My Mom, the CEO Who Should Have Been

My mom isn’t the CEO of a company. But she could have been. She has the qualities of a good leader, but like many women in her category, she sacrificed a life of career and success to be a full-time housewife and mother. I’m not complaining. I’m the one who lucked out because she was always there for me—which I’m grateful for—but sometimes, I do wish she did a bit more for herself. When it comes to leadership, many of us have idols like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, but we’ll miss out on valuable insights if we’re only looking at those who’ve achieved outward success. Here are some leadership lessons I learned from my mom over the years.

She always eats last.

Simon Sinek wrote Leaders Eat Last. My mom has always eaten last—literally. She cooks, serves, and eats only after everyone else is done. I didn’t think much of it—until I started cooking myself. After 45 mins of standing by the stove, the only thing I can think of is to ingest my creation ASAP. In Indian tradition, the women in the household typically eat after serving everybody else at home. Agree or disagree with the tradition, the point is, my mom is always happy to eat last, even if that means cold food. Leaders let others go first.

She never fails to give recognition.

Those who know my mom will tell you that hardly an interaction with her goes by without her praising you about something. She is always on the lookout for positive traits in others. Daniel Coyle, in Talent Code, talks about how complimenting and encouraging someone is one of the most important things you can do for their advancement. Our bodies produce a chemical called myelin that helps us develop talent and confidence. Studies have shown that getting recognition is a key ingredient in the development of myelin. If you want to help someone become better at something—anything—you first have to get them to feel better about themselves.

She hustles like crazy.

Entrepreneurs who want to learn the art of hustling should spend a day with my mom. Whether it’s a project I’m working on or a video that Mala is creating, one thing we can always count on is my mom’s support. She’ll do whatever it takes to help us succeed.

Once, I shared a YouTube video with my mom that Mala had made. Something to do with Indian fashion for women. You know what my mom did? She stopped random women at the mall to tell them about the video. Another time, she was in the waiting room at the eye doctor with my grandma. A girl was sitting nearby (who looked like she’d be interested in fashion). Mom started chatting her up—about her dress and all—and got her to subscribe to Mala’s channel. Pinterest is worth multi-billion dollars today. Know how it started? The founder, Ben Silbermann, approached strangers in coffee shops asking them to give Pinterest a try.

My mom isn’t an extrovert, and hustling is not something she’s naturally comfortable with. But she’ll do whatever it takes.

She has unbelievable grit.

Grit is difficult to understand. Angela Duckworth describes it this way in her book Grit:

The secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but grit, a special blend of passion and persistence.”

I understood grit by observing my mom’s grit. For over 15 years, my mom had been trying to find her classmates. I remember looking up names for her on classmates.com (no Facebook back then). But no luck. We kept trying year after year, but her classmates were not on Facebook or anywhere else we looked.

My mom wasn’t going to give up, though. We flew to Mumbai (where she grew up), and the evening we reached, we went to Gloria Convent, her primary school in Byculla.

The school was closed for summer, so we walked across the road to the church that was part of the school. But how was she going to find a classmate at a place she left 50 years ago? How about stopping every stranger—at least those who looked to be in their 60s—and asking if they went to Gloria Convent as a kid? It’s exactly what she did. Insane, right? But guess what? She actually found someone she knew!

It was just good timing. The lady was her 5th-grade classmate. She had never left Byculla, and apparently, she goes to the church every evening. It was pure luck that we bumped into her, but that’s what grit is. When you keep trying despite failures, you’re opening doors for luck to show up.

Mom didn’t stop there. We also went to her secondary school, and then to her college, where she tried similar antics, and today, she is in touch with almost all her classmates.

She is a relentless worker.

Some people think that leaders can delegate everything out and then chill. The good leaders I know are the most hard-working people I know. I lost my grandma recently, and I wrote about how my mom painstakingly took care of her. What many don’t know is that my mom took care of three of my grandparents—that’s many years of hard work, commitment, and sacrifice. She didn’t do the kinds of things retired people do—traveling, visiting ashrams, whatnot. She didn’t even visit me for 15 years. Good leaders know how to delegate well, but they also realize that the buck stops with them and that sometimes you have to do the work yourself.

She is highly empathetic.

It’s tough to be a great leader if you can’t put yourself in other people’s shoes. Empathy might not come naturally to everybody, but it can be learned. I highly recommend Stephen Covey’s classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The entire book, all seven habits, and the key to being an effective person revolves around one thing: empathy.

I was a difficult kid in primary school. You were more likely to find me in the principal’s office than in the classroom. One day, my social science teacher hit me on the knuckles with a ruler—yeah, that was a thing back then—and for whatever reason, I told my mom about it. Later that day, I saw her hitting her own knuckles with a ruler. She wanted to feel how painful it must have felt for me. Nothing unusual here, every mom’s going to feel horrible if their child got a beating. But this is just to illustrate the difference between a good leader and a great leader. Good leaders will try to understand their people’s problems and challenges. A great leader will go a step further and try to feel what they are feeling.

I used my mom as an example here, but this isn’t just about my mom. When we think of leaders, the image that often comes to mind is of someone wearing a suit and giving presentations in front of really smart people. But there are many women who are natural-born leaders not in the limelight because they are at home taking care of their families. Think of who these people are in your family. There’s a lot you could learn from them.

There are many styles of leadership, and different people have different types of personalities. But there’s one trait that my mom has that all good leaders have: she always puts the other person first.

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