As we celebrate International Women's Day, Diya Kapur Misra, a Leadership Impact Coach talks about her initial stages of career, struggles with gender imbalance at workplace, and how she went on to balance a life both personal and professional. Resilience & Desire To Prove That I Could Survive Was A Strong Thread and today we speak with business leaders in the industry about it.
For more details watch: https://www.youtube.com/@oneindia
#women's day #Business #8March
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For more details watch: https://www.youtube.com/@oneindia
#women's day #Business #8March
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04 Happy Women's Day, everyone.
00:05 On this special day, we are here to interact
00:08 with great women achievers who have done exceptionally
00:11 well in their career.
00:12 Diya Kapoor Mishra is one of them.
00:14 She is an entrepreneur, a mother,
00:16 and has worked with some best organizations.
00:20 Welcome, Diya.
00:21 Welcome to the show.
00:22 Thank you.
00:22 Thanks, Shruti.
00:23 And a very happy Women's Day.
00:25 Yes, to you too.
00:26 Let's talk about you.
00:30 Share your journey with us.
00:31 I started my career about 24 years back.
00:35 I must admit, it doesn't feel like it was so long back,
00:37 but it was.
00:39 I started my career with Hindustan Unilever
00:42 and went through the usual one year of management traineeship
00:47 and then was placed at a factory in Yavatmal
00:50 in interior Maharashtra.
00:53 That was the first interesting experience
00:55 for a girl born, brought up in Delhi,
00:57 and always been used to big city life.
01:00 It was quite a transition, but a phenomenal experience,
01:04 both the management traineeship and the experience
01:07 at the factory.
01:08 From there, I moved on to another factory
01:10 in Silvassa in Dadra Nagar Haveli,
01:12 where I worked there for some time with Unilever.
01:14 I decided to marry somebody in the company
01:16 and so made a personal choice to take my career elsewhere.
01:22 Again, the first realization that, fortunately
01:26 or unfortunately, often it's the women
01:27 who make choices like this more than the men.
01:31 Moved on from there, and I joined
01:33 Hewitt, the HR consulting firm, which is today called Aon.
01:38 I spent about 7 and 1/2 years with them.
01:41 When I joined them, I was employee number four
01:44 in the consulting practice.
01:45 And by the time I left the company,
01:47 there were more than 4,000 people.
01:49 So in 7 and 1/2 years, it was quite a scale up.
01:53 I would say I grew with the business and grew the business.
01:56 And it was, again, professionally
01:58 a phenomenal experience.
02:00 From there, I then took my first maternity break.
02:04 I had my first daughter, who is now 16 years old, took a break.
02:10 And as a very ambitious career woman,
02:12 I sort of thought that in three months of maternity leave,
02:15 I would be back at home.
02:17 But life often has different things in store.
02:20 I realized in about two or 2 and 1/2 months
02:23 that I just couldn't bear to leave that little baby
02:25 and go back to work full time.
02:27 So I ended up extending my maternity break
02:29 and took two years off.
02:31 And then when I got back to my job,
02:35 I did not want to go back into consulting
02:38 with a small infant, didn't want that kind of travel,
02:42 which consulting entails.
02:44 Consulting was also going through a slump.
02:46 So work was low.
02:48 And it seemed like a good time to go back
02:50 into a business role.
02:52 At that stage, I joined Cadbury's.
02:54 And I spent the next couple of years
02:55 with Cadbury's, which was another phenomenal organization
02:58 to work with.
02:59 But that was probably one of the toughest phases of my life,
03:02 going back post-maternity and dealing with all that
03:04 comes as a part and parcel of that.
03:07 I realized after a couple of years
03:08 that I was really missing consulting,
03:10 because I love the variety of experiences
03:12 that consulting offers.
03:14 And so I went back into consulting.
03:16 And I joined Conferry as a partner in the leadership
03:20 consulting practice.
03:21 I joined them to set up the leadership consulting
03:24 team and business in Bombay, and then spent the next few years
03:27 with them.
03:28 Professionally, in many ways, I think
03:30 that was probably the highlight of my career.
03:32 I was a slightly more experienced mother by then.
03:35 So I was handling that better.
03:38 I had a phenomenal team.
03:39 And I think we did some really amazing work,
03:42 built a great client pool, and a very, very
03:45 strong and robust business.
03:47 Then I took my second maternity break.
03:49 I had my second daughter, went--
03:52 almost dropped off the face of the earth,
03:54 because my second child was a premature baby.
03:55 So she was three months premature,
03:57 and therefore in hospital for three months in the ICU.
04:00 And it was obviously a fairly challenging period for all
04:03 of us as a family.
04:04 That passed.
04:05 She's now a thriving 9 and 1/2-year-old,
04:07 going to be 10 very soon.
04:09 But it was a difficult phase personally.
04:11 And therefore, the professional piece sort of
04:13 took a backseat for a while.
04:15 I came back to work then after that for a brief period
04:18 to Conferi, and then decided to branch out on my own
04:21 and start working for myself.
04:23 And that is when, about 7 and 1/2 years back,
04:26 I set up my own proprietorship firm,
04:28 which is in the leadership advisory and coaching space.
04:31 And that's what I continue to do seven years down.
04:36 So that's kind of my journey, professional and personal,
04:38 in a nutshell.
04:40 You have this massive experience.
04:42 You've worked with some of the biggest brands.
04:44 Hindustan Unilever is one of the biggest FMCG companies.
04:48 Let's talk about the challenges.
04:50 What kind of challenges did you face during the initial years
04:54 in the industry?
04:55 The period that I'm talking about
04:57 was a different era altogether.
04:58 When I talk to younger people, I realize
05:00 that there's a huge shift, and thankfully so,
05:03 which has taken place in the last 15-odd years.
05:06 I'm talking about a phase--
05:07 I joined Hindustan Unilever in 1999.
05:10 And you will imagine that at that time,
05:13 there were very few women joining the workforce.
05:18 And in the kind of places where I was, where I was in factories
05:21 and very, very, I would say, sort of remote locations,
05:25 it was even more rare.
05:27 The experiences of being the only woman in many, many places
05:32 was something that I had for the first time.
05:35 Like I said, I was a big city girl who'd grown up in Delhi,
05:39 gone to Delhi University, then gone to Exelada,
05:42 Jamshedpur, where there was a decent gender ratio.
05:45 And then I suddenly found myself in situations
05:48 where I would be one among 700 or 800 men,
05:50 and the only woman, and a young woman at that.
05:52 One interesting anecdote comes to my mind.
05:55 I did my summer training with a very prominent paint company.
06:00 And I was posted at their factory,
06:02 again, one among 750 people, only women on campus,
06:05 including contract labor, mathadi labor.
06:08 They were all men, and it was me.
06:11 And I remember on my first day there,
06:15 going through the orientation, there
06:18 was a supervisor, a manufacturing supervisor,
06:21 taking us through the orientation.
06:22 That was me, and there was a male colleague
06:25 from one of the IIMs.
06:27 And right through the whole day, this gentleman, the supervisor,
06:31 talked only to my male colleague.
06:33 He never even looked at me or acknowledged my presence.
06:36 And I realized that it was simply
06:37 because he was really socially uncomfortable dealing
06:39 with a woman.
06:40 He had probably never had a woman in his workplace.
06:43 So that I took in my stride, and that was fine.
06:46 And at one point, after explaining the paint process
06:49 and the manufacturing process, et cetera,
06:51 he finally looked at me and acknowledged me,
06:55 my physical presence, and said, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
07:00 You can think of this as making dal.
07:03 And I was stunned.
07:05 I was stunned, because I had never
07:06 faced a stereotype like that in my whole life up until then.
07:11 And I think it was the first realization
07:13 that it is different to be a woman in the corporate sector
07:16 when you are in a minority.
07:19 So there were many little instances
07:21 like this where there were just microaggressions, stereotypes
07:25 to deal with, being the only woman,
07:28 and therefore discomfort with that.
07:30 Just basic issues like no women's bathrooms
07:33 in most places that I went to, nobody to really talk to.
07:37 People would avoid you because they were awkward.
07:39 Union leaders who didn't know how to deal with a woman, HR
07:42 manager.
07:44 They couldn't be aggressive.
07:45 They didn't know what to do.
07:46 They didn't know how to be around you.
07:48 So a lot of things were, I think,
07:50 abnormal for many others because I was there.
07:53 And that made things difficult and awkward for me sometimes.
07:57 But I live to tell those tales, and I can joke about them now.
08:00 So I guess it's a good thing.
08:02 I want to ask you, how did you overcome that?
08:05 Because there would be some kind of awkwardness.
08:09 Or even from if you are the only person, only girl,
08:12 working in a team of men, then how did you break the ice?
08:18 So it was, I think, a bunch of things.
08:20 I mean, now when I reflect back on it, one,
08:22 it certainly took a tremendous amount of resilience.
08:25 I think the easiest thing to do would have been to quit
08:29 and to come away and say, listen,
08:31 I don't want to deal with this.
08:33 But I think the resilience and the desire
08:36 to prove that I could survive it and I could come out stronger
08:40 and on top was a very strong thread.
08:44 And I discovered that I had that resilience.
08:46 I don't think it had really been tested up until then.
08:50 So I think that's one.
08:52 The other very crucial thing, I think,
08:54 is that my own purpose in why I was doing what I was doing
08:57 and the fact that I wanted to build a successful, solid
09:02 career where I was making a difference was a very clear
09:08 guiding light, I think, for me.
09:09 So for me, each of these interactions
09:13 were a challenge and an opportunity
09:15 to turn things around.
09:17 You are a mother, Diya, and you're also an entrepreneur.
09:19 You work with NGOs.
09:22 You have a very busy life, if I could say that.
09:25 How do you balance your life?
09:29 How is your work-life balance?
09:32 So I learned very early on that this word "balance"
09:34 is very elusive.
09:37 When I first became a mother, I used to look for balance
09:40 on a daily basis.
09:42 So if I didn't spend an adequate number of hours with my child
09:46 and I got late coming from work, I would be ridden with guilt.
09:50 And I would really struggle with that until one day I realized,
09:55 over a period of time, that balance is not a daily goal.
10:00 You can't have balance or work-life balance
10:03 on a day-to-day basis.
10:05 So one thing that I think has happened
10:07 is over time, I've realized that you
10:09 need to take a slightly longer-term view of balance
10:12 and what you're striving for.
10:14 And I came to the conclusion that if over a week,
10:18 over a month, over a year, if I'm
10:20 able to give enough time and quality time
10:24 to different aspects of my life-- motherhood, parents,
10:27 friends, my husband, work, my own passions--
10:32 if I'm able to manage those over slightly longer periods of time
10:37 and give them adequate attention and time,
10:39 then that is balance.
10:40 But on a short-term basis, things will swing.
10:43 So there will be weeks where work pressure is so high
10:47 that I will not be able to give enough time, let's say,
10:49 to my children.
10:51 And that is OK.
10:53 So I had to first become OK with it myself.
10:57 And then what I started doing very actively
10:59 is to actually bring my stakeholders--
11:02 and when I say stakeholders, I mean my family, my friends,
11:04 my kids, my husband--
11:06 into that journey and into that process with me.
11:10 My last question to you, Diya, is
11:12 do you have any advice for people
11:14 who are just out of college, joining the industry,
11:17 they have no experience?
11:18 And obviously, the environment, ambience
11:21 is very different from what you get in college
11:24 and once you join a corporate.
11:27 So any advice for Gen Z, probably?
11:30 So I would say three things that, to my mind,
11:34 are the most crucial, I think, for women starting
11:37 their careers and who have, hopefully, a very long runway
11:40 ahead of them.
11:42 And I say hopefully because, unfortunate, reality still
11:45 is that many women drop out of the workforce
11:47 at various career stages and life stages.
11:50 One, I would say, is stay the course
11:54 and stay resilient and persistent
11:56 because there will be the challenges.
11:59 There will be life changes that will come,
12:01 whether it's marriage, whether it's motherhood,
12:03 whether it's caregiving later at the stage at which I am,
12:07 for parents, for in-laws.
12:08 I mean, a bulk of the caregiving burden still rests with women,
12:12 not just in India, but the rest of the world as well.
12:15 And those are stages where the temptation and the need
12:19 to give up your career is a very real one.
12:22 So one, I would just say, is that mentally prepare yourself
12:25 for the fact that there are going to be these blips.
12:28 And your reason for why you want to continue to work and build
12:32 a career for yourself needs to be very firm and very clear
12:35 to you to help you stay the course despite those.
12:38 So that's one that I would say.
12:39 Think about that early on.
12:41 Don't hit that stage and then start trying to deal with it
12:44 because then it becomes very overwhelming.
12:47 So that's one, I would say, which is the ambition
12:49 and your own purpose and vision piece.
12:52 That's very, very crucial.
12:54 The second I would say is that we can't do it alone.
12:58 It's very important to create a support system.
13:01 And I know from my own younger days
13:04 that the fallacy of youth is that I'm very strong.
13:07 I'm very clear.
13:08 I will do this.
13:09 And I know what needs to be done.
13:11 And then life teaches you that you need that support system,
13:16 professional and personal.
13:18 So I would say, one, cultivate the personal support system.
13:22 Wherever you think there are people in your family,
13:25 in your friend, in your community
13:27 who understand your ambition and your need
13:29 to build for yourself, enlist their support early rather
13:34 than later and take that support.
13:37 Ask for it.
13:38 Don't hesitate.
13:39 Sometimes people don't volunteer support.
13:41 You have to ask for it.
13:42 My experience has been when you ask, very rarely
13:44 does it not come.
13:46 So that's the personal.
13:47 Similarly, on the professional front,
13:49 cultivate and nurture relationships
13:52 which will hold you in good stead in the long run.
13:54 Mentors at work, people who believe in your potential, who
13:58 will vouch for you, stand by you when things are difficult.
14:01 Build and invest in those relationships.
14:04 And the third part of support system and relationships,
14:07 I will say, is other women.
14:08 And this, I cannot emphasize it adequately.
14:13 We all go through phases where we get very caught up
14:15 in our own lives.
14:16 My husband, my children, my parents.
14:19 And when you're about 30 or 35 is when you suddenly
14:22 realize that where are my friends, which
14:24 is my other girlfriends.
14:25 And everyone's got busy in their own lives.
14:28 And that's the stage at which when motherhood, et cetera,
14:30 comes in where you start realizing the value of those
14:33 other female friendships and support system.
14:36 Don't let go of that.
14:37 Hold on to that because that's a really important one
14:40 as you go through stages in life.
14:43 So that support system piece, I think, is really crucial.
14:46 And the third thing I will say is
14:48 continue to invest in your own capability.
14:51 So the one way of overcoming any challenges and stereotypes
14:56 and loss of opportunity, et cetera,
14:59 et cetera, is to ensure that you are really good at what
15:01 you do professionally.
15:04 Don't wait for others to give you those opportunities.
15:07 Don't wait for your organization to train you
15:10 for things to happen.
15:11 Take that in your own hand.
15:13 So three things I would say.
15:14 One is be very clear about your own ambition and vision.
15:17 That will keep you on the journey
15:18 and when you feel like quitting, which will still keep you in.
15:23 Build your support system, professional and personal,
15:25 and other women, very, very crucial.
15:28 And third is this whole thing of just investing
15:31 in your own capability and ensuring
15:33 that you're really on top of your game
15:34 and good at what you do because it will keep you there
15:37 and it will keep you fulfilled.
15:39 I think, Diya, you nailed it.
15:42 Very, very clear views and thoughts.
15:45 I'm sure people who are watching the show
15:47 will get a lot of encouragement and they
15:50 will be able to see clearly because some
15:53 of the younger generation people who are just out of college,
15:56 they are sometimes lost.
15:58 That, OK, I've joined here, but I don't know which way to go.
16:01 So very nice.
16:03 Thank you so much for being on the show, Diya.
16:05 That was Diya Kapoor Mishra.
16:07 Thank you for watching us.
16:09 (gentle music)