Dr Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj on Leadership Transformation, Authenticity, Values, and Evidence-Based DE&I

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts, and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions, or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started!

[00:00:32] I'm just giving myself the runway to pronounce your name, Shaheena. So, here we go. And welcome to my guest, Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj. Hi Russell, lovely to meet you. Was that me? It was good. If you want to add doctor, just to make the name even longer, because I am a doctor. Yeah, look, it's a delight for you to join me today, so thank you so much for that. Why don't you just tell the audience a little bit about who you are?

[00:00:56] Thank you, Russell. I'm an executive advisor that works with leaders in companies all over the world. I am also adjunct faculty for a number of business schools, and I'm also an author.

[00:01:10] And I'm still deciding what I'd like to do when I grow up for them. But for the moment, these are the things that keep me busy. So, I really enjoy working in the space of leadership transformation, building human potential, and helping individuals, leaders and organizations find different ways to solve problems they're facing.

[00:01:29] It is interesting, isn't it? When one asks the question, who are you? People tell me what they do. People very rarely tell me who they are. It is quite interesting how we've maybe built a Western culture, which is, I am what I've done, rather than who I am as a person. It's interesting when I talk to people from the East, they often very talk about themselves, who they are as a person, their family, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. I just wonder if there's something about our shared Western culture that is almost shy about who we are as people.

[00:01:55] I wonder, I have spent the last five years working in Doha, in the GCC. And I think there is something about the time it takes to introduce yourself. You're absolutely right that in different parts of the world, the starting point will be different. I suspect there's still that Western part of me that tries to be very efficient and mindful of who I'm speaking with. Yes, you're absolutely right. I think different parts of the world, you will use different reference points.

[00:02:23] And obviously we're on a podcast, but if I were to meet you, say in a social gathering, I'd probably be using again, different reference points of maybe someone we know that we can then form that connection with. So, yeah, I think the starting point depends very much on the context and then also perhaps the cultural lens through which you're sharing your information with around whether you want to build it, how you're building your relationship and efficiency being big things.

[00:02:48] Yeah, that's interesting. And that's a, I wonder, given we'll get digging into it all about what you do, but I wonder if that's quite a gendered approach as well. The fact that there's a lot of women in business who adopted a male gendered approach in a sense that male communication patterns to, to be able to build that credibility because it's often a very gendered world, isn't it?

[00:03:06] Yeah, absolutely. I think you're absolutely right. And I do spend a lot of time working with women in leadership programs, coaching conversations as well. And it takes a lot for women to own their success and then actually be able to articulate it in a way that is clear to others.

[00:03:25] And I say that just because we know that more often than not women have more squiggly careers than their male counterparts. And so you, you build on that narrative of this is how I demonstrate value or show my impact through perhaps what could be seen as quite a masculine lens.

[00:03:42] I also think it, again, it depends on the impact you're making and why, how, and why you're introducing yourself. But you very rarely would hear male leaders start their introductions with, I am a father of X or husband of Y. So I think that's the, that's become the norm in business.

[00:04:04] But I think at the same time, it's really important to be able to bring some of your personality and your identity into conversation. So as people start talking to me, invariably, I will talk about the fact that I have three sons, that we are a very international family. So very quickly, I'll talk about my husband, my children. So that starts to come out very quickly. But I think that starting point is always, here's my ref, here's the frame of reference from a work perspective. So you can find a point of connection there.

[00:04:32] Yeah. It's fascinating, isn't it? Because people bang on so much about authenticity, but it's almost as if, and I meet this with a lot of female leaders, it's that idea that they're doing that thing of fitting in rather than standing out and shining as it were. So it's almost as if they're competing in a way which is putting them to a disadvantage because they're competing against people who are experts at communicating in that sort of way.

[00:04:55] So, sorry, this is apropos, absolutely nothing. But I just find it fascinating with especially working a lot in the Far East as well, where people will start by saying, I have a father, I have three children. I'm a village elder, for example, especially in Africa. And I find that fascinating. It's not criticism. It's just a cultural observation.

[00:05:11] I think so. But I think even, and we could spend time on this because it's a real, one of the things I like to do, I like to really challenge assumptions and bust myths. And I really struggle with the concept of authenticity because it's often a very low determining for women to get women to be more authentic.

[00:05:30] And yet it becomes a very double-edged sword. And I think it is something around, we've got to understand the nuance of what we mean by authenticity, which is about being genuine, being from your space of comfort, what you're really excited to talk about as an individual or why you're in that meeting. Rather than when you say to people, bring your whole self to work, the workplace is not ready and it doesn't need to be ready for all of that. So I think that language is loaded and I think that's where the gendered issue becomes far more complicated.

[00:05:58] I think also you spend time developing the way you talk about yourself, your introductions, what you think also matters to the person you're talking to. I think that's really important. Yes. And I think we live in a world of a pitch mentality, don't we? Where we actually have this idea of this sort of elevator pitch and such like, you have to say something in 30 seconds and such. I just find it interesting.

[00:06:19] And I like the fact that you brought up authenticity, whoever brought up authenticity, because I'm a real non-believer in authenticity at work around that description of bring your whole self to work. Because I do think there are different personas and it's about, it's much more important that you show up to a meeting and you're briefed and you're planned and you're prepared and you're accountable rather than actually say, I've had a terrible day at work. Let me tell you how moody I am because, because one is both definitions of authenticity and which is the most useful.

[00:06:47] And I think, and I wonder where this very trendy version of authenticity has come from. And because, because people talk about it and of course it seems to be utterly unachievable. And I just think it's one of those burdens that's thrown on leaders by consultants whose job is to write a book, sell a book and find a need and create a need and make everyone feel bad rather than this concept of building resilience, which is about yes, learning, but also about testing yourself rather than always having to be fitting in such like.

[00:07:16] I think there are some really critical elements of which we could see the narrative and the discussions around authenticity starting to peak. And this would have been about over the last five to 10 years ago. It's very much along with the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda around allowing people to be themselves at work. So whether you look at it through a gendered lens or a race lens or sexual orientation, whatever, or even if there are intersections there, there is certainly something about.

[00:07:44] Being more comfortable in your skin at work. And that is really important. But I think the language around authenticity has become so loaded. So when people say bring your whole self to work, you really have to question what does your whole self look like and what does that mean? And as you said, if you're having a bad day and your team is relying on you, you've still got to get things done. And that's really important.

[00:08:05] But being human enough to say, OK, we need to create space for people to have a break or give each other that emotional support in that space. That's really important. But at the same time, we've still got to get things done. And I think for me, when I really strip it down and I've had so many conversations, I remember speaking to a friend who really strong leader from Southeast Asia, American backgrounds, a really strong mix of backgrounds, working with an investment bank.

[00:08:34] And we were doing a walk actually during COVID. And she said to me, I realized they don't really want me to be authentic at work because they cannot let. And I said, no, of course not. That's not what you're expected to do. But you've got to understand that essentially when we talk about authenticity, for me, it's really simple. It's being very clear on your values and being consistent with that. That to me is what authenticity is. And if your values are strong, you have to be authentic with your values.

[00:09:01] There's only so much you can hide those until there's a split between who you are and how you're presenting yourself. And you used the word earlier. You talked about accountability. And for me, this is one of the biggest, biggest areas of focus for me around leadership because I think we need stronger, stronger accountability around leadership. And that also means you've got to really be clear what your values are.

[00:09:24] So whoever you're working with, whoever is in your team at a particular point or an organization, your authenticity, it comes back down to your values and how you interact and work with people. You know, that has very little to do with whether you can still have had a bad day, but fundamentally people can look at you and say, yeah, she's having a bad day today, but this is not who she normally is. This is who she is. And that's what authenticity is about. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:51] And I think it's interesting because I always get uncomfortable with values as well. And I just think this is sort of the curve is moving, the curve is shifting. Because I think what you're talking about is the element of trust there, isn't it? What you're saying is what's the difference between what someone's saying about themselves and their values, in other words, aspirational. And actually the behaviors they exhibit, which are factual. It's a bit like organizations, isn't it? I'm sure you have. And they're looking at some of the organizations you've worked in. You've worked with huge organizations who spend hours and hours thinking about their values, maybe about integrity.

[00:10:19] And then you'll find that people are filling their expenses. And that's a very poor example. But it's true as well, isn't it? There is. And I think I worked in boards. One of the most successful boards I ever worked in had all sorts of interesting values, but it was massively successful. Huge PR earn out. There was bullying. There was grifting. There was all sorts of different poor behaviors going on that were grievances left and center. It was massively successful.

[00:10:45] And I think it is interesting, isn't it, to actually say my values are to be dishonest because that gets results. But that's a strange form of authenticity, isn't it? And I just wonder whether we spend too much time talking about that stuff instead of just getting on and doing what leaders are meant to do, which is to prove it's through their results. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's really that example you gave.

[00:11:09] I'm smiling as you said it because I'm thinking if someone can be that honest and say, I don't care as long as I get results, you know where you stand, right? And there is value. And recently, actually, I was running a leadership program for a major bank and we were doing a team building exercise. And of course, you know, the value of these things is lots of helping teams to connect. But it actually brought up some really interesting underlying behaviors because one team purposely did not listen to the rules and follow the rules and the other team did.

[00:11:39] And the team that broke the rules, their attitude was we got the job done and they did. They achieved the task. But the other team was absolutely furious and devastated. And what was interesting, it was an in-house group, intact team. So you could suddenly see the fractures between these two. Now, I was working with the internal coach and we handled that and had a really great conversation. But what was really insightful for me, later on in the afternoon, one of the C-suite leaders came in and I shared this story to him as the group was working.

[00:12:09] I went and told him, you know, we had a chat and I explained this is what happened. And he just shrugged his shoulders and said, it doesn't matter what you need to do as long as you get there. And of course, this is, you know, somebody whose message then filters down and certain group members, team members have said, this is what I need to do to get ahead in this organization. And others haven't. And this was a bank that prides itself on being a family-run business, various ethical principles, all of those types of things.

[00:12:36] I think if you look at the history, I've spent a lot of time as a full-time faculty member in various business schools. And I have understood how leadership and values, the different ways in which values are taught to leaders. I think what we're seeing now is a really interesting point where there's a departure from the sort of traditional model of values. And actually what even constitutes values? You've got the Western approach to values. You've got different. It's very contextual.

[00:13:04] But we know the values have been dominated by a very certain narrative in business schools as well. So I think the narrative, the discussions around values are actually opening up more and recognizing there is a very clear disconnect perhaps through values, mission statements that are plastered on more and what happens in meetings with individuals.

[00:13:23] And it comes back to the point earlier, I think, for me that values, authenticity, how you have enough self-awareness around how you behave and the impact you have on people is so important. So you don't have to have your values clustered on your blazer or your lanyard to say, here's what I stand by. But people can be able to talk about you and how you do things and what you do to achieve things in a way that actually demonstrates you as a person and as a leader. You've hit on two really massive different issues.

[00:13:52] And I'm really torn which way to go with this. So let's go to the simple one first and then we can come back to the other one. It's very interesting how many organizations talk about family being family businesses. Sometimes they are actually family businesses that are full of family. And some of the most family businesses, some of the most effective family businesses are prime family businesses. And again, we come into this idea that family businesses are often the most bent out of shape because families can be one of the most difficult structures in which to work.

[00:14:22] So I often think that this idea that we're a family business, therefore more ethical, whatever, is usually the most, and especially in Africa, the huge amounts of family businesses down there. They're often the most unauthentic, the most contrived in terms of structures. And I find that fascinating. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, it always struck me that with things like DE, and it's often been leveled out here, and things like values and such.

[00:14:49] They're mostly mechanisms to tell you what you can't do. And actually, leadership for me is a lot about what you can do. Now, I know that's some of the phraseology and such, and forgive me if I'm oversimplifying. But I just wonder your view on that. And I don't want to get stuck in DEI just yet. It does strike me that some of this corporate nonsense is really about slowing the organization down. Let's think about our culture and all that sort of stuff. But actually, what are we really saying when we're talking about those things?

[00:15:17] We have the culture we've got. If we want to make a culture, it's very rarely. It's usually about stopping something, isn't it? I do find it odd that we spend too much time not liberating and actually far too much time controlling and policing. And it's arguable that's one of the challenges it's had in the West with DEI because it has become a form of you can't do that, you can't say that, you can't go there, and you can't have that. And it's interesting because I spend a lot of time in the measurement world. And I've always said that DEI isn't a failure of concepts.

[00:15:47] It's a failure of effectiveness and measurement and results. And so I just wanted to throw that at you. And I think particularly with this idea that I find in my model of leadership, which is a good leader as someone who can make sure that productivity is much higher than the pay that someone paid. I often find female leaders are so much better than male leaders because of the methods and strictures and processes they use, not because of the DEI and values and constraints which are there.

[00:16:14] So the conversational side of it seems to have thrown into confusion the effect of this argument. We're going to come back to the family business points later on. Oh, we might. With the diversity piece, I think the way I've worked in the DEI space for 15 years, and it has been, for me, it's been very clear that it has, the whole approach has been about transformation and change. It's a different way of thinking about transformation and change.

[00:16:44] And from a cultural perspective, very rarely do organizations proactively seek out cultural transformation and change. It's got to be, there's got to be some stimulus or catalyst for it to happen. I think, again, for me, from the absolute beginning of my journey in this space, I've always been very clear that diversity needs to be evidence-based and it needs to have a very clear revenue result. It's got to be business-driven.

[00:17:11] So to me, whether if you're looking at improving innovation, and again, a big push for me has always been how do you encourage innovation for leaders? You need different perspectives, but you also then need the frameworks for different perspectives to come out. And this is where DEI should play at its best. So I, the triangle I work in for diversity and inclusion is cognitive diversity, different perspectives, different experiences.

[00:17:34] That is also supported by really strong leadership that encourages people to challenge, encourages people to question differently, encourages people to come out with different perspectives. And also that that needs to really strong innovation. Now you can tear each of these apart, but cognitive diversity for the longest time, we've really struggled to understand what that means. And we end up looking at it through the impact of, or through the lens of personalities or profiles.

[00:18:02] So we'll talk about gender, we'll talk about race, we'll talk about age. And there is merit in it. There's absolute merit. It's a start. It's a start because right now we're not probably that far off, but having little cells in our brain or little microchips in our brain that can identify how different my thinking is to yours. As I said, we're probably almost there, but you want to bring in different perspectives.

[00:18:25] As a leader, it becomes really important to have the skill to actually welcome those perspectives and move from a point of what I like to call un-ruscle. But you want, you can have very clever people working together and still being very biased in how they do things. And really you want not just those bright people coming together, but being able to bounce different ideas off. There was, again, there was a bank I was working with a number of years ago, and they was working specifically in the risk division.

[00:18:51] And one of the things they were thinking about, this was pre-COVID, they were thinking about future trends and risks. And it was very interesting because if you look to the profile of these individuals on their website, they ticked every demographic you could imagine. So diversity of race, gender, age, everything, right? Tick, tick, really good. But interestingly, when I actually started to dig deeper, that leadership team, they were all predominantly from the same discipline in terms of their degrees.

[00:19:21] What's happened with the chief risk officer was, had graduated in one particular field of science. And so he and his leadership, his HR team were subconsciously recruiting in that likeness. So while you had all this sort of profile diversity elements, their mode of thinking was very similar. And they did not realize it until I called it out to them. That was the really interesting piece. They had not seen it until I called it out. And then there was this shock of realization.

[00:19:49] So I think we're seeing an evolution right now in the diversity agenda. There's been a lot of pushback and knockbacks. And I think a lot of it's to do with a lot of floppy stuff that's been out there. But for me, diversity initiatives and organizations that have worked very well on them are data-driven and evidence-based and impact-driven. And I really challenge when I work with clients, I'm always talking to them, not just about numbers and presence, but actually impact. So that's interesting, if I may leave in there. Sure.

[00:20:19] So because if you think about the process here, and I think this is where it goes wrong. So for me, diversity, there is a true measure of diversity, and that's the amount of evidence conflict because diversity creates conflict. Now, I don't mean punching people in the face. That's fighting. Conflict is effective disagreement because actually you want more ideas, you want more disagreement. And it's in its place, obviously, because there has to be a time where you get on and just get on and do stuff as well.

[00:20:43] And so for this example, the argument for having neurodiverse people in the workplace is great because there is evidence that people with different degrees of autism are more able to challenge more effectively without the need to worry about upsetting someone. And so what you have is a leader who is able to bring together people who can talk in an adult fashion, which are conversations about the thing rather than about the person, which are conversations about the fact rather than the feelings. It's about understanding the difference between facts and feelings.

[00:21:10] And I think what's gone wrong is we've given too much credence to feelings rather than facts. We've given too much credence to an idea called radical candor. Now, if you look at radical candors having an adult conversation, why do we need to write a book on that?

[00:21:25] That's the ultimate indictment of a culture where we've gone to, we've treated things like DE&I as being soft and fluffy rather than being hard and maximizing the talents of different people by allowing structures and processes and leaders to actually have difficult conversations. Not difficult conversations, not difficult conversations, not difficult conversations, not difficult people, but difficult conversations where conflict comes.

[00:21:50] And we enjoy conflict and we have it and it's done in a way where it ends up in something that's actually tangible and useful. And I think leaders have lost that plot. I think what I find when I'm in either workshops or facilitating sessions or even in coaching conversations with the client and their leader, you do not always find leaders, more often than not, I do not find leaders who are comfortable and strong enough to walk the talk.

[00:22:19] They will say, yes, you can come and talk to me, but they do not walk the talk. And that I agree with you about leadership has really shifted because I think my view on this is people see leadership as an aspiration rather than recognizing the skill set that are needed. And that is why you do need books, which sometimes can seem as though they're being, they are absolutely just very commonsensical and obvious, but it's a reminder to people that actually this is what the basic is.

[00:22:46] So books that talk about being open, so radical candor or the conversations now, there's so many conversations about psychological safety and trust. This is not new, right? This is not new, but at the same time, the fact you have to explain to people and remind people that psychological safety means people need to feel, they come to work, they feel safe, they feel valued. I grew up in a family business. This was, these were conversations I grew up with all the time. My parents were certainly not from business schools, nor did they use language around psychological safety.

[00:23:16] But they wanted people to talk up. They wanted people to feel that they were valued and part of the organization. So I think, I think in many ways, actually, we do need to bring feeling back into these conversations because I think a lot of business schools, many business schools, many business models have stripped away the human element and made this very scientific, very robotic and an assumption. If I do X and Y, then I get to Z. And there is a school of thought in that, in leadership.

[00:23:42] And that has really dominated a lot of leadership training, again, very much from a Western perspective. Yeah. I find that interesting. And if we ever meet again, which I'd love to, we'll get into the whole feelings thing a bit more because I find it fascinating that most people can't actually describe what a feeling is. And yet they won't talk about feelings all the time. And I think that's even in psychotherapy. Psychotherapists and consultants and psychologists can't do it. You don't expect the average leader on the street to be able to do that.

[00:24:06] But I will challenge you a little bit on that, Russell, because if you entrepreneurs or you think about really strong, successful leaders, we often talk about them having strong gut instincts. Instincts and gut. And gut is about feeling, right? Instinct is, yeah. Yeah, your intuition. So I think it's, I think the problem is the language, again, has sanitized this and always tried to remove the sense of feelings as a soft, fluffy, woolly thing, rather than actually seeing it as a position of strength.

[00:24:33] And yet, ironically, we attribute it to so many successful leaders. So that's where the clash comes in. But yeah, I think that's a conversation for another day. Yeah. And I think, but I think it's classic in the business schools, isn't it? They, and there's something in the Westernized model, which you don't see in China and you don't see in Japan, of these creation of these false conceptual frameworks, which were often just created for someone to write a book and create something to make money from.

[00:24:59] And so leaders are constantly being pulled from pillar to post and often don't have those core skills to be able to have those difficult, those conversations. One of the aspects of leadership, I might argue, is courage because actually sometimes you have to sit down with someone and face them. I, I have done, I bet you've done this a hundred times. I've run resilience programs. Maybe for, to, for four and a half thousand people, because the C-suite will not have a difficult conversation with that within themselves.

[00:25:26] So they train everybody how to have, so no one needs to have them at senior level. And I've often said to people, save all your money. And I'll just sit down with a couple of eyes of all of you. And that would just solve the whole thing. Oh, no, no, we're not going to do that. That lack of courage, that lack of awareness. The old, the best book ever written in terms of job title, in terms of title was The Fish Rots from the Head, which I've always enjoyed. I've never read it because I started to read it. It was quite dull, but it's true. And I just, I don't know. I don't know. Are you hopeful for leadership generally?

[00:25:54] Or do you think that the models of leadership we have aren't going to survive in a new world with new challenges? I am hopeful. I'm over-optimistic. I'm a glass-half-old type of person.

[00:26:05] I think what's really fascinating for me, working in the part of the world I am now, and with all types of organizations, so corporates, government, NGOs, and also family businesses, the conversations I'm now having around leadership and what I'm planting, but also seeing reflected back to me on new models of leadership coming out.

[00:26:25] And I think I was, in fact, chatting about this recently with somebody about the swing back towards accountability and stewardship as a really important model of leadership. And yes, this is a model you can extrapolate it from servant leadership, which is around 50 years old. So you could say half a century, but sometimes we know the best ideas take a while to ferment and take us a while before we can catch up with them.

[00:26:50] Because to me, the other, the sort of balance with stewardship is the concept of wicked problems. And the fact the world we're operating in today, any leader, no problem has a straightforward solution. Any solution will generate further problems. And even that concept, wicked problems, is also 50 years old. Can I just jump in here for those of you wondering what you mean by stewardship? Yeah, sure.

[00:27:14] So by stewardship, it really, it speaks to the fact that leaders are there to be of service, to be in service to their stakeholders. Now that can be the community, it can be the environment, but it's about being in service to the wider, their wider constituents. It's not just about the bottom line profits being the single driver. It is actually broader than that. And I think the concept of leadership being in service is really important.

[00:27:42] It is something, so you talked earlier about family businesses and the level of dysfunctionality with family businesses. In some, not all. No, of course, in some, not all. But then again, it's not regional. You see it across the board. I have seen, my PhD 25 years ago, looked at family business succession in Kenya and the UK. And I saw phenomenal examples of family business leadership. And actually what you do see with family business succession, when it's done well, the legacy that it's a 50 year time frame they're working to.

[00:28:11] So stewardship is a big part of that. Yeah. I think fundamentally, one of the really big problems we have right now is how we reward and compensate leaders. And when you have the life expectancy of a CEO or the tenure of a CEO, in fact, I think it's dropping. It's about three and a half to four years where it used to be seven years. This is the problem because there is no incentive to think about stewardship. There's no incentive to think about longer time frames. Because as a CEO, you've got to survive.

[00:28:39] You've got to make sure that you've got the packages or the bonuses you need coming in. And then you've already got to start looking for the next role. So I am hopeful because I really do see, particularly emerging from the global self, different conversations and different models of leadership coming up. And that's what I'm excited about because we actually know the mess we are in collectively as a world is as a result of some good leadership, but also pretty poor leadership. It has to change.

[00:29:09] I'm very impressed that you've said that because I must admit, again, you have more experience with me in Africa than I do. I just worked in Africa. And it sort of struck me as a real shame that so many African leaders get sent to the business school or American institutions and they learn a Western model of leadership. And it's so alien to their own culture. So, for example, I was sitting with someone who had a C-suite meeting quite recently and they talked about the fact that they're not allowed to talk about anybody's gay.

[00:29:37] I'm with the gays, they said, but I can't say that out loud because I would have a real problem with that. And they forget that at the weekend, they're village elders who go into their own villages and they're religious people as well. And very often there's no sense of true religion rather than spirituality. Now, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it just strikes me that there's something to be done by bringing the best of all different worlds together in an emergency market like that,

[00:30:06] rather than saying, oh, let's just do what the Americans did. Because we've seen the flaw of the American market playing out at the moment. And if I was Africa, I wouldn't be worried so much about that. And yet you counter that with the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino model print camps. And that's very different. And I don't know why we don't look further east for our inspiration for leadership other than mindfulness and Buddhism, which is always seems to me a terrible chain. I think, I don't think it's just African leaders.

[00:30:33] I've worked with business schools in the UK for a number of years and had a large number of students coming in from Asia, Southeast Asia. So I think it's across the board. And I think in the absence of any other models, the dominant models that have existed for the last half a century still exist. And you can argue, okay, that's as a result of academics building on existing models. It's about publishers. You could deconstruct the whole of academia to try to understand how and why that happens.

[00:31:03] You clearly have the sort of top business academics practitioners who take the models and they've become the default for everyone. They have a place. They are not completely redundant. But the important thing is the increasing need to contextualize. And having worked for five years across the GCC, so in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi, and Dubai, a big push was around developing programs, developing content that was very heavily contextualized.

[00:31:31] So while the principles might have still been rooted in various models, whether you're talking about strategy or innovation or leadership, the models, you can apply them and use them, but they have to be very heavily contextualized. Now that's the same for when you talk about other regions. So the way that you would deliver or talk about leadership training in East Africa, and even in East Africa, you have very different countries. What you would do in Kenya would still be quite different to Tanzania. And we're not even talking about the West or the South or North Africa.

[00:32:02] So I think contextualization is important. I think there's a growth of academic institutions and academics and voices being heard through business platforms, through academic business platforms. That is allowing space for diversity. I've been in this business for 25 years.

[00:32:23] And I remember when I did my PhD on Asian family businesses, I was given a really tough time because I was told I needed white family businesses as my control group. And I kept arguing, I don't, because I'm looking at this from a very contextual perspective. I'm looking at this from a very holistic perspective. So looking at white family businesses in Kenya or in the UK would not give me, it's not a control group because it's not a comparison.

[00:32:51] And I'm just, I'm looking at what successional issues look like in these different populations of Asian, the Asian diaspora in East Africa and the UK. But I now see there's a huge shift and I'm really welcoming the big shift around a much more inclusive, much, much more multicultural perspective, a global perspective. But I can tell you even 25 years ago, it's not that long when you think about the lifetime of business and academia.

[00:33:19] But I remember being given such a hard time for not having that white Western control group as a perspective. Yeah, that's how it sounds, I think. And we need to throw this away really quickly because AI is going to go so fast. It's going to get, it's going to create discontinuous change. And I think that's the opportunity and biggest risk for us at the moment. And you've written many books and which is the one you think is the most relevant to resilience in the future?

[00:33:43] So the books I've written range from leading in family businesses, women's leadership, and then also thinking about the future of your career. I think there are two. One is future-proofing your career, which we actually, I wrote with my co-author during COVID. It was our COVID baby. Interestingly, it was five years ahead of its time. So yes, we talked about AI.

[00:34:04] Some of that is out of date, but the approach to being more entrepreneurial, taking a more innovative approach to your career rather than this linear way, thinking about how you become even more adaptable, agile. We're seeing it now. We're seeing it now. I'm living it. So that sort of proactive nature to career development is really important. And actually the book was flagged last year as one of the top 10 books for career disruption. So it has lived beyond its publication date, which is always a good measure for me.

[00:34:32] And the other one more recently around women's leadership, take the lead, talking about women's leadership and innovation. And again, I wrote this with co-authors when I was at HSA Paris. And you talked about courage earlier. And we created this canvas, the seven C's of leadership, because everybody loves a good canvas and lots of C's when it comes to leadership.

[00:34:50] But courage was a big one, a really big one for women to think about how they step up as leaders and actually as leaders, how you demonstrate courage in order to help your teams feel more courageous when they're dealing with uncertainty. Yeah. Noise was me tearing off a piece of paper and making a note. Sorry about that for those who are getting the thing. Okay. Look, I have just looked at the time and seen I've been very disrespectful and taken part too much of your time. So thank you for spending time with us today. How did people find out more about your work and how to get hold of you maybe?

[00:35:19] Or tell us those details. Sure. Very easy to get hold of me. So my website is shahinajanjuhajivraj.com. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm a very active user on LinkedIn. You can also follow me on Forbes. I write for Forbes and I have my own sub stack. So those are the key areas to where you'll find me hanging out. And for those who are pronunciationally challenged as I am, there'll be an economic page. That's been fascinating.

[00:35:46] Thanks for the, well, thanks for an exploratory introduction to you because I suspect that there are many interesting layers of the onion to peel to get to your depths and I think that's been really fascinating. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, Russell. It's, I've enjoyed the conversation. I feel we've, we've started to poke into unexplored alleys and lots more conversations. I'm hoping we've also provoked a lot of thinking for your listeners. And I always say to my audience or participants, if I've left you with more questions than answers, then I've done a good job. So I hope we've done that. Let's hope so too. Really appreciate your time.

[00:36:16] Spend your time with us today. You take care. Thank you. Hi, I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining. If you want to support our work, please go to resilienceunravel.com and you can become a member there as well. You can also send us a question there and even apply to do a podcast. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast hosts of your choice,

[00:36:44] as well as getting hold of some useful resources about resilience and a whole lot more. Join us next time on the next edition of Resilience Unravelled.