Growing up in a middle-class household, the morals were to always let others speak before you, always ensure you have catered to the rest, never adamantly put forward what you want unless someone asks you to. So even if I would have been thirsty and if someone would have asked me if I wanted some water, I would have awkwardly stammered, “Um, no no, it’s okay. Seriously, I am not thirsty at all. Probably whenever you have time. It’s okay even if you give it to me in the next hour or so. Or you seem busy, let me fetch it myself and also repair your water filter, or better clean out your kitchen while I am at it.”
Point is – I had subconsciously ingrained it in me that asking for something that I want is narcissistic and I should wait till it’s my turn or someone pointedly asks me for it.
But of course, that is not how it works in the corporate. You need to speak up. This was a very difficult skill for me to build and it is to this day. But as fate would have had it, one day I did submit to just speaking my mind impulsively.
I was sitting next to one of my friends as we were travelling on an orientation journey. We started talking about movies and I asked her if she had seen this latest Bollywood release. She said no and I immediately jumped into a narrative of the film, what I liked, what I disliked, what made me laugh, what made me facepalm. At the end of what may have seemed to her as an uninvited monologue, she laughed at me and said, “Hearing you speak, it felt like I was right there in the theatre. You do know how to tell a tale.” I blushed at such a generous compliment and blurted out without thinking, “Well yeah, I really like to tell stories. I love weaving words and to write. I feel I express myself the best through the art of storytelling.”
She complimented me a bit more, I deflected it as usual, and we moved on. The next day was our appointment to various stints. We were all waiting to see which roles would open and being the anxious person I was, I thought I would rather lounge in my room than in midst of all this fervour. After an hour or so I come down to the meeting space to get some coffee when I heard this person call me out, “There she is! Varshika, you are being called for. They have been looking for you to talk about the stint.”
I hurriedly went to the HR, trying to reign in my dishevelled hair as I racked my brains to guess what I might be offered. I sat down and the HR manager said, “So I heard that you are interested in writing. There is this stint where the team needs somebody to help with building the brand narrative and synthesising stories of the Group. Would you be interested?” I was stunned. Would I be interested in something that overlapped the two things I wanted to do – Communications and Writing? Yes, just one question – can I start this second.
So, before my middle-class mind could meddle, I immediately said yes. My resume and portfolio were sent, I was fortunately picked, and it ended up being one of the best jobs I have done till date.
All because I had the courage to say out loud what I loved to do – to write.
Turns out when the HR was asking for interests in the role, my friend very graciously stepped in and said that I had earlier expressed to her how much I liked writing. Hence the call to me and hence the job. If it weren’t for that ride with my friend where I blurted out what I wanted without waiting for my turn, I may not have gotten that stint.
As I have moved from job to job, I have now realised that you need to be able to speak up for what you want. But why is it so difficult for some of us to do this? Why do we feel we will be scorned upon if we assertively ask for what we want? Unless we let others know what it is that we are building, how can they help us build it? Nobody is saying that you should steamroll your ideas everywhere. But you should build that confidence to backup what you are saying with why you deserve to be heard.
