I recently spent a week in the middle of India facilitating an extraordinary leadership immersion programme created by The Hunger Project. Instead of attending courses at Harvard or INSEAD, twenty leaders from a large financial services company went to India to learn about leadership from women elected to serve on their local village councils (‘gram panchayat’). 

I learned a lot from these women but to my surprise the most impactful was what the world needs most from me as a man. There were seven lessons in total. This article is the last in the series.

We returned to our hotel in Khajuraho one afternoon to see dozens of staff members outdoors preparing for a big event. One group was putting together a spectacular entrance arch made entirely of pink balloons. The audio-visual guys were blasting Bollywood videos over a giant screen and speaker tower. Another team was laying down a dance floor the size of a tennis court. Women staff were festooning dining tables with pink ribbons and garlands of flowers. Others were assembling a buffet stretching the full length of the hotel swimming pool.
 
We spied our favourite waiter pushing a trolley piled high with metal steam trays and asked him what was happening. A wedding? A corporate function? A state banquet?
 
No. A local tycoon was celebrating his daughter’s first birthday.
 
What a waste, I thought. How could a child that age have any idea what was happening?
 
But I was fascinated and watched the preparations from the bar like it was some kind of performance. At nine o’clock around two hundred guests arrived en masse. The parking lot filled with the latest Toyotas and Nissans. Prosperous men from the most privileged castes chatted in small groups. The women gathered to talk and admire each other’s saris. Children were chasing each other through a wonderful fantasy world. Everyone was having fun. There were speeches, music, dancing and masses of food.
 
This party could have been in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles or Sydney instead of one of the poorest parts of India.
 
That’s when I got upset.
 
We’d spent most of the day in a dirt poor village meeting women elected to serve as representatives on their local councils. The contrast between then and now was brutal.
 
Few of these women can afford a bicycle, let alone a car. They come from the most marginalised castes. Many were mothers by the age of fourteen and never received an education.
 
Yet as elected representatives they’ve taken on the big issues facing their communities, like poor sanitation, girls’ education, child marriage and domestic violence. It is hard, grinding work that would rarely trouble these party goers.
 
I wondered what the others in my group were thinking, but the music drowned out all conversation. I went to my room in disgust.
 
On my way, however, memories of my daughter Lily’s birthday parties began flooding back: the excited children; the magicians, entertainers, makeup artists and even a chef; the skating rinks, bowling alleys, wave pools, climbing centres and cinemas. Not to mention the piles of food, cake and decorations. They were such fun.
 
Then there were her friends’ birthday parties, over eighty before she was fourteen. The most memorable involved a limo taking a dozen girls in ball gowns for a photo shoot!
 
Yet just down the road from where we lived was one of London’s most deprived neighbourhoods. We never invited any of those children to attend our daughter’s parties. Neither did our friends. Our lives simply did not intersect.
 
Now I was in turmoil. Of course it was right to celebrate Lily’s birthdays. The joyful memories will stay with me forever. But maybe I was as thoughtless as the wealthy man throwing this huge party.
 
The next day our group discussed the birthday event. Some others felt as confused as me.
 
We needed a mindset shift. The person to do it was Pana-bai, an elected woman representative we’d recently met. Her approach to children’s birthdays (and everything else) challenged our fixed way of thinking.  
 
She’d taken us to visit a brand new crèche in her village. As we arrived a little girl was being presented with a birthday cake, for the first time ever in her life. All the village children under six were invited. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and everyone got a little piece of cake. To us it seemed like any normal birthday celebration.
 
But the girl’s mother was moved to tears. Pana-bai explained this little party was not normal at all. Usually only boys’ birthdays are celebrated. Publicly acknowledging a little girl as a valuable, treasured human being is rare.
 
Just as uncommon is the idea of including every child in the village. Pana-bai and her colleagues have shifted their mindset from ‘there is not enough to go around’ to ‘no one is left out’. They believe their own poverty shouldn’t stop them from sharing what little they have. Pana-bai does not say, “I’ll wait until I have enough and then I’ll help.” She makes whatever she has go around.
 
As elected representatives she and her colleagues are role models for generosity. Instead of directing it to themselves (like other politicians), they ensure the most marginalised benefit first from new infrastructure like electricity, roads and street lights. School places go to those who most need them. Pensions, free school meals and government assistance are directed to the deserving poor - the widows, the disabled and the desperate - not those who can cheat the system.
 
Some elected women have even prospered but they never forget where they come from. Instead of protecting and enlarging their wealth they are more generous. They feel their duty is to help others.
 
The Hunger Project’s training reinforces their innate generosity: Unless everyone wins, no one wins. These women have learned to trust that, in giving, their needs will be taken care of.
 
Years ago I was out of work and ‘on the bones of my arse’ financially. Earlier we’d made a large commitment to The Hunger Project, who were now asking for the money. I could have backed out but chose instead to increase our mortgage. I finally understood what it was like to be on the outside. Life wasn’t all about me. I had to trust.
 
This is counter cultural for us Westerners. When I started earning again it was easy to be magnanimous. But life became all about me again.
 
Now, years later, I’m not working. I could get a job but want to create something new. And also be generous. I need to remind myself what life is really about. And learn again how to trust.
 

The Hunger Project is a global NGO committed to the end of hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centred strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world. In India they coordinate the training and development of the most marginalised elected women leaders for the entire five years of their tenure in Life was all about me office, enabling them to be effective in ending hunger and poverty in their villages. 

I recently spent a week in the middle of India facilitating an extraordinary leadership immersion programme  created by The Hunger Project. Instead of attending courses at Harvard or INSEAD, twenty leaders from a large financial services company went to India to learn about leadership from women elected to serve on their local village councils (‘gram panchayat’).
 
I learned a lot from these women but to my surprise the most impactful was what the world needs most from me as a man. There were seven lessons in total. This article is the sixth in a series.
 
People living in rural India face a bewildering array of complex challenges. The myriad of interwoven causes, like gender, culture, politics and religion, defy simplistic solutions. Even the most experienced leaders find it difficult to choose the most important priorities and then make any noticeable difference.  
 
But the elected women representatives we were visiting are expected to do exactly that.
 
As soon as they take their place on the council, the representatives are besieged by villagers and family members, each knocking on the door to plead, and sometimes demand, his or her issue is fixed first.
 
As a manager I often faced the same dilemma. Admittedly, there were times I avoided making tough choices so as not to make people unhappy. Unfortunately, this meant important things did not get done. And people ended up unhappy anyway!
 
But in India the women representatives have been trained by The Hunger Project how to work together to align on the top priorities for their villages. Part of the deal is learning to withstand the inevitable backlash from men who don’t like women making decisions.
 
The one priority all the elected women we spoke to agreed on is the problem of poor sanitation. Most rural people in India have no access to toilets and must defecate in the fields. The untreated waste gets into the water supply, causing massive public health problems like dysentery. As a result, tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths occur every year.
 
Men in the villages don’t make things any easier, jeering at women and girls as they go out to do their business. Even worse, if there is no street lighting (as is often the case) women become vulnerable to sexual assault in the fields at night.
 
The good news is the government has also prioritised sanitation. Prime Minister Modi is promising 1.2 million new toilets in rural areas by 2019, the one hundredth anniversary of Ghandi’s birth. Problem sorted, right?
 
Not really. In India, as elsewhere, just because the government says something is going to happen does not mean it will. From the elected women’s perspective there are huge obstacles to overcome to make the Prime Minister’s plan a reality.
 
For example, the standard government design - a flush toilet - is inappropriate for most of this drought stricken nation. Alternatives like composting toilets do not seem to be part of the plan, despite being simpler and waterless, producing useful fertilizer as an added benefit.
 
Even worse, dodgy contractors sometimes do not connect toilets once constructed. Or they don’t dig an underground soak for the waste. Or there is no plan for street lights to keep women safe when they use the toilets at night.
 
How the toilets are to be cleaned and maintained is also unclear. In India, the Dalit caste, formerly known as the ‘Untouchables’, used to be responsible for this kind of work. But they don’t want to clean up people’s shit anymore!
 
As I listened I was reminded of all the unsuccessful, top-down driven initiatives I’d experienced both in corporate life and my consulting work. The root cause of each failure always pointed back to ineffective leadership.
 
There have also been countless initiatives in the developing world that never delivered, in spite of spending billions of dollars. Western leaders have failed to understand both the context and the needs of the people they’ve been trying to help.
 
In India the elected women representatives experience the effects of such poorly implemented initiatives at first hand every day. But to our delight, instead of being resigned about the toilet programme they are leading by example to bring proper sanitation to their villages. Their stories were inspiring.
 
For example, one representative I’ll call Sita told us in her village it was people’s religious beliefs preventing them from allowing toilets near their homes. If the household gods protecting one’s home smelled the toilet they might flee, bringing misfortune upon the family.
 
Sita took the bold step of declaring her home would be the first in the village to build a toilet, right in middle of the family compound. But her husband and in-laws resisted fiercely. They too were frightened of displeasing the gods. Sita did not give up, however, persuading her family with a mixture of facts, appeals to public spiritedness and promises the toilet would be kept immaculately clean. She even offered to contribute towards the cost with some money she’d earned. She won the family over, and soon the whole village.
 
Another representative, Rajkumari, told us her council received funding to build toilets, but some rich people in the village would not allow delivery of the construction materials to the site. There was no explanation given and nothing the women could do.
 
Rajkumari agreed with some other elected women representatives to do what they could at odd hours to prepare the site. Carrying building materials on their own backs, they made progress, little by little. They gradually wore down the resistance of the rich neighbours, who let them begin construction. Hundreds were eventually built across a number of villages.
 
Rajkumari then entered the village in a government-sponsored contest called ‘Open Defecation Free’, offering any ‘gram panchayat’ a reward of 500,000 rupees if they are able to demonstrate the entire village is committed to using toilets.
 
She discovered old habits and attitudes die very hard. She and the other women representatives took it upon themselves to be role models for using toilets, which meant regular demonstrations for villagers unsure about the new way of doing things. The women also needed to devise flexible solutions for regular cleaning and maintenance. With a lot of effort, followed by a twenty-day assessment by government inspectors, Rajkamuri’s council won the award.
 
I learned from these elected women representatives how important it is for a leader to risk unpopularity by being clear about priorities. Even then, it’s not enough simply to tell others what to do. Sometimes as a leader you must get on the pot and show them how it’s done!
 
Watch out for the last article in this series: It’s Not About Me
 
The Hunger Project is a global NGO committed to the end of hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world. In India they coordinate the training and development of the most marginalised elected women leaders for the entire five years of their tenure in office, enabling them to be effective in ending hunger and poverty in their villages. 

I recently spent a week in the middle of India facilitating an extraordinary leadership immersion programme created by The Hunger Project.  Instead of attending courses at Harvard or INSEAD, twenty leaders from a large financial services company went to India to learn about leadership from women elected to serve on their local village councils (‘gram panchayat’).
 
I learned a lot from these women but to my surprise the most impactful was what the world needs most from me as a man. There were seven lessons in total. This article is the fifth in a series.
 
It was the turn of the quietest of the elected woman representatives to speak. Her name was Sura-bai. The translator said she is a Dalit, the most marginalised caste in India. She has overcome many obstacles just to be there, yet is still shy mixing with strangers.
 
We asked Sura-bai to tell us about her challenges. Her daughters had recently completed primary school and moved into Year 8 at the secondary school in a larger village ten kilometres away. Their daily journey to and from school involved more than two hours of walking each way. Unfortunately, every morning and afternoon men and boys shouted insults and taunts at them as they walked by.
 
“Where are you going?” they say. “You don’t deserve to go to high school… You think you’re smart? You’re sluts. You’re stupid… dirty… disgusting… filth, etc.”
 
Understandably Sura-bai’s daughters felt vulnerable, even travelling together with a large group of girls. When their father heard about all the hassle, he decided to take them out of school.
 
We were shocked. How could he give up so easily?
 
Sura-bai explained from her husband’s point of view, the top priority was the girls’ marriageability not their education. Under the current circumstances their reputations were being sullied. People would begin to believe the rubbish being said about them. Hence pulling the girls out of school was his way of protecting his daughters and ensuring their future.
 
She said it is hard for her husband and others like him to understand the long term benefits of educating girls. It is an investment in the future: girls marry later, have fewer children and earn much higher incomes. A positive cycle is created carrying them out of poverty.
 
But many men see little immediate payback, only short term costs. Someone else has to do the chores and earn money. The girls attract unwanted attention outside of the home. They get distracted from the ultimate objective of marriage.
 
Unfortunately, Sura-bai said this pressure results in a 100 per cent drop out rate at eighth grade for all the local girls she knows of from marginalised castes.
 
I could not bear to hear this. I wanted to find their Dad and shout, ‘Keep your girls in school. Stand up for your daughters! Go and tell those guys to leave them alone!’
 
Sura-bai shrugged, resigned to the way that it was. It’s how the cycle of deprivation stays stuck.
 
This story bothered me for a long time. Then I wondered what I’d do if I were her husband. Could I see beyond the constraining limits of my caste and speak up for my daughters? I was not so sure.
 
It became real back home in Australia a couple of weeks later when my wife and I were having breakfast with another couple. Our friend complained about her husband’s temerity at a recent social gathering when a man pronounced to a group of teenaged boys, “Don’t ever let yourselves get pussy-whipped!”
 
She was disappointed her husband had not challenged the man for perpetuating unhelpful attitudes amongst the boys.
 
“There’s no point me saying anything!” she continued. “No one would listen. It has to be a bloke.”
 
She is absolutely right. The cause of women will only move forward when more men speak up.
 
Yet her husband remained very quiet. I could see he was beating himself up pretty badly.
 
I have a lot of compassion for him for a couple of reasons. Firstly, in my younger days my attitude was as bad as his friend’s. People have heard me say similar things (and may even remind me after they read this article).
 
Secondly, as my views swung around, I have found it really hard to challenge men who talk women down. To be honest, I’m afraid. For example, there are clients who might not extend my contract if I pointed out how dismissive they are of female employees. Or male colleagues who might mock me if I challenged them for being patronising. I’ve even been afraid of speaking up in front of my friends. I have not wanted to look bad.
 
But I’m tired of being afraid. I am using this article to tell everyone I’m taking a stand to speak up for women. I want women to enjoy equal respect, admiration and treatment from men in all spheres of life. I invite people to hold me to it, and remind me if I forget.
 
Equally as important as speaking up is what I say and how I say it. I want to learn how to get through to guys like my friend’s friend. Not to shame them or drive them into a corner but to encourage them to think and speak differently.
 
How? First, we men need to admit we’re part of the problem. Whilst in India one of the executives said to me, “If I was brought up in this society how would I behave with women? Like one of the pricks? Or like one of the guys who behave well? I’m not sure.”
 
Second, we men can make others aware how our words make a huge impact on each other and especially on young, impressionable minds.
 
One of the executives travelling with me said, “The little boys in India are lovely but at some point they change into young men with toxic attitudes. I need to prevent that from happening in my family. I have to be clear with them about my values. And then take that to work.”
 
Another told me, “I’m aware of being a big, Western, successful bloke. It starts when you’re born with the expectations on you. Our young boys are nurtured in a similar way as in India, just more subtly.”
 
The third step is to acknowledge the perceived peer pressure. Many men fear appearing ‘pussy whipped’. It prevents us from speaking up for women. So let’s be honest about it.
 
I believe it is only when we challenge ourselves, honestly and with compassion, and with a lot of encouragement will we men make any progress. Please challenge and encourage me!
 
Watch out for the next article in this series: How to Lead by Example
 
The Hunger Project is a global NGO committed to the end of hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centred strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world. In India they coordinate the training and development of the most marginalised elected women leaders for the entire five years of their tenure in office, enabling them to be effective in ending hunger and poverty in their villages. 

I recently spent a week in the middle of India facilitating an extraordinary leadership immersion programme  created by The Hunger Project. Instead of attending courses at Harvard or INSEAD, twenty leaders from a large financial services company went to India to learn about leadership from women elected to serve on their local village councils (‘gram panchayat’).
 
I learned a lot from these women but to my surprise the most impacting was what the world needs most from me as a man. There were seven lessons in total. This article is the fourth in a series.
 
​
I never thought running a crèche for pre-schoolers could be dangerous. But then we heard a chilling story from an elected woman representative called Paldati.
 
In the crèche in her village every child is entitled to a free cooked lunch. Paldati’s mother-in-law is in charge. She ensures the mid-day meal is nutritious and distributed fairly. Budgets are tight so she keeps a careful watch over the supplies.
 
She recently noticed a number of over-age kids, who should have moved on to primary school, were still coming to the crèche for a free lunch. As a result, children entitled to the mid-day meal were being deprived. For some it is the only meal of the day.
 
She notified Paldati, who, as the elected representative took it upon herself to visit the parents of the ineligible children to sort things out. She expected a difficult conversation but was met with a ‘violent confrontation’ in her words. Then one of the men threatened to kill children at the school if his kids could not keep receiving a free lunch.
 
Paldati was horrified. But instead of reacting or retreating, she stood firm and calmly explained everyone has to follow the rules. The men shouted and harangued her, but got the message. The free riding stopped.
 
Her next story was almost as shocking. Paldati recently advised a woman to take her severely malnourished child to the Nutrition Centre in the nearest big town for emergency treatment. The child’s survival was at stake, but the husband refused to allow his wife to be away for two weeks, asking, ‘Who will cook the chapattis?’
 
Such cultural issues run deep in India. Paldati chose not to try to tackle this one head on. Instead she offered to look after both the woman’s family and her own for a fortnight. Fortunately, the baby lived.
 
We visitors who had never faced such trials could only describe her as courageous and resilient.
 
But Paldati insisted she is no more courageous or resilient than the next person. She still experiences fear, lack of confidence and has concerns she is not up to the task. The only difference is she took a stand to end malnutrition in her village. An impossible sounding goal but it changed her life.
 
Paldati’s stand has nothing to do with her personal wants or happiness. It’s on behalf of the wider community, something much bigger than herself.
 
She is able to go beyond her fears simply by asking herself what is the next action she must take to end malnutrition, and taking it. How it will end she does not know but step by step she makes progress.
 
The Hunger Project train elected women representatives in taking a stand. They begin by envisioning what their village would be like if it was free from hunger. Some can hardly imagine such a possibility. But from deep inside each woman a vision eventually emerges: education for girls, clean water, no child marriages, working toilets, a crèche, no more alcohol-fueled violence, etc.
 
Then they are asked, ‘Who will make your vision a reality?’ It is confronting because, like the rest of us, these women all think someone else is responsible, like the government. But they soon face the fact no one is coming to the rescue. It is up to them.
 
This is a huge mindset shift for the women, allowing the positive things they can do to emerge.
 
Each one then seals her commitment by declaring her stand in front of her sisters.
 
We visitors were all mightily impressed. Our ambitions are so often self-serving rather than for the greater good. We water down a bold commitment with phrases like ‘to the best of my ability’ or ‘make reasonable efforts’. We dislike being held accountable for doing what we’ve said.
 
On the return bus ride one of the execs summed up his thoughts from the day, “I’ve always assumed doing the right thing and being fair are enough to redress the wrongs in the world. But then I came to India. If we want an equal society we men have to be wiling to lose something. I realize now I have to make a decision on the end state I am committed to. Then do what I need to do to get there.”
 
We were all ready to work on our stands. But many of us were wondering, ‘What should I stand for?’ In a way it’s easy for the Indian women because there are so many urgent issues confronting them.
 
We reflected silently on some questions, scribbling in our journals:

• What do you really long to see happen in the world? What dreams or aspirations have you had for a long time (not about you but something bigger than you)?
• How could you contribute if there was nothing holding you back?
• What unique strengths could you bring?
• What might be stopping you?
• What specific commitment would you make, if you were free to make it?

 
We then asked each person to get up in front of the group and declare their stand publicly, following this format:

• What do you now see about yourself?
• What new possibility is emerging?
• What do you commit yourself to (that’s bigger than you)?
• How will you know you’ve accomplished it?
• What support do you need?

 
Doing this work had me become clear about my stand: for boys and men to thrive. For years I have led father and son weekends, facilitated men’s groups and run ‘rites of passage’ in the desert. But articulating my stand pulled it all together. It is what I want to spend my life doing.
 
How exciting! But also challenging. I don’t feel a surge of courage inside me to see this through. But like Paldati, I am confident my stand will pull me into action no matter how I feel.
 
What is your stand? I’d love to hear it.
 
Next week Lesson #5: Men Must Stand Up for Women
 
The Hunger Project is a global NGO committed to the end of hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centred strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world. In India they coordinate the training and development of the most marginalized elected women leaders for the entire five years of their tenure in office, enabling them to be effective in ending hunger and poverty in their villages.