The Evolving Leader

Reignite Your Inner Drive with Sharath Jeevan

• Sharath Jeevan • Season 7 • Episode 3

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What happens when everything changes, when your core assumptions about your life and work seem no longer to hold true? A key responsibility of the leader is to be honest with themselves and others about anticipating, accepting and preparing for new realities while acknowledging that human beings often resist reality in ingenious and self deceiving ways.

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Sharath Jeevan O.B.E. about his work helping leaders confront inflection moments where the external environment poses a significant threat or opportunity to an organisation’s business model. Sharath has also written two books “Inflection: A Roadmap for Leaders at a Crossroads” (2024) and “Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite our Inner Drive” (2021) and teaches leadership at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Jean Gomes:

What happens when everything changes, when the core assumptions about your life and work seem no longer to hold true, the key responsibility of the leader is to be honest with themselves and others about anticipating, accepting and preparing for new realities and fully acknowledging that human beings often resist reality in ingenious and self deceiving ways, we can clearly foresee a huge change in the workforce globally within the next decade, the last of the baby boomers will soon formally finish work, and the aging population will start to outnumber those in work who support the system. We know that climate change is dramatically lengthening summers in the northern hemisphere, creating fundamental changes to how we work and live. We also can predict that millions will soon become climate refugees and seek to find cooler climates. These are two of many huge new realities that we can confidently predict and prepare for. But how many leaders are spending focused time on these massive topics? Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel in the 1990s popularized the term inflection point, where the external environment poses a significant threat or opportunity to an organization's business model. In this show, we talk to the fascinating Sharif Jeven, who helps leaders confront inflection moments. Tune in to an important conversation on the evolving leader.

Scott Allender:

Hi friends. Welcome to the evolving leader, a show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront the world's biggest challenges. I'm Scott Allender

Jean Gomes:

And I'm Jean Gomes.

Scott Allender:

How are you feeling today, my friend?

Jean Gomes:

I have mixed feelings. I am really enjoying the Olympics and some of the incredible endeavors that particularly Team GB are doing, because I know some of the people behind the scenes and involved with them, and sad for the athletes who came so close. I'm also feeling very disconcerted by what's happening in the rest of the UK at the moment, the riots and so on, and that can't help but cast a kind of a cloud on, on, on life. But overall, I'm, as always, feeling optimistic that there are better things ahead. So yeah, I'm pretty, feeling pretty, pretty. Okay. How are you feeling?

Scott Allender:

I feel, I feel a mix of physically, I feel a bit tired. I'm still a little jet lagged from my recent trip. But Emotionally, I feel a bit of optimism as well. I'm we're coming into a very important election, and for the first time in a bit, I'm feeling feeling some hope. So we'll have to keep an eye on everything and see how things play out, of course, and yeah, just feeling a lot of gratitude, gratitude for you and to be back in the studio with you and talking to our guest, and really keen to learn all that we can about about our guest. Today, today we're joined by Sheriff jeeb. Sheriff has specialized in leadership at inflection moments, and he's the founder and Executive Chairman of intrinsic labs. He supports organizations to safely navigate their inflection moments and future proof success. Sherith has worked with public sector organizations, leading universities and high profile corporations all the way from the UK's NHS to L'Oreal. He founded and led two education organizations, stir education and teaching leaders, which collectively impacted over 10 million children across 40,000 schools in developed and emerging countries. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2022 new year's honors for his contributions to the field. Sherith has established a general sorry, let me say that again. Sheriff has established a generational Success Lab to help organizations across sectors navigate the generational inflection moment in our workforce and society, which we'll have to ask him about. He teaches leadership at both Oxford and Cambridge University, and he's the author of two books, inflection, a roadmap for leaders at a crossroads, and intrinsic, a manifesto to reignite our inner drive. Sheriff, welcome to the evolving leader.

Sharath Jeevan:

Thanks so much, Scott. Really great to be on with you both today. Sheriff, welcome

Jean Gomes:

to the show. Normally, we just. To ask our guests how they're feeling, but I want to broaden it out, seeing as things feel pretty big at the moment. How are you feeling? How are you feeling about the world at the moment?

Sharath Jeevan:

Yeah, so I was thinking Jean, as I was I love your podcast, and some of the guests you've had as we were saying we joined. And while I was just thinking about this period, about, you know, maybe the we're at an inflection, post pandemic, right? We've had that very, you know, that very difficult, what, two, almost three years, if you add it all up, really, where, you know, Adam Grant, the psychologist you know, mentioned that term around languishing. And I just wonder, it does feel like we're sort of bumping up and saying, Is there a better way of doing things right now, I'm not entirely sure that we have we've found that better way. I think it feels like it can go either way right now as well. I think like you I think some of the stuff in the UK has been quite especially as a minority. It's been quite disturbing seeing some of this stuff, and of course, the census killings of the three young girls, of course, before that. So I go either way. I think probably like you guys, but I am an optimistic person by nature, and I do think if we can get leadership to leadership right, I mean everything from our politics to our everyday organizations that we really rely on each day, I do think we can get to that better place overall. So maybe I am profoundly optimistic overall from the whole piece, actually there.

Jean Gomes:

So can we start with getting to know you a little bit, the arc of your career, and what you feel is the propelling energy of your work today?

Sharath Jeevan:

Yeah, I guess one of the things that I've really grappled with, Jean, all through my 40s. What am I now? 47 and stopped counting after a certain point, didn't you as well? But I think the big, the big, sort of dilemma, the thing that I've always grappled with is this question of, Do I want to be a path taker or a path shaper? So I'm an immigrant to the UK. I'm first generation. So my parents were born in India. They came here As doctors worked in the NHS. We spent time growing up in Saudi Arabia. My teenager that was quite a surreal and exciting experience in lots of ways, came back to my last years of high school, secondary school, university and so on on. But I think with any kind of immigrant upbringing, there's a strong focus on playing by the rules, on climbing the kind of ladder, the escalator, trying to find stability and structure as a really important psychological need. And I think a lot of my my adult career, I think, and even my time at as a student, was about trying to say, could, is there a path out there that I can, I can shape the direction I want to take in my career, in my life, and do it on my own terms? And I think that's been the sort of overall struggle over that period. And the reason why this whole topic of inflection is one that personally resonates with me is because I don't think it's just an everyday thing. There were key crossroads, key decisions in my life that I had to make, that would make or break or future proof. Use those words, whether I would get there or not. I think that that idea that not all time is created equal would have these really important inflection moments in our lives and careers and organizations. How do we navigate those and make sure we're going on the path that really makes sense for us most as as individuals? That's pretty weird. It kind of connects to me very personally.

Jean Gomes:

Can I just pause one moment? I don't want to make it this show about about your life experience, but from from an early age. But there is something important there that I think you said that a lot of people would find interesting to understand and just pause on, which is that immigrants need a structure to make sense of a new culture and to find a way of gaining psychological safety and de risking, you know, assimilation into A into an environment. And so they, they follow the rules, and they, you know, and so on. And that, that experience, which many of us don't have, because they take for granted so many things, is a weight and a burden of of anxiety and thought and so on that many people afraid of. And when, when, actually, we desed some of the rules around those communities, we're doing a lot of damage that we just don't see to their lives. And just, I want to test that proposition with you, and just say, you know, can you bring that to life? Is that, you know, a fair assumption to make? Yeah,

Sharath Jeevan:

I think it's a fair assumption. I do. I do hear, actually, Jean, like a lot of people who perhaps have in the UK. Let's take the sort of English example, though, I think there are American parallels as well. I think those people have cross class divides. I think often feel something quite similar. So I'll talk to many of my clients, let's say a managing partner of a law firm, and he might not have come from the most privileged backgrounds, and will be sitting in some you know, having fine china at his office, having a dinner or something, and talking about stuff, and he'll just look at this and say, This is so surreal. If I really step back, I can't quite believe I'm in this world as well. And what's really interesting. Think is that in today's career, in today's landscape of work and success and so on, I think we need to be a path shaper. We can't be a path taker. And so I think a lot of challenges that immigrants, all those, I think crossing sort of class divides or socioeconomic divides, more broadly, I think that's a really tricky inflection moment to navigate. And I hit it very hard when I became I was in consulting. After I went to Cambridge, I did all played by the rules in many ways, and sort of tried to sort of play by the existing rules and do the best that there was nothing wrong with that. And I went into a career like management consulting, where every year you had an appraisal, you were given a little they were fantastic at sort of just giving these little psychological markers of progress. You were a c1 you became a c2 you became a c3 then you became a SC Senior Consultant one, and it was almost gamified, right? So a lot of that structure and stability was being provided so that people worked hard. And there was a partnership ladder and pyramid as the ultimate, ultimate prize of all that stuff. The problem with that is I realized that after doing that for several years, that there wasn't a lot of meaning in that pyramid, and that wasn't something actually gave me a lot of intrinsic or inner value. I was doing it because there was that pyramid, and I was doing it because I wanted to show that I was competent and progressed and so on. And so I think that realization that I had to shift that and really move to shaping my own path. It was quite a tricky one to navigate, I think. And when I became the CEO of my first organization, a smaller organization, that was the hardest thing that you wouldn't get these day to day markers of approval, but people often be quite angry what you said or did or not always agree, at least. So moving your motivational dial from extrinsic and external to intrinsic, am I doing what I really believe is the right thing to do in this situation? That was one of the hardest things I had to deal with as a as a leader, making that reflection moment happen for me personally.

Scott Allender:

So speaking of leadership, let's zoom out and take, kind of your wide angle lens on the sort of leadership landscape, and then we can zoom in based on what you say. But now, what are the biggest challenges you think are sort of leadership is facing at the moment?

Sharath Jeevan:

I think our biggest challenge right now, Scott, is it is an absence of courage. I think vision actually, in many ways, I think that what has happened is, and because we've created a kind of leadership industry, we have sort of inadvertently, I know anyone sort of deliberately wanted to do this at all, but by doing that, we have almost made it pain by numbers. We've created all these kind of mantras and templates and, you know, buzzwords. I'm also guilty of this as well. By no means am I trying to absorb my own I've written a couple of leadership books and so on as well. So I'm not trying to absorb responsibility of this problem. But I think at the core, you know, my definition of leadership is that a really great leader, or just a leader, actually takes people and organizations to places they wouldn't have got to otherwise. They take people in organizations to places they wouldn't have got to otherwise. And I think if you really look at many leaders and organizations today, you know, we're having a big productivity crisis in the UK, the US to some extent as well. A lot of it is because we're we're sort of doing we're busy, we're on emails, we're constantly meetings. We're kind of managing things. We're not really making that, that big dent in Steve Jobs talked about, we're not really helping. Oh, let's just take that new step to find that next mountain. And I think that's the that's the core problem. I think right now, as leaders, you know, are we really making enough of a difference? We're paid well, we're in the driver's seat. There are many perks, there many pressures as well. But are we really taking taking things to a place they wouldn't have got to otherwise? I think in many cases, the honest answer is is probably no.

Scott Allender:

So with the perks and the pressures, what do you what accounts for the lack of courage in your estimation?

Sharath Jeevan:

Yeah, by no means. We're trying to say that. I think that leaders, CEOs, whatever, are not courageous people, not at all. Actually, it's the opposite. They are often deeply courageous. But what I think is happening a lot is that there's a there's a strong sense of imposter syndrome, the many leaders, first time CEOs, but actually all the way through a career, and they come into a role, and all the pressures around you are around really maintaining the status quo. It's really about, you know, back to that. Kind of path shaping versus path thinking. It's really about, you have to take the path that's already there. You know, boards often can be very conservative. Investors can be quite conservative, if you have investors teams also, they like stability. They like to know. They're often very, very comfortable by the familiar. And so all the pressures really push against a leader who wants to take an organization to a fundamentally different place. And it can be really emotionally, quite scary to make that journey, to make that infection happen, because you've got to persuade so many people, but you've also got to persuade yourself as well. I.

Jean Gomes:

So can we turn to this point of inflection? Moments? A little bit more detail. Andy Grove famously described this. I coined this term. He popularized it the CEO of Intel in the 1990s that an inflection point was when the environment poses a significant threat or opportunity to an organization's business model. And you talk about the need to simultaneously consider that challenge from different time horizons. And I wonder if you could unpack that for us.

Sharath Jeevan:

Yeah, so I think I love, you know, Andy's and his definition. And I went back to my research in this area, Jean as well. I think the only thing, the reason why I'm quite deliberate about the language of inflection moments rather than inflection points, is that the point idea has a certain inevitability about it. I think Andy was actually talking a lot about the price of semiconductors, actually, you know, some of that stuff and Intel. And you know how every every cycle, the price of those things went down, there's a natural inevitability about it. And I think sometimes I think the sort of casualty of that way of thinking. I mean, it's a great model, but the casualty has been, we sometimes think of these things as inevitable as this will happen anyway. What I see is almost the opposite. I see a lot of leaders at this point where they've climbed a mountain, they're doing fine, they've gone through a certain challenge, they've got to a certain point. And the question becomes one about, do you actually try and climb the next mountain, or do you stay where you are? And I'm going to mix metaphors here, but I think often I'm a big tennis fan, for example, about got a depictable ball recently as well, and playing the English open tomorrow, actually. But one of the things that I've noticed is I've lost a lot of matches being one set and five two up. Because what happens is I start to play not to lose, rather than play to win. And I see a lot of leaders and CEOs and boards get into that sort of that dynamic where they're they're doing fine, they're almost coasting, they're a bit too comfortable, and they get into this kind of status so status quo type mentality, that kind of path taking mindset as well. And it's really hard to know how to climb the next mountain as a result. So I think it's something I think back to leadership, you know, back to the idea of taking organizations, people places they would have got to otherwise. I think great leaders, they really recognize there is an inflection moment that they have to almost create that next mountain, create the vision for it, the direction for it, with their teams and their stakeholders, but also really cajole and motivate people to want to do the decline being because the more comfortable part is just to do what, um, what's already there, and just keep, keep the status quo grow incrementally, keep doing what they're already doing just a bit better each time.

Scott Allender:

So in the face, so I'm hearing is there's this tension between these inflection moments and this desire and proclivity towards status quo. So when you go into a C suite and you see that tendency, right? How do you help break through that? What are you doing? Or how do you help leaders break through that, holding on to the status quo, playing not to lose, instead of playing to win. How do you help them get that courage and that ability to move forward towards, towards winning and getting that to that next mountain top?

Sharath Jeevan:

That's great question. Scott, so, you know, one of the things, for example, is often we'll ask a few unlocking questions, and one of them is around, you know, imagine you had no resource constraints. Imagine that your aunt and egg, you know, blood sheep passed away, sadly, but gave you an endowment, right? And that meant your company would not have to, for example, fundraise or scrambles revenue anymore, etc. Imagine you could unlock all those constraints. What would you actually do? And what's interesting from that is often leaders or CEOs of leadership teams, boards, they have actually some strong ideas where they may want to go, but they've just almost never had the legitimacy to be able to dream that big and be I don't mean in some kind of big, sort of very fairy visionary sense. I mean in a really practical way. How will you help help and serve people better, your customers, clients, communities, whatever you're doing as an organization? But I think if you can start with an unlocking question, then you say, Okay, well, if that's the case, what are some of the constraints that are holding us back for now? And that's why, you know, I think you mentioned Jean, this idea that the way I think about affectionate you've got to you've got to straddle these time horizons, what 10 staff and as leaders think about the short term first, and that gets them very much into day to day thinking. Whereas you've said, let's start with I think of it almost like a clock or a watch hand. Let's start with the hour hand. The long term. What is that long term perspective that you have on the problem? How do you see see it differently from others? So just give you an example. I be working with the B Corp movement in the UK, the leadership team. They're the group. Certifies company for social impact and so on. 3% of they started off in the States. 3% of UK. GDP now goes, you know, now accounted for by the movement at about seven or eight years. The easy way would be to say, let's go from 3% to 4% 5% and but they're thinking in a very different way about, how do we go be more systemic? How do we start to influence governments, regulators, investors, pension funds, around the rules that business plays by? And so it's again that chance to really rethink it and think about what that new mountain is in a very fresh and distinctive way. And if that can happen, then we can think about how to align the team aligned culture, think about what things we need to learn in order to get there. Jean,

Scott Allender:

this reminds me very much of your value today, value tomorrow. Model. I'd love to hear some of your your thoughts on this as well.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the the point here around trying to move to an act of imagination that's so lacking in many leadership teams, because they never give themselves permission to to imagine what their future is looking like. And so that puts them into the, you know, play, not to lose defensive position. And the more that that becomes the justification for their problem solving. It's sort of self enforcing cycle of short termism and imagining stuff seems like a luxury or a legitimate thing to be doing. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be figuring out how to get the next quarter or the next half of the year delivering profit, because otherwise we won't have a future, but you don't have a future because you've never given yourself the chance to envisage it. And I wonder what you do with groups to help them actually step into that more imaginative space, beyond asking the question, how do you help them to actually see that as a capability they need to build? Yeah, great question,

Sharath Jeevan:

if I can just recount an anecdote around that. So I used to work with eBay, actually, for eBay the UK, and I was a sort of senior executive there. And at the time I joined, I think it was 2005 it was the I got married. I think eBay and Amazon were head to head in terms of number of users in the UK. We, I think, with 10 million on both platforms. And yeah, we would only tell you what's happened since then, that what happened was exactly what you described, that there was so much of we had really smart people, most of the best teams, and I still stay in touch with many of the alumni, fantastic group. There was no lack of talent in the organization. But what happened is so much of our time was spent on quarterly meeting, quarterly targets, looking at quarterly promotions. What do we need to get the revenue number, all that kind of stuff. And Amazon didn't have any of that at the time, or they were incredible. They were, they were a public company, but they managed to tell a very different story to investors. They just really focused on the long term and being that, that visionary of that, that huge, um, you know, the huge need they were trying to meet as well, and that big vision. And they just really relentlessly built that and kept with it, whatever the short term volatility and manifestations there as well. So yeah, I just think there's just a really strong example. I mean, this can mean billions or hundreds of billions of dollars in difference in valuations and one extreme, but, but I think back to your question about, How do you try and ground I think the biggest thing we're lacking as leaders today is the chance to step back and reflect, to zoom out Scott and the words that you were using earlier. It's so easy to get on the treadmill and keep getting obsessed by the minutiae of what's happening, and not step back and say, let's look at the bigger picture. Are we making? We the biggest difference we can to our customers, clients, communities? How can we reimagine that as well? And somehow that's almost been taken out of the leadership lexicon. Almost we don't have the mission to do that anymore as leaders. So

Jean Gomes:

I wonder, given the area that you're focused on, in terms of these inflection moments, how you see the conversation around AI automation in general, changing the kind of the climate around that conversation. Is it the moment for you to kind of seize more of this conversation? How are you seeing organizations responding at C suite to this?

Sharath Jeevan:

Yeah, I think what we're not focusing enough on the AIP certainly again, I know they're wildly different. I also lurch between optimistic and pessimistic, like most people on this but what gives me a lot of optimism? I was working with the NHS, I think you mentioned at the beginning of the interest got and I was working with some of our primary health physicians or practitioners GPS in the UK. And what really stunned me when working I was working with their very, very senior leadership across London, and so much of the time just gets spent in so much minutiae, especially around compliance paperwork, maybe on a screen, but basically paperwork, administration stuff they never really went into medicine to try and work on. And it's enormous parts of the day or the week and so on. And. My big optimistic health AI is that actually can take all of that crap out and really help them focus on what matters, which is that relationship with patients and communities, understanding the needs of communities better, being able to be much more preventative and think about much more strategically, about long term ways to improve healthy lifestyles communities rather actually trying to fix problems as they come. So I'm very optimistic if we can harness it right. I just think a lot of us right now seem very confused about the purpose of AI, and I think if we can really have a discussion about if we know that's happening, and a can really focus the development of it, but also think about the more human and strategic elements of leadership that will need to complement that so we can spend more time on the human element. I think most professions, as government leadership, in particular, the human elements of each role is going to massively become more important. And I think we're going to emphasize very different skills now from the more technical skills that we've always prized before, I think the relative currency of human versus technical will shift a lot more to the human is by my strong prediction of this.

Scott Allender:

So you're interested as well in the intergenerational shifts taking place, which we mentioned in the intro. Can you give us a sense of how you think this will affect the workforce in the coming years? So

Sharath Jeevan:

just doing some really fascinating work in the sports arena, it's gone with some of our leading like sports, national sports, sports leagues, both in the UK and the US, actually, and I had a round table with a number of leaders a few weeks ago. It was with a group called leaders in sport. And what was really interesting with that is I've done a number of interviews with senior leaders across both countries, actually, around what they were seeing. And sport is at a really classic like sectoral inflection moment, where you've got really shifting consumer tastes in terms of what they want from sports. So, for example, a real design for faster formats with a new generation simpler rules. So one of the things I think has really made pickleball a big success in, say, the states versus Venice, is that it's a very it's much more accessible, it's easy to play better on the body, all of those kinds of things. But I was also talking to baseball league players and coaches about sort of how some of the rules are constantly moving to be more accessible each year, actually incrementally. So you've got that kind of audience shift. You've also got a real shift between athletes and teams, or even college teams in the States. So before a lot of power would be with the club or the college or the university, it's now shifting much more to player with social media. They've got their own platforms. They have their own brands and these so there's a double whammy, generationally, both on the sort of audience side or the customer side, but also on the talent side as well. And I think many, many, many sectors, and I do some stand up comedy as a love doing and I'm seeing a very similar sort of focus there, both on the audience side and in terms of the type of comedians who are coming becoming successful now as well. Yeah. So I think a lot of sectors are really grappling with, how do we keep relevant in terms of workforce that is really making our proposition and work relevant to any generation? But also, how can we make our core product or service appealing to a new a new generation as well? And alongside that, you've got just the last thing I'll say, What about seven or $8 trillion of assets are being transferred between generations over the next 10 years or so. So it's a perfect storm, and I think we're not thinking about the generational reflection enough. That's one of the reasons I've created this lab and trying to do more active, practical research in this area as well.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah, and I wanted to quickly dive into something, because I just kind of hot off the series of conversations with a range of millennials, and this constant kind of existential crisis thing, which I think is probably, in part, a little bit shaped by covid And what happened there, but I think it's deeper thing, which is what I'm taking from it is a lot of them are saying, I want a career that is driven by purpose. Whatever I'm doing right now, it could be a brilliant job. Is just drudge, and it seems to be like Groundhog Day, and I'm not sure whether it's giving me a purpose. I've got so much choice. They're not saying this, but they have got so much choice, because we're talking about a group of people who are very got a lot of advantage, and they're going around in this cycle of being kind of almost stuck, and they're delaying things, and they're not really recognizing that they're living they're not living life fully. They're kind of almost perpetuating, and I think you're seeing a number of. Trends with women deferring, you know, either getting married or having children. You know, not because they don't want it, because they think there's other things that are much more important right now, but they're not quite sure what those things are. And the same thing with careers, I'm searching for purpose, and they don't. They think it should just sort of like materialize as an algorithm for them, rather than by engaging in the world and engaging in work to find out what that looks like. Very, very few people actually do are born with vocation. I think so. I'm really interested to hear what you think about, you know, this like millennial crisis around purpose, and you know, it's really important for the first generation. Actually, this is a thing where, you know, they have the luxury to be able to even consider it as being a career shaping factor. What are you seeing in this area?

Sharath Jeevan:

So, so I think, you know, I teach, as you mentioned, that side business. Well, I teach one of the most popular MBA electives there, and it's all about sort of generational success, how you find meaning and fulfillment and so on in your career. And one of the things that I've talked a lot to students about is many of them are in their early 30s. They work five six years. They don't do the MBA. One of the ideas that I think the follow your passion stuff is really overrated. And as I said, many people don't know what their passion is. I think the follow the purpose stuff is also it creates a lot of expectations and heavy pressure. You see these young people, often who are just really saddled by too much worry and expectation about that stuff as well. I struggle to say in my career, but I think that what I encourage is much for what I call a third approach, a third way, if you like, which is around, follow your problem, find a problem that you're genuinely excited and curious about that could be a social problem. It could be about climate change. It could be about AI. It doesn't have to be, though. It could be about AI. It could be about the future of, I don't know, financial services, or any of these things, but something that is bigger than yourself and just get deeper and deeper into the problem. And by doing that, you actually open up a lot of career opportunities. You might, let's say you had a real passion for climate change. I was making this up, but imagine that was case. Then you might start your career often as a consultant, maybe in an advisory place where you learn a lot. You do different projects, good layover land, and lots of these kind of specialist firms coming up, as well as some of the more established ones who have got kind of practices now, you then might decide, okay, I want to actually get my hands dirty and become an executive at a large company looking at climate change, for example. So really see what it's like from the inside. You might then say, Okay, I'm really that's really interesting. I now want to look at the investor perspective and join up many, one of the many climate VCs that are popping up around the world. You might say, Okay, I've done that. Now maybe you made even a little bit of money from that. And now I want to become a, maybe becoming that kind of advisory, regulatory policy making space as well. So I guess what it does, it avoids this sort of need to find passion and purpose in each of me. You're just following your curiosity, and you're getting deeper into deeper into things, and you're allowing yourself to go with the flow a little bit and see what opportunities come up. There doesn't have to be a master plan, but you can see, and you often, if someone likes you on one role, they may suggest opportunities. Things will happen organically. And one thing I also talk a lot about is that problem can change. It doesn't have to be climate for all your life. It might through that process, you discover something else, and you move to that, that new problem area as well. For me, it was education for 15 years, and I contribute in different ways, and now it's about leadership as my core sort of problem. The last thing I say is just, if possible, try and find a problem that is in my definition of wicked so where there's no technical solution. Because back to your AI question. The technical stuff will get solved by by someone else, by bots or by the llms and so on. But things that are fundamentally messy human that need a lot of human thinking, imagination, coordination, leadership, that's where I would place my bets. From a career perspective as well. I don't think you need to train specifically from any of these things, but you have to be open and curious and be willing to be a little bit of a lifelong learner as you get into one of these, these problem areas that

Jean Gomes:

I think that's great advice, and I love that follow the problem and all the subsequent thoughts that sit around that I think that should be a little digestible pill that we put into The education system very quickly. Thank you for that. So following on from that, you focus a lot on intrinsic motivation. How mastery, autonomy and purpose fuel our drive? Can we talk about how you help people to operationalize that amidst all the uncertainty that they're experiencing? I mean, I think it ties into the last thoughts. But you know, intrinsic motivation as a driver in our lives is a wonderful thing to have. Yeah. So

Sharath Jeevan:

I think you know, again, back to leadership, when we talked about the very beginning of our conversation, that I think that so much of the motivational dialog for leaders nowadays is external, is extrinsic, and they it's much more pleasing shareholders or boards or to. Boxes a lot as well. I think if leaders can move more intrinsic as a move the dial even worse, we need a mix of both. So I also don't want to, you know, oversimplify this, we need a mix of both external and internal drivers. But in general, most styles, let's say, from CEOs all the way through to those entering the workforce, are far more are far too focused on the extrinsic. So a shift of that would be really helpful. I think of those drivers you mentioned that, as you mentioned Jean, the purpose one is that is the biggest one. And I think we talked about, we talked a little bit about this, but I distinguish a lot between what I call big P and small p purpose, BP purpose is what we talked about, finding the problem and sort of finding a problem bigger than ourselves, trying to find that sort of North Star that we want to spend a significant period of our lives working on. It might be years if you're early in your career, might be decades if you're late in your career. But I think equally important to that is what I've called small key purpose, which is much more about are we helping, even serving people and others each day, every day. So I was in my first book intrinsic, I talked about a bartender I met in a bar in London who spent a crazy amount of time with a couple of the bar. And that's not usually very common in London. I'm not sure that. I don't think it's a Nashville either, Scott as well, possibly. So I went into afterwards, what on earth were you got? Were you doing? And said, look, there was a that was a divorced man and his teenage daughter. The dad was on visitation rights. And my job at the moment wasn't just to serve the drinks, it was to make the dad look cool in front of his daughter, so that she would want to spend time with him. So even in your something bartender, we don't normally think of it as a purposeful job. Actually, a lot of times it can be, and we've all been to restaurants or cafes where maybe we're in very stressed, it's been a long day, and just that time with someone we care about, or even by ourselves, it was really a transformative time. So I think a lot of it is, are we spending are we really doing what we can to help and serve others? Well, you know, if you look at even at things like doctors or teachers, many are resigning in large numbers because their job is intrinsically purposeful with a small team, but the compliance regimes, the accountability is taking them out, getting out of them. So we need to reignite that. And one exercise I do a lot is really asking leaders to look at like a personal mission statement. So who you're helping to do what, and by by doing what? So, for example, my one it's I help leaders to navigate their lecture moments by writing, advising and coaching. And I would look at each day and each week and say, have I actually spent most of my time on that? If I have, I probably had a very productive day. If I haven't, what am I doing? It's been a waste of time. I've got distracted by some of them, the treadmill stuff as well. So having some kind of way of looking at our time and are we really putting it where our motivation matters most, can be a very powerful way of reuniting that intrinsic motivation. And as you mentioned, autonomy. Can we try and do things on our own terms? So for example, if you're an early morning person, if you're very creative in the mornings, can you set up your work so that you you that you you do your most creative work in the mornings and afternoons, where you do the meetings or more kind of mini type things, it's as well. And then the idea, then of mastery, of getting better and better at something, and thinking about putting the non the non technical skills, what are some of the human skills we want to try and master? Whether it's around communication, coordination, influencing, you name it. How do I get better and better at those things and keep learning and reflecting on those so I think the main thing is like, ideally, we want to try to get towards that bigger problem we talked about and trying. But if we are stuck a little bit, maybe in a career where it isn't, maybe our top choice that's that's a fact of life. There are many things we can do, at least in the short term, to try and draw out as much motivation as possible. But hopefully that will give us the courage to then try and take that leap, that inflection, to something that is more meaningful, that is a problem we want to spend really time on in our lives and careers as well. I

Scott Allender:

love everything you're saying there. And that example of the bartender, whose moment is trying to make the dad, you know, look cool to the daughter, that's like that moment of finding little bits of purpose and opportunities in everything you do. I spent a great deal of time trying to make Jean look cool, but it really hasn't paid off yet. I

Jean Gomes:

haven't figured it out the formula yet.

Scott Allender:

I'm looking I'm not going to give up on

Sara Deschamps:

you. If the conversations we've been having on the evolving leader have helped you in any way, please head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and review. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation

Scott Allender:

we've been talking kind of like seemingly large scale organizations and C suites and sort of the leadership industrial complex and all these things. But I'm curious too about your thoughts on, you know, startups, the sort of the new economy that's being driven largely by entrepreneurs and startups. So what advice? Advice might you have for those listening who are part of an aspiring team who's just getting going and wanting to be successful?

Sharath Jeevan:

Yeah, I should say I work courses. Got with I do work with large corporates and public sector organizations, etc, but also with a lot of VC funds, accelerators and their startups and so on. And what I'd say is the number one thing I've seen again and again with with founders, that tends to be the where things unhinged is that they, they they, they're very solution obsessed, right? And they become too unavan by by their own mouse traps, rather than the problem overall. And I think the best founders that I've seen also try and help kind of recalibrate it is, get really, really obsessed by the problem. Be obsessed with everything about, let's say you're working in, I don't know, health, tech or education or financial services or whatever it might be. Are you really, really curious for what's going on? Are you tracking what's happening? Are you constantly thinking, Are we doing the thing that will give us the most impact and make us more successful. Or have you become this kind of traveling salesman? And I must, I did this sometimes as a founder, so it's an easy trap to fall in where you're just competing your your own product, your own service, and you're constantly saying the same thing. You're not learning. You're not really trying to create the best version of that, of what it could be. So I think that deep curiosity and also humility as well. And I think it's a tricky one, because, you know, founders also need to be somewhat delusional to make anything happen, and that's how they would never do, you know, the craziness entrepreneurship. So there's a tricky balance. And I was talking to a VC recently, and he was telling me about this idea of a great founder has strong views loosely held the strong views loose, so they really care what they're doing. They're able to persuade people, but they're also open to changing their their assumptions and learning as they go. And I think the second thing that will really differentiate the founders the future, because they'll be to able to adapt and keep reinventing their companies as they go through different inflection moments, and even funding rounds from a C to a Series A or B, each one is a an inflection moment, almost automatically. But also things in the market, what competitors do, all of those things are really important. So I'd say it applies almost even more. I'd say it's got to to the life of a founder or entrepreneurial company, and then perhaps even a larger, more established organization.

Jean Gomes:

Let's pause on that little moment there around the ability to be able to hold that tension between strong conviction and willingness to remain open to the fact that you're missing something don't know something could be a better way that both. I'm thinking is incredibly difficult for a lot of people who've been trained to be quite, you know, decisive and either or, how do you help people to do that? I

Sharath Jeevan:

think it's given. I think a lot of this is about the emotional safety. We talked about this in terms of immigrants, but actually it applies all the way through to seers and founders, is that it's a very lonely job at the top right of an organization, everyone is after you. Everyone's got a point of view. Everyone is second, second guessing you from your team to investors to your board or partners. It's a very tricky space to hold, and when I sort of accompany leaders founders, he was on those journeys, a lot of it is also just giving their emotional safe that they will be fine, and they are. They're good leaders. They'll find their way, and it's okay to take some time out, to step out and think about where they could really go overall. Yeah. So I think it's more that just trusting yourself, that I think because the leadership lexicon and sort of the way we thought of leadership is very narcissistic. Actually, it's quite egotistical, the kind of way we see see leaders. And I did some work in the UK Parliament last year, which was fascinating. And I talked to all these kind of MPs Members of Parliament who would say, look, all these people will be chairing meeting. They will look very chair like the way they would ask for minutes that, you know, ask people very abruptly to finish all this kind of to play all these games. But actually, the substance behind all this was was way for thin. And so I think it's we've been trained to think about leadership a bit like a game. And I think a lot of it's weaning away from that and saying, actually, are you really trying to take the organization to a place it wouldn't have got to otherwise? Where do you want to take it if you have that perspective, that sense of seeing the world differently, that's what I think gives us leadership, power to a much more than formal authority. If you don't see the world differently than others, why are you leading? Because you're just going to continue the status quo. So a lot of what I'm trying to do is help me just think about what makes them that they cut their view of the problem the area different from others, and how to lean into that, that uniqueness, and really make that the basis of their next chapter, of their company or organization.

Jean Gomes:

If you were starting out again, given everything you've learned, everything you know as an 18 year old, how might you do things different? What might, what path might you found yourself on?

Sharath Jeevan:

I'm actually writing a sort of a book on this, Jean, right now, I must say, I don't have the answer. But I think one of the things I'm always a bit graphic, sort of torn by, is I took a conventional path, path for maybe the first 10 years of my career, consulting, corporate business school, etc. I had a strong sense of, roughly, a strong sense of way I wanted to go. Wanted to go though in terms of, you know, career with more social impact problems around education, etc, and then leadership became a big North Star for me. In terms of that problem you talked about. I still don't know to this day whether I would am better off just going straight for that and playing to Strengths much earlier on, or whether doing something that forced me to round out a bit, do different things, build a great network, maybe have some conventional badges on the CV, honestly, as well. Help. I'm sure it did help. But what I don't know is whether, if I just gone straight into what I was passionate about, would I be in a very different place altogether, for example. So I don't have a perfect answer to this, but I think it's one thing just to be conscious of. And I think if you're going to do, like, what I call a stepping stone, which is what I did, just know it is a stepping stone, give yourself a jump off point. So I knew that after about 10 years that was enough, I wanted to make the jump off what to do? Maybe 10 years was too long. Maybe, maybe it was in retrospect, but yeah, it's one of those things to we'll never know the exact what the counter factual. Counterfactual would be.

Scott Allender:

Are you able to tell us more about the new book? I'm super curious,

Sharath Jeevan:

so I'm I'm playing actually right now. Start with the format of it. It might be a nonfiction book. What I've done before, it might also maybe be a novel. So playing with a few ideas there, I've certainly mentioned I do a lot of comedic gigs for companies. Often, I'll do a keynote as well as the advisory, which is a bit more comic and a bit more fun, because it can open up minds and get people to think differently, and get us out of that sort of comfort zone we talked about. I'm wondering where to create a comedy show version of the of the book as well, and maybe do it so like Edinburgh or something as well. So a lot of ideas around it, but the core idea, though, is about what, what is that that middle ground between generations? And you know, what does a father tell their son or daughter? What is a someone very senior to tell someone entering the workforce? How do we get that sort of balance right and and think about it in the right way as well. So yeah, and I think it's about there's not one right answer. It's not going to be what the new generation wants fully. It's also not going to be what maybe what we did and to get to where we are now. But there's some middle ground that we need to co create together, and there's a lot more empathy and understanding that we need to look at and looking at these, these sort of pillars of perspective, of authenticity, connection and excellence as some of the pillars we need to explore to make that intergenerational understanding clearer and stronger as well. I love it

Scott Allender:

well, Sheriff, you've given us some really insightful, wise and practical views and things that are very actionable, so we're really appreciative of that. Thank you so much for your time. And yeah, we'll have you on again when you when the new book comes out.

Jean Gomes:

Maybe you can do the few jokes next time

Sharath Jeevan:

as well. It's one of these with these things as well. But I really enjoyed the conversation, guys, and it feels such a live. I love what you're doing. I think it feels like such an important time to look at leadership. You at leadership with a different lens right now. So I love what you're doing.

Scott Allender:

Brilliant. Thank you Well, folks, thank you for joining us again today, and remember until next time the world is evolving. Are you? You?

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Jean Gomes

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Scott Allender

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