Interview Highlights:
Q1. What is one leadership lesson you have learned from a non-traditional source such as hobby or personal passion?
A. My personal passion, also reflected in the bio data is FITNESS.
I’m a Fitness Freak and if I look at fitness or sports, there are lot of life lessons, leadership lessons that we can take away.
One possible leadership lesson that we can learn is the importance of setting and pursuing SMART goals SMART. We all know right, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound.
These are the basic criteria that help leaders define and track not only their progress, but their teams progress so that they can get the desired exact outcomes.
Now for example, if I look at fitness, a fitness goal could be to run a 10K race in under an hour by end of the year or to lose 10 KG. This goal is very, very specific. It is measurable and it is achievable. It is relevant because obviously the person has decided to achieve a certain fitness goal there and it is time bound.
Similarly, when you get on a project right when you are targeting to achieve certain objective or certain goal in your team or in your organization, you tend to set SMART goals which will give you a framework that not only increases the team’s motivation, but more importantly the focus and accountability.
And it gives you chances to achieve, celebrate the achievements. Apart from this, there are two more very important lessons which personally I have taken away.
First one is to embrace challenges and learn from failures like in my fitness journey. It has never been a linear process for me. It has always been full of ups and downs along the ways wherein things have not gone the way I have anticipated.
But this, I still continued my journey.
Likewise incorporate a leader or if I talk about my own self. We don’t shy away from any challenges. that we come across rather those challenges becomes more of an opportunity to grow and improve initially.
Good leaders tend to adopt a growth mindset. That’s what we step in and that’s what fitness also teaches us. So basically, it’s all about improving the ability with effort and with continuous effort and achieving the desired goal.
Another important one is- Leaders need to seek feedback and measure their progress on a continuous basis. Like, fitness is not subjective, but it is more quantifiable with wherein you have a lot of tools and coaches who are actually measuring your performance.
Seeking feedback should happen on a continuation basis, not only from their superiors but also from their team that builds a strong bond within the team and a sense of trust which helps them to achieve what they want to. It also gets a fair idea or a perspective around the strengths and weaknesses or the areas of improvement where a leader can improve upon.
But majorly these are the three one is setting SMART goals, courteous lead, embrace challenges and learn from failures and 4th would be the feedback and measure progress.
Q2. Can you describe a few situations when you had to lead A-Team through a major HR transformation and tell us how it impacted your growth as a leader?
A. I think every HR leader would have gone through the transformation journey during the phase of COVID.
Because that was something which is absolutely unprecedented and absolutely uncalled for and it not only impacted us personally but professionally as well and the role or function of HR during that time became really, really important.
We faced a lot of challenges and opportunities wherein we had to continuously support the employees and leaders during this crisis. If we look at HR per se, we were the forefront of health, wherein we were helping the employees and the organization to rework on the processes that we were working on.
Everything was redefined right from the operational point of view to looking at the sales figures, looking at how we were approaching or taking care of the mental well-being of our employees, business continuity scenario, planning every. Everything.
HR was basically involved in the crisis management part, and they came out real strong. They not only demonstrated that they had the value and influence as a strategic partner and leader, but they were the key pillar of the organization during this phase. In fact, HR also came out as a champion of employee well-being and engagement.
It was the crisis phase wherein we were not able to reach out to employees face to face, which now is happening, or which previously used to happen.
So how you can promote, how you can keep your employees protected and healthy during the era when they were highly in, stressed out, they were facing anxiety, they were isolated because of the pandemic. I think at that point in time the focus on the mental health counseling, wellness programs came up, flexible working arrangement came in and if we look at now post COVID, we are still continuing with this, and this has become one of the major work areas for HR wherein.
Employee well-being has come up like anything while it was there earlier but now it has more focused and a sense of community, purpose and belongingness towards employee has come up. I had also faced a certain similar situation in my organization and when I was talking to my other colleagues who had in our friends who are in different organization, they have or also of the same view.
That it was during COVID when HR really transformed, when it not only taught us the creativity part, but it has shown its path of being resilient and relevant and being empathetic.
I mean, all of a sudden there was a focus on being empathetic. In terms of us as leaders, we had to show empathetic leadership. This terminology was not being used so often earlier.
Either the leaders were more people focused or they were task focused. But in between this being empathetic and showcasing the empathetic leadership part has come up during this COVID phase.
Spenderbig has taught a lot of things and if you really look at it, even digital transformation is one of them. The key focus area was that it has happened during pandemic and now we are working on everything is getting digitized whether you talk about training, recruitment benefits, employee engagement or the other in some manner, this digital transformation is happening.
COVID was a learning school, a different era, working together and I’m sure HR will prove its potential to shape the future of work in organizations. Now in the post COVID era. It has taught us the new ways of working.
Q3. Can you talk to us about the importance of psychological safety in promoting well-being at work?
A. Promoting psychological safety in the workplace is very, very crucial if you want to really foster a positive work environment where employees not only feel supported but valued.
And if you really look at, as I was saying earlier post COVID, that support and feeling valued is what is needed because people are more focused towards themselves. And it has a direct impact on their work area. So, providing that psychological safety can lead to increase in productivity.
It will help you with overall well-being and reduce the overall employee turnover. There are various ways if you want me to narrate how we are doing and what I do as a leader.
My other mentees say as well that we should not focus too much on having the perfect. It is OK to make mistakes. It is OK that we are not able to complete something. It is OK to get being, because perfectionism at times leads to micromanaging your team and closing that space wherein, they can really grow and bloom. So if you let them make mistakes, avoid blaming them and give them that space to learn and grow, that will really recognize these individuals and will bring in innovation and trust within the team itself. It is fine what you are. Give your best shot.
Now that best shot as for the corporate could be you are giving them a progressive path and you’re giving them the space to grow and you as a leader show them that path.
Second more important thing is one needs to be very empathetic. So, people need to trust you when you’re communicating with them, communicated with proper care. You need to learn how you can make them experience vulnerability. You have to learn with vulnerability. You have to learn openness when you are open about your struggles and opinion. It will help your team members to practice the same behavior.
Get a coffee. Have a meeting over a cup of coffee or over lunch or dinner wherein you are sharing your set of experiences and your life lessons, your corporate lessons that will help them to build up a culture of openness and sharing, what challenges they are facing and how it can be. They will ask you questions. They will seek responses or solutions for what they are facing in their professional life.
And the moment you open that window, be sure that you have open doors for your team where they are sitting together and working with you towards your objective, towards what you want to achieve. Because that trust is established.
Another thing is the psychological safety that comes in is when you engage with your team members in real authentic manner so there I have seen leaders wherein , they don’t share facts, they don’t share the true stories, and they feel that if I exaggerate and make my team members fear, then I’ll be able to get the better result. It’s like creating a crisis and getting the best out of it. But that doesn’t happen always. One needs to be very, very considerate and very authentic when engaging with the team members. So, it is extremely important to have that also as a team leader, if you are giving them space to speak up wherein, they can share their thoughts, wherein they can share their ideas.
You will find that you are not only promoting the openness culture, but also you are moving away from the biased culture as well. All of us have got that unconscious bias which tends to close down a person and also plays a lot on the mental and emotional well-being of an employee.
Maybe it could be a cultural bias. It could be a regional bias or a gender bias. She’s a woman and she can’t work in late night or something. However, when the critical project is there and if you have really shared the authentic information, the real crisis of the entire scenario and she might agree to work upon for that thing. So as a leader, it is very, very important for us to showcase all this.
I think these are the main critical ones and something that I also would like to advocate here is as a leader we should not rush to fix things and achieve timelines before the timeline. Some of the leaders tend to give a timeline. If there is something that needs to be completed by 15, they give their team a timeline of 10th. No, let’s give a timeline of 10th only and tell them that while on the 10th we need to finish our work, let’s target to finish it by maybe 6th or 7th so that we have scope for improvement. Now when you’re doing this, you’re allowing people to think through the challenges that can come up.
You are allowing them not to be destructive or rushing around. You are actually enhancing their productive productivity and making them work or making them learn how on the given timelines, which are the realistic timeline. And because tomorrow they will also grow as leaders. So, what they will take away, they will also learn from you.
Q4. What steps one should take to upskill HR professionals and ensure they have all the competencies that they need to be able to work effectively when it comes to AI based technologies?
A. In the corporate world what is happening, especially as the HR professionals, are ensuring that they have the necessary competency to work effectively with AI based technology. While people feel that with AI a lot of things may not work since it will be taken our way by AI, it is important for us to understand the principles of AI. The possible advantages and drawbacks of making wise choices like AI can be widely used in hiring and training employees.
Then second thing is having a critical thinking ability to ensure ethical and objective hiring and talent management procedures to assess and analyze. See with AI, especially the generative AI, the assessment and analysis will change and are changing.
The application of AI in HR is something that we need to really learn upon whether we talk about automating applicant sourcing, resume screening. So with online working mode, a work from home, lot of people are giving interviews through web, Microsoft Teams and also there are certain software which can actually assess an employee’s expression and give a character analysis of that individual that how this person will be whether he or she is lying or whether he or she is being true to you, what kind of a person he is, everything can come up.
So then if you look at the training, even the customized employee training programs can be curated through AI. You can have performance evaluation reports, you can have chat bots which you can use, who respond to the basic queries related to a product. In fact, that has been there for quite some time, but people are now using it to facilitate even employee engagement.
We had come up with this VUCA terminology earlier that it’s a WUCA world. So I don’t know if there is an extreme, the next word beyond VUCA that has come up because the technology is changing with a click. So, we need to continuously explore the applications of AI and HR.
We need to stay updated with the latest developments that are happening in AI so that we are able to stay in tune with how things are moving. And we cannot say that we are HR and this is technology. It’s a joint thing that is working now, so let’s not get redundant. Let’s see how we can work together and grow with AI, specifically looking at the application part in HR so that our skills remain relevant.
Q5. Talk to us about any literature or any book that has shaped your HR leadership journey
A. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is what I recommend to everyone.
This is a book by Stephen R Covey and it presents a framework for personal and professional success. It is based on the universal principle of effectiveness so that even habits that we talk about you can apply anywhere. OK any aspect of leadership like communication, collaboration, trust, vision.
The first habit is being proactive. You can approach a particular situation. The second one begins with the end in mind. So, when you have envisioned the result, working backwards is something that one needs to really do right, and you can if you as a leader. If you are working like that, you will have a road map or a framework for your team to work upon and reach the desired destination while you have aligned your actions keeping all challenges in mind.
The third habit is putting first thing first. Again, it is about not procrastinating but putting something that is an important and urgent task first.
Most of us end up doing the trivial and the distracting one. So, this really helps you maintain your physical, mental, and emotional well-being in place. Because if you have handled all the critical things until they become in a firefighting situation and something a habit that I really love and it’s very close to me is think win win.
That is how you can seek mutual benefit and you can work in collaboration with others. So, you’re not in competition or a compromise with others, but you are working together so that working together builds trust and a long-term relationship as a leader. As a leader, if you have to be successful, you have to think when, when be it with the competitors, your customers or your team members and another.
The last one I remember is seek sorry. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Something which people lack. Listening effectively and empathetically is extremely important.
Because if you want anyone to hear you, to listen to you and do the things as you want them, you need to give them space so that they can share your views and opinions, they can share theirs, they can express themselves well. So, this book has been a Bible to me, and it has been there since last 20 years now. And I think anytime I can go back and look at the habits and see which one I need to refer to. And trust me, if you start practicing one, the other six will follow you.
Closing Note
Heartfelt Thank you to you for joining us on this episode of the CHRO Mindset Podcast and sharing our expertise. I’m super confident that Vatsala’s perspectives would have left a lasting impact on our audience.
Thank you for being part of the CHRO Mindset Podcast.
We really hope you have found this episode insightful and inspiring for your own HR journey. Stay tuned in because we are going to get you some more exciting discussions which are lined up with more folks in the weeks ahead, so don’t go too far.
Thank you.