'For women, it takes repeated demonstration of success to build credibility': Daisy Chittilapilly

As a woman business leader, Daisy Chittilapilly faces bias on a regular basis. Like how, when she is travelling in a car with a male colleague who reports to her, and they reach the destination, the driver will always assume she is the junior person and ask her, ‘When will sir be returning?’ These “micro-aggressions” are common, she says, but she has learnt to deal with them with grace, assertiveness and humility. As president―Cisco India & SAARC, her style is more about empathy than aggression. In an interview with THE WEEK, she talks about the need for women to believe in themselves, the baggage of guilt that they carry around, and breaking stereotypes about how a woman should behave at her workplace.

What do you think women in business want the most?

I’d like women to live up to their potential. In the age we live in, where EQ is as important as IQ, I think women really have the capacity to be amazing leaders, because they are in many ways multitaskers, crisis managers, very comfortable with change, and very adaptable. I’m not saying men are not all this, but women are, too. And these are important for a leader today.

I was recently talking to the CIO of a large company. He was very complimentary to me saying that he admired me for being a profit and loss (P&L) managing leader, because you can find women in finance, HR,  marketing or communications. You can find women in many functions, but you don’t find many women in P&L managing roles who are really accountable for the business. He has three daughters, and he said when he sees women in these roles, that is when he will believe that it has truly become an equitable world.

I agree. And so, I think women need to put themselves in places where they can create a more positive impact for themselves, for the teams they lead and definitely for the business. And also drive meaningful change in their communities. I want them to just embrace their potential.

What were your biggest obstacles to reach your position?

I started in the mid-1990s in tech sales. It was not very usual then to see women in sales. So to be taken seriously is your first hurdle. And that comes through repeated demonstration of success to build credibility. And once you do that, then you will have more yay-sayers than nay-sayers in your circle.

The most successful women are also products of the generosity of their peers, mentors and sponsors who saw their potential. Having people who are in your corner at the right time is very important. And I think I can certainly count a few that saw potential in me when I didn’t see it in myself.

Women also must have ambition. At some point you’ve got to say, I am capable of doing this. You’ve also got to have a plan for your career, both short-term and long-term. And this idea of your career should be shaped only by you. If you do things for somebody else, you’re never going to be happy or successful. But  if you are clear that this is who I am, this is what I’m good at and this is what makes me happy and fulfilled, then your career will go places.

Finally, despite however brilliant you are, you will come up against bias, both internally and externally. The ways of dealing with it depend on the situation. Sometimes you deal with it with dignity and firm words, sometimes with grace, and always with humility. Never lose your cool.

Recently, for example, I was at one of the largest airports in the country. There were 15 lines for security check and right at the end was the Digi Yatra queue; there were two for men and none for women. There were three of us women and they told us to walk all the way to the other end. I decided this was not a battle I was going to waste my time on. But the other two women were very upset. They asked to speak to the supervisors of the CRPF personnel, and magically a queue for women got opened.

Similarly, you will find many examples of bias. You need to have the courage to speak up for yourself. Women are frankly guilty of twisting themselves into shapes to meet the expectations of everybody else, because that’s how they’re socially conditioned.

Was there any tipping point in your life when you began seeing your own potential?

There was an incident. About midway through my career, there was a leader at Cisco who was actually sitting in the place I’m sitting in right now. He had just come into the role. And then I got a message from him that he wanted to be my mentor. I wondered why such a senior leader would want to mentor me. So I asked him, and he said to me something that I never forgot from that day on. He said, you could be sitting in my seat, but you don’t seem to see it. Till then, I had always been happy-go-lucky. I was progressing at a decent pace, but he sat me down and said, this is your destination if you want it.

Did that change the way you functioned?

Yes, from then, I started to make moves that everybody thought was career suicide, because I realised that being a country head at Cisco meant that I had to have different muscles. Until then, I only had experience in tech sales. But I realised that if this was the future I wanted, then I had to be a bit of a Swiss knife. I had to have different kinds of exposure to become more holistic as a leader. So I intentionally made some career moves, which did not make sense to many people then. But if it is in line with your career goals, you should seek those exposures and experiences.

Do you think a woman has to be aggressive to prove herself and be taken seriously?

It was true when I started my career in the mid-1990s. If you were not loud you wouldn’t be heard. Since then, I have made the transition from being the loudest voice in the room to being the softest. And I think that’s an important transition to make. There was definitely an era, particularly in some functions like sales, when aggression equalled assertiveness. We all had that phase in the first half of our careers when, till we established our credibility, we displayed that assertiveness; we were more alpha male than female. But I don’t think that’s the case any more. You don’t have to shout, swear or thump the table to make your point. My tonality and voice have evolved and is today more in sync with the person that I am.

I remember in the beginning of my career, I had this bulletproof persona. No one could dent me. For some of us, that’s how the workspace was. So the human side of you was never displayed at work, because the assumption is that women are highly emotional beings and that they cannot be given tough feedback. I’m also a product of that social conditioning, where being emotional is considered a weakness in the workplace.

There was a team session at Cisco some years ago, where we were asked to talk about the most important relationship of our life. I spoke about my friendship with a gang of girls who I knew from college. A colleague leaned forward and asked me, “You have friends?” That’s when I realised that I was hiding so much of myself from everyone at work. Then I decided that I wouldn’t try so hard to fit in. I think women deserve to be themselves in whichever spaces they occupy. Because when you are yourself, you’re not constrained to fit into a box which is not your shape.

Are there any formative incidents that shaped you into the woman and business leader you have become today?

I think so. My parents taught me to be independent at a young age. I thought that was the norm, and did not realise how rare this was. For example, they sent me to the bank to collect money every month. I would walk a few kilometres, catch a bus and go to the bank. They didn’t make a big speech about independence, decision-making or cultivating people skills.

They also instilled in me a sense of purpose. What you do, they taught me, is not just for yourself, but you’ve always got to think about the impact of your actions on others. I think as a leader, that is one of the critical skills you have to have. They also taught me integrity without preaching about it. Integrity, I learnt, comes at a cost. It is never easy to do the right thing, but you have got to do it. I saw my father demonstrate this repeatedly in his life.

Do you think women can have it all, or must they make sacrifices in their personal lives to rise professionally?

I think it’s a balancing act. Yes, there will be sacrifices. As long as women don’t want to be perfectionists, they can manage multiple roles. One of the things I find when I talk to women is guilt. Irrespective of their level of success, the degree of guilt that women carry is unparalleled. The origin of that guilt is this striving for perfection. There are so many roles that a woman plays―being caregiver to your parents, a mother, wife or business leader. Some days some things will slip and that’s ok.

Sometimes the women I meet at Cisco tell me that they go to the bathroom and cry because of the insensitivity of their colleagues. It might just be an innocent remark about how cute the baby in the photo on their desk is. They’ll ask the mother how she can leave her baby and come to work. As a result, the mother―who is already guilt-tripped about this―goes to the bathroom and cries. Women feel guilt-tripped all the time. That’s why there is this dialogue about whether women can have it all. Why don’t we ask men that? The big difference between men and women is that men don’t feel guilty―not about being on the road five days a week, going home late or missing PTA meetings. A woman will feel guilty about all this and more.