[Anuradha Mahindra]

I was recently asked to be the chief guest at the 43rd Annual Business Communicators Conference, which meant that I would have to stand on my feet for nearly two hours to hand out a total of 101 awards. Just the thought exhausted me, but then, after some consideration, I accepted the offer, because I felt that women are natural communicators who intuitively realise that communication is the pivotal factor to success in any field, be it parenting or publishing or politics. I wanted to take this opportunity to get my views across to a 300-strong audience of men and women in the field of communication. The audience that night didn’t take much convincing, because most of the winners turned out to be women.

For centuries we have perfected the art of reaching out to people, of impacting lives and touching hearts, and learnt all of this, not with the help of power-point presentations but by accepting our responsibilites as home-makers. The first sign of positive feedback we receive for our efforts is when our baby smiles. We learn very quickly why the baby frowns, cries or whines and attend to her/his needs immediately, so the smile returns instantly. In many cases, we are able to transfer this attentiveness to the workplace – to our customers, clients, patients or colleagues, creating a rapport and ambience that could well be deemed the ‘feel-good’ factor in that environment. We certainly don’t get much recognition for bringing in this intangible asset to the job, and hardly ever get a raise for increasing the number of smiles, in addition to the profits. Our nurturing ways are taken for granted.

The fact that women employees are more inclusive rather than exclusive is often a given, not a competitive advantage over male employees. We are judged mainly by performance, by how we manage the bottom line; less by how we manage relationships. It is tough to accept this attitude and it takes a great deal of courage and grit to stand up to this lop-sided measure of our success. Cynicism can easily set in and we can begin to desensitise our emotions raising walls and barriers that would actually inhibit communication and eventually results. While the merits of emotional intelligence are slowly beginning to creep into agendas at boardrooms, why don’t we rally together to recognise and reward ourselves, independent of any performance appraisals or annual reviews?

Let International Women’s Day be an occasion which reinforces our own confidence in our capabilities and talent; in our spirit of enterprise and professionalism; in our ambitions; in our belief that we are second to none and in our commitment to the fact that compromises will just not do. Let us begin today by repeating this to ourselves, over and over till we really believe in our own power.

On my part, it was this unwavering belief in Indian women – their need for quality and for wanting the best that the world had to offer – which inspired me to launch Verve in 1996. A new post-socialist India was just beginning to dawn. Things were changing and the first face that was beginning to change was the face of the Indian woman. She had long been chafing at the shackles of tradition. She became aware, was educated, had ambitions, was clued in and most of all believed that she was second to none. She wanted to feel good about herself, her mind and her body. She wanted articles that respected her intelligence. She wanted the best that the world had to offer. Verve was the Indian magazine that promised her something close in look feel and content. It not only addressed her but also reflected her mindset.

Today, the feedback we get from our readers shows that we are touching their lives in many ways. Many women write in to say that Verve is their window to the New World, that it increases their self-esteem and self-confidence I like to think that this is because Verve motivates women to find expression in herself for herself.

To me, as a woman, if I know that Verve is able to touch lives, sometimes in the most unexpected way, of the most unexpected people – this is the biggest ‘feel-good’ factor for me. It is the reason I love being in the business of communication. No raise has ever felt better than knowing that I was reaching out and making a difference to the lives of so many women out there. And, on International Women’s Day, the best gift I could receive is a sign on the Letters to the Editor mailbox, which reads ‘Full’. It would be the next best thing to seeing my daughters’ smile.