2460 - Moving Beyond Feel-Good Workshops to Achieve Sustainable Leadership Results with Cygnet Consulting's Shaheena Janjuha Jivraj

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Shahina Janjuha Jivraj. Shahina, it's great to have you. You are the founder. Well, you're found on the web. You have a long and storied history of leadership, but you're found on the web at your name,

1:15ShahinaJanjuhaJivraj.com. We've got that all linked up. So to our friends that are listening, you can just click in your show notes and you'll see a direct link to that. You are a author. Take the lead is, is that your newest book? Yeah. It's the, hi, first of all, hi, Josh. It's lovely. It's great to have you by the way. You've got many others. I want to share. Future proof your career. Championing women leaders beyond sponsorship, succession agent, family firms. So yes, Shane, and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh. It's lovely to be here with you today. And so, you know, one thing I love to do is just find out what high-level leaders do for fun when they're not at work.

2:02And I understand that you and your husband recently relocated, and you are taking to the local culture. Tell us more about what you're doing for fun already. sure so uh literally four weeks ago we relocated to kenya my husband is kenyan so we have roots here um but we moved um ourselves our family three boys well grown-up men and a teenager and also a dog the dog was the hardest to move um but we've been we've been in nairobi now for four weeks so um it's it's definitely been a journey and um you know being in a new environment gives you a chance to try different things so um my big challenge actually in terms of finding new hobbies I've started um dance classes I used to be a tap dancer as a kid and now I go to dance classes which kind of like local dance dance hall bit of hip-hop local culture so it's very very very very hectic and very physical but it's so much fun and at the same time you've just got to let go of how you would do things and immerse yourself in what this crazy active teacher is getting you to do, which is amazing.

3:15Oh, my goodness. So I don't know if you pictured yourself as being a hip hop dancer at any time, but now you have the opportunity. Absolutely not. But do you know what? I'm just surrounded by people and it's and everyone's just so joyful and having fun and no one's taking it seriously. That's that's. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And so now you're in Nairobi. Tell me about the area. Yes. And Nairobi is really interesting because it's the, you know, Kenya is the hub of East Africa. You've got some fantastic economic growth going on. You've got the UN headquarters here. You've got such an entrepreneurial vibe.

3:55It's so, so buzzy and busy. You've got growth in the tech sector and also areas like health are really growing. So everywhere you look, there is so much growth, so much energy going on, really big conversations for entrepreneurs, for business leaders about how governance and local needs need to be put first in order to really support the growth, both of the population and the needs of the local economy as well. Yeah. Well, Shahina, you are also the founder or co-founder of Signet Consulting. Can you give us an overview of all of the work you do? I mean, obviously inclusive of your thought leadership.

4:34Sure. So I've spent about the last 25 years straddling two really important areas, working with global leaders and working in business schools, global business schools. And I've worked across 60 countries, so bringing research and evidence both into classrooms and into helping leaders think about the critical areas that affect them. And this is both entrepreneurs, but also leaders of multinational companies. and for me Cygnet is the umbrella organization where I can offer a lot of support and work to leaders whether it's through advisory whether it's through coaching whether it's through strategic thinking and deployment or training and facilitation and what is particularly unique about the way I work and what I do with leaders I have spent the last two decades teaching practically every business school model you can think of when it comes to leadership, strategy, culture and thinking.

5:29And while the models are helpful, we actually have to allow leaders to break out of that, those sort of very confined ways of thinking and actually work to frameworks that serve them. So that's my big area of work. And then I'll tell you, I'll share a little insight because I hope we get to talk about this later on as well. I have a new baby coming out, which is Delta Futures, which is all about looking at how I can use data to find ways to be more quantitatively, sorry, I'm going to say that bit again, Josh. I have a new baby coming out, which is Delta Futures, which is a data-driven approach to measuring the impact of leadership programs.

6:10And this is really looking at how you measure sustainable behavioral change in leadership programs beyond the kind of fluffy feel good of what happens in the classroom. Yeah, well, please do continue on that. What are the things that we can measure? How do we measure that? Is it just, well, I'll let you kind of give us the 101 on that. I won't speculate. later okay so i'm going to give you a quick whistle stop talk because this can this can take a long time but you know what you find time and time again when you're in executive education programs um the focus is very much on the entertainment value did what was this enjoyable yeah did the participants have a good time did they feel they get something out of it you know sometimes i think it's a bit like being a performing monkey as long as everyone's had a laugh and they felt good about the program they've learned a little bit and you know you're out of the room and I think um the real challenge is once that kind of uh the the enjoyment has worn off and you know the uh you're actually stepping back and going back to your team or back to your workplace and saying okay what have I actually taken from this program that um I can start working on with my team and more importantly how am I sustaining that shift in behavior over three six nine months um that's really what I'm talking about in terms of impact and I look at things that really get into the heart of how we think how we behave why we do what we do so bringing creativity bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to everybody not just entrepreneurs this is about dealing with shifts shifts and risks so it's deep-seated um approaches to thinking that need to change and this requires time and practice yeah well and yeah please i mean yeah no i was just going to say you You know, often you find if you're being very brave about this and you actually get people to review the programs six months down the line, they will be far more counted about what's really made an impact for them.

8:03And that's the data that I'm starting to work with with companies to say, OK, let's go beyond the kind of, you know, how many people do you have in the room in the presenteeism discussion to actually what impact is this making for your leaders? Because you've invested so much money into these programs. and then more importantly, how is that cultivating that sense of a learning organization for their teams and how do they take it back? Yeah, well, you know, in all of the work that you do in and around leadership, I suspect that there's probably some key insights that I hope you won't mind sharing to our room of leaders listening right now, because obviously, you know, we want to empower our leaders.

8:43You know, we want to obviously, you know, exercise great leadership, you know, in our own roles. What are, are there some things that stand out for you that you think are valuable to be talked about more, to be more conscious or aware of? I think a really, a really big one for me is looking at helping, oh, well, a really big one for me is helping leaders think about how they come to decision making and how they actually handle uncertainty and make decisions when there is extreme turbulence. I've talked about this, it was a big part of the book we wrote, Future Proof Your Career, and it's very much driven for me from my background in working with and supporting entrepreneurs, because as an entrepreneur you have the ability to see opportunities in chaos, and right now we are experiencing a huge amount of chaos a huge amount of turbulence and if we're really honest this is not going to stop anytime soon we are just going to have waves of uncertainty and turbulence and so what I do help them to really the question is that they're asking so seeking clarification around the problems they're solving you know we know the stories leaders when you talk to them that their agendas are full of so many problems and issues they have to deal with but actually what is the key problem that they need to solve and then also helping them recognize how they solve problems because even if we like to believe we're drawn to challenges to innovation to doing things differently intellectually we might get that and say yes I'm really open to it emotionally it's quite terrifying yeah and change can be can be very very unsettling at at the least but it can actually be really really sort of paralyzing for people and there's a gap here and what I do I work with leaders to help them understand intellectually this is what's going on here's the neuroscience this is what your brain's doing but let's actually get to the emotional elements of this and help you understand not just how you're responding to change but also those below you because this is unpacking control so when you are able to help leaders see and understand how they can understand the problem and then unpack it in a way that makes sense to them and teach them how to do it, they can then take that back to their teams.

11:05And so it's multi-layered. It's a bit like, you know, I'm peeling an onion, but it gives them the tools to recognize they are in control of this. Not only can they do it for themselves, but they can go back and do it with their teams as well. Yeah. Shahina, any ideas on, you know, resilience? So if we know the change is inevitable, it's unsettling for our team members. It's unsettling for us, for those of us who are founders, you know, we live, you know, often with a bit of instability, but, you know, definitely a lot of movement, you know, different, you know, every day it can be a new surprise.

11:43Sometimes it feels like, and maybe, you know, some of us just get used to it. And, you know, we develop a thicker skin for that. But are there any traits that maybe you do to ground or center yourself for that inevitable surprise? So I think there are two bits to this, Josh. I think that the area that I love working in is around self-efficacy and the sense that you push yourself, you get yourself out of your comfort zone. You are so aware of your reactions and feelings to how that experience went, whether it was great or whether it was not so great. It doesn't matter. you've actually pushed yourself out of your comfort zone um and the more that you build your self-efficacy and getting yourself out of your comfort zone the easier it is to become more resilient i mean this this is every entrepreneur listening to this will know completely what i'm talking about you've done it i've done it we know hundreds of people around us who've done it as well the more you get yourself out of your comfort zone um you are able to the next time there is something unusual comes along you're able to step back and think i remember when x y and z happened i was able to handle it so going into those stretch roles getting yourself out of your comfort zone and really building strong positive associations with it hugely important when you failed i'm a big big fan of learning from failure i know it sounds like a cliche but it is unbelievably powerful and i'm still sometimes surprised when i say it in rooms people nod but i know they haven't got got to that because they're just not ready to deal with failure or their organizations won't deal with failure we know this the the the most learning you get is when you fail i have i can tell you in my two decades of being a university professor it is that when the students get their grades back it's the ones who got the c's and the d's who are barging knocking on my door demanding to know why they didn't get a a or a b i've never had an a grade student come and ask me why they didn't get an a plus or a b right it's it's that's it's that disconnect from what you expected and what happened um and what i do because again to me it's such an important element of walking the talk especially you know when you can talk to theory but actually walking it it's getting myself out of comfort zone so i was telling you about the dancing earlier or finding roles i take on roles or i work with um clients or i work in areas that i i'll argue stretch roles for me a few years ago i went to did a piece of work with a telecoms company in Tajikistan and this was during the tail end of COVID in 2021 and I spent two weeks working in Khorog which is like the northern part of Tajikistan right on the border of China and I learned I knew my knowledge and I knew what I wanted to talk about with them and I was working with different business schools and universities in this but I learned so much about the culture and how business operates in that part of the world so for me I'm always always looking for more stretch, for more opportunities.

14:41And it then means that when there is uncertainty, as we are going through now, I've got resources I can build upon because I've been there before. So Shahina, your website is your name, shahinajanjuhajivraj.com, which we have all linked up. Tell us about the work that you do in consultancy and how folks, who should be in touch with you You've worked with a lot of great brands, Lloyd's, Cisco, Deloitte, Mattel, NHS, University of British Columbia. You seem well loved by your clients. What is that work? Yeah. So my work, it really starts often with a conversation around a leader who's going through some sort of change or transformation.

15:33And it could be either driven by them or it could be imposed on them. Now, it might be an individual that is looking for career advancement and they want some executive coaching or preparation for that next big stretch they have. But it could also be someone who is in a leadership role, whether it's for their business, their family business or a large complex organization. And they need to get their team into a more strategic mindset and building an innovation into that thinking. so often what happens you know you have that great conversation initially you can see what the client needs the client also sort of has an idea of what they want and then we get to an agreement on what the advisory work could look like so it might be coming in and doing some workshops some training facilitation for their teams it might be doing some coaching for them it might even be doing some research I often some of the companies you've mentioned I go in and I've done research for them, which on the back of that then leads to a program and a plan of how to develop their human capital for their leadership team.

16:34And then, of course, inevitably, coaching is always intertwined in all of this. All right. Shahina Janjuha Tivraj, your website is yourname.com. Shahina, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for the work that you do, also a lot of the advocacy work you do, particularly with female leaders. Thank you so much for that. And it's been a pleasure having this conversation with you. Thank you, Josh. It's been a pleasure meeting you.

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