Innandya Irawan - Kindness and humility - key traits for real leaders

In this episode, Innandya Irawan, co-founder of CarbonEthics, talks about how important it is for leaders to “choose to be kind instead of to be right”. This calls for a level of self-awareness, so that leaders can have open discussions with their team.

“Try not to scold if they make mistakes but be honest with them and let them have ownership, not just accountability. Let them be part of a decision and it helps them to have more professional commitment,” she says.

The second quality that today’s leader needs is humility. “Leadership, for me, is not about a pay cheque, authority or recognition; it’s about the readiness to serve others,” says Innandya.

“It’s about equipping others with the right tools and strategies to help break down barriers and leading through example in this world we’re living in that’s vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous,”

When working with volunteers, her first question is always to ask how she can help them to develop and grow

Leaders should get to know the team on a personal level, understand their professional or personal goals. “As a leader in the NGO that I’m in or in the corporation, I’m presented with the opportunity to make an impact in someone’s life on a daily basis, and my aim is always to leave a positive footprint wherever I go. I think the ultimate test of great leaders is whether their people felt they were a better person than the first time that they came in to join the organisation. To do that, it means you’ve got to take a stand for their development as well.”

Transcript

Innandya Irwawan FINAL

Thu, 4/21 3:22PM • 11:56

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

carbon, leaders, world, next generation, pandemic, compassion, sdgs, corporate, passion, farmers, ethics, climate crisis, leadership, volunteers, collaboration, led, aim, organisation, addicts, realised

00:01

Hello, and welcome to the fin biz 2030 building resilience podcast series. This episode features highlights from the better leadership better future webinar hosted by Angaris Angia here. In this episode we hear from Innandya Irwawan, introduced here by Ann Garis.

00:28

Our next guest speaker is the beautiful Innandya Irwawan, who by day works as a commercial professional in the energy industry. And alongside that she also runs carbon ethics, which is an NGO whose mission is to demystify the climate crisis and instead to enable and inspire climate action. What is so great about this is that the carbon ethics initiative has been created by a group of One Young World ambassadors. And again, if you have any questions, don't forget to submit them. So welcome Innandya, the floor is yours.

01:09

Hi, guys, thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you so much, when young world and Institute of content for the opportunity I'm honoured to be here and very humbled about it. So for those of the audience that don't know about exactly don't know about carbon ethics just yet. I'll share my screen just to give a brief introduction of what it's about. So as previously mentioned, briefly, carbon ethics is sorry, carbon ethics is an NGO that aims to demystify the climate crisis to inspire and enable climate action while improving the livelihood of communities. And what does it mean, it means that by doing this mission, we're actually able to hit on for several different SDGs number 11,13,14, and 17. Through our vision of sustainable living for healthy Earth and humanity, we're planning, we're aiming to do a lot of carbon education, we've already been doing that through our business partners, as well as collaborations with different corporations and other NGOs. And not only that we are taking concrete actions by planting mangroves as well as blue carbon, blue carbon, such as corals, and sea grass and seaweed. And therefore, by doing that, we're actually empowering and giving alternative income to the farmers that helping us to do that at the local level. Given the fact that this webinar specifically is about leadership, we're also now is is a host or home for 75. Now it's 70 volunteers and five full time full timers, and in one and a half year. Most of them are final year students, young professionals and corporate activists and we've been able to create lots of social and environmental impact whilst doing that. So if you ask me on whether or not the pandemic has given us a chance to actually build resilience within the team within how we do business, how we do carbon attics approaches, we realised that during the pandemic, a lot of our pharma partners lost lost their main sources of income, as most of them are double hatching as fishermen as well as tour operator. So this further convinced us to launch several campaigns that, you know, required us to reach out to our business partners as well as corporate corporate networks to give them the additional alternative income to help their family as often this mango farmers are the group of community that gets forgotten because people tend to the doctors and the nurses are the GoJek drivers, but not not necessarily the blue carbon farmers. So during the pandemic, we really effort in trying to help them even better. And I think another point, being able to live in this generation, as you know, picking up from gibberish point is that we're able to use digital outreach in our solutions. And therefore, we were able to make conservation more digitally possible, you can go to our website to help us do conservation as well as monitor the blue carbon that you guys are planting itself. Right. I guess moving on to the title of this webinar, which is about leadership. I'm gonna stop sharing here. Leadership for me, it's not really about paycheck authority or recognition. Leadership, for me is about the readiness to serve others and it's about equipping others with the right tools and strategy to help breaking down barriers and leading through example, in this VUCA world that we're living in and what is VUCA whoo guys actually, vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous just like 2020 Whatever. plan we've made in 2019, it must be changed in 2020. Right? That's just how, how the world is currently, the state that we're in. So as a leader, in the NGO that I'm in, or in the corporation that I'm currently working on, I'm presented with opportunity to make an impact in someone's life on a daily basis. And my aim is to always aim to live a positive footprint, wherever I go, whether that's with my volunteers, or with the farmers that I interact with. And I think, you know, talking about resiliency of leaders is that I think the ultimate test of great leaders is where they're people that left them felt that they were a better person than the first time that they came in to join your organisation. And therefore to do that, it means that you got to take a stand for their development as well.

05:51

So often, what I asked my volunteers and your organisation is like, you know, thank you so much for lending out your time for carbon addicts, but what can I do to help you? What can I do to you know, fulfil your learning goals or your professional goals? What can carbonate addicts do for you, and therefore, it's sort of like a reciprocating love between one another, because we want to help them and they want to help us and eventually, together, we help the environment. And that is the power of collaboration that I see. So I think I really do owe it to the One Young World 2018, Kate and team that have really propelled me to action. Coming out of that union World Conference, I just couldn't wait to start action, I just couldn't afford to just postponing, constructing, wishing and waiting, I wanted to jump in, right into action. And that is how I started my corporate activism journey. And I realised during that process is that you didn't need it, I didn't need a lot of resources. But what I needed the most was strong personal conviction to help solve a problem. And you ask yourself, how do you find your passion? How do you find your iki guy, my mentor once told me that passion is actually a performance multiplier. So when you know you're happy and energised, doing something even in my case, you know, doing carbon addicts is actually meaning that, you know, it's on during late nights, as well as weekends. It still fits me with lots and lots of positive energy to propel my days, onwards and forwards, right. So if your brain is sending signals that are you're getting closer to your passion, you will feel it, you definitely know where it's coming from. And I think for me, coming from Indonesia as an I'm naturally exposed to the richness of Indonesia's islands and archipelago, when I found out about and when I learned about plastic pollution, as well as sea level rise, I know that I couldn't just sit by doing nothing and not using the resources that I have to create carbon ethics with 200 corporate access be more interesting, which has been really, really wonderful.

08:00

So I guess I wanted to move on from that into how do we then build resilience? Right. So I think, you know, echoing garish, as well as perhaps the other speakers in here, we need more leaders that exercise Compassion over command, that nurture commitment and collaboration over control. And here are key.Leaders that can unite different interests, race, political division, and lead really with empathy. We also need leaders that understand the urgency of climate change, and that we've only got seven plus more years and leaders that actually, you know, want to sleep late night or work weekends to do something to really action it and do something about it. So one of my actual favourite example is actually, for instance, Jessica Arden, you know, I'm sure all of you know that she's the Prime Minister of New Zealand, it really shows the difference that she leads with diversity, kindness, compassion, and relatability. During the Christchurch shooting, she led with skill and compassion as well, by strengthening the gun control law. At the local level, you can see the comparison on several other leaders in several different countries that you know, fight fire with fire, and that doesn't help. So really, we really need more world leaders that lives with empathy, as well as compassion as such. So if you ask me about the next generation, garish has covered quite a lot about the next generation and what young people can do at this stage. But I think from from my perspective is that unfortunately, this generation or the next generation is inheriting a world where climate change breaks have oxygen, our economies, societies and the environment where unemployment and inequality is also ramping and the trust in international cooperation is falling. However, what I also see is that we have seen some evidence that makes me believe that the next generation of youth has the stubborn optimism to decelerate the climate crisis, and this is what makes the next generation so different. Right? And you also from home 1000s of you can also make an impact from home. And how do you do that? I think several practical tips from me number one is to be very self aware of what you're capable of. And I think self awareness is the very first step to many great things that awaits you that that you can that you can build up from there. And then number two, I would suggest that you spend the first three to five years of your career taking on some of the most difficult jobs that you will be able to deeply rooted yourself on. Because humans are like plants, right, we need a strong roots in order for us to grow on to the light. And that's what the tree, the first three to five years is about for you. And then number three, venture out, find a problem to solve from one to 17 SDGs. Find one that fits your iki guy that fits your passion, because we know what we need more changemakers and problem solvers in this world that perhaps can even give employment as well as social and economical impacts to other people. So I guess I'll stop on that point where I might have may run out my eight minutes, but thank you so much for the opportunity.

11:17

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