Get your goat: So you want to move to the country and raise goats - A podcast about change
Get your goat: So you want to move to the country and raise goats - A podcast about change
Season 3/Episode 45: The Art and Strategy of Leadership Storytelling with Gayathri Shukla
Gayathri Shukla, known for her empathy and commitment to diversity, joins us to share her journey from engineer to digital transformation leader in mining. Her story reflects the challenges she faced as an immigrant in male-dominated fields, shaping her into a champion for inclusive workplaces. Gayathri's insights show us how storytelling in leadership isn't just an art—it's a tool for connection and change. Her creation, Campfire Kinship, is a guide for leaders who want to use diverse stories and empathy in their work.
With the precision of an engineer and the vision of an innovator, Gayathri shows us how to build trust—a crucial part of making big changes happen. As we learn about her experiences, we see how to blend big plans with the realities of everyday work. Gayathri's time in the mines, along with her push for more people-focused technical education, highlights the importance of soft skills alongside technical knowledge. By guiding leaders through honest storytelling, she helps create workplaces where trust and empathy drive meaningful change. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation—your leadership skills are about to get a boost.
Welcome to. So you Want to Move to the Country and Raise Goats? This is a podcast about change. Change is all around us and sometimes we're ready for it and sometimes we're not. When it overwhelms us, well, we just want to move to the country and raise goats. This podcast features stories from people who have gone through change. We hope that their insights will help you better understand and deal with the changes in your life. I'm Peggy Koenig and, along with my co-host, katherine Greiba, we chat with insightful people with interesting change stories. We hope you enjoy our podcast.
Speaker 2:Our guest is Gayathri Shukla, and she has seen change in her life and, in fact, has made it her life's work. Gayathri was born in India, then moved to Saudi Arabia and later immigrated to Canada with her parents and younger brother. Through these moves to three very different countries, gayathri has an appreciation of the challenges that come with adapting to new cultures. Trained as an electrical engineer with an executive MBA from Queen's and a certification in social impact, gayathri worked in the energy sector for over 17 years. During that time, she found her greatest success was when she took the time to get to know the people she was working with. Empathy is the key, and she talks about how we must learn to hold space and really find the strengths in other people to help them bring their goals to fruition. Today, gayathri is the founder of Campfire Kinship, where she creates story-based solutions by diverse individuals and teams to highlight their unique strengths and build empathy. Her most recent role is leading digital transformation and innovation programs in mining. Join us for our conversation with Gayathri from her home in Calgary.
Speaker 1:We're talking to Gayathri Shukla from Calgary today and welcoming her to the podcast, and Gayathri's an entrepreneur. She's a keynote speaker, a podcast host and has a very interesting company that focuses on storytelling and leadership development in the areas of equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. But before all of that, Gayathri studied engineering, and so I'm really interested in hearing your story as to why you chose engineering, why that was the path for you at the time, and then how you've evolved into what you're doing now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much for the kind introduction, peggy, and I'm so excited to be here on this podcast. Yeah, I guess I would say I started my career as an engineer, you know, not because of the reason you offer here as to people who are so passionate about engineering. I come from an immigrant background and, as is typical in many immigrant families, the direction I received from my parents was you know, get a, get a degree. That's going to get you a good job after you graduate. And I happen to be really good at math and science in high school. My dad himself was an engineer, so following in his footsteps kind of became the default for me and I would say I started to find my passion once I actually really got into the work.
Speaker 3:At the beginning it was hard, I won't lie. It really challenged challenged me not just from a technical and and like the difficulty of the subject itself. But I would often question if I belonged because I wouldn't see too many people that look like me, not in engineering school, not out in the field. I started my career in mining and oil and gas up in northern Alberta, so remote, and there were not too many people who looked like me at all. So, just being the only made me question if I belonged.
Speaker 3:And as I started to navigate my career, there were all of these stereotypes and biases that we you know, we hear that still plagues women in this field that I myself had to navigate, and through that I think I really found my passion for the work I do now in inclusion and diversity, because not only did I navigate these things myself as an engineer in the field, but also, once I got into leadership roles, I started to see really the benefits of diversity, and yet I also saw how difficult it was for leaders to put these things, these concepts, into action, and so I sort of became obsessed on the how how do we actually bring these principles and intentions to life and actually create workplaces that work for everyone? So that's a little bit about the backstory of how I got started and how I got into what I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:You know. I'm really curious then about, as you you know, you got your. Your training as an engineer. Working in the field wasn't quite, maybe, what you thought it would be. How, what were the interactions like with your family during that process? Um around, I'm not sure this is a fit for me. Do you just, you know, for a while, think, oh, I'm just gonna work through it? Um, or like, what did that look and feel like for you?
Speaker 3:you know, I would say there were definitely some difficult conversations I had with my family in the beginning, and the one thing that was constant was my family's support. I have a brother as well, and never once did I see my parents sort of favoring, you know, him over me. And when it came to education, there were no sort of like gendered roles to what we were doing and and I knew they had my back. So I didn't feel like giving up. But it again wasn't until I actually got a job in the field and then started to appreciate all of the stuff I was learning on the textbook, uh, in real life. That it was like you know what? No, I think I can do this and I think I'm going to like it, so I'll stick with it and see where it goes.
Speaker 1:So when you started you were a practicing engineer and you know from what I understand, from looking at your career path, it looks like you slowly but surely moved into more of the diversity and inclusion area even when you were a practicing engineer. Were there a lot of challenges doing that, or were the companies ready? Was the company ready for that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say when I started moving into this it was actually through a formal role. I would say when I started moving into this it was actually through a formal role. I was still doing my engineering work, but I was given the opportunity to lead our employee resource group on women's diversity, which was sort of like on top of my regular job, and so that signaled to me the company was definitely ready.
Speaker 2:But even through that role of leading that resource, group, I came across again several barriers and really the first time I realized that, while there's great intent, if we don't know how to actually action some of these things, it's not going to go that far, unfortunately. So was there someone that you worked for or with that said Gayathri, you know, you've just got what it takes. You should pursue this a little bit. Or was it something that really came from within and you just charted your own path?
Speaker 3:A little bit of both. I think the majority of it was something that came from within, but I've also been blessed to have some amazing mentors and others in my life who helped catalyze that change for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we've heard from so many of our guests that sometimes it's just, you know, that one person that's noticed where we're good at something and encourages us. So, you know, coupled with your own drive, it sounds like it was never really a question for you, or was it? Did you ever look back and say, oh, I don't know if I should be doing this or not.
Speaker 3:I have never regretted the shift to entrepreneurship, I think partly because, you know, sort of 15-ish years into my career I also did an MBA, and the MBA opened my worldview in terms of the work I had done up until then had been largely technical, but this just expanded my horizon in terms of understanding the overall business context and the importance of having your vision. But then how do you really bring that to life? And I also first came across storytelling during my MBA, because my thesis was on transformation and specifically the role of inclusive leadership when it comes to change and transformation. And that's when I came across this practice of human-centered design, which is really about understanding the lived experiences of the communities that you're trying to serve and the beauty of storytelling in that. And so when I started to study that it was, all of the pieces of the puzzles came into place where I went aha, this is actually what's missing in the workplace is just let's humanize this work, right.
Speaker 3:I think we often tend to talk about things like inclusion, diversity from a very theoretical angle, but it's really about the human being who's at the center of that and if we can help by learning about their lived experience and really understanding where the challenges are and then co-creating solutions with them, then I think we can move the needle forward. And so, yeah, that MBA, I would say, was sort of the accelerant for me to really put this into practice and then also give me the confidence to make the transition from a career standpoint.
Speaker 1:So when did you know exactly that it was time to leap out of the corporate world and into an entrepreneur role?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say about two years ago. So to go back a little bit further than that, it was when COVID started that I finally had the time from not having to commute, from not having to travel for my job, just having time in the evenings and weekends to test this idea that I had been playing with since the MBA. And I literally just started an Instagram account and I started to share stories of women in the STEM professions. And then I also certified in a method of storytelling called guided autobiography. And then I also certified in a method of storytelling called guided autobiography it's a mouthful and that gave me the opportunity to host workshops in the community. And then, pretty soon, one thing led to another and before I knew it, it had garnered enough traction to the point where I was finding it difficult to pull down a full-time job and try to do this on the side. So, about just over two years ago now, I made that decision to quit my corporate job and and go in all full-time.
Speaker 2:So I'm really curious. When you say inclusive leadership to help guide your transformation, can you share an example of what that would look like or what does that mean?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think these terms inclusive leadership and transformation sometimes just get used as buzzwords. Yeah, to me, an inclusive leader is really just someone who takes the time to get to know their people, and it kind of comes back to this practice of empathy, which is what I really center a lot of my teaching around is how to hold space for someone who may not be sharing the same types of lived experiences like we do. How to hold space and really find the strengths in them that they themselves may not see that they have and help bring that to fruition in a work context. And there's another term that gets used a lot, that I think can become a buzz term is psychological safety. And it's interesting because the link between inclusive leadership and psychological safety is that those who know how to create that for their teams are really the ones that are inclusive, those that know how to create an environment where people feel safe to speak up, to voice a dissenting opinion, to just be who that they are. That's what I think is an inclusive leader, okay.
Speaker 2:And so how has do you make any parallels then between you know, the inclusive leadership and psychological safety in the whole change process of transitioning from, perhaps, one career to another. How does all of, how does that fit into the change process?
Speaker 3:Oh, I think it's paramount the change process and the change can be change of careers, it can be change of culture. I'll give you one example. In one of my past roles I was leading the digital transformation initiatives for our mining department and I would often find that while again there would be great executive intent and strategies, there would be a gap between that strategy at the highest level and sort of the lived experiences of people in the field and their realities. And I personally because I had been part of this, you know, studying human-centered design and all of these things I would personally go up to the field, in the mine, and talk to the people in the field and say you know, tell me your problems, tell me your pain points, what are some of the issues that you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis? And the number one thing I would hear would be you know, thank you for taking the time to come talk to us, like, thank you for caring.
Speaker 3:It. Just, it feels so good to know that someone in the corporate office cares about us and our issues. And what I found was that, from a change perspective, once that trust and relationship was built, people are a lot more on board to adopt whatever initiatives we were proposing, as opposed to seeing it from a place of fear or resistance to say, oh no, I don't know about this digital stuff, like that's going to take my job away. And so, for me, an inclusive leader is one that can understand that for any change to be successful, you've got to first build that trust with your people, and you've got to take the time to get to know them, get to know their stories and meet them where they're at in their journey, without trying to force down something that they're not ready for yet. So that would be sort of the link that I see to change.
Speaker 1:So, Guy3, it's. You know a lot of people that we've talked to have started in one place, like perhaps a music degree or a English, a liberal arts degree or an engineering degree, and have moved into something else. Have you found that you've been able to leverage? Because very often people say, oh my gosh, I've invested all this money in getting this education. How can I just turn around and walk away from it? But are you really walking away from it? I'm interested in knowing your thoughts on whether or not you leverage those types of things as you develop in other areas yeah, I love that question, you know it.
Speaker 3:What comes to mind is I think you can take the engineer like me out of the field, but you can't take the engineer out of me.
Speaker 3:And I and I say that because I all the time I'm seeing, when I take a step back, the skills that I continue to apply, that I built early on in my career, everything from problem solving, which I think is my biggest strength, and then I think many engineers are ones that they spot a problem and they put their mind and their resource to solving that problem, put their mind and their resource to solving that problem.
Speaker 3:So, really bringing good critical thinking skills, good analytical skills, problem-solving skills, and those are things I do every day. From a technical standpoint, I would say, yes, I've sort of it seems like I've left the profession, but I also get to work with other engineers through my client engagements and, again, the strength that I see is that I can really understand where they're at and bring in my own lived experience to meet them where they're at, as opposed to someone who maybe doesn't have that exposure in the field and doesn't, from a first hand, know the problems as intimately as someone like myself that I think I can bring. So again, I see myself supporting the profession, not maybe in the inside, but from the outside.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, you know, when you talk about human centered design and versus I don't know if it should be, if the word versus is appropriate, but versus technical training One would say, hmm, is there an alignment there? But really there is. From what you've just said, there is an alignment, so that bringing that human-centered design and and bringing it together with the technical, it makes sense. It's just that that not that many people do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, it's interesting to hear you say that, because I wish there wasn't as much of a distinction or duality between the two. I think that should just be. The way that we embrace any types of problems we're trying to solve as engineers is to look at who is the person being affected by this, who is the person that's going to be the recipient of this, and learning to take their input into the design. I think should just be the way that we operate normally now.
Speaker 3:When I went to engineering school, this wasn't even a topic that was talked about. Granted, I went many decades ago and I'm aging myself now, but I now have this unique opportunity to teach and run workshops at the Faculty of Engineering at U of C, which is my alma mater, and I'm so happy to see that such topics like you know, the so-called soft skills that's. You know, I don't really like the term soft skills, but I'm happy to see that skills like communication and teamwork and inclusive leadership these are all things that are now being talked about much more, even at an undergrad level, and I get to go, have that opportunity to go and talk to students and help teach these workshops to support their skill building in those areas, and it's something I really wish that I had, and I'm just hoping that, as you know, time goes, we will start to normalize these things and not necessarily view them as two separate things, but just the way and how we work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know. It's also really interesting to me how you've talked about time and the importance of time, the time that you took during COVID, because prior to that, you never had the time, the time that's needed to invest in relationships before you can ask people to change or to trust you, before you can ask people to change or to trust you. And you know there's an adage that says you know, the speed with which decisions can be arrived at is dependent on the level of trust there is in the room, so that this trust and time is there's a, you know it's a. They're very dependent on each other, and so you know, our listeners, do you have any advice for people when they're considering a change about the how to you know, take the necessary time by which to evaluate, and how do you find that time and how is that? How important is it?
Speaker 3:You know this is one of the greatest precious resources that you know all of us have or don't have in some cases. Right is time, and everybody gets a finite amount in life. And I think that's also one of the biggest challenges is how do you make the time? And I know for me that the knowledge of having done change type initiatives, both through my career and also changing my own career path, I know now after the fact when, in the moment, I would be met with my own impatience of like oh, it's just taking so long, you know, like I don't have the time to do this.
Speaker 3:But now, having done change a few times and then looking back, going well, it was because I invested the time that I could make this change work. I have that foresight now for any other new projects that come up that requires that type of investment to go. Okay, it's going to feel painful and at the beginning, but that's okay. It's absolutely worth investing the time that we have because the payoff, I know, will be that much better and I could probably accomplish more later because I took the time now to do it right. So I don't know if that helps, but I just I empathize that time is a precious commodity and sometimes it can be hard to justify investing as much as we do to build relationships or to just even take the time for ourselves from a self-care perspective, but it always, always pays off in the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean organizational change is, you know, as you said, many executives. They have, you know, kpis. They've got targets to meet all of that and it's all very important applying empathy to conversations and but also personally, when we're going through change, to just set the time aside that's necessary to do that reflection of what we're looking for yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:There's another, another adage that I love. It says uh something around the effect of change moves at the speed of empathy, which I think is uh, really true and relevant, and often I coach leaders too to say, you know, don't feel like you need three days at an off-site to do this work. It could literally look like two minutes when you're walking down the hallway you're seeing someone your employee and you're taking the time to actually listen to how they're doing. Like you're asking how they're doing, you're not on your phone, you're asking them how they're doing and you're taking the time to actually listen to how they're doing. Like you're asking how they're doing. You're not on your phone, you're asking them how they're doing and you're taking those two minutes to listen to the answer. And that's two minutes. And that's how we can continue to build on any change or even empathy skills right, just by taking that small incremental actions wherever we can yeah so how has the entrepreneurial journey been for you?
Speaker 1:they've been ups downs. Has it been fun, has it? Do you ever question what you're doing?
Speaker 3:I, to be honest, I would say it's been a journey that's been very fulfilling and fun, and also it hasn't been without its challenges, and I think the challenging part of that is something I also welcome because in the long run it's taught me some really valuable lessons that I don't think I would have had the opportunity to learn otherwise. But it's been fulfilling. I published a book last year called Landed it's on the stories of immigrant women in Canada and I was able to, you know, apply this method of guided autobiography, run workshops in the community and help 37 women from 30 countries of origin write their most heartfelt immigration journey for this book and I'm so proud of this project because, you know, it takes a lot of courage to not only write but to put your story out in the world and within two days it became a bestseller, which to me, signaled that there's a lot of interest that people have in not only sharing their own story but also listening to other stories. So that's been one of the highlights, I would say, and also the variety of clients that I get to work with. I'm really, really enjoying that.
Speaker 3:I think, from a corporate perspective, in my previous career that sort of variety wouldn't normally be had. And now I get to work with universities, with school boards, with for-profits, non-profits, and it's just such a wide range that I'm really enjoying. So I'd say those two things for sure. The challenging part has been to try and doing things on your own. As you know, right, the learning curve is deep, and I've just now started to learn how to start to delegate and how to find the right partners in the first place that are skilled at different things that I'm not skilled at, which is the benefit of diversity, right, and so being really diligent around delegating the things that I know I'm not good at and building those partnerships, that's been some of the learning for me so far.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like you have a lot of energy.
Speaker 3:It sounds like you have a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:So I mean balancing that off with patience and reflection. I expect that you probably have other places that you're going to take this business. What kind of vision do you have for going forward? Are you still getting the foundation sort of settled before you start doing other things, because I sense a lot of creativity there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for that question.
Speaker 3:In terms of a long-term vision, what I would say is I see this business being successful if it's not just me hosting and facilitating the types of workshops that I do.
Speaker 3:I would love to be able to get to a point where I have a train-the-trainer type of a model where other people can be trained and can start hosting their own storytelling workshops. I know, even from one of my previous client projects, there were 600 leaders in the organization that needed training, and when I signed on to this large enterprise contract, my first reaction was oh wow, how am I as a single person going to do this by myself? And I started to realize the importance of now building a network. I have co-facilitators now who are starting to offer this training as well, and I also have an online course that's built that sets the foundations for folks. So it's through more of these types of steps that I I see myself taking over the next couple of years. I think this can be built to a point where there's that scalability as well. So that is kind of my longer term vision.
Speaker 1:I think that's more change coming. Yeah, it's so exciting because it really aligns with where Catherine and I are coming from, on stories and sharing stories, because really that's how we, that's how we pass on our the wisdom, I guess, around change and transition. So I think storytelling is there's a lot more that can be done in that area, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no for sure. And you know, one of the questions I often get from leaders is just how do I tell my story? How do I feel Like, how do I first know what story to tell and then how do I tell it in a way where it's still authentic but, you know, doesn't sort of put someone on the spot or doesn't expose me, whatever. That means, right, and I think just even that vulnerability is a very courageous thing. To tell your story and just giving leaders a space to explore that a little bit is a starting point. But the nice thing about this and having done this now for over two years, I see the impact and I see that um just creating that space enables leaders to be able to uh, feel more confident to share their story. So I really see it as a strategic business competency um to build and it can serve change management, it can serve inclusive leadership, it can serve all kinds of goals. So hoping to see more of that in the world well, what a remarkable story you have.
Speaker 2:I mean, just to have the courage to see what else is is out there. I mean you were certainly on, I'm sure, a successful career track as an engineer, uh, but then just to see how things could be better by, you know, focusing on inclusive leadership and storytelling, I think it's quite remarkable.
Speaker 1:If you've learned just one thing about change while listening to this podcast, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify and share with a friend. Please subscribe on Apple or Spotify and share with friend this episode recorded via Zoom audio. Producers Peggy Koenig and Catherine Greiba. Executive producer. Koenig Leadership Advisory Theme music La Pompe, written by Chris Harrington. Music publisher Envato Market For information on this podcast and to purchase some fabulous goat merchandise.