From Rejection to Redemption - a book that tells you how

Independent brand coach and best-selling author, Ambi Parameswaran, speaks to Corporate Citizen about his recently launched book, “Spring: Bouncing Back From Rejection”, which focuses on how to handle setbacks in life

"Every single person you see as a success today, was a failure at one time or the other"

Corporate Citizen: Spring: Bouncing Back From Rejection - what was your inspiration to write this book?

Ambi Parameswaran: I was delivering a talk at Jagran Lakecity University, Bhopal. I had spoken about my book, ‘Sponge: Leadership Lessons I Learnt from My Clients’, and how I had met various business leaders and learnt from them. One of the students then pointed out that, while I seemed to have had a very good career and had met a lot of interesting people, they themselves were young and very nervous about being rejected. So, I went on to speak extempore about how I have also faced a lot of rejection and that one’s real mettle lies in bouncing back. That talk got a standing ovation and I realised that maybe here was an idea that I needed to explore, that young people in the age group 20 – 35 are very sheltered and they are worried about being rejected. The other myth is that with anyone who is successful, you are aware of all his achievements and accomplishments but we don’t know what problems he faced in his journey, how he probably did not get the job he wanted, how he was denied the promotion he wanted, how a particular proposal he made was ridiculed by his colleagues. It was to tell this untold story that the book was born.

CC: What kind of research did this book require and how did you go about it?

I had repeated a part of the rejection story talk I had given in Bhopal, at IIM-Calcutta, as a part of my acceptance speech when I got the Distinguished Alumnus award, and again it elicited a very warm response from the students. Working on my current book in November 2018, involved thinking back on my own journey, the rejections I had faced, the lucky breaks I had. Then I decided it was not enough… I decided the book would comprise 20 stories only five of which would be my own while the balance would be of personalities from other domains. I started reading and interviewing people, such as the dean of a business school, the former hockey captain of the Indian Olympic team, a very senior bureaucrat. I further researched on articles and books about rejection and failure, for about a year and then I started writing the book.

CC: What realisation did your interviews and research help you arrive at?

Every single person you see as a success today, was a failure at one time or the other. Whether it is APJ Abdul Kalam or J K Rowling or the Beatles, or numerous startup successes, they have all gone through rejection and failure. An overnight success actually is the result of five years of failure.

CC: As a veteran in the industry, what would be your distilled learning to young people on coping with failure?

In the book, I have suggested a particular model for everyone to facing rejection. The first step is to be positive about what you are setting out to do. But you simultaneously have to be ready to face rejection. Whichever job you set out to try for, you have to know that you could be rejected. Be confident when you go for the interview, but at the back of your mind, realise that youcould get rejected. And when you get rejected, you should not allow it to crush you. The second step is when you get rejected, you should figure out how to process that rejection, in the sense of what happened, why did it happen this way, what could you have done. Sometimes you don’t know if you are reading it right, so you should have a mentor, a support system, to advise you. The third step, which is extremely important, focuses on what you learnt from the rejection, what should you do the next time, will you do the same thing or should you do something else? The fourth step is to reboot how are you going to go forward. If you manage the first three steps, namely how to face rejection, how to process rejection, how to learn from rejection, then no rejection will destroy you. You will be able to get up, reboot, and get on with life.

CC: Any guidance for those who are in a position of power and do the rejecting? How can they make it more palatable for the one being rejected?

Regarding rejection, psychologists advise, ‘Don’t take it personally’. It means you are not being rejected; your CV is being rejected. You are not your CV you are much more than that. If the situation is flipped and I am interviewing someone, and I reject that person’s candidature, I need to make it clear why I am rejecting it. I have to give reasons to that person, what I like and what I did not like, or why the person was not a fit. In the course of my career, I have rejected several people who have applied for jobs. But it is important to always try and tell them why they were being rejected, what is the reason, and maybe also what they can do to get an acceptance the next time.

CC: Your book also comes at a crucial time when many experienced professionals are faced with job loss and rejection…

The book was ready in December last year and we had planned to launch it in April this year. Hence, you will not find the word Covid-19 mentioned anywhere in the book. Having said that, currently, many people are going through these big questions. The book answers some of them, telling readers that these are things we have to get ready to face, and that everything is not lost everything is never lost! You can always bounce back, maybe not next month, but after three months. You cannot lose focus, your self-confidence, and your defined purpose of existence. Like I had mentioned, you need to process the rejection, seek the advice of a mentor, maybe develop new skills, maybe you need to change your career direction, look at a different industry. You may be too close to the problem to define it for yourself, so may be you need to find someone who can tell this to you.

Springing back stronger

Best-selling author Ambi Parameswaran’s thoughtfully titled book, Spring: Bouncing Back From Rejection, takes its inspiration from the spring, ‘a twisted piece of metal that can be pushed, pressed or pulled but which always returns to its original shape or position afterwards’. The book delves simply and thoroughly into tackling that demon that we all face at some time or other rejection. Parameswaran handles the bugbear differently, asking, what if rejection was a tool that could be used as leverage to spring forward at every setback? What if there was a way to systematically process rejection and become a super-spring? Brimming with well-researched insights, he explores the theme through real-life examples and tales packed with rejection and redemption, demonstrating, how rejection can be used as a pivot to swing one’s career and business around.

The book is divided into three broad sections - Anticipating and Facing Rejection, Processing and Recovering from Rejection, and Learning and Progressing Post Rejection. From blowing a job interview and finding a new path, to the magic of reframing, and embracing and learning from rejection, the theme is especially pertinent for today’s generation, which, as author Apurva Purohit points out, is wilting under the pressure of showcasing success in their increasingly visible online lives. Seven worksheets to enable better handling of rejection can make for a useful, ruminative exercise in recalling past rejections, examining first reactions then and now, after-rejection responses, support systems, rejection learnings, becoming rejection positive, and developing a rejection processing system.

Ambi Parameswaran, author, brand and leadership coach, and former CEO of FCB Ulka Advertising, dips liberally into his own cache of rejection stories, sharing life lessons with wit, wisdom and honesty. Most importantly, the book coaxes out our inherent fear of failure, offering valuable and practical cues to handle a sensitive issue that many don’t even like thinking far less speaking about. As former captain, Indian Hockey team, and CEO Olympic Gold Quest, Viren Rasquinha sums it up, ‘In sport, the first lessons you learn is to accept rejection if not selected and defeat, which happens often. But character is revealed in being able to get up every time you fall. Ambi captures this beautifully in Spring.”