When Everything Becomes a Reward

 

On praise, expectation, and what children learn to take for granted

Children do not simply achieve — they announce it.

Yesterday, my granddaughter came running to me, eyes bright, over the moon with pride, holding out two small stickers she had received from her piano teacher. She was ecstatic, and so was I, in that quiet way adults sometimes are when a small moment stays longer than expected.

Now, she is not the next Beethoven — at least not yet.

But that was never the point. In her world, those stickers meant something simple and powerful: she had tried, she had improved, and someone had noticed.

It took me back, quite suddenly, to my own school days at St Joseph’s in Allahabad, where acknowledgement looked very different. There were no stickers or smiley stamps, no colourful charts celebrating small steps. We did not grow up in a culture of frequent rewards. What we did receive, on rare occasions, was a pat on the back from a teacher — brief, understated, and for that very reason, memorable.

What we had instead were coloured report cards. Above 80 per cent meant a pink card: “Very Good.” Between 65 and 80 was blue: “Good.” Between 40 and 65 was yellow: “Fair.” Anything below that was red — the dreaded “Unsatisfactory.” The colours were few, and they were not handed out lightly, which is exactly why they carried weight.

Today, the approach has changed, and rightly so. We now understand far more about confidence, wellbeing, inclusion, and the importance of children feeling seen while they are learning. A well-timed word of encouragement can genuinely shape how a child sees themselves, and most parents and teachers are now far more conscious of that responsibility.

Yet somewhere along the way, something subtle has shifted. Acknowledgement has become more frequent and immediate, and it has begun to lose its sense of distinction. As with many things in life, too much of a good thing can quietly dilute its meaning.

“And when everything is marked, very little feels earned.”

This is where leadership quietly enters — not as instruction or motivation, but in shaping what people come to see as normal. People do not grow only through reassurance; they grow through clear, calm expectations, without too much noise.

Good leaders understand this balance. They know we must be careful with praise and reward — not stingy, but deliberate — so that it remains meaningful rather than routine. They also know when to step back, allowing effort to exist without constantly turning it into acknowledgment.

Because not everything that is done needs to be immediately seen.

Over time, it is rarely what is formally communicated that shapes people most. It is the quieter signals — what is noticed, what is overlooked, and what is allowed to pass without comment. These signals slowly form a person’s understanding of effort, value, and success.

My granddaughter’s joy brought this into focus. The issue is not the stickers themselves. It is what they quietly begin to train us to expect — that effort will always be noticed, and quickly returned.

Once they step out of the cocoon of school, the world feels different. It is less responsive, less generous with feedback, and far more silent than many are prepared for. When that familiar reassurance no longer comes, the reaction is often uneven — frustration for some, and for others a quiet dependence on external validation that no longer arrives so easily.

And perhaps that is the real question. Not whether we should stop acknowledging effort, but whether we are preparing children for a world that constantly marks everything they do — or one that quietly expects them to keep going even when nothing is marked at all.

Because in the end, the most lasting form of approval is not the one that is repeated often, but the one that is earned once — and stays long after the moment has passed.

I am a priority customer

 Priority Banking: A Short Story

“Thank you for your patience. As our priority customer, we are happy to serve you.”

Haven’t we all heard this before—and for a second felt a little elated? Especially the first time we were told we’d been promoted.

I’ve been trying to fix a simple issue with my bank in India for about a month now.

I thought it would be simple. How wrong I was.

It’s a straightforward problem. Nothing complex. The kind of thing you assume gets sorted in a few minutes if someone just looks at it properly.

I’ve mailed. I’ve called. I’ve followed up—again and again.

Every call starts the same way.

First five minutes: card number, account number, date of birth, address, OTP… my entire life story, lightly interrogated and cross-checked. Somewhere in between, they start using my first name too—like we’re old friends catching up instead of going through security clearance.

And while I’m typing all this in, the automated voice just keeps going—calm, robotic, almost indifferent—slowly frying my brain in the background.

I’m going cross-eyed trying to enter everything before the system times out.

I’ve spoken to so many call centre agents across India now that I genuinely worry one day someone will recognise me—by name, account number, or just the sheer frequency of my suffering.

A close friend even tried to help.

He got nowhere.

Quietly. Politely. Efficiently. He did everything right—but it just came back to me and the whole thing started looping again.

And now I’m locked out of my own account, which is where all of this started. I’ve spent hours—days—fretting, fuming, pacing around like I’m negotiating a hostage situation, breathing like that’s somehow going to fix the system.

Then comes the familiar line:

“Thank you for your patience. As our priority customer, we are happy to serve you.”

To be fair, the call centre people are polite. Almost too polite. Always calm, always composed.

They’re somewhere in an office I can’t even place on a map, doing their best inside a system that doesn’t seem very clear even to them.

And that’s the strange part—everything is polite, everything is patient… and nothing really moves.

It’s like watching a very well-dressed orchestra in slow motion, where everyone is smiling and nodding, but somehow playing completely different songs.

And still, they say it again:

“You are a Priority Customer.”

Priority? Seriously ? 

And you just pause at that word.

Because you can’t help wondering—what does non-priority look like?

If this is priority, what on earth is normal service? Smoke signals? Carrier pigeons? A letter that arrives next financial year?

Or maybe the real question is simpler: shouldn’t everyone already be priority if they’re a customer?

Because right now, “priority” doesn’t feel faster. It just feels… nicer words around the same waiting.

Same delays. Same escalations. Same loop. Just better manners.

The issue is still not solved. I’ve been fully verified, repeatedly thanked, reassured, and officially prioritized. And yet, as I finish writing this, I’m told it’s resolved—again as a priority customer.

It hasn’t.

Somewhere in the background, it feels like a bugle is being played off-key—confidently, loud, and completely out of sync with reality.

If everything is a priority, what does priority even mean?

Is success really a moment ?

 Is Success Really a Moment?

Behind every “sudden success” is a long, unseen climb.

We often assume success happens in a moment.

A young cricketer scores a century, a champion wins another title, a singer starts filling stadiums. And almost immediately the comments begin.

“How lucky.”
“What timing.”
“She was always destined for it.”

From a distance, success can look sudden, but that is only because we usually arrive at the end of the story.

When Virat Kohli walks out to bat, we see control, not the years of failure and rebuilding that came before it. When Roger Federer played, everything looked effortless, though that effortlessness was built through endless repetition. Even outside sport, Adele fills global stages today, though she once performed in small rooms where some nights ended in silence—there was little applause, if any. That is usually how life works.

We see people on the top floor, sometimes even on the helipad, but rarely the journey that took them there. Social media makes this illusion even stronger. We see the achievement, the award, the promotion, the celebration. We rarely see the years that came before.

The truth is that most of life happens there—not at the start, not at the finish, but somewhere in the middle.

It is the place where you keep showing up every day and wonder if any of it is making a difference. Where the work feels repetitive, the progress feels invisible, and the destination seems no closer than it did yesterday.

I know this because I have lived it. In my early thirties, I was already a Headmaster in a large school in Pune, India. The title sounded impressive. The reality felt very different because most days I felt I was learning as fast as I was leading.

I made mistakes. Some could have had serious consequences if I had not adjusted quickly. I learnt from people older and more experienced than me. I watched them closely, listened carefully, and absorbed whatever I could. Looking back, I probably learnt as much from observation as from formal training.

Late evenings became routine, but so did self-doubt.

There were days when I questioned whether I was ready for the responsibility that came with the role. Long before I knew the term “imposter syndrome,” I understood the feeling. Deadlines, expectations, difficult decisions, and the fear of getting things wrong all arrived together.

It wasn’t smooth, it wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly didn’t feel like success in any form. Looking back, that was probably the most difficult stage.

You keep moving forward, but there is no applause, no visible breakthrough, and no reassuring sign that all the effort is leading somewhere meaningful.

That is where frustration creeps in, and disappointment follows close behind. Some days you even wonder whether it is worth continuing.

Most people experience those moments, but few talk about them.

Perhaps that is why comparison can be so misleading. We compare our struggles with someone else’s results. We compare our beginning with someone else’s ending. What looks sudden is usually the result of years of persistence that nobody noticed while it was happening.

As an educator and a father, I have come to believe that encouragement matters most during this stage. We naturally celebrate people when they succeed, and there is nothing wrong with that. But often the greater need is earlier, when confidence is fragile and progress is difficult to see.

That is when a word of encouragement, a helping hand, or a pat on the shoulder matters. Sometimes these are the very things that keep us going.

Then, often when you least expect it, something changes.

What once felt difficult becomes manageable. What once felt unfamiliar becomes second nature.

You do not always notice the change immediately. You notice it later, when you look back and realise you have travelled much further than you thought, and there is a deep satisfaction in that realisation.

Not because you reached the top, but because you kept going when it would have been easier to stop.

The top floor gets noticed—it always does.

But what deserves equal attention are the years before that—the mistakes, the doubts, the late nights, the tiredness, the setbacks, and the moments when people almost gave up but didn’t.

Success is not the moment you arrive at. It quietly takes shape over time, long before anyone else notices, and long after you yourself have stopped wondering if it will ever happen.

When I look back at my own journey, it rarely feels like arrival—just a quiet understanding that those ordinary days were never wasted; they were simply taking me somewhere.

The packet

 

THE PACKET

 

It was an evening in late July

When he saw him sitting under the gnarled banyan tree,

Wizened and apparently gasping-

A maniacal look on his face

Clutching an earthy brown, cloth bag 

Under his sweaty arms.

His rasping cough made him breathe heavily.

 

“Who are you”? asked the young boy- 

Just all of eight- marbles jingling in his pockets.

‘Are you waiting for someone’?

What’s in your bag’?

There were no answers forthcoming,

But the silence was broken with a ‘pechak’

As the old stranger spat his betel juice, into the dust around them.

 

He smiled- a red toothy smile and whispered- 

In almost a threatening growl

‘My boy – don’t ask me those questions- ever again’.

He bowed his head, which sunk deeper

Into the depths, of his seemingly, hollow torso

And gasped aloud.

 

There was a pregnant pause-

And the young lad was terrified.

 

In the distance the ‘kik- kik- kik’ of the ‘Koyal’ could be heard. 

Summer was coming to an end. 

Lines of soft, grey Nimbus clouds 

hung low and spelt rain- later that night.

An eerie stillness prevailed.

 

The old stranger looked crestfallen,

-utterly broken. 

But wait -there was something else-

Were those tears, amidst the wrinkles?

He fumbled with his belongings –

A bell and some beads strung together.

He took out a tattered paper bag,

And laid it on the ground. 

His scaly hands trembled and beads of perspiration- 

Appeared unexpectedly- trickling down,

His seemingly, scrawny neck

Losing themselves in his grimy garments.

 

They both stared at the bag in complete silence.

The ‘kik- kik- kik could be heard, in the distance. 

The echoing voice of his mother calling him home- 

‘ Balaaaaaa’- roused them from the reverie.

 

The stranger hurriedly picked himself up- 

Dusted his garments and shuffled away-

Pulling a ragged shawl 

Tightly over his long, matted hair.

He didn’t look back.

 

The young lad sat mesmerized-

Staring at the abandoned packet for a few, 

Agonizingly long moments.

This couldn’t be his birthday present in advance?

His father and twin brother

Had left for the market early that morning. 

He willed them back, as night 

Was fast approaching.

He had always been petrified of the dark 

 

The tension was palpable and 

He could contain himself no longer.

‘Balaaaaa ’- shouted the mother once again.

It was now or never.

 

Stretching his right hand forward-

He reached gingerly, for the creased packet- 

Pulling it towards himself, hesitatingly. 

Taking a deep breath – he opened it warily.

And took one furtive look

 

Screaming in abject terror 

Bala bolted towards his little thatched hut- 

At the edge of the large paddy field.

He collapsed into his mother’s arms- 

Sobbing inconsolably 

Pointing vaguely to nowhere

Muttering unintelligible sounds- 

hysterical and incoherent.

 

The family rushed out-

Just in time to see an old stranger-

Board the last bus out of the village that night. 

The lad led them to the banyan tree- 

Still sobbing and gesticulating towards the crumpled bag.

The pale crescent moon illuminated the sky-

And bathed them all in a silvery glow.

Then the skies opened and the tempestuous rain

Came down in torrents.

 

Packet in their hands- they walked home

Their sobs mingling with the thunder

On keeping it simple

 ON KEEPING IT SIMPLE 

"Keep it simple."

Anyone who has worked with me has probably heard me say those words more than once. In meetings, in assemblies, in conversations with leadership teams, and sometimes even with students. It is a phrase I come back to often because I have seen how much trouble starts when we move away from it.

We seem to live in an age that rewards complexity.

People speak in jargon. They write in language that sounds impressive but says very little. Tasks that should be straightforward somehow acquire layers of forms, procedures, and explanations. What began as something simple becomes something exhausting.

I have never understood the attraction. Surely beats me!

Some of the most effective people I have met over the decades  were also the simplest. They spoke clearly. They wrote in a way that everyoneunderstood. They knew what they were  trying to achieve and got on with it. 

There was no performance. No unnecessary drama. No effort to sound more important than they were. Today things have changed. 

In this modern day and age , keeping it simple is likely to get you looked down upon . 

It is easy to hide behind complicated language. It is much harder to express an idea so clearly that everyone understands it.

 The same applies to leadership. A leader's role is not to leave people confused by clever words. It is to provide clarity. To make the path ahead easier to see.

The truth is that life is already complicated enough.

People carry pressures we know nothing about. Families, finances, health concerns, deadlines, responsibilities. Most are dealing with far more than they ever show. The last thing they need is someone making their day harder through poor communication or unnecessary complexity.

Over the years, I have found that simplicity rarely lets you down. A simple message. A simple plan. A simple act of kindness. A simple conversation.

These things work.

So I continue to repeat those three words.

Keep it simple.

Not because simplicity is easy, but because it is often the hardest thing to achieve. And when you do achieve it, people understand you, trust you, and follow you.

There is a lesson in that for all of us.

Schools now and then

 When School Was Different: A Memory Across Two Eras

When I look at schools today - especially here in the UAE , I see how much has changed. Schools are structured and have clear policies in place, safety is taken seriously, and supervision is there all the time. As parents and educators, there is real comfort in knowing children are safe and looked after through the day, and that does matter.

What stands out today is the system behind it. Schools are not running on assumption anymore. There are clear rules, processes, and checks, and regulators set expectations that schools follow seriously. Teachers are also responsible for wellbeing, behaviour, and safety. There is more awareness, training, and responsibility, and most carry it out well, even in busy classrooms.

Support systems exist now that did not earlier—counsellors, safeguarding teams, structured pastoral care—and children who need help are noticed and supported. Transport, playgrounds, labs, and sports are also properly planned. Nothing is left to chance. It brings reassurance because you don’t just hope a child is safe—you know there is a system around them. And that is a real shift.

I have lived through a very different kind of school life. First as a student at St Joseph’s Allahabad and Boy’s High School Allahabad, and later as a teacher at Boy’s High School and for nearly 20 years at The Bishop’s School, Pune. I have seen it from both sides and i see the big difference . 

Health, safety, wellbeing, and child support were not part of our vocabulary then, and we did not even think to ask for it. We drank water from round school tanks, and sometimes a light pink disinfectant—potassium permanganate—was added, and that faint colour was considered enough at the time. Broken taps added to ' the experience'.

Vaccinations were done in school too, and I remember the nurse using the same needle after dipping it in disinfectant. No one questioned it then, and it was simply accepted practice in those days.

Cameras in schools did not exist. You were expected to behave, and that was it.

At St Joseph’s, even the school bell stays in my memory—a long iron rod hanging in the play area, struck with another metal piece. It stood where we played, and boys sometimes ran into it and got badly  hurt. It was just part of school life.

Breaks had very little supervision if any. If someone got hurt, we went to the infirmary, but beyond that there was not much structure.

Playgrounds were simple—monkey ladders over cement, swings without safety flooring. We learned by doing things, not being told.

Small things stay with me: cleaning blackboards, clapping the dusters , chalk dust everywhere, white hands, dusty uniforms, and that chalk smell through the day.

Discipline was direct. If you arrived  late, you stood outside or were sent home with no discussion. Standing or kneeling outside the class was normal and accepted. In PE, punishment often meant running rounds until exhausted or being made to hop forward in a seated position. That was horrible! 

Teasing, fights, and bullying were part of growing up, with no labels for it. In craft periods, we worked with saws, hammers, and chisels with very little supervision. Cooking and manual work also happened without much formal safety framing.

We cycled, climbed, ran races, used ropes—freely and competitively. We left school alone or in groups and made our own way home - no phones, no tracking, no check-ins, and we just reached. If something was lost, the answer was simple—you were careless, replace it. If you were caught cheating, consequences were immediate. Detention meant staying back, and parents were not informed and rarely  involved.

Looking back now, it was rough in places, but it also built independence, resilience, and the ability to figure things out without being told every step. Today’s schools are far more aware, structured, and caring, and that is a good thing.

But sometimes I still wonder…

Are we becoming a bit too careful—not in safety, but in how we define childhood?

Are we removing the small scrapes, small failures, and unplanned moments that once quietly taught you and me how to deal with life?

I don’t really know.

Maybe children don’t need less care, just fewer reasons to believe we are watching their every step.

Why Listening May Be the Most Underrated Leadership Skill

 

Across classrooms, workplaces, and leadership spaces, speaking is often mistaken for engagement, while listening is quietly undervalued

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“Pay attention.”
“Listen carefully.”
“Don’t get distracted.”

We hear these instructions so often that we stop truly hearing them.

From childhood onwards, the message is consistent: listen. At home it is “listen to your parents.” At school it is “listen to your teacher.” The settings change, but the expectation does not.

Yet a quieter question rarely enters the conversation: are we actually learning how to listen — or simply being told that we should?

In structured environments, listening is frequently mistaken for silence or polite acknowledgement. Increasingly, it has become performance.

People speak for the sake of speaking, as if every sentence demands a response, correction, or completion. Others feel compelled to contribute to everything — even if it means interrupting a thought mid-air to secure their place in it.

Voices rise over one another — less conversation, more collision. Ideas overlap. Sentences break mid-air. What emerges is often incoherent — fragmented, unstructured, rarely absorbed. Everyone speaks — but very little is understood.

What appears as engagement is often a plausible performance of participation rather than understanding.

But filling silence is not the same as understanding what is being said.

Modern life reinforces this pattern. Speed is rewarded. Silence is uncomfortable. Attention is fragmented across screens, notifications, and constant interruption. In this environment, listening is the first casualty. We become efficient responders, but unreliable interpreters of meaning.

Perhaps it begins earlier than we admit.

In classrooms, listening is often equated with silence. The “good student” is frequently the one who participates, answers quickly, and reproduces expected responses. But whether quiet or vocal, behaviour is mistaken for understanding.

Over time, something shifts. Children are naturally spontaneous — quick to question, quick to imagine, quick to connect ideas without fear of being wrong. But when speed of response becomes the measure of success, listening is reduced to repetition. Curiosity gives way to compliance. Creativity becomes cautious.

That habit does not remain in school. It follows directly into adulthood — and into leadership.

Because leadership is not defined by how much one speaks, but by how deeply one listens.

Real listening is not passive. It is not waiting for a turn to respond. It is the discipline of absorbing what is said — and what is not said. It is noticing hesitation, contradiction, emotion, without rushing to resolve it. It is attention in its most disciplined form.

There is a reason even popular culture returns to this idea. The song “Listen” from Listen is not about voice — it is about awareness. About hearing what lies beneath words, not just the words themselves. A reminder that listening is intentional, not automatic.

As Malcolm Forbes once said, “The art of conversation lies in listening.”

Perhaps the shift required is simple, but uncomfortable: from hearing as reaction… to listening as intention.

Because in too many spaces — conversations, classrooms, and leadership rooms — we are not listening. We are competing. Words overlap, ideas collide, voices rise, and meaning is lost in noise.

And in the end, leadership is not weakened by lack of speech.

It is weakened by lack of listening.

The question remains.

Are we actually listening… or just waiting for our turn to speak?