WORTHY INTENTIONS. UNWORTHY TITLE

WOMEN OF WORTH 2016

L’Oreal Paris, along with NDTV announced the 2016 Women of Worth Awards on March 28 2016.

Congratulations are in order to the nominees and the winners for the tremendous work in their respective fields. And recognition at a special felicitation ceremony, like the one put together on March 28, becomes a fitting tribute to their endeavour.

However, the Women of Worth Awards shows how a good brand strategy gets diminished with poor execution.

BRAND MYOPIA

First, why is the award for women only? Okay, L’Oreal makes and sells beauty products for women. So they restricted their awards to women. Isn’t that obvious? Yes, but isn’t it also obvious, that when you connect only the dots that are obvious, it demonstrates poor vision? It’s a fantastic example of brand myopia. Of course men are worthy too and making the award gender-neutral would have done wonders for a brand that might be used by primarily by women, but whose results are seen, experienced and felt by men too.

Next, what is with “Worth”?

Simply trying to associate the title name with the L’Oreal brand tagline “Because you’re worth it” is not just poor communication strategy. It’s downright lazy.

So, what happens to the women who got nominated, but did not win? Unworthy? It’s obvious that the communication and brand teams did not look at ‘Worth’ from all angles.

Ideally, the over-arching title Award name should not have an antonym. Examples:

Distinguished Leadership Award
Endeavour Postgraduate Awards
John Maxwell Leadership Award

In the case of ‘Worth’, the “unworthy” connotations that come immediately at the subliminal level are too strong to be ignored.

THE AWARDS NITE

While we were still grappling with the unworthiness of the award title, the event added to the dissonance. The lineup of film stars and beauty queens at the gala nite completely diluted the purpose and vision of the awards. What were Aishwarya Rai, Katrina Kaif, Mandira Bedi and Sonam Kapoor doing there, other than making fashion/style statements, taking selfies and posing with their hands on hips?

While the lineup of panelists to discuss the larger issue of women and their struggles was impressive, the core of the discussion was once again about ‘gender inequality’. The discussion was peppered with the usual suspect phrases “We, the Unequal”, “it’s time men listen to women”, “sports is a male bastion”and so on. The only sensible observation came from author and columnist Suhel Seth when he said – “There is no such thing as inequality. We live in individual silos. Sometimes activism around gender is the biggest hurdle in the way of gender neutrality.”

The opportunity to make the event really unique and memorable was tremendous. By not reducing it to a gender bias and female victory, and simply celebrating the achievement, L’Oreal and NDTV would have catapulted the award to new levels of aspiration for men and women. To dare, to dream and to do.

L’Oreal ‘Women of Worth’ Awards in partnership with NDTV is a great example of perfect intentions going awry with poor brand vision and even poorer communication strategy. The powerful stories of those wonderful women got lost somewhere because some communication managers lost sight of the overall narrative.

Leadership Lessons from MasterChef Australia

The 2015 Master Chef Australia concluded some months back, but is now being telecast in India. As the Finale Week is approaching, I thought it was opportune to pay a tribute to one of my most favorite television programmes.

I have been watching Master Chef Australia for about five years now and it never fails to touch a chord. It is much more than a cooking reality show. While it does celebrate food, flavor, culinary skills, technique and presentation, it also packs in more lessons.

Watch how Gary, Matt and George don their roles as coaches and mentors and provide unmistakable lessons for leadership.

Cooking
When the participants are cooking and racing against time, the trio steps in to provide that bit of valuable advice or to flag-off a potential cooking disaster. It is always done professionally and is always about the skill, technique, ingredient, speed and never about the person.

Take-Away for leaders:
Don’t wait till appraisal time to provide inputs or comments. Be involved, observe carefully and ensure you don’t set your team up for failure.

Tasting
This is leadership in action! Watch every tasting ceremony and see how sensitivity, compassion and objectivity become the core values of an ‘appraisal’ or ‘review'. When the participant places the dish for the ultimate test of tasting, the judges’ body language and expression is neither condescending nor critical. The first remark, whatever the outcome would be, is always positive like –“Wow! That looks good”.

When the stakes are high, especially in an elimination round, every tasting is preceded with a personal conversation – “what’s driving you?”, “how did you do today?”, “is something bothering you?”. There’s so much empathy that is demonstrated, especially with the participant who has struggled the most or whose dish is showing problems.

We see expert, incisive knowledge as the basis of observations and comments. Even though the viewers aren’t tasting the dish, we know exactly what went right or awry with the flavour, technique or ingredient. No personal biases come in the way.  

Take-Away for leaders:
Demonstrate deep domain knowledge and let objectivity and fairness ride supreme. This way the candidate is completely enrolled in your evaluation and respects the decision. And don't fake the personal conversation. Insincerity is always detected.

Scoring
The judges clearly spell out reasons for their score and you can’t fault their verdict.  The good points are unfailingly highlighted, along with the poor ones. In a close tie, the ultimate parameters are flavor and balance. Presentation, hard work, team spirit all get their due. But when its down to the last crumb and every dish is a visual treat, then it is all about the core value – how did the food taste.

Take-Away for leaders:
Let your employee know exactly the reason behind your scores and always align performance to the ultimate objective or core value of the role/project.

Elimination
This is when the participant with the lowest score gets eliminated from the show. And how! The best moments are showcased, strengths and achievements are celebrated and the participant is reminded of his/her goal or dream.

What’s beautiful is that much after the elimination, the last frame tells the viewers about the participant's current journey and success - "We wish you well", "We know you’ll do well" "We’ll look out for you".

Take-Away?

Breakdown or Breakthrough - Managing Results through Communication

I was invited as Guest Speaker by IBM India today to deliver a talk on the above topic as part of their 2-day workshop for women leader empowerment. The audience was a select group of participants from the Top 100 Women Achievers of their India Software Labs. It was an enjoyable afternoon and highly interactive. I got first-hand insights into the challenges of interaction and communication faced by young women leaders. I shared insights and lessons learned in crucial conversations to achieve breakthroughs in communication. Examples were shared from experiences and applied through a model / framework that I have developed for Effective Communication.


Ultimately, after you have the necessary education, expertise, skill and certifications, effective communication skills will become a vital instrument for leadership. Like John W Gardner said - “If I had to name a single all-purpose instrument of leadership, it would be communication”