Things my father taught me about valuing others

My Dad had the most extraordinary ability to make people feel cherished and important.

The nature of his life meant he counted international celebrities as friends, rubbed shoulders with pop stars, Hollywood royalty and heads of state, and led negotiations with major industry figures of his time. But he was equally happy chatting to homeless people on the street. He wasn’t interested in outward status.

Dad made everyone he met feel like they mattered, however long or brief their encounter with him.

Making those around you feel genuinely valued is at the heart of inclusion, so I thought I’d share four lessons my father taught me.

Curiosity

Dad was a great one for sharing golden nuggets. One he often repeated was from Dale Carnegie’s seminal book How to make friends and influence people. According to Dad, Carnegie said there is nothing more interesting to a person than themselves. Dad advocated asking a few questions of people, letting them talk and really listening with genuine curiosity to what they say.

Dad loved people so being curious about them was not hard for him, but even if this does not come naturally to you, curiosity is a skill, and like any other can be practiced. Even a five-minute conversation based on your curiosity can make someone feel like they matter to you.

The higher your organisational status, the more this matters. People talk. They will share stories about leaders anyway, so why not make those stories about how you value people?

This also takes the pressure off you of having to form relationships with absolutely everyone – something impossible for leaders of large organisations. People will get a sense of whether you value staff from the stories others tell of you, as much as from direct contact.

Stay awake

Dad’s opening line to strangers sometimes linked to what he observed. I remember him starting a conversation with a check-out woman in Sainsbury’s with: “you look a little tired today, are you OK?”  

This was not a check-out woman we’d seen before. Dad didn’t know her. He just noticed her.

What followed was an outpouring of the difficulties this woman was facing. While we packed up our shopping, Dad listened. Really listened. He barely said a word beyond empathetic noises. By the time he’d paid the bill, the woman’s mood was noticeably lighter.

No doubt Dad forgot the encounter soon after, but I always remembered it. Dad did not just listen with his ears, he listened with his whole being – BEFORE a conversation as well as during. Dad stayed awake to the people around him, at all times.

So many of us go through life locked in our own heads. Once in a while, open the doors.

Getting out of our own heads is a core skill in inclusion.

This sometimes involves being aware of what’s happening in the world and asking what this might mean for those around you.

A few years back there was a Muslim woman who sat at a desk next to the office of a client partner. One of my visits to the office was the day after the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque. As I said hello to the woman, I added that I was so sorry to hear of the attack on the mosque. Her professional mask dropped and the pain she felt shone through. She thanked me for talking to her about it.

Our chat lasted less than five minutes, but there was a deepness to our brief encounters from then on, whenever I visited the client.

Listen and remember

I am not going to lie, this is something I struggle with. My Dad was brilliant at it. He would remember people he’d met years before: not just their names but something personal about them like how many children they had or where they lived.

One of Dad’s best friends was an internationally renowned Indian classical musician and Dad often accompanied him to important events and concerts – literally, as Dad played an accompanying instrument called a tanpura.

As people came up to the musician, after a concert for example, Dad would whisper in his ear “that’s so and so, you met him there, his wife’s name is such and such”. So, when the person approached, the musician could pretend he remembered them, which made them feel special. (To be fair to the musician he did meet thousands of people a year...)

I sometimes resort to making a quick note in my diary, and if I know I am likely to encounter a person or a team again, I’ll refresh my memory beforehand.

Remembering personal details about people, even just the one, is a very powerful way of valuing those around you. Particularly if you don’t see them very often (which is regularly the case with leaders of large organisations). And as a leader, this feeds those stories that will inevitably be shared about you.

Always be yourself

When I was little, we didn’t have a huge amount of money. But our rickety second-hand furniture and the damp on the walls did not stop my parents entertaining genuine superstars of the day at home. They were never embarrassed that we didn’t have fancy material stuff, and neither of my parents pretended to be what they were not. They had an inner confidence that transcended their monetary circumstances.

Equally, when Dad chatted to homeless people or shop assistants, he didn’t pretend to be “street” or downplay the person he was: middle class, Indian, a professional raised in a family of academics.

Dad didn’t boast, but he didn’t pretend to be anything other than who he was either.

That taught me an incredibly important life lesson, which is central to our ability to value others. Be at peace with who you are. If your attempts at valuing people come from a place of inauthenticity, it doesn’t matter what you do or say, no-one will believe you, or feel valued.

So many leaders feel they must contort themselves into something they are not or wave the sackcloth and ashes of shame about their privilege to be able to lead inclusion well. That is literally the opposite of what is needed.

Being inclusive or valuing others does not require you to eliminate your privilege, it just requires you to understand it.

How has your privilege supported your success? What has it given you that others have lacked? Confidence? Opportunities? Ambition? Networks? An ease in certain situations? An understanding of the unspoken rules of professional or social situations? Not being seen as "characteristic" first and a person second? Knowing which cutlery to use?

If you understand your privilege, you are better able to understand the challenges of those that lack them and support them with things you may take for granted.

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