This week’s guest on The xMonks Drive podcast is Mr. Rajesh Ramakrishnan. He enumerated some of his childhood experiences that have helped him form the value system today as an adult. The conversation escalates to building connections to knowing what is a perfect job and so on. Here are some highlights from the conversation.

Childhood Shapes Adulthood 

How successful children are in getting along with their peers is linked to their behavioural, cognitive, and social skills. When a child is able to recognise and interpret others’ behaviour correctly, perceive them, then he is able to handle his own emotions, and select appropriate responses. 

Such development in childhood sets the foundation and structure of the value system that he would practice as an adult. Emphasising the role of childhood in his personality, Rajesh mentions, “ I grew up in a very, you know, humble kind of thing in terms of a typical middle class family living in a very middle class area in Chennai. Some of the values that got instilled in me right from the beginning, were around simplicity, but are around hard work, you know, dedication. So, I think those were the fundamental values which are there.”

Social roles may solidify during adolescence, but the trajectory is built from childhood. with some children in steady trajectories as popular, rejected or neglected. 

Connecting with people as a CEO

A leader in any role should be approachable. Mr. Ramakrishnan, as he speaks further in the conversation, talks about connecting with people. 

“I take being grounded, the humility, the simplicity, they all sort of go together. Even if you’re a CEO, or if you’re at any level, it doesn’t really matter. But I think your ability to for example, connect with people right becomes very, very critical.”

One way to look at it and say that I am a higher order person and sitting on a pedestal then connecting becomes less with people. For me, these values were instilled in me right from the beginning. That really helped me, for example, connect with people at that level across the organization. 

Connecting with people gives two things. One, it gives you a good sense of what’s going on in the organization and therefore, your ability to keep a pulse on the organization. And the second is it also gives you an ability to connect with people, inspire them and get them to put in their best. So I think in many ways it has an impact in terms of not just a personal connection, but ultimately, it also has actually a business impact as well. 

Rajesh also mentions his ability to connect with people of different cultures as an added bonus. “Some of the people I have met in my life while I studied in school as well. In a way, it opens up things at multiple levels. So one is getting to understand a different culture, getting to understand the different kind of environment. How to adapt yourself to that. Getting to meet people with very different perspectives, different languages, different food habits. So I think at multiple levels, it was completely different. And the whole, of course, process  took a while. But I think it starts teaching you something. And I’m glad I did it right at that stage because it then helped me over the years. One of the things that I feel good about is getting out of my comfort zone, being able to quickly adapt myself to different environments, etc.