Leadership – Mixed Fruit Jam or Fruit Salad

Oops!!! Leadership - Mixed Fruit Jam or Fruit Salad! You must be thinking, now what leadership has to do with a jam or fruit salad. Let’s first talk about both edibles and then we will talk about leadership.

A mixed fruit jam is a blended combination of multiple fruits with sugar and preservatives. While fruit salad is a combination of multiple cut fruits, with cream acting as it’s binding agent.

In a mixed fruit jam you cannot taste each fruit separately, while in a fruit salad you can enjoy taste and crispiness of each fruit. In a fruit salad a kiwi will taste just like a kiwi and a strawberry would taste like a strawberry.

Same, can now be extended to leadership and many other aspects of life, like parenting, friends, relationships, etc. It is our perspective of seeing people around us - do we see them as mixed fruit jam - where there is no uniqueness or identity of any single fruit OR we look at people around us as a part of a beautiful bowl of fruit salad - where all fruits taste different and they bring their own crispiness and juiciness to that bowl. 

I learned to appreciate these differences or rather I would say UNIQUENESS in people about 12-13 years ago. It was time when my son became 3 and my daughter was 6. I could see different personalities being developed, the way they expressed their love was also different. These differences at times were subtle and at times quite glaring. I then started looking for these differences at the workplace also, in my peers, in my team members and even superiors. More I understood and appreciated the differences I realized I was able to connect with people at much deeper level and it put me at ease with them.

I had stopped looking at people like a jar of mixed fruit jam rather I enjoyed their varied company just like I enjoy the crunchiness, taste and aroma of each fruit in a bowl of fruit salad.

Over the years I further related this concept to organization culture and experienced it in a very different way. I associated people being like fruits in a fruit bowl called the organization and each one us bringing our own uniqueness to that bowl; while we are bonded together by the cream – the organization culture. I have gained tremendously from this concept and now not only I am a far more inclusive person, I am also appreciative of the unique qualities that each one of us possess and bring to work and our being every day.

Have a uniquely fruity week ahead…