It’s March and like every year, there is IWD fever in the air. Even if you have limited exposure to social media, you would be aware that the theme for this year is #BalanceForBetter. Looking at the barrage of photos and posts on LinkedIN, Insta and FB, my curious mind got thinking… Is building awareness and celebrating IWD with fanfare enough? Haven’t we been doing this for few years now? While the needle on awareness seems to have moved, is it sufficient to keep focusing on building awareness? How will we transform the world to make it a more balanced place?
While I was looking externally at my trusted advisors i.e. “Google” and “LinkedIn” for answers, I heard a wise man say… Look for answers within… Because “In is the Only way Out” and I had a “aah haa” moment J.. So I started the journey of exploration within and the more I pondered, the more obvious it became that balance within will lead to the balance outside … I know it sounds a little philosophical but let me see if I can break it down in the context of real life.
If you really think, there are some distinct strengths that each gender brings to the table. Strengths that have been developed over the generations of human evolution and along the way, we have picked up some biases and started stereotyping what a typical man or woman traits should be... For example, Women are generally known to be more compassionate, perfectionists, skeptical/risk averse, good at multitasking and more intuitive and sensitive (to name the few).. let us call these as “Wonder Woman” Strengths… On the other hand, Men are considered to be more objective, focused, able to take tough decisions and ever ready to take risks … Let us call these as “Iron Man” strengths … Don’t you think, as an individual each one of us need to have right balance of “Wonder Woman” and “Iron Man” strengths? I mean, imagine if you are objective to the core without an iota of sensitivity or compassion, wouldn’t that make you a Robot? (well… even Robots have feelings these days thanks to AI) Or on the other hand, if you are so skeptical and risk averse, that you never take any risks, would you grow personally or professionally and truly become a Wonder Woman?
I think we need to shift this, whole #BalanceForBetter conversation, on its head and focus on building the balance between Wonder Woman and Iron Man from within. Because, even if we get the Gender balance right in the organization or a community, the real impact will only happen, when each one of us (either male or female or any other gender for that matter) experience the true power of each of these strengths. So the obvious question is how to go about it?
While, each one will have a different path to reach the destination, I think, the first step is to take a peek within and reflect, which set of strengths we have and more importantly, which ones need to developed within? It doesn’t matter which gender you belong to, however, it does matter whether you can embrace the qualities of all the Genders… It doesn’t matter whether you are a Iron Man or a Wonder Woman, however, it does matter, whether being an Iron man, can you embrace and inculcate the strengths of Wonder Women and vice a versa… For e.g. If you are someone who is objective and tough, then building compassion and sensitivity within will give you an experience of empowerment at a different level and with that experience while you are hiring or building a team, obviously you will seek for the right balance of Iron Man and Wonder Woman... We won’t have to set gender balance KPIs for hiring managers, they themselves will strive for balance having experienced the benefits of both strengths …Hence, this inside out view of imbibing the strengths of different gender within, will result in a more gender balanced organisations or communities…
So this year, when we say #BalanceForBetter, It doesn’t matter whether we celebrate International “Women’s Day” OR “Men’s Day” OR just “Being A Human Day”, what matters is that we seek the balance between Wonder Woman and Iron Man within each of us... Because ... “In Is The Only Way Out”
- The Curious Mind
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