells his father that he loved him all his life. Ashwini also says the same thing to his son.

And that's when Vijay asks him:

"Toh kaha kyun nahi dad?" (Then why didn't you tell me dad?)

Simple words but profound in terms of their depth and impact.

And with that the son dies in the arms of his father.

I asked the participants to reflect on the truth of the matter and then further shared with them an insight I had found beautifully articulated in Ken Blanchard's book: Know, Can, Do! that children who don't receive their father's appreciation and acknowledgment go onto become driven and difficult in life.

There was a long moment of poignant silence in the group as they seemed to reflect on the mirror that just appeared in front of them and they did seem to open up to acknowledging, appreciating, thanking and encouraging their junior managers' good work.

Then on 28th November last year - a little over a month after this training session, I came across a moving and scary TED talk where the presenter spoke about an African proverb:

"If a child is not embraced by its village, he will burn it down just to feel its warmth."

_/\_

Sohum.