 Welcome everybody to today's Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership webinar. This is the first in our advancing leadership series and we're looking at personal leadership in action. My name is Zoe Arden and I'm going to be chairing today's webinar. I'm delighted to have with me a fantastic panel of speakers. Sudanshu Palsuli, Educator and Leadership Coach has written a number of books in this space. Patrick Hull, previously Leadership Development, now Strategy Director at Unilever, and Jessica Pallaghi, Head of Resource Management at Marks and Spencer's. So welcome to all our panelists and welcome to those of you who are joining us live. We have over 400 people joining us from around the world and a number will be listening to this recording afterwards. So welcome everybody. Just a few technicalities. You are welcome to ask questions via the chat function. A recording will be available afterwards. We've had a number of questions received in advance, many questions. So thank you for those. We're looking forward to getting through those and a few leadership series webinars coming up shortly. So this is our agenda for today. We're basically looking at personal leadership in action. We're going to start with a bit of the framing of the context from Sudanshu. Then we're going to look at the inner game of leadership, three considerations, understanding yourself, cultivating self-awareness, deepening your authenticity and clarifying your purpose. And then we're looking at the outer game of leadership, specifically understanding the context and developing a systems mindset. And the final takeaway, which seems particularly important at the moment, is around building your resilience. Just a word on that. It's an incredibly challenging time with COVID-19 and it's been a more important time to be looking at how we can strengthen our personal leadership. So thinking of you all. So firstly, just some evolving leadership, quick insights from CISL. Yes, we've been working in this space for over 30 years with many organizations globally and we've got a number of reports and courses in this area. And we've built on that insight. We have the Cambridge Leadership Model, and you can see that we'll be specifically focusing on the bottom half of this model today, looking at personal leadership and action. So guided by purpose, the necessary thinking values and practice, and then about being reflective and adaptive. And this webinar is specifically responding to requests from our network and beyond really to dive more into personal leadership. So we're responding to that. So firstly, I'd like to open up to Sadanshu Palsuli. Sadanshu is the author of a number of books. More recently, the Social Leader Redefining Leadership for a Complex Social Age. One of my personal favorites, I have it here. And published this year, Rehumanizing Leadership, Putting Purpose and Meaning Back into Business. So Sadanshu, if you can just give us a framing of the context. Thank you very much. Thank you, Zoe. I'm delighted to be on this webinar at a time in history, which is rather momentous. And hopefully a lot of the things that we talk about today are going to be supremely relevant to the context we are in. So we are talking about evolving leadership in the sense, is the kind of leadership that we have heard of and even practice until now, is it relevant for today's complex age, or do we need to move from a more, you know, the heroic leadership model that we've always had to a more collective capacity for change? Let's take a very quick look at some of the contextual reasons for making this change happen. The first one is the yawning gap between the way technology has been accelerating and the way our human ability to understand the implications of technology evolves. There's a huge gap in there and we are at the, at the rising end of that exponential curve where technology is going to take us to places we have absolutely no idea about. The past is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Not just unfamiliar, but it's irrelevant. So so much of what we've learned and practiced in the previous century is starting to become completely out of date. And this is something we have to keep in mind because that also includes the way we lead our people and turn up as leaders. The next one is, is so much is, is about how we are overshooting our Earth's capacity for sustaining life. And this is arguably going to become the most definitive aspect of why leadership is being called upon to change. And the current crisis that Zoe talked about a little earlier bears testimony to this. So these are the three dominant reasons for why we've got to change. Now, if you take a look at our leadership models until now, they all come from an industrial age where we learn to treat organizations and indeed the society in which we operate as a machine. It was very convenient to do so. We could apply the laws of science. But today that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the rise of complex ecosystems. As a result of that, we practiced efficiency. There's nothing wrong with efficiency as long as the world in which we are practicing efficiency stays stable. But when that very world, when that very context starts moving, efficiency by itself becomes quite inadequate. And the third aspect, which I think bears directly upon the way we lead our people and our organizations and societies, dependent on power as one of the dominant, one of the dominant tools by which we let our people. And that means talk down communication, control, making sure that what we control belongs to the kind of zone of knowledge that we operate and all that is starting to become completely irrelevant. So the question that we've got to ask ourselves is, what is the kind of leadership we require for the 21st century? Now, if you take a look at that slide, we've been used to having leaders as heroes who exogenously from the outside work on us, this model is reaching the end of its obsolescence. I'm going to invite Patty into the mix over here. But before Zoe introduces him, let me just quickly talk about the two aspects that I think I'll pick up a little later on. One, the need for purpose is becoming paramount and important. And number two, the need for empathy and authenticity. I'll come back to these points a little later on. Zoe, over to you. Brilliant. Thank you, Sadachi, for that excellent framing. So we now want to really dive into what we mean by the inner game of leadership. And we've got three points here. So firstly, this idea of understanding yourself, cultivating self-awareness. Secondly, clarifying your purpose. And thirdly, deepening your authenticity. And as Sadachi said, he's going to come back and make some comments. So, Patty, I know that you've been doing a lot of work in this area and you'll probably start with your context and then move to purpose and self-awareness. Yes, thanks very much, Zoe. So, yeah, back in 2017, when I was leadership development director in Unilever, we also came to the realization, similar to what Sadachi shared, that the way we were equipping leaders at the time was not sufficient for the 21st century. And so we embarked on a lot of research, crowd-sourcing insights and what leadership would be required in this 21st century that was not so dominated simply by the industrial way of thinking about the world, but far more around ecosystems. One of the big insights we had from the research was that we really need to get better at equipping leaders to be able to respond and adapt to the rate of change they are experiencing. And I think that's never more evident than what we are going through right now. We're seeing a rate of change with COVID-19 and responses and reactions, like never before. So how do we equip leaders to respond effectively in this sort of situation? Now, what we came up with is what we're calling our Unilever Standards of Leadership, which had a very big focus as you'll see here on both the inner game, what we were calling the inner game of leadership, which is the way you are as a leader and the outer game of leadership in terms of what you do as a leader. And we really, for the first time in Unilever, focused and showed both of these as equal parts of the leadership model. Previously, most of the focus had been on the outer game, what you need to do, how efficient and productive can you be as a leader, as Sudanchu alluded to earlier. Whereas the inner game is much more on who you are, how you've cultivated your self-awareness and purpose. And so we really wanted to show the organization that this was equally important and in fact that we needed to emphasize that even more at this time. So I'm going to quickly work through that inner game of leadership starting off with purpose and service, first of all. We recognize that coming from a place of purpose was probably the most important thing for leaders to do in a complex, ever-changing environment. When you use purpose as your North Star and your guide, you are able to make decisions in a very interdependent ecosystem, if you like, or in places of systemic change. I give a quick example of the Unilever CEO who last Friday announced that globally all our office workers would work from home. He made this announcement ahead of a lot of governments and that kind of thing, but he recognized that the safety of our people was of paramount importance and therefore made that call in the midst of a lot of other calls to take other courses of action, to do it more slowly, to only move when governments move, all that kind of thing. But instead he led from a very clear sense of purpose in terms of what to do. And I think that is the only way to be in these situations. The SEC building on that, we then said personal mastery, which is essentially really cultivated self-awareness where you're spending time on yourself and thinking about how you can bring your best self to a situation. When you're leading from purpose and consciously bringing your best self, that's when your people are going to respond to you and your leadership most effectively. What we mean by this a little bit as well is thinking about how can you be mindful in any situation of who you need to be? What does that situation need from you? Our chief learning officer Tim Mundan often talks about meetings and you've all been in them where you're sitting there and you're thinking, oh, this meeting's going nowhere. This is a waste of my time. But you carry on sitting in the meeting and not doing anything about it. And he always says we need to ask ourselves a question. How can we make the best of this situation? How can I be my authentic self in this moment? What could I do to transform this meeting and make it better rather than just doing my emails on the side? So that's a little bit of what we're talking about there. Always bringing your best self, cultivating that self-awareness of who you can be in that moment. And the Google research on leadership has shown that how leaders are is the number one determinant of organizational climate, which in the end has been correlated with 20 to 30% of performance. So extremely important. And then once you have these two elements in place, then you can be more agile as a leader. And we put that in the inner game, not in terms of what you need to do, but in terms of how you need to be, the mindset which you bring to a situation, which is about being curious and courageous. You can be more courageous in making calls when you've got a clear sense of purpose and you can be more curious when you are freed up from just thinking, oh, how do I need to react in this situation and thinking, actually, how can I respond? How can I experiment and learn the best thing to do in this situation? So in a nutshell, we've really tried to emphasize that through all our leadership development approaches. This inner game of leadership is being equally, if not more important at this moment in time as a leader. And I'll allude to more of that when we go into the question and answer a bit later. How are we going about doing that? Over to you, Zoe. Thank you. And then, Patti, if you wanted to just, you've touched on purpose, you've touched on self-awareness, and we've got some more slides here, which I think you've covered off. And I'd now like to hand over to Sadanshu just to pick back up on this, the third element that we've identified in the inner game of leadership, this point around deepening your authenticity. Over to you, Sadanshu. Sorry, building on what Patti just did a little earlier. Up until now, up until recently, except for a few people who thought differently, the dominant narrative in the world has been about a way of leading, which is kind of deep personalized. So it's almost assuming that I can turn up as a leader and lead in a situation because the situation demands that kind of leadership. At no point did we ever talk about who we are as people and how we bring ourselves into the place that we lead from. There have been certain movements in leadership. I think transformational leadership as a movement was important. The servant leadership idea was also part of the same genre, but by and large, the dominant leadership theories have all been about, really, the leader as someone who's got the skills, the charisma, the superman abilities who comes in, swoops down and sorts out the issues. Now we are starting to really understand the depth to which we've got to go in order to understand this inner world that Patti talked about. Now, if you go back in history and look at the way we as Homo sapiens, as a species, we behave and what evolution has given us. Evolution has provided us with two of the most amazing faculties that have been around with us for millennia. One is the need for purpose. Life may or may not have a sense of purpose in itself, but the fact is that we need a sense of purpose in order to do things more productively, more meaningfully, and that allows us to lead more purposeful lives and work more purposefully at work. And the second faculty that nature has given us is the ability to empathize, to be an empathize, not just as a soft emotion where I feel your pain, but rather the ability to understand really what's going on so that I can then take more informed decisions as a result of that. So in my last book, I called them the two vectors of evolution, purpose and empathy. And the point is we need to use them more often, which means we need to overcome another narrative that's been around in society for a very long time, especially after the Industrial Revolution, which is all about self-maximization, that we are all here for ourselves. Our businesses are meant for shareholders to make money. No one really cares about anything else. I mean, yeah, I can pay lip service to the environment. We have CSR and all those wonderful things, but in reality, business is about making money. And I think the time has come to go beyond that narrative and truly come up with a new model in which we as leaders turn up in the most authentic way possible, because without authenticity, you cannot liberate purpose and empathy. So this to me is the third missing element in what we've talked about so far, the need for authenticity. What does authenticity do? Authenticity in my book is not about just being yourself. That's a very superficial understanding of what authenticity is. Authenticity is something that liberates me from being shackled within an alternative narrative and being able to live purposefully, work purposefully, so that I bring my purpose into the theater of action. So that's where I go from the inner game into the outer game. That's what draws me to the outer game. And the second thing that authenticity does is that it frees up my ability to empathize. Only authenticity, only authentic people can truly empathize. Otherwise, it's a game. It's something that we put on and people can see through that quite easily. So to me, what completes the whole scenario we've been talking about until now, which is be purposeful, live purposefully, work purposefully, create purposeful organizations, and Patty gave an excellent example of that at Unilever. I've been talking about empathy as a collaborative force to work with, but the two of them get activated and get liberated when we truly learn to be authentic leaders. It is not easy. It is difficult. But at the same time as Patty mentioned a little earlier, it's all about how we want to turn up. And if each one of us takes that decision to live more authentically and to lead more authentically, we then start creating a climate around us in which we invite the other people to do the same thing. And that's when leadership gets away from that hallowed, a portal organization who is going to solve our problems. Leadership is something that we all can engage in. It's a space that we can all enter in. So I'll stop for now, Zoe, and I'll make sure that we come back to this point again when we answer some questions. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much for that, Shia. And thank you for tying that all together. So as you said, it's like authenticity is really the element that ties together the inner game of leadership that you and Patty have been talking about so far. And I now want to invite Jessica in. So in terms of the outer game of leadership, firstly just some reflections from CSL on this. CISL has worked on a number of papers including rewiring the economy where we identify levers in the system where we can make changes. And Jessica, I know that you've got some thoughts around what the whole system looked like. So from the inner game of leadership, just want to touch on. So we've gone from understanding yourself, cultivating self-awareness and the elements of purpose and authenticity within that. And now want to touch on just briefly the outer game of leadership. So from understanding yourself to understanding the context of developing a systems mindset or a whole systems mindset. So over to you, Jessica. Great. Thank you so much, Zoe. And thank you so much for Sudenshu and Patty for really creating a great framework to just build on. I put a quick definition up on there about wholesome thinking. But I really just wanted to say that, you know, for me, I've highlighted the related because it really is about understanding the connectedness, these entanglements. You know, how do all the bits interact with each other? And that definition is more to do with product because I'm coming from a retail perspective from Arts & Spencer. But really it is just understanding how things are related to each other. So I'm going to unpack that a little bit. So if we skip to the next slide, what we've got is a diagram which I think is really, really great at illustrating the sort of the partnership that divergent and convergent thinking need to be taken to understand and how to define a problem. So really I put this on there because I'm really just wanting to touch on how divergent thinking is about thinking expansively. So how do we really engage all of the people across broad parts of whatever system we're trying to interrogate? How do we get them all to come together and really just throw everything on the table? And so in doing that, we're thinking more of a web or a hive mind. And then we need to define the problem. We can't sort of exist in the space where everything is about having all the ideas out there. We need to focus and be a bit more linear in our thinking. So then we go from divergent down to convergent. So we're narrowing it down. We're defining what we need to understand in terms of this diagram is talking about a problem. And then when we're thinking of solutions, we're branching back out again. So we're going back into this divergent thinking space trying to understand, what are the solutions? How do we collaborate? So if you think of divergent as being, why not? Why can't we do this? Why can't we do that? And the convergent piece is more like why. So you've got this really great idea of them almost existing as two sides of a coin. So that's just a very quick diagram on divergent and convergent thinking within a system. And then next I just wanted to hit on system thinker. What are some of the wins? We're going from shifting these mind frames. So we're going from being disconnected to being interconnected. We're going from a linear line of thought where we've got a very structured, almost narrow perspective to being circular, sort of really trying to understand how two ends come together. We're going from being quite siloed to being emerging, to really breaking down those walls and breaking down those barriers in which we can talk to each other. We're going from parts to holes. It's really important because it's really easy to identify one part of a system and go actually I'm going to pull that lever without understanding actually the ramification that may have somewhere else. So it's about trying to understand where do I fit within this system. And then we go from analysis to synthesis and it's really nice to its understanding within these connections. What are those synergies? How can we work together? And then I think the last one is very pertinent for now. We're moving from isolation to relationship. So we're moving from this almost quite fractured approach to moving together to understand how we can relate to each other. So I think the key part is really on the next slide where I just wanted to really pull in as a leader what does that look like? Being systems focused and problem oriented is really just ensuring that you're steering the team, whoever you're working with back to the problem back to the issue. How can we understand and how can we prioritize the factors and dynamics that make up this complexity? There are huge problems and systemic change that's required that as individual parts we may not be able to see how we can come together but it's really about how can we make sure that we keep focusing on the system, we keep understanding and trying to interrogate it. The second point of that is being reflective and generative and I think this is really, really tough. It can be really challenging and especially in corporate environments and in most business environments where we're all time poor but it really is about trying to slow down and create space where we can have really good conversations that reflect on the way that we think or the way that we've approached something. We may have already jumped to perhaps a solution or an assumption and we need to release those. We need to create the space where we can have these great conversations where we can move to a more generative of what we can do and how we can move forward. And then the last one is about co-creating. How can we constantly think about this aspiration of health for the system? How can we really go, what do we want to create and what is this today? And then how can we use that tension of the present and the future to really fast forward and be a catalyst for the creation? And I think language is really important, so this idea of co-creation is really beautiful as opposed to a more top-down. So I think a lot of things we're talking about is almost like this collective leadership, which I think is really beautiful. So the last slide, I think it's really pertinent, so I just wanted to give some time to it in terms of building resilience. And just to say that actually the building resilience is our final takeaway absolutely and then we'll get into questions. So over to you all in building resilience. Yeah, I mean obviously the current situation we're in with COVID and all the other I guess other systemic and complex situations which have arose from it. We're really thinking of resilience and trying to interrogate what that means and not for it just to become this almost buzzword which sometimes happens in leadership and business. And I think for me there were three key things that I just really wanted to touch on today. And the first one was about being realistic. I think sometimes we have an assumption that being a resilient is a bursting optimistic person but actually if you're optimistic sometimes you can lose, it can distort your reality. So it was really just reflecting and saying do I truly understand and accept the reality of the situation or does my organisation if we were thinking more corporately and that facing into is hard and that's really just trying to accept where we are and if we are training ourselves to survive before it happens I think the other thing too is having a grasp of what is actually happening. Purpose so I mean Paddy and Sudenshi have already touched on this but from my perspective I was just trying to understand that value systems in a business in corporate sense like they sort of infuse environment with meaning so it kind of helps us to interpret and shape events. So you know resilient business is actually the value systems don't tend to change very much. So I think Paddy had a really good example in terms of just stepping forward and making that decision because that ability to react is really a reflection of the value systems that a business has in place. And then lastly improvisation, I think this is really interesting and we've seen a lot of these examples come out of the current situation we're in which is this idea of book elage so how can you be inventive how can you imagine new possibilities how can you use familiar objects to unfamiliar uses and there's some great examples of businesses that have changed the business model so impactfully and rapidly in the face of COVID. Those that were suppliers for hospitality are now creating food boxes to send to people's houses so you've got these really great examples of resilience where people have improvised so they've got a plethora of tools and they've just gone actually we need to be reactive to this situation and we need to think about how can we be creative in the way in which we can survive so I think that's really interesting as well so I've just touched on that Zoe I think you want to add some more and then we'll have more in the Q&As. Yeah absolutely thank you so much Jessica so in fact I'm going to move to questions now we've had so many questions in and we always want to make sure that we leave a really good chunk of time to deal with the questions and we appreciate that some of the questions we've got in people might be catching up with afterwards when they listen to this on record but we're also taking questions as they come along. So Dancio I want to invite you back in actually so and just specifically diving into the questions that we've had around purpose and authenticity we've had a question from the chat so I'll go to that first before we go to our questions that we had in advance which is your point about empathy and when we've had a question how do you actually develop empathy? I wonder if you've got some thoughts on that? Well this is a great question and I'm smiling because we often talk about empathy quite so easily and it's such a as a psychologist I can tell you it's a very complex psychological function. We all every human brain is born with the ability to empathize in the sense it's a latent potential function but it doesn't really activate itself in every human being right? So one of the preconditions for empathy to flower in a human being is that you need to interact with other people around you at an early stage in childhood and later on in life too other people who are able to activate and display that empathetic function but by that I mean it's a learned behavior when you actually come into contact with people who are displaying those same behaviors so it's not easy. Number two the good news is that it gets better as we practice it so think of it as a muscle think of it as going to a mental or a psychological gym and the more you practice it the more we actually create those neural connections in our brain which allows us to become more empathetic as we go along. And the third piece of good news is that as we get older we do become a lot more empathetic than before and this applies to men who generally develop the empathetic function slightly later on than women do so I'll stop for now Zoe on that note. That's brilliant. Okay, thank you for that Sudanshu and actually while I've got you primed I just want to go back to the evolving context so go back to the beginning and particularly think about where we're at right now so we had a question which was how can we use this global crisis to help expand our understanding the need for connection and interconnectedness. And you want me to take that on? Yep, if you wouldn't mind and then I'll let you rest and I'll come back. I'm sure Jessica and Patty are just itching to get into this question too because it is one of those times right I mean we are staring at something in the face which is telling us that the way we approach life the way we approach our work and everything we do is just irrelevant is obsolete and if there was ever a time in human history that allows us to step back and learn this is it now what do we need to learn very quickly I'm just making it up at the top of my head it's an amazing question number one we have to learn to collaborate across all kinds of borders and walls and here's a funny one because while we are doing this our global politicians are busy building walls literally protectionist walls so I think there's a bit of a paradox in there we'll have to break down those walls and learn to collaborate number two we will have to understand that our self importance is not that important when it comes to the big picture all right we will learn we will need to learn to respect nature more that's the second thing that we need to think about the third thing we need to think about is how do we actually use this opportunity to change our behaviors and habits that are now becoming pretty pronounced for example do we all need to travel the way we traveled do we all need to consume the way we used to consume can we scale down can we step back so I'm going to stop for now Zoe because I'm sure Jessica wants to just get into this I can hear Jessica I just really wanted to echo everything Sudentia said I mean obviously in a retail space this is all of these questions are very pertinent in terms of really understanding what do we need and I think what we've all really established over the last months or even two months is what Sudentia is saying how do we consume how do we live you know what is important you know really just trying to I guess strip away and really have this true self-reflection and around you know what do I need to function how do I connect with people I think the connection piece is really interesting like you were saying Sudentia about you know making ourselves borderless when we are actually in the face of having more borders put up you know I think there's been a you know a really interesting concept in terms of how do we connect with people how can we create new ways of connection you know because we're all moving into a more digital workspace but you know the technology that we have how can that be more responsive how can that allow us to create you know connections better because you know we're still not used to having this screen in front of us we still really love that connection and that physical space and energy so I think yeah I think what we'll see out of this is it will provide a catalyst for all of these questions that perhaps have you know we've put prioritized quite low down in the face of everything else you know what is the role of business what is the role of retail you know so I think it's really is one of those times where we it's unprecedented anyway so our responses will you know reflect that I'm sure yeah I'll throw one quick one in Zoe sorry I know you want to move on but just very quickly yeah I'll just give one small practical example I mean I think remote working and and this kind of video conference and that kind of thing is definitely going to be here to stay we're all going to learn this but even the way we do that is going to change so I heard someone on the television and the news this morning talking about how they have to work from home and now their children are at home and they have to be locked away in order to you know do their work and this is a problem and actually one of the things we've said to our people is please don't worry about that we actually posted that video that most of us may have seen of the BBC guy with their kids running into the room and all of that and just said that's going to happen you know we don't know how long this is going to go on for this is an emergent situation please don't feel like you have to lock yourself away from your kids and all that in order to be doing work calls and stuff you know that's just not going to work so I think it's even going to break down the barriers in terms of how we see remote working that connectedness is actually going to hopefully increase because we're going to be a bit more open you know in our own lives and that kind of thing through this so yeah just an encouragement to also even rethink how we do remote working is going to be key. Yeah absolutely we talk about bringing our whole selves to work don't we and it's like now we're bringing our whole families to work so and I loved your point there Jessica about you know really thinking through what we need I heard a great phrase this morning about what we need not what we greed which I thought was was a good one so Paddy I want to bring you back in just continuing this theme to some of the questions that we had in advance around understanding yourself cultivating self-awareness and we had a bunch of questions which I'm just going to lay out on this in this area and just give you an opportunity to come up with a beautiful blended response so we had questions such as do you believe including mindfulness and meditation as part of your leadership training helps to achieve the goals I think in a very much building on what Jessica was talking about earlier how do you advocate the importance of self-awareness when there's resistance from management and what are the best tools to use for self-awareness and self-understanding so really picking up on the work that you've done at Unilever this point around cultivating self-awareness and the inner game of leadership great thanks Zoe so very quickly the first answer on meditation and mindfulness and how important is that there's a very big resounding yes in fact Sudanchu was at our leadership forum together with us last year where Tim Mundan our chief learning officer led a guided meditation for our top 100 leaders on the final day when we were going through what is the leadership that's going to be required you know to lead us for the next year and that was the first time that it appeared at a leadership forum where normally it's all about the do-do-do but we've significantly shifted all of our leadership interactions to think about how do we include a mindful approach to what we do and that links with your next question in terms of how do we you know advocate for this kind of thing and we take a number of different approaches one is obviously talking about the science there's now so much research and science out there saying that we are I think distracted 40 percent of 47 percent of the time and not only are we distracted but that also leads to a lower sense of well-being so this constant distraction and interruption by emails and all this kind of thing also as Kyle Porter said leads to the shallow work that we never really do anything in any depth and if you really want to do something meaningful as a leader you need to be able to transform the system as Jessica was saying you know you need to be able to take a step back take a moment to consider you know what needs to be done and you're never going to do that and if you're not being mindful if you haven't taken a moment of self-awareness to think about where am I at this moment in time am I in the right space to be able to grapple with this situation or am I just simply rushing from one thing to the next so we approach it with a lot of the science help our leaders understand that because again I guess I wanted to emphasize which was also some of the questions that you're going to have leaders and managers in different spaces we often find that people are like super excited about self-awareness and purpose and they say to us thank goodness you're talking about this I knew this was important there's a third you're kind of saying right convince me you know I think I'll go for this and then there's a third you're saying gee how can I rush back to the office and do some more emails because the stuff's scaring me and so you've got to take different approaches you know where you've got to go across a whole spectrum of approaches of bringing in great role models and helping people interact and helping people who you know have strong empathy and that sort of thing we've got to create the environment that says this is really important so like putting it in our leadership forums we've got to bring in the science and then we've got to make sure that all the time there's signals I guess for people showing that this is something that we value and see is important brilliant brilliant that's fantastic Jessica Stanchu anything that you would like to add on this whole bucket of cultivating self-awareness Stanchu I'll turn to you first well yes I think we once again going back to something I've talked about before we carry enormous reserves of consciousness in our brains stuff that we don't use and so much of our waking time is spent in almost being like machine like we are robotic in our reactions we are operating based on biases and heuristics and the whole idea of self-awareness is to truly give us depth and that returns in the way we turn up as leaders so if any of us is really interested in improving our leadership presence as we call it the best way to do it is to start becoming more self-aware it's a wonderful mechanism for doing that so I'll just give that as one more addition to what Badi said right Jessica anything to add I think just you know for me it's just modeling that you know so anyone who's worked with me or worked with my team knows that I like to do this thing I call a marinade where I just like to sit with something you know if that means it's out the window on the train or I just and I actually just call that time out and you know I think it's just having that I guess that ownership but also that vision to say it's okay that I don't answer an email within 30 minutes I actually need to think about it I think we can be quite transactional it's very easy to sort of become in that default workspace I think you touched on that Badi in terms of like the shallow work so for me I just call it out and just say like I need time to think it's a shame that I have to do that but I think that's just been the nature of the beast at the moment so I actually just yeah I say let me marinate on that I will come back to you but I really I really need that time to I think I guess yeah just just sit with it and just really understand what could be a measured response and in turn rather than just something that's a you know off the cuff so yeah I mean I really think that I try and do that and I model that with my team and I encourage them to do it as well you know and sort of just say look talk me through what some sort of timelines are obviously we all have pressure and we all have people that we need to report to but you know I think that it's about trying to create space as I've always said you know where are those moments that we can actually capture them and you know and use them in an effective way yeah. Yeah super fantastic right thank you all I love I love that that idea of marinating I think it's a great one I want to just turn to the that we've had a lot of questions on the theme of clarifying your purpose and again what I'll do is that I'll put them into the mix and it would be great to turn to you Paddy and Cedant you first on this so the questions that we've had around clarifying your purpose so you know what does it look like tangibly for someone who is not allowed get on your soapbox leader to lead with purpose well that's probably good we don't want those type of leaders do you have any frameworks or powerful questions that help employees determine their personal purpose I think that's a great question I imagine that was part of your process Paddy so I'll get to that one in a minute and let's start with those two so what does it look like for someone to lead with purpose and what are the powerful questions to help people work out their personal purpose so Paddy do you want to kick us off? Yeah I'll start with question two first and then lead into question one so we discover your purpose workshops in Unilever for our employees we've had over 50,000 go through them in the last couple of years and essentially what they do it's a day of storytelling so we ask people to get together in small groups of four and share stories about their lives with one another and it's stories about what did you most enjoy doing when you were growing up as a kid you know what were some of the activities that you really enjoyed getting involved in we ask people to tell us about their proudest moment you know what was something that they had achieved that they were most proud of we ask people to tell us about their most challenging moment you know what was their sort of crucible moment that they've gone through in their lives that really changed them as a result of that and we ask people to tell us about things that interest them now what are they sort of hobbies or interests what are the things that they just do because they enjoy doing them and through a combination of those stories what the people in the group do everyone is tasked with the job of finding the common theme that runs through all these stories quickly give you mine as an example and then people come up with a bit of a statement of their purpose at the end of the day after we've done this but essentially my purpose is around bringing the essence of Pollyanna into the room Pollyanna in the English dictionary described as someone who's excessively joyful or optimistic and that's always been a feature of my character and who I am I remember one of my teachers writing this about me back home to my parents saying they can't believe how I'm always trying to find the positive in something and so there were all these stories that I had from my life and I was very fond of the book Pollyanna I really loved her way of helping people unlock new ideas and new ways of thinking about their situation and I realized through going through the workshop I hadn't actually realized this for myself but I'd realized through the workshop that that was something that was unique to me and that people really appreciated about me that I could bring that sort of energy into the room so if you think of what it looks like tangibly for me it's just about in situations that I'm in I always want to think how do we bring Pollyanna into the room especially in some of those meetings where everyone's just going blah blah blah how do we transform that situation and it's not about jumping up on a soapbox and all that necessarily and in fact there's lots of different ways we can show our purpose and simply through actions that are in line and are authentic with it whatever that might be but let me pause there and let Sidanchu come in and talk a bit more on that as well I think this really illustrates the point better than anything I can say and what I've actually seen I can testify what Patty's talked about you asked these people about their purpose at Unilever and they give you the answer just like that and it's not a contrived answer but it's a well thought through answer that comes from the very depths of who they are and I think it's a very simple framework but the whole idea is to liberate those stories from us and very often we are so busy and we are so tied up in what we do that in a way we have forgotten the essence of who we are and it's to bring that essence back again and put it to use so you see there are two aspects of purpose one aspect is to the self-awareness which is getting to know what your purpose is but the second more important aspect is what use are you putting that to and the interesting thing about purpose that we wrote my colleague and I wrote in the book purpose always goes outwards it's not about me it's about what I do for the others so there's a tremendous element of service in that purpose and no matter what it is it doesn't have to be about saving the world it could be about the way I treat one person who is a customer who comes to me it could be about the very very banal and little things but in the end if I'm living that purposefully there's a difference and that difference counts so I just wanted to add that to what Paddy said because there are two aspects to it and we've seen that work at Unilever Super fantastic thank you Jessica I want to come to you now and run through some of the questions we've had about resilience but was there anything that you wanted to add on purpose before we do that? No It's all brilliant stuff Absolutely Fantastic, well as you can imagine lots of questions about how do we build resilience that came in in advance and also we've had come through while we're actually on the webinar so so I just want to again what I'll do is I'll give you the array of questions that we've had in the sort of building resilience bucket and then sort of take your general thoughts so this point around how do you motivate others to take on personal leadership challenges particularly as they require men's personal effort so I think it's really talking to the idea of how do you stay resilient as a change agent how do you cultivate resilience in time of great turbulence and uncertainty and then if you're dealing with a sort of what I like to call soggy middle layer if there's a culture of resistance and fatigue at a middle manager layer how would you suggest effectively managing upwards and then some of the other things and I'll just give you the opportunity to give you not to answer each of these in depth but just give some overviews So how can this is an interesting one that's come in while we've been speaking how can you share measures that can be applied to a team setting to build resilience together so can you share measures that can be applied to a team setting to build resilience together so I'll get your initial thoughts on that and see if Paddy and Sidance you've got anything they want to add Yeah I mean sort of reflecting on this webinar specifically but then some of the I guess the outputs because I think what I really love about all of these opportunities is it's really great to upscale myself with this almost luxurious opportunity to read copies amounts of books and articles and I think one of the things that I've really reflected on and thought about is that this idea of resilience is just building on what Paddy and Sidance have talked about in terms of your whole self I kind of really am relying on this real toolbox of skill set that I've acquired throughout my life and through the different I guess avenues of my career but also parts of who I am as a person you know so I'd like to sort of really overlap what I've learned in different areas throughout you know in different situations so I think example of that is I help run an art collective in London and so I'm working in a very community collaborative environment where we're really just creating all the time you know and we are obviously doing lots of things around narratives and storytelling and sharing experiences so the things that I'm learning within that I'm really trying to then apply to I guess what is my business you know life you know how can I really duplicate some of this real authentic connections in a business sense but also you know how can I model some of this behaviour myself I think when I'm thinking about resilience I'm thinking about how can I actually touch on all of the parts of my personality all the parts that these component parts that I'm made up of how can I actually use all of those elements to my advantage you know how can they help me you know continue to be resilient continue to improvise you know to have purpose you know really just try and I guess bring it all together you know because I think sometimes we can compartmentalise our lives you know we think this is my business persona you know this is who I need to be in this framework but actually I think the people that I've been around that I you know sort of look up to in terms of that situation are ones in which I can there is that authenticity within them but I can see that they're who they are behind the role you know so I think that's really important when I'm thinking about resilience I'm thinking about how can I bring all of those component parts together how can I encourage that within my team who are you that's the question I constantly ask them you know so what makes up who you are you know where do you locate yourself culturally that's really important for us we always start a new relationship and connection with locating ourselves in our landscapes you know these are the natural environment that I come from so we talk about things you know sort of anthropomorphising you know mountains and rivers and things like that so it's just a real connection with everything that we are so I think for me within the team setting it's really important to have a obviously a resilient mindset you know and I think again that falls back on the value systems that are in place but I think in terms of you know sort of indicators it's not I feel like resilience is something that happens after the fact you know so when people start a conversation saying I'm really resilient it's quite you know if you're going to a job interview it's always quite challenging to think talk me through how you think that from the outset you know sometimes you have to live through it we go oh that you know and often you don't realise you're being resilient I think is another thing so you know I think we're constant I mean I'm constantly learning in this space about what it looks like in terms of measures I think it probably just how situations dealt with you know so for me again I'm super encouraging I'm being creative and collaborative in solutions so I really encourage my team to think outside the box in terms of what are the tools and what are the things within our within a gift and how can we use them to you know continue the service delivery or continue to understand the system and the problem and just you know really you know just encourage them to be very expensive in the way that they think so yeah so I hope I've touched on some some aspects there and happy to throw it out to the rest of the team. Yeah that's brilliant thank you thank you so much Jessica and I'll hand it out to the others it's just an interesting one that's just come through on the chat which I think is very much reflecting how we're having this conversation which is how do you incorporate vulnerability into your leadership for example feelings feelings of ecological grief so I think this this whole self pieces is really relevant Padi, Sudanchu, anything you'd like to add up there add to on the point of resilience obviously so much to say in so little time. Yes so I'll try and be succinct and then let Sudanchu come in but yeah I just love what Jessica was saying there it was you know about tapping into all the different aspects of yourself in order to access all those wells of energy that we do have at our disposal and it's so important whether it's creativity, whether it's being in nature whether it's exercise whether it's meditation or mindfulness it takes that self-awareness around where do I get my energy from to then because it's all about energy when you want to be resilient you need energy you know when facing tough situations and all that if you don't have the energy you can't respond as effectively as you need to so you need to know where your energy wells are where those are of your team so it's beautiful what Jessica does in terms of checking in with everyone on that and then use that in service of what you're doing you need to be able to ask the team and so you need the vulnerability and the psychological safety to ask this you need to say how do we feel and able do we feel to take this work on if you feel you can't actually ask your team that they're not going to be honest with you then you need to go back to creating more of that psychological safety being more vulnerable in front of them so they know they can respond because only when you get the true answer to that question do you know how resilient you can be going forward as a team do you agree dear that's you anything you'd like to add you've heard some wonderful insights until now all I can add is that if you the Patty's point about the safety being important for the vulnerability we have to be vulnerable we have to bring that vulnerability into the team and encourage our team members to do so but they'll only do so if you've given them a safe space otherwise we shut down, we posture we pretend to be what we are not what Jessica was talking about earlier and it just defeats the purpose and I think it's important to watch oneself in terms of how is one coming across to the others and I have a very simple framework I'll share with you, I call it the CAB each one of us has a CAB framework CAB, C stands for conversations, A stands for actions B stands for behaviors so on any day just take a mirror and look at your own CABs what are the conversations you're having with your people, what actions are they seeing you take what behaviors are they seeing you display are they authentic do you display the whole vulnerable aspect of it do you display resilience do you have those conversations with your people and it's a wonderful way to just do a check on yourself every now and then or ask people they'll give you feedback so that's the thing I just wanted to add to the mix wonderful thank you so we're coming to our last few minutes of this webinar and we've done lots of questions and really appreciate the interactiveness of our audience and I feel like we've covered it off a lot of a lot of those questions so I'm just wondering if so just we've had a very nice comment actually from one of the participants which is I have to jump into the next corner minute but thank you so much for making this webinar happen it's been really uplifting in these uncertain times I appreciate the effort and the preparation that went into it makes me feel quite emotional so thank you for that feedback I think feedback is a wonderful gift and absolutely so last thoughts really so the title of this webinar is personal leadership in action we've covered off purpose self-awareness authenticity the context and developing assistance mindset and we've spent a lot of time really exploring resilience would like to invite each of you just a last word before I close if there's any final takeaway that you'd like to give to people that are joining us live now or will be listening later silence as I didn't prepare for that I've got one I just wanted to share I think for me personally sometimes I walk into a room and there isn't a lot of people that look like me in terms of being a person of colour and a woman so I think my big my key takeaway would be don't think that you shouldn't be there so I think it's instead of thinking why me think why not me and also use that to your advantage because I can tell you now there are people who would have underestimated based on assumption and bias and all those things that we know that we're all working on but actually you can use that to your advantage you know so there are covert ways in which you can really turn a situation around to be more beneficial for you that you may have thought in the first instance so my one word would be you know you should be at the table lovely brilliant thank you Jessica Paddy wow I think that's beautifully put I think the only other thing I would add is yeah just to be really purposeful and mindful about all your interactions so that actually you can try and overcome some of those biases and assumptions so really think about the person who's in front of you what you can do for them how can you be in service of them wonderful thank you and Sudantia a final word from you Rosh okay I'll just evoke the title of my new book rehumanising leadership I think I think it's time we went back to humanising our relationships humanising our workplaces humanising everything we do to ask the question what does it mean to be completely human because we are not we are truly you know this is a time when we can actually step back and ask that question to ourselves let's begin the process of rehumanising again that's my last take on this thank you brilliant okay massive thank you to Paddy Pollyanna Hull Jessica Pallaghi and Sudantia Palsuli for joining us in what's been a wonderful conversation today and thank you all who are joining us live or will be listening to this later and just a reminder dates for your diary of the next two webinars that we've got coming up so thanks to our panellists and thanks to all of you for your wonderful questions thank you thank you