 Hello everyone, thank you for joining another session on Pilates India Experience Sharing. This time we have with us Paramita Gupta who will be sharing her two-decade long experience and her real-life experience on women pursuing leadership roles. Over to you Paramita, you can share your screen and you can begin. No, I don't want to share my screen really. I thought I'll just talk, right? So good afternoon everyone and thank you for having me in this session of the Pilates Conference. It's an honour to be here. Yes, I do indeed have more than two decades of experience and I guess I have been in many situations where I have required resilience and persistence many, many times. So yeah, I thought why not kind of share that with you and discuss it with you and I'll keep it short. So if you kind of want to have a conversation after that, we could do that because dialogue always interests me instead of me just having a monologue from my end. So a little bit of background about me, I'm in Capgemini now, I'm a vice president but I've been working for 23 years after my MBA. I've worked in different domains and different industries. I started with HSBC and then I went over to Accenture for 10 years and then I've been with Capgemini for four years. And I thought that though I'm not a technical, you know, I'm in the IT sphere but I am not really a technical person but I actually have a code for this afternoon, right? So my code is 131 and I'll kind of take you through what 131 essentially means. So the first one of the code really is a myth, right? Very often we hear, you know, so and so we'll tell you on how to have it all. Now the myth is you really can't have it all, okay? You can't have it all all the time, right? So I think that's true for men and women and when I hear women coming up to me and I have a lot of them, you know, at work, outside work, coming up and saying, how do you have it all? Don't put unrealistic pressure on yourself or don't have unrealistic expectations of having it all every single, you know, every single day at all the time, right? So you do have to kind of prioritize and you have, you know, you at certain days you have the pleasure of probably being at home or looking after, you know, your family or pursuing your hobby and at certain other days you prioritize work. So the first, I think the first myth is or the first advice is that don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself about, you know, or then don't try to be super women about having it all, yeah? And so now let's kind of move on to the, you know, the second part of the code, right? And that is, you know, my three lessons, right? So the three lessons essentially are I think the first thing which I keep telling everybody in my team and people I meet when I go for conferences, etc. There are genuinely no shortcuts, right? I see a lot of people coming into meetings with very sloppy preparation with absolutely having no idea of what they have to be saying there or doing there, right? That always kind of gets my vote, right? I mean, I don't, I personally really, really believe in hard work, right? Till this day I don't go into any meeting without doing any research, without having a plan and for big meetings I always prepare, right? I mean, focus, so do that. I mean, there are no shortcuts to what you're doing. Also, focus on your brand. I'm sure you've heard about it a lot, right? But it is such an important thing. I think from the time that you've started your career till now, right? I'm 23 years and I'm a vice president and even now when I have conversations with my boss, who's an executive vice president, his main thing, and you know, I talk about my next promotion, his main thing is that you need to be known for something that, you know, you uniquely bring to the table, right? And that's quite a lesson for me, right? I mean, I actually honestly think I'm quite multifaceted when it comes to work and I can do a whole lot of things. And I'll just give you an example, right? My career is a bank up and after seven years in HSBC, I decided to get married and move to Bangalore and I didn't want to continue in a bank, right? I said, oh, I'll do something new. I'll do something wonderful. And I joined a startup. I had no clue what BPO was. I had no clue what mortgage was and I started off doing that, right? Heading a team and, you know, I won the first deal there. I got quickly promoted there. Then I moved on to Accenture to do again a few things which I had never done before. Then I moved on to CapGermany to do IT and I'm leading a team of extremely technically brilliant people. I mean, Sukanya included, whereas I am not the technical person. So I have begun to believe that, you know, I can do anything and maybe that is my brand, okay? But it is important to be known for something that you uniquely can bring to the table. So even after 23 years of, you know, experience, I generally have to narrow down. I can do anything into this is what I'm really good at, right? And this is what I need to be able to demonstrate time and again, right? So yeah, so there are no shortcuts and focus on your brand. Definitely, definitely be known for what people will come to you for, right? What you will uniquely bring to the table and what you can definitely pull off with success. Now, you're doing all this to kind of rise in an organization to be known as an achiever, to be known as a credible, competent person. But sometimes even when you do everything right, right? When you do everything right, you find yourself, sometimes I don't know if any of you have found yourself, but I have found myself in a very toxic environment at times, right? When I had my second child and I came back in Accenture, I found my super boss who's very, very senior in Accenture who is really, really like me. He was my first boss. He wanted me to be part of a particular team, right? But the gentleman heading that team did not want me. For whatever reason, he did not take, you know, probably kindly to me. He wasn't very keen on me joining that team. However, his boss and, you know, wanted me to join the team. I joined the team and I realized that despite the fact that, you know, I was in the right place as far as the work was concerned, as far as, you know, completely proving myself was concerned, my boss wasn't willing to acknowledge it. And, you know, I got into this whole mode of, oh, even if it kills me, I'm going to change his mind about me, right? And I almost killed myself and worked really long hours with the baby and worked through weekends and on paper he changed his mind about me, right? There was like no denying that, you know, I was doing extremely well and, you know, the results spoke for themselves. But then I say it was a toxic relationship. It was a toxic environment, not a relationship, toxic environment. Because despite my working so hard and despite my achieving everything, I still wasn't, you know, being set up for the promotion and I wasn't getting the rules that I wanted. And I think one of the things in being persistence and resilience, you know, and Fransukanya asked me to come and speak to all of you and, you know, she asked me to speak about persistence and resilience. I think one main important thing is that be persistent and be resilient but change the context if that is not working for you, right? Because if you stay in a context which does not recognize you or for which, I mean, even after fighting, you know, I see many women who just like me 10 years were out of seven, eight years back, they're kind of fighting to be, you know, to be recognized, to be acknowledged. And that is great. And in most situations it works, right? I mean, you put in your hard work, you invest in yourself, you invest in your team and that kind of pays off. But if it doesn't, then you should change your context. And that's exactly what I did, right? I changed my context because, you know, what happens when you don't change the context? When you stay, you know, you're constantly kind of trying to get your due. Slowly the lack of belief of people around you kind of gets to you and starts eroding your own self-esteem and self-worth, not a place to be in, right? That's absolutely not a place to be in. Sometimes I have seen and I myself have been in that situation, right? I stayed in that environment for some time because I had two little children, right? I had my family, my in-laws and my parents, I don't live in Bangalore. And with my first kid, I used to travel like crazy, right? I mean, I used to be traveling from Monday to Saturday. And when I had my second child, I promised myself that I just won't do that, right? I won't be an absentee mother. And I wanted a job that would afford flexibility in where I work from. Not necessarily all work from home, but it would afford the flexibility. But my main condition was that I did not want to do something that was not intellectually, deliberately challenging. And that was not in the back of beyond, right? I wanted to be visible, right? I was vice president with Accenture already. And I said, there's no way I am. I'm not the kind of person who will be happy doing this any job, right? So I wanted a visible job. I wanted something intellectually challenging. And I wanted something flexible, right? And that particular role, regardless of having a non-believer boss afforded me all those things. So I had my reasons for staying in a role like that. And typically, if you find yourself in such situations, right? I mean, where you're probably having to make a compromise because of certain situations, right? I mean, I've had a friend who took on a role like that because the mother was suffering from cancer and she wanted to kind of devote time to her mother. But then my advice to you is be very clear about the reason that you are in that environment and put a time limit to it, right? Because you should not let that go beyond the point because it's infinitely harmful to you in your career, right? So that is one thing. I mean, work on your brand. Don't take shortcuts and don't get trapped in an environment that doesn't work for you. The second thing I have always seen when, you know, I have, I myself have grown when I was a lot younger. There's a lot of people who probably felt that, you know, Paramita is kind of doing it at the cost of her family life, right? And I've realized that there's an unspoken belief that it's a choice, right? It's an either or. And what I want to say that it's not an either or, right? You can continue to scale the heights that you want to with understanding and support from your family, from your partner, from your organization, right? It's a question of asking for the help that you need. It's a question of taking on what you can choose, right? You know, so it's been realistic with your situation and the work that you're doing, etc. And, you know, I think also it's a question of being kind of flexible and kind of having a strategy on a daily basis almost, right? So when my kids were a lot younger, I did not have a set priority. You know, it's not that every day my work was my priority for 12 hours a day. And I don't be shocked, right? For certain some days, my work was priority for 18 hours a day, right? I would leave at 7 o'clock in the morning and I would come back only at whatever, 10 in the night, right? But there were certain days when I definitely entered this date. I continue to have a priority for the day, right? And maybe priority for the afternoon. And if I have to, not in the corona times, but if I have to, you know, go and listen to my daughter's violin concert and if that means, you know, planning a meeting, having it earlier, having it later, I will do that, right? For a long time, I did not pursue, you know, two children and elderly parents. I did not pursue what was important to me, you know, the hobbies that was important to me. Because the hobby that I really like, which is professional stage acting, theatre, was going to take away a lot of time, right? So though I kept on getting offers and requests when my kids were younger, about four years back, I took it up, right? So I act with a team called Geogriti who are very famous in Bangalore. And of course, I mean, given the fact that my job is the wages, I don't get too much time, so usually weekends go. But you'll be interested to know that, you know, I have actually managed doing rehearsals even on weekdays. It's a question of conveying your priorities and managing them, right? So I told my Geogriti team that I can either, you know, wind up rehearsals by 10 in the morning. It helps that they're right next to my office. Or I can only come up to six, right? It of course means that, you know, my family has to kind of fend for themselves without me for most of the days for about a month and a month and a half. And they're okay with that. So what I'm kind of trying to tell you, that don't tell yourself that your work life comes at the expense of everything and doing well at work comes at the expense of everything. You'll be surprised to see how much your organization, your team will support you, right? If otherwise they see that, you know, you're contributing, you're an honest person with integrity, you work hard, you can't be a slacker off and say that, you know, anyway, I don't work and now I'm going to do theatre, so I won't work at all. That doesn't work, right? But I had my entire team and my boss who's the CEO of Capgemini kind of, you know, supporting me, saying that, yeah, I mean, do what you have to, right? And there were many days when I had, I could not go and find my rehearsals. Even right before the performance was supposed to be staged because work was more important than I travel around to kind of attend to something important at work. So what I'm saying is be flexible, you know, plan well ahead. Be, you know, communicate with your family, your team, your organization so that they know what your priorities are and how important it is for you to, you know, have both professional success and personal fulfillment, yeah. Okay, so that's important. I think the other thing that's important is for the people in your life to be kind of on the same page as to what your aspirations are, right? I mean, there are a lot of people, a lot of women who often have talked about the fact that you need to choose your husband's carefully, right? Sheryl Sandberg has said make your partner a real partner. I think, and Indra Nui has talked about it. But my point is it's not only about, you know, your husband or your partner. I think people in your life, right? So if you're living with your parents, you're living with the in-laws, they need to be on the same page as to what is important to you. And most often than not, you will probably get the support from them when, you know, they are on the same page as to what is important to you and will probably help you in kind of realizing your ambitions, right? So that's one thing. I think the third thing, right? The third lesson, well, it's not a lesson really, but the third thing I realized, you know, when in my journey for whatever 23 years is that to be a successful woman, you know, you don't have to act like a man, right? You don't have to, you develop your unique style, right? You develop your unique style and you will be surprised that, you know, a lot of people will value you, will flock to you for your unique style, right? There have been times in HSBC when, you know, I've been the only woman in the whole team, right? So there was a time when I was in the corporate bank and I was the only woman in all the managers and there were about 15, 16 managers. I was also the youngest, okay? So I was 24 years old and I was the only woman and most of the time the bank expected me to just smile and play along with whatever, you know, it was, whether it was a, you know, coffee break, which turned into a smoking break, which I hated because, you know, I just can't tolerate passive smoking. So I would call it out, right? I would call out jokes and humor, which I did not appreciate, right? Which I thought was not proper, at least in my presence. I did not appreciate it. So a lot of time, you know, there were people who were surprising, I mean, you know, why can't you just, you know, smile and grin along, which I never did. And that did not hurt me at all, right? So develop your unique style, even when, you know, you are, even in cap, I think in my organization when I joined, I was the only woman in the India leadership team for some time, right? But it does not mean that you are at a disadvantage or you are at a minority. I mean, you develop your own style, you are honest in your work, like I told you, you are quality by now in 23 years, you would have, you would be known for what you bring to the table, etc. So do not act like a man in order to, you know, climb the corporate ladder or in order to smash what you think is a glass ceiling, right? I think the last thing that I have to say, and I do want to have 10 minutes of maybe just questions and answers, is a piece of advice, right? So I kind of shared a myth, I shared three personal lessons, which have taught me a lot along the way. One personal advice is that, just like Sheryl Sandberg said, right, don't leave before you leave. And I have done that, right? What do we mean by don't leave before you leave? A lot of women, right? I mean, we all, not we all, a lot of women, they want to get married, they want to have children. And so, they start kind of retreating from the professional sphere even before the situation has presented itself or almost as soon as the situation presents itself, right? So in her book Lean, and she famously talks about this girl who says, how will I manage this once I have a baby? And they find out, far from being pregnant, far from being married, far from being in a relationship, I think she had just gone on a first date and started planning her future, right? When I say I have kind of done that, when I joined Accenture, my daughter was six, seven months, right? So it was hard. It was hard managing her. It was hard managing being one of the youngest vice presidents at time. I felt I could not say no to anything. I had to do everything because, you know, I was always being tested, which is another thing I think that you need to be clear about. You can always say no, right? Without being scared that this will go against you because if you're already doing a lot and you already feel that, you know, you're contributing and you should not stretch yourself too thin, right? Because by stretching yourself too thin, you don't do yourself a favor and you inevitably will make mistakes and you inevitably will drop something which will reflect poorly against you. So if you ever feel the need to say no, please go ahead and say no. Anyway, to come back to my scenario, twice, right? Once within a year of joining Accenture. The other time, six months later, I was offered partner roles that would eventually become partner roles once in UK and once in US, right? My husband is an entrepreneur, right? I mean, he was an entrepreneur. Now he is in his company about 20 years, whatever, 50 or 20 years old. And he could not easily have moved to UK or US like full-time. So he would probably move only for part of the time. So do you know what I did? I mean, to this day, I think how could I just do it? I didn't come back and discuss the proposal with my family. I'm a very supportive family, incredibly supportive husband, amazing parents and great in-laws. I didn't come and discuss it with anyone. I promptly sat there and my mind raced to situations in UK and US where I was probably alone. My child was two years old. I had to travel. I could not manage. In my head, I put blinkers and brakes on my thought process and told my boss that no, I can't do this. So he said, what do you mean you can't do this? You haven't even gone and spoken to your family. So I said, no, no, no, I can't do this. Six months later when it happened, I again did the same thing. And then I came and told my family that I have gone and said I can't do this. They were aghast because it's a very, very uncharacteristic thing for me to do. I usually take opportunities with both hands and I usually never say no to work. But it was just that I left before I actually left. I mean, I told myself I can't do this. The situation hadn't presented itself. Had I said yes, maybe. I mean, my husband when he said, realized that I said this, said no to these kind of opportunities twice. He said, but we could have made it work. I mean, I could have taken on the sales part of my company instead of the operations part like I'm doing. And my partner could have done the operations part. Why did you go and say no? But I had just told myself that I can't do it. I didn't know those two were the only two times I told myself that those are the last two times. Because I just realized when I came and told my family that they were all going to support, my parents said that we could have traveled with you. My brother was in the US. So I really don't know what I was thinking. But anyway, I think it's worthwhile sharing that. Because sometimes as women, we often take on a lot on ourselves. And I have seen this from all my friends. And I have friends who are CEOs of companies, who are head of marketing for global banks. I have friends who are staying at home now and at a very early age they told themselves that they can't do it. I have a friend, interestingly, who's trying to make a comeback after 12 years. Her daughter is as old as mine. And she told herself when her daughter was born that she cannot continue her career. And then I think for 12 years she's fell, okay, not 12 years, but in the last eight years she's felt that she's made a mistake and she's trying to come back. And she's doing a very good job. I mean, I think she's just got a job which is pretty good. She's kind of realizing that she didn't have given up because both of us were mothers at the same time and she's seen me kind of get very frustrated, get very down sometimes because I could not manage everything or sometimes maybe because I was trying really hard at work but still not getting the recognition. So she's seen me do well also. She's seen me get the recognition, get promotions, get good jobs. So she now feels that maybe she shouldn't have taken a break. Anyway, so whatever your situation is, right? If you, I guess you are listening to me because the title of the talk is Resilience and Persistence and the experiences of 23 years in corporate world. I'm assuming that you want to probably stay on in the corporate world. You want to succeed, right? If you do, don't leave before you leave. Don't, you know, remove yourself for retreat from the situation because you think a situation will present itself in future. Let the situation present itself in future and then you might just be amazed at how forces in the universe will, you know, conspire for you and not necessarily against you the way you think. So I've gone out talking for most of my half an hour. I actually thought I'll conclude 10 minutes before but there's still five, four or five minutes. So first thank you for the opportunity and all of you. And it would be lovely to hear from you if you have any questions or if you want to kind of share any experience. So can you take questions? Sure. Audience can put it in the chat if they have any. Or else we also have the Zulip stream. And. Okay. Thank you, Manuswini. Yes. To all those who are attending, if you have any questions, feel free to write in the chat or else you can also ask in the Zulip stream and the Paramita can either will be there or we can get back to her on the questions. Thanks Babani. I'm glad you liked it. It's, yeah. Okay, great. Thanks. Okay. So you know you'll be interested to know how I came about to being a speaker in the session, right? So I was having a, I was having a team meeting and suddenly I kind of break into, I saw a lot of young girls in the meeting and I stopped talking about what I was talking and I asked them not to just drop out of their jobs, right? Because I see only too many people who just drop out of their jobs because they think they will have to follow their husbands. So I'll tell you one maybe last thing. We have a group of alumni from MBA college and there's a senior of mine who I really admire and she and her husband have I think the both continents thrice, right? The first time for her job, the second time for his job, the third time again for her job. So I think they went to Europe because she got a great opportunity and they went to US because he got a great opportunity and they moved back to India because she's got a great opportunity. So don't put any preconceived definitions and expectations of the society of anybody on yourself and think that this will not happen. Kind of try to make things happen. You'll often be surprised. I really want last thing because I worked one minute and I think that actually kind of was quite pivotal. I told you guys as to how I do not want to have a travelling job when I had my second kid. So, you know, I went on my maternity leave. I had a lot of time to think about it and I called up my boss when I was supposed to come back. He said, oh, you're coming back, great news. So I said, I am coming back but I've got some conditions. So he said, okay, conditions. So I said, yes, I've got conditions. I will not be travelling for a year. I do not want to be in a client facing role for a year because I personally find it very difficult to say no to clients. So the clients say, you know, come on a call at two o'clock at that time when I was 34 years old I would have come on the call at two o'clock also. So I was regularly doing that for a year. Though I was pregnant, I was regularly doing that. So I said, I don't want to do a client call. I want to do an internal project. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. I don't want to work from six to nine because I don't have domestic health. I have to look after my children. But I want two things. He said, okay, what are those two things? And I said, I want a set of really challenging rules and I want very highly visible rules. Right. And I thought he will say, it was nice knowing you. Goodbye. Right. You know what happened? It was an impossible list. Right. He called me back two days later with a job that exactly fit the circumstances. I was lucky. I was fortunate. But the reason I'm sharing this with you is don't be afraid to ask. Because if you are a valued member of the team, you'll be surprised to what lengths your boss will go. You'll be surprised at what lengths I will go for some of my team members to make things happen for them. So guys, I know I'm top of the hour for me. This was great for me. Jagannath, I'm glad. Yeah, don't leave before you leave. Absolutely. Sukanya, thank you so much for the opportunity. It was a pleasure to be here and to talk. Thank you for accepting my invitation and taking on this topic. We all learned a lot. Thank you for this inspiring session. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Bye.