Shakti - Closing the Leadership Gender Gap - Featuring Puneet Sadchev
Today's guest is Puneet Sachdev, a global people and culture leader passionate about leveraging data, technology, and humanity to create inclusive and innovative workplaces.
In a world of incremental technological changes, Puneet believes staying close to people is the key to success.
In this episode, Puneet will share his views on the existing shortfalls in how organizations are developing senior female leaders. Puneet talks about Shakti, which is the principle of divine feminine, and how it can help bring balance to leadership in a world that is still predominantly masculine.
Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to close the gender leadership gap in organizations.
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Managerial & Leadership Development
#leadership #change #femaleleadership #shakti #divine feminine #puneetshadchev #podcast #pitypartyover #stephenmatini #alygn
TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: You lived in so many different places, so many different countries. What have you learned from all these traveling and all these experiences?
Puneet Sachdev: When I look back on this and who I am as a result of it, of course one of the things which comes from doing that and having, like you said, lived in four or five different continents, worked in all over US, UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, a bit in Africa as well, actually Botswana off for very short period of time.
I think you have to have a lot of tenacity or you will develop that. Because remember each time you go in a new context, some situations I've had to go and create my life there. And then you have to start networking and you're dealing with a lot of stereotypes, a lot of mental unseen barriers. That's one thing which I have learned that just constantly have to be upping your game, build your networks, try to find people who understand who you are, what's your value proposition. That's one.
It makes you very adaptable. It just makes you extremely adaptable. You can be, you can hit the ground running in utterly, I can talk myself that hitting the ground, running in no time is absolutely becomes a part of, you know, who you are in.
In a way it's adaptation for survival as well to an extent. The challenging side of that is that networks, friends, because when you go to these places, they are people who you would like to hang out with, but they have their local schoolmates college friends. You gotta be there for a long period of time. And then also it depends on the culture. So I think it's you know, it's been a number of these different things. So it's, it's got it ups and it's got it's it's downs as well.
Stephen Matini: Have you always known that you wanna be in change management, leadership development, or is it something that unfolded over the years?
Puneet Sachdev: Not really. Stephen, no. My dad's from the Indian Navy, the area in which I grew up, whatever, where, you know, when finishing off college school in, in the nineties, the middle of the nineties and all of that, there were very few options available.
There was in India, the engineering, doctor, lawyer, armed forces, rights? So mainly these were where you would get the jobs. I have a very, I had a very impressive uncle, my mother's brother, Tenesh Tata. I mean, until today, I don't think I met anybody else who was as impressive.
Very charismatic, very handsome guy, dresses up extremely well. Very intelligent international chap, one of the pioneers in the hospitality business in India. One of the first few people to go overseas to Salzburg and study and come back and he joined the Roy Hotels as a management trainee in their first batch in the 1970s.
I think subconsciously that was planted that I want to be like the mau. That's what we call Uncle Mau in India. I finished my college and then I applied just for that program. Nothing else. I just applied for The School of Management. Now it's called The Center for Learning and Development. I actually don't know what I would've done had I not got selected for that way stringent the talent acquisition process. But two thousands of people apply and they hire only 10, 15, whoever they think would be general managers down the line, right?
I think I was one of those eight or 10 who managed to make it that year. That's the way life started for me. Transition into OD work, which I do right now, people, culture, organization development, change management. It wasn't a part of my plan. I was doing very well where I was. What happened was General Electric was ramping up, scaling up at India considerably. Okay. This is I think like two thousands now.
One of my fathers grand, Dr. Cherian, he was a management consultant in organization development working globally. He had suggested, why don't you think about stepping out of the hotels into corporate?
So yeah, the transition was completely happenstance, but I love the work I do totally, you know, number of things, right? Which for me, create flow at work is connection with people is very important for me to know that, to have a sense of contribution into the world, into people is important, it creates that to me.
As far as I have the ability to do that, to be creating the solutions I design to be, to bring in research, to bring in technology, work with smart people, solve problems. I'm happy , honestly. And I think the choices that I've made, it has given me all these options. So I really think it's been really lucky to have been doing all this work for so many years.
Stephen Matini: You have traveled hard, you have worked hard. Because you have seen so many different cultures, you have experienced at so many different organizations. From the perspective of someone whose specialty is change, you know, is organizational development, have you noticed any elements that seem to be consistent across all these experiences?
Puneet Sachdev: It's very easy to now get squared data driven and tech and all that. Fantastic. I think it has its place, but we don't want the tale to act the dog in many ways, and the dog in many cells, many sense it still remains the people, it still remains the humanity of the world, right?
And we have a very privileged show to play, in my opinion, to raise the consciousness of organizations. That's the lens through which I do my work is to go there to elevate the consciousness of this organization, whatever that looks like. Consistent elements for me will always remain staying close to people, no matter what you do.
Let's look at it in two different ways. Explain close to people. If you look at it in the sense, if I'm leading a team and I'm dealing with stuff, then having a regular one-to-ones with the people having two-way communication channels, having the opportunities to, to best practice sharing, to understand, to help grow and all of that.
So I think, I mean always staying close to the people has been important to me to understand the people as much as I can. I'll give you an example.
Hotels, at least the Old Roy is very, very strict on the customer satisfaction scores. The the board or the leadership team of the organization, every day they would get these CSAT scores from all hotels, 30 hotels in the world. They would go through it. They would actually give a call to the general manager of a property if they saw anything that was, so it was a measure higher than I think for them money was the employee experience, right?
In that context, the teams that I ran over there, we always ended out with the highest CSAT scores consistently throughout f and b operations. And the other part was the highest density of employees of the month. And I can attribute it to one or two things.
We are still remain universal no matter where you go. I really, honestly, genuinely care for the people that I've worked with. I not only knew them, I knew about their families, I knew about their dreams and desires. I used to go to the houses, give them flowers and cakes. If there was any occasion, I've done that all personally.
Even today when I'm working organization consultancy, I feel that what has made me successful and because it's me, right? I'm walking through all these cultures and everything else, I think is that first of all, that ability to just care about the people, build the rapport and be honestly on their side. Everything else will fall into place.
I believe when you do that, when that's the soil in which you are cultivating what you are doing. Yes, there's people analytics there, employee experience there, employee external strategies, all that will come. But the essences, you're serving these people today.
The other very important aspect, which has to be recognized by any leader is wellbeing. It's very overwhelming all around. Whether you look at the social environment, political environment, now you add the old complication of generative AI and all the anxieties, which that is bringing up with people. D&I is a big deal. There's so much going on. You need a robust heart in a human being to be a leader today. And that comes with a lot of self-awareness. I think that's the genesis of everything for me.
Stephen Matini: When you work as a consultant and you step into an organization, there's somehow that component, the human component that the consciousness is just not part of the organizational fiber. How do you move around as a first step to introduce a such important concept?
Puneet Sachdev: The way I would look to influence to shift the zeitgeist of leadership, to elevating the consciousness and the inclusivity of the human being is of course, number one, you walk the talk, right? So you role model it yourself. And fortunately for me, I have done incredible amount of my own interpersonal growth work, spiritual work.
So I think it has automatically given me a level of depth naturally to create a level of comfort and safety for people around me.
So role modeling it and the other way, the best way to do that is because we have, we have the influence, you design your leadership solutions with that built in. So I think it's just weaving it into the employee experience and into the design of solutions in leadership development.
The easiest, and I suppose the most lowest barrier way to do that if you, if that language was very confrontational, is through coaching. It's through incredible coaches, people like that can shift the consciousness of leaders and organizations hiding the right kind of external people. Coaches then trigger more of those conversations in many ways.
Stephen Matini: Are you ever afraid of the impact that digital and artificial intelligence could have? And you have a lot of experience in digital transformation. Do you have any concern moving forward?
Puneet Sachdev: I think if I also think about concerns, I would break them up into two different buckets. One is systemic and let's say organizational. The other is the whole human aspect of it, right?
I think as far as the systemic side of it is concerned, I would say there would be the, the whole data privacy, the, the cybersecurity, all of that is a very big concern.
I think on the human side of it, which is more importantly as well today, is this constant and sense of surveillance, protection, insecurity. It has a lot of implications on mental health because the more and more we dependent on looking on the phones and the technology that is becoming a much more mental health epidemic than it has been, especially for the younger generations. I think those are the most common, I mean I, I think that's very commonly understood that these are the key concerns today as far as tech is concerned.
Stephen Matini: You mentioned last time when you and I talked the notion of the divine feminine. You talked about Shakti. Would you mind sharing, how did you gravitate towards that?
Puneet Sachdev: It's, it's an evolution. Yeah, it is, it is a percentage of the work I've been doing recently. Still not the bulk of it. Maybe it will in the future, who knows. But it is a, it is it's a percentage of what I do today. It's an evolution of the work I've been doing with women leaders, right? So I've been doing the coaching work, actually, it, it's even before that coaching over time I've seen that most of my clients tend to be female leaders. Bulk of them, like 60, 70%. They have been female leaders, you know, for one reason or the other. And they've come from all over the place. They've worked incredible places like Hollywood and from Rolls Royce to Goldman Sachs, like I said, et cetera. So a lot of them from tech as well. Cause I do coaching on the NASDAQ Center in San Francisco.
So I'm on the coach on the coaching panel for the number of years. I do that as well, Jen, from there it was to start looking at what would a solution look like for in-house women leaders, right? So most of this was one-to-one work with women who would come to me outside of my regular work consulting work that I was doing. So I started looking at the, the data around it, you know, now the concept of divine feminine in a very simple, very simple language is that it is both it is basically about the qualities of creation, nurturing the life, giving energy, the empathy. We are talking about those qualities. That's what we mean of the divine feminine and that that is there in both men and with women, it's just that it's easier, it's more prevalent and it's more of the d n a of a woman than it is of a guy.
When I started looking at the data, right, in terms of what are we doing for when there's a lot of talk about programs and solutions to address the leadership gender gap, to look at elevating women's leadership. All of that is going on right now in, in the world, as you know. So I started looking at some of the information. To me it still looks very, very traditional. It may be given a very fancy name of like wild, which is women in leadership development is one of them. But even if I look at some of the top business schools, I still think it's so masculine. It is so outside in the, the crocs and the essence and the drift of what is happening is around imposter syndrome, confidence, networking and understanding your leadership. So it's generally in that genre still. This is based on my research, right?
So, but that's what I notice and the soil in which it is created is still outside in. You are the problem. You go get fixed, go to this program, to this leadership, women's leadership program, learn these different things, and you come back into a patriarchal container in most of the situations. And then you fit in and you behave with those, those masculine capabilities or those somewhere masquerading there to be able to move up and succeed, right? So you are subjugating who you really are at the core and that's what it looked like. Like you know, you So it one is that the other part of it, what I don't think they do very well, they do not address the water in which this is going on. There's a huge big cultural piece to it. The performance environment piece to it. The legacy thinking, the legacy practices.
I mean, if you're not gonna address that, even if you do a great job with women leaders, they're gonna leave. That's what you'll do. You'll only make them more attractive, more self-aware to know that this is what I don't want , I don't want to do this anymore. You'll make them more aware of it. That is once they get tuned into truly who they are. So it began from their step to look at it. And then from there I started then I designed the solution. It's got shock theorizing. Shocki means the divine feminine as you already mentioned. And it's got two pillars to it. One is the individual tra the other thing as well, which I would like to add as well, most organizations, the work is still very cerebral. It's still very left brain oriented, right? I don't think it is transformational.
Now you look at the life of a woman leader, right? Let's just say directors, VPs, all that, they're probably late thirties. They're into their forties and fifties and that's their station in life today. So you, let's put two and two together. You look at their life outside of work, personally, there's data around it. In the UK there's a recent research of 2000 women leaders in organizations researched. They talk about traumatic experiences and between the, I mean many of them between, let's say between 40, 45 and 60 65 have been through at least five traumatic events in their life. Sexual abuse, domestic violence, there could be the menopause. And you have to remember this all leaves an energetic signature in the nervous system of that human being who is dealing with it, whether they acknowledge it or they agree to it because it's become so normalized that, right?
You just get on with it. But it does imprint. Where does that show up? It shows up in your wellbeing and your health. Most of the autoimmune diseases, 70% that happened to women. I'm not saying there's necessarily a core correlation, but there is something around there. Mm-Hmm. . The other part of it is decision making. You know, it will a hundred percent impact the quality of decision making. I think when you're designing a solution for the women leaders, and I've written extensive, I, I recently posted around International Women's Day, I wrote an article, which is when women lead firms win the metaphysics, the business case, and the approach for closing the leadership gender gap, it starts with this whole conversation about the divine feminine. Why is that important to the humanity? And then I have put a lot of data around it, McKenzie, Lena Gallop Gardner, which clearly states that when women lead firms win, you know, very much whether you look at the ebot performance of an organization, which is top quarter in their, in women in leadership, they will outperform their peers up to 25% in earnings before income and tax.
And then there are statistics about women, what 30%, at least 30% in leadership positions is a tipping point for profitability, et cetera, et cetera. So the number of stats are quartered over there. So it's very clear the solid business case to be able to doing, to do this work comprehensively and well enough. So the solution which has been designed, which I've designed, has got two core elements to it. One is the transformative experience for the women leaders. It's done in a group coaching and an action learning container. Okay? So business goals, what are you gonna be accomplishing or what we do? But diagnostics beneath Engram 360 on leadership do all that stuff. The ultimately the goal is to be able to take them deep with the themselves. The deeper they go within themselves, the more they get in touch with their own core needs, what they have not addressed, what they are, the better, more integrated people they will be.
They'll have clearer boundaries. They'll have a clear yes, a clear no that will have its own ripple effect in the organization and at homes in a positive way. It'll be uncomfortable to begin with. But if the sponsors and the people around these women are aware, then I think, you know, you know what you're creating. It's a very interesting quote by an Indian Bollywood actress, let me see if I can remember it. Her name is Pre Zinta. She says that behind every successful man, there's a successful woman behind every unsuccessful man, there are two women and they are behind. I thought that was hilarious. And behind every progressive woman is a progressive man. And that is the essence behind every progressive woman leader is a progressive organization. And that is what shock the is designed to do. So it's there, it's got wellbeing, self-compassion, understanding of leadership masculine and feminine leadership dynamics.
So it's got all that covered. It's a mind, body, spirit approach. The other element of it is looking at the performance environment. So that's, so this is a seven month journey, the individual journey, which can be bespoke and tailored. The other one is looking at the performance environment in the organization. So core element of the women's journey is the group coaching, the leadership, the business, your own business goals, personal development goals, introspection, self-compassion, and also allyship. If an organization was to say, just run the group coaching and the action learning piece, that's not shocking. That's, that's just group coaching it for it to be shock. The, the group coaching part of it, your business goals, the introspective piece, the self-compassion, the wellbeing piece, and the commitment by the organization to allyship is critically important. That makes it what it is, right? And as a part of the onboarding journey, all stakeholders are a, are there present in the room to hear the same language around let's say the divine feminine, the importance, all this data around what's happening, I shared with you about the traumatic experiences and business impact data.
So everybody is present to the same container that we are creating and that can be then taken and that these women leaders can be supported individually as well as organizationally. And then there is a five to seven week kind of a diagnostic piece that dives into looking at the performance environment in terms of policies, practices. Is there a clear charter on our approach towards general equality? If so, what is it? What are the KPIs around it? If an organization is well down that path, then it's fine. Carry on doing that, great. If not, then this is a comprehensive solution to actually genuinely address the challenge of the leadership journal gap and creating very targeted, very bespoke way persona oriented solutions for women leaders who require a lot of nuance. And you can't just do blanket the stuff that we've been doing in the past.
Stephen Matini: You have so much experience when you hit a rough spot, when you have somehow a bad moment. How do you get out?
Puneet Sachdev: I regularly have to be dealing with situations I haven't dealt with on a fairly regular basis. That comes as a part of doing, having worked and traveled so much and being in so many different situations, my own just dreams and desires. They just keep expanding and I'm always in a situation, I don't know what the bloody hell to do now.
One is that I have got my practices and routines where I think are just the most important things to do. Getting up early in the morning, I do my prayers and my meditation for about a half and half, 45 minutes, sometime longer, sometimes lesser. I run regularly. And that also the running came into my life also because I was dealing with a lot of mental health challenges during separation and divorce. I mean it was about 10 years ago now, but I did not want to go down the root of antidepressants, which every people around me was suggesting.
I spoke to a few people and I said, no, I don't want to do that. So the way I dealt with it was more through prayer and running, quite honestly has been incredible. So I think that really has to be dialed in into your life. Even if you're not dealing with constant change, just looking around you, it's very overwhelming today. Ultimately, why you doing all this? To just keep your nervous system in the, what you call the parasympathetic nervous system as activated, which is your rest and relax. It's a nervous system game, Stephen.
Nothing else. If you bring it down, it is all how you are regulating and co-regulating your nervous system. Co-Regulating would be with the people around you, the people supportive with you that COEs gives you energy and stuff like that. But otherwise, my own regulation mechanisms are my prayers are my running and exercising, having my green smoothie and eating clean food.
But when I'm going through some really challenging questions, decisions to make, then my prayers and my fasting, I do fast. Then for decisions, I would fast. When I say fast, I'll probably have one meal in a day for let's say three days or whatever I wanna be doing, depending on what I'm dealing with. So I can quiet and be noise within me and really get access to the truth. But the fact also is, you know, you can do all of that ultimately when you have to make a decision. It still is tough. It still is so bloody tough to make certain decisions. Whether it was a decision to move from the UK to Australia, right? The decision from them, it was a personal decision to have been made, et cetera. I regularly work with coaches and people who I trust as especially one lady Daphne.
She has been the most incredible support for me for the last 10 years. She knows me extremely well. I definitely will have a touchpoint call with her or maybe a few of them, but whoever I think I need to bring into the conversation. So that is my way of making decisions through challenging situations. And if you talk about organizationally when I'm working with teams and let's say you're going through challenging times.
You know what I have done for my, what I've done is, number one is with the team being very open and upfront about what is what we are dealing with. Clear open communication, involve the team, break that down into constituent parts, bring the team into cre. Looking at that, okay, you look at the problem of the, let's say the revenue. You look at the problem of the people side of it, you look at this, you look at that, and then let's work on that together.
So that makes us all very cohesive way together on this. What I would also do is to have some kind of play or creative activity. Alright, we are gonna go do some basketball, but we'll do something like that. We get out. So we are tapped into our creative energy as well to create different solutions from the problem. What I've also used in the past very well is best practice visits or conversations quite okay, who do we know who is done this? Let's just line them up or let's go to their office. Let's have a conversation. So do that and do research.
Stephen Matini: Thank you for your generosity and for all these amazing thoughts. This is really, really wonderful. I
Puneet Sachdev: Hope for this episode to be
Stephen Matini: Listened to by as many people as possible. Thank you so much.
Puneet Sachdev: Thanks Stephen. Thanks for the opportunity.
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