Baby giraffes never go to school. But they learn a very important lesson rather early in life. A lesson that all of us would do well to remember.
The birth of a baby giraffe is literally an earth-shaking event. The baby falls from its mother’s womb, some eight feet above the ground. It shrivels up and lies still, too weak to move.
The mother giraffe lovingly lowers its neck to kiss the baby giraffe. And then something incredible happens. It lifts one long leg and kicks the baby giraffe, sending it flying up in the air and tumbling down on the ground. As the baby lies curled up, the mother kicks the baby again. And again. Until the baby giraffe, still trembling and tired, pushes its limbs and, for the first time, learns to stand on its feet.
Happy to see the baby standing on its own feet, the mother giraffe comes over and gives it yet another kick. The baby giraffe falls one more time, but now, quickly recovers and stands up. Mama Giraffe is delighted. It knows that its baby has learned an important lesson: no matter how hard you fall, always remember to pick yourself up and get back on your feet.
Why does the mother giraffe do this? It knows that lions and leopards love giraffe meat. So unless the baby giraffe quickly learns to stand and run with the pack, it has no chance of survival. It also knows that the lessons we learn early on become part of our habit, our instinct, and stand us in good stead all through our lives.
Most of us, though, are not quite as lucky as baby giraffes. No one teaches us to stand up every time we fall. When we fail, when we are down, we just give up. No one kicks us out of our comfort zone to remind us that to survive and succeed, we need to learn to get back on our feet. And often, we live such protected, cocooned, low-risk lives in our early years that we are not quite prepared for the big, bad world when we enter it.
If you study the lives of successful people, you will see a recurring pattern. Were they always successful in all they did? No. Did success come to them quick and easy? No again. You will find that the common streak running through their lives is their ability to stand up every time they fall. The ability that the baby giraffe acquires.
The road to success is never an easy one. There are several obstacles, and you are bound to fall sooner or later. You will hit a roadblock, you will taste failure. But success lies in being able to get up every time you fall. That’s a critical life skill that all successful people have internalized.
Learning to win in life is quite like learning to ride a bicycle. When you start to ride, you might fall and get bruised. It doesn’t matter. You need to get back up and continue to ride. Fall one more time? Get back up again. That’s all it takes. Learn to get back up every time you fall.
So the next time you find a supervisor or a parent kicking you, don’t get upset with them. Like the mother giraffe, they may only be trying to teach you one of life’s most important lessons. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. What matters is your ability to pick yourself up and stand on your feet once again.
One organization that did the mother giraffe act extremely well was my first employer: Unilever (HUL). I remember how excited I was to be joining what was then Hindustan Lever Limited. As a young MBA with a keen interest in marketing, HLL was the place to be. I was looking forward to my first day at work. I had all these dreams of getting to work on Lux and Surf, creating the next blockbuster ad and changing the world. Guess what happened on my first day at work? I got sent off to a small town in Tamil Nadu to sell shampoos and fairness creams! You were ‘flown’ to Chennai, put up at the company guest house and treated with the kind of respect you thought freshly minted MBAs deserved. And then you began your stint as a frontline salesman. You took the train, stayed in lodges like the salesmen did—on a salesman’s allowances—and lived the life of a salesman. Unilever ensured that every new management trainee learned a vital lesson: great marketing ideas are born in the marketplace—not inside boardrooms. Staying in touch with consumers is priceless. And having spent time doing all a salesman does, you learn to respect the hard work, challenges and excitement that a salesman experiences every single day! The lessons learned on the field in the first eight weeks of work stay with all management trainees for the rest of their lives.
As a leader, one should learn to play the role of the mother giraffe. Handling new members of the team with kid gloves isn’t necessarily a great idea. Throw that new intern into the deep end. Push him out of his comfort zone. And he just might learn valuable lessons that will be handy for the rest of his life!
The lessons we learn early on become part of our habit, our instinct, and stand us in good stead all through our lives. And an important lesson to learn is this: never mind how hard you fall, always remember to pick yourself up and get back on your feet.