PART II

LEARN from DIFFERENCES

Meet Aesha and Heather

At the end of the day, Roger poked his head into Heather’s office and asked if she would be open to mentoring Aesha. Aesha started as an intern at Any Healthcare several years ago and has shown tremendous potential for future leadership. Heather didn’t need to think twice about it. She was all in!

As she packed up her things before leaving the office, Heather thought back to 1998, when it had been difficult to find her way at Any Healthcare. At first she was excited to be working in health care, where it seemed like changes were afoot everywhere. She yearned to be part of the action, but she didn’t feel like much of a contributor. She felt isolated, on the fringes. It had been challenging to adjust to a culture that was neither supportive nor welcoming. She was a single mom and one of only two women in her department.

Heather wanted to be heard and taken seriously. She continued to struggle, as she looked for acceptance and a way to make a meaningful contribution. She hungered to find people whom she could trust. It quickly became clear that she was going to need to become “tough as nails” to succeed. Her struggle to toughen up was a slog, a slow uphill climb. The inside jokes, group speak, and eye-rolling indicated that there was something she was missing. It seemed as if her coworkers all knew something that she wasn’t privy to.

Heather was not one to sit by idly. She realized that she had a lot to learn and that she was going to have to own that responsibility. She asked herself, “Who do I know that can help me figure this out?” Then she adopted a divide-and-conquer approach, setting up meetings with each of the department’s key players to get to know them and understand the basis of their ideas. It took patience and tenacity, but Heather stuck with it long enough to gain the deeper perspective she needed to understand long-shared history of the department’s key players and why things always seemed to go a certain way. Over time, Heather made her mark as a change agent and a high-value contributor.

Aesha was first introduced to Any Healthcare’s many product lines while working as an intern at the firm two years earlier. She found the demographics behind consumer marketing fascinating. Following her internship, she was immediately offered a position in the marketing department. Her interest in marketing blossomed, and over time so did her responsibilities.

Aesha started out conducting telephone surveys and before long found herself with increased responsibilities for designing, conducting, and analyzing customer preference surveys. After a year, she discovered her calling and was eager to become a product analyst and team lead for developing and positioning marketing strategies for Any Healthcare’s products. She was a quick study and within two years had easily overcome her lack of health-care experience.

Aesha is a first-generation Indian American. Although her husband’s parents lived in Mumbai, they visited annually for several months at a time. She looked forward to their visits, but their extended presence added stress to her already long day at work. She didn’t see this changing in the short- or long-term and knew that the addition of children in the future would only increase her load. She was trying to figure out how she would manage her time with increasingly competing responsibilities. Aesha loved her work and was excited about upcoming possibilities. Aesha was hoping that her mentor would help her figure out what else she needed to learn, how to establish herself at Any Healthcare, and how to balance work and family.