Interview: Invisible Mentor, Kamel Hothi, Director, LLoyds Banking Group, Part Two

Interviewee Name: Kamel Hothi, Director

Company Name: Lloyds Banking Group

Website: http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Kamel Hothi: I’ve been working for 32 years in the banking world. I’m a Director at Lloyds Banking Group. I’m married, I have two children and I live in a very strict Indian traditional family.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Kamel Hothi: The way that I integrate work and life, is that the things I learn at home I bring to work.  I do a lot of cultural training, I’ve trained over 500 executives, which I’m hoping that those nuances of explaining what the culture is, how to do a handshake, the name, the eye contact, all of those things will help them improve their business relationships with the community. And what I’m doing at work is networking with the community, going out to a number of events. And for the last couple of years, my husband has accompanied me to a number of these events and my children come along so they can have an insight into what I do. The first time I invited my husband to a black-tie event with 700 people, mostly men, I knew my husband was very uncomfortable but now he’s part of that and he enjoys coming with me and supports me as well.

Avil Beckford: What’s a major regret that you’ve had in life?

Kamel Hothi: That I didn’t go to university. I wasn’t able to go at that time, but I wish I had. I knew having an education would have helped me to fast-track up the career ladder faster than I have so it’s always a feeling of weakness in my chink of armour. I’m doing that with my kids and I’m pushing them forward – one is graduated and the other is going through it now.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Kamel Hothi:

1. Believe in yourself.
2. Always think of the bigger picture.
3. Seek to get a balance and do not get hung up on your career but to also look at your personal life. Yes there’ll be times you focus on your career and not the home life, but I do believe that they need to go hand-in-hand.
4. Count to 10. If you have an email or something that’s impacted you, sleep on it, do not fire back a response immediately, you always think differently in the morning when something has upset you.
5. Make sure that you review the task at hand, plan everything as much as you can, and leave room for flexibility.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Kamel Hothi: The reason why I’m smiling is that I have so little down time. The thing I’ve given up for my career is downtime, but we tend to get downtime when we go away on holidays. I love reading and if I can I do like painting, but it’s very, very rare. The easiest form of downtime is gardening during the weekends. I love it and do it as much as I can.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Kamel Hothi: I love teams especially new people, I love asking them what their first impressions are for things. No matter what the grade of the individual I think ideas generated first time to capture them when their minds are not clogged at all with the work routines. That’s what I try to do.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Kamel Hothi: Treat people like you would like to be treated. It’s something that I’ve always tried to live with. It’s what my mother used to say. To me that’s humanity, everybody likes to be treated fairly, everyone likes to be loved and everyone likes to be treated with respect. That’s how I want to be treated and if I can do that to others hopefully it will come back. People do return how you treat them.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Kamel Hothi: Success for me is very much about being a parent, my children are happy, they are established and have made their own mark in feeling that they’ve achieved something, that would be success at home. And at work, I would say that it’s to leave my legacy with an organization of this size, I’ve changed their thinking, and helped them to achieve something that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Kamel Hothi: Determination and having that burning desire, that there is no other option but to succeed, and just chipping away at it. You will come across loads of barriers and hassles and people trying to get in your way, but it’s believing in yourself and constantly chipping away at it.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Kamel Hothi: For me, it was really understanding the psyche of what’s in it for me. That’s very cynical, selfish thinking, but that’s how people tend to live in the corporate world. It’s using that thinking and putting it into my strategy. When we were building the Asian strategy it was very much what’s in it for them, what’s the business case, what would they achieve, would they pay attention? So once you can show them what the case looks like and get their juices flowing then it’s mapping that out and how it can be realized. That’s what I would say is what I have done in my field.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Kamel Hothi: As soon as you get in, think about what is your next goal. Yes you might have landed in a new role, you want to do well in it and you want to understand it, but always have with you next steps. So once you know where your next step is, you know what you have to achieve in this particular role in order to get to the next one. It’s constantly looking at the next step, how to get there, and the people you need to network with to make that happen.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Kamel Hothi:

1. I’d love to meet Gandhi, his way of influencing people, bringing cultures together and doing it so peacefully, I’d say his wisdom would be so powerful.
2. I’d love to go and see Mandela to understand how he coped in prison all those years and still have the courage and strength to come back peacefully and to continue where he left off.
3. I’d love to meet Mr. Ratan Tata in India, the executive for the Tata Group. From what I’ve heard he’s a great entrepreneur, but also his thinking, his wisdom in the way he is steering the company, I really admire him and certainly where he had to take the organization forward is something unique that I have not seen before.
4. If the opportunity arose, I’d love to meet Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico. I’ve heard her speak but did not get the opportunity to meet her face-to-face. When I heard her speak and how she has taken over that company, an Asian woman is absolutely fabulous. I’d love to spend more time with her, listen to her, find out what has driven her to get to where she is, and how she could help other women.
5. I’d love to meet my mom again, and just be able to have a conversation with her and have her views, feelings and what she would say about me, my children and what I’ve achieved so far.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Kamel Hothi: I think for the context of this interview, I love the The One Minute Manager. It’s a simple book, but the messages in there are still valid and a great reminder on the basic foundation of management. I dip in and out every now and again to remind myself of the seven rules of management and I think it’s a great book to have on a side table.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why?

Kamel Hothi:

• I love fiction books because I like to escape from the world that we are in sometimes. I think this is a great way to be engrossed and cleanse your mind. Any good thriller books would be great, so I do enjoy them.
• I do like talking about philosophy and deep thinking and The Rising of a Thousand Stars [Note from Avil: I think she meant A Thousand Splendid Suns] is about two women in the Taliban, which was so emotional. It was a culture that I didn’t know anything about and I read that book, and I would love to read it again because it brings home the friendship between two women in such a difficult situation.
• I also do tend to like healing books to heal yourself. You are constantly going as a woman and it’s important to find time to focus on yourself, see what’s going on, and what makes you tick. I like to analyze myself and see how I can be a better person.

Avil Beckford: What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Kamel Hothi: I like Kishore Kumar, he’s an Indian singer. I love his traditional Bollywood songs, they are very romantic and slow but the words are absolutely amazing and they cut you to the core and there is usually one song that brings back some sort of memory in my life, so I’d love to take his music with me. I love the new Gladiator movie that came out. I love history so that brings history back to life again. It’s about the struggle about this one man and making his mark and standing up for what’s right. Romance is spread right through it.

If you cannot view Kishore Kumar Romantic Songs YouTube video.

If you cannot view Gladiator trailer YouTube video.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Kamel Hothi: My children, I love spending time with them. I love watching them grow, seeing how they have turned out. I love enjoying some of the stuff that they do. Last year, they took me quad biking (a quad bike is an all terrain vehicle – ATV) in the jungle in Mexico. I just enjoy life with my children.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Again, talking to my children, that is very much listening to them and being there for them So when they have problems or difficulties or questions, the fact that they come to me, that in itself reassures me that I still play a part in their lives, and that they still see me as someone that they still need. I also ensure that my husband is still there and that our relationship is still healthy. After 28 years, touch wood, we still get on really well, and he still wants me so that’s really important.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Without being a cliché, it would be helping the people in the Middle East to communicate better and if there is a way to make that happen. I’m really worried about the future of the world and what’s happening there, and it has an impact on myself, but on my children’s future. That worries me and I wish I had some way of supporting that.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Running in the field with my children.

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Video Credit: Uploaded by UltraHindi on Nov 29, 2010, Uploaded by JosPeters on Oct 15, 2006

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