In this episode of Executive Connect, Melissa Aarskaug sits down with Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj, an experienced leadership advisor who has worked with government leaders, Fortune 500 executives, family businesses, and global organizations, to examine why leadership should be intentionally designed rather than simply inherited.

Shaheena explains how mediocre leadership can quietly show up through turnover, disengagement, stalled decisions, burnout, and lost opportunities. She shares why psychological safety and trust cannot be declared into existence, why successful leaders can become trapped by the very behaviors that once made them successful, and how a lack of tolerance for failure creates dangerous blind spots.

The conversation also covers leadership agility, emotional intelligence, self-reflection, empathy, accountability, and why training programs rarely create lasting change when senior leaders refuse to change themselves.

For organizations that want stronger cultures and better performance, Shaheena’s message is clear. Leadership is not a status or title. It is a practice built through behavior, reflection, trust, and the willingness to adapt.

Chapters:

(0:41) The real business cost of bad leadership

(1:50) What leadership design actually means

(2:11) Why organizations tolerate mediocre leadership

(3:55) Leadership as behavior, not status

(5:04) Warning signs of poor leadership

(5:53) Psychological safety and trust in action

(7:14) When leaders blame instead of adapt

(9:46) How success creates leadership blind spots

(10:24) Why high performers struggle with failure

(11:32) When old leadership models stop working

(12:18) Building tolerance for failure

(15:45) Leading through constant uncertainty

(15:52) Why agility is now a leadership superpower

(16:34) Understanding how teams handle uncertainty

(18:41) Knowing when your leadership style has expired

(18:54) Self-awareness and leadership evolution

(19:17) Equality versus equity in leadership

(20:01) Why deep reflection changes leaders

(20:36) Learning from what goes right

(23:09) Why emotional intelligence still matters

(23:53) Bringing humanity back into leadership

(25:23) Why connection drives better performance

(27:26) Why leadership training often fails

(28:25) The hidden cost of command-and-control leadership

(29:44) Why change must begin at the top

(30:16) Accountability as a leadership requirement

(30:59) Measuring whether behavioral change actually lasts

(34:08) Building a collaborative company culture

(34:42) Empathy, alignment, and shared goals

(35:23) Challenging assumptions across teams

(36:37) How behavioral change creates better solutions

(40:33) Why trust changes team performance

(41:01) Slowing down to become a stronger leader

(41:40) Observing without judgment

(43:03) Calling out a leader’s damaging behavior

(43:31) The conversation that created a breakthrough

(44:26) Leadership as an intentional design challenge

(45:31) Shaheena’s three leadership principles

Shahenna

(0:00) What I realized during the coaching was he was setting his team up to fail because he tried to do that with me as his coach as well. (0:08) And I had to call him out on it. (0:09) We had built trust, but I had to call him out on it.

(0:11) And culturally, you know, it wasn’t an easy thing to do with this guy, but I did it. (0:17) And when he saw, I saw through the BS that he was presenting, everything, the mask slipped, everything slipped, right? (0:25) And we had the most honest conversation.

(0:28) We had the most honest conversation. (0:30) And I was able to say to him, if you behave like this with your team, how on earth are they supposed to trust you? (0:35) Because this is what you’re doing to me, and I’m supposed to be helping you.

(0:39) And it was that level of honesty, phenomenal.

Melissa

(0:41) Bad leadership doesn’t just hurt morale. (0:45) It doesn’t just create frustration with the organization. (0:48) And it certainly doesn’t stay confined in the employees engagement surveys.

(0:53) Bad leadership shows up on the balance sheet. (0:57) It shows up in delayed decisions, stalled initiatives, unnecessary turnover, missed opportunities, and talented people quietly disengaging before they eventually leave. (1:10) The challenge is that most organizations never connect those outcomes back to bad leadership design.

(1:17) Today’s guest has spent years helping leaders make that connection. (1:22) Shahina has worked with government leaders, Fortune 500 executives, family businesses, and global organizations to understand why leadership systems succeed, why they fail, and how organizations can build structures that perform better because leadership is intentionally designed rather than accidentally inherited. (1:44) Welcome, Shahina.

Shaheena

(1:46) Hi, Melissa. (1:47) It’s great to be with you today.

Melissa

(1:50) Great to be here. (1:51) And man, I surely agree with everything we talked about in that intro. (1:56) And I love this phrase that you use called the leadership design.

(2:03) Talk to me a little bit about what that means and why so many organizations get it wrong.

Shaheena

(2:11) You know, I think I’m going to jump straight in with this because I think we see time and time again, people putting up with mediocrity and leadership. (2:21) And really, fundamentally, this is about a mindset shift. (2:24) And before I jump into that, I just want to give you some data that really speaks to the cost of bad leadership.

(2:31) So when you have senior managers who leave an organization, it is estimated that it costs the organization around 200% of the annual salary in terms of loss. (2:42) Now, you know, that is everything. (2:44) That’s the cost of finding somebody to replace that person.

(2:47) That’s the decline in output. (2:49) But when you think about the salaries you’re offering to senior managers, double that salary is lost as a result of senior managers walking out of the door. (2:58) It’s a huge amount.

(3:00) And if you do nothing else but start to stem the attrition of senior managers leaving, you actually start making money because you’re saving what leaks out of the business. (3:11) So absolutely huge. (3:13) And I think when we think about bad management or bad leadership and we think, well, let’s not, maybe that’s too harsh a word, let’s talk about mediocre leadership.

(3:22) We seem to have got to this stage where we kind of put up with it. (3:27) Often when I’m in delivering training programs or I’m working with clients and, you know, they see the opportunity for growth and development, but they’ll say, yeah, this is great, but my leader dot, dot, dot, dot, you know, and the assumption is this cannot be moved, managed upwards. (3:43) They are stuck with a manager or a leader who doesn’t see the need for change, has sent them on this training program, put them into a coaching program, but actually doesn’t really want much to shift there.

(3:55) So for me, having spent decades working (4:00) within business schools, on executive education programs with thousands and thousands of clients, (4:04) a really, really big shift for me is helping leaders change the way they think about leadership (4:10) into not this sort of status driven, fitting into a box, this is what I’ve got to do, (4:17) but actually recognizing this is about practice, it’s about behavior, it’s about iterating. (4:22) And the message I give, and this is a big part of my slogan now is really pushing leaders into thinking about how they behave in the sense of leadership being unscripted.

Melissa

(4:36) Yeah, and I love, gosh, so much in that. (4:40) You know, I would say I was a good leader succeeding inside a poorly designed system, and I was making gobs of money, and I eventually left the organization. (4:53) I was making the organization gobs of money, and I was making gobs of money, but I actually left for the exact reason that you mentioned is poor leadership.

(5:04) And so what are some of these signs of poor leadership inside organizations? (5:11) Because I would say if I was, you know, a CEO of an organization, I’d want to know why some of my best employees were leaving the building. (5:20) I want to unpack that before I kept losing more and more.

(5:23) So why, maybe why is this happening, and what are some signs for leaders to start paying attention to?

Shaheena

(5:31) Yeah, you know, I think it’s a very hard one until you’ve actually gone through that experience, when you really, truly understand what poor leadership looks like. (5:39) And once you’ve understood it, then you work so very hard never to be in that situation again. (5:46) I think, you know, one of the big things is actually what is the tone, what is the culture that is set by the leader?

(5:53) Because so much of my work focuses around behavioral change and around innovation, one of the core elements is around psychological safety and building trust. (6:05) And, you know, I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard people say to their teams, well, we need psychological safety, we have trust in this environment. (6:13) And it’s almost as though it’s a consumption, you know, they’ve said it, therefore it is.

(6:18) But actually, it’s about the consistency of behavior. (6:21) And you can see very quickly, when you’re working with teams and individuals, how they respond when the leader’s there in the room with them, compared to when the leader’s not in the room with them. (6:32) So that willingness to be open, that willingness to share ideas, the fact that you can look at your leader and say, or believe that when they say trust me, or you can challenge me, you actually genuinely believe you can and that you feel safe enough to do it.

(6:47) So I think these are these are absolute fundamentals. (6:50) But I also think there is something really important here about, you know, we’re all drawn to patterns of behavior. (6:56) And we’ll see leaders who will consistently do the same thing over and over and over again.

(7:02) And it’s not about it’s actually very, very, very intelligent, high functioning individuals will work with what they’re doing, because it’s worked before. (7:12) So why not? (7:13) Why would you change it?

(7:14) If it doesn’t work, you are less likely to blame yourself, you blame the external environment. (7:19) So when you see leaders getting stressed, when they start blaming others not taking responsibility, this is really when you’re seeing very detrimental behavior around leadership, because there isn’t the ability to change behavior. (7:33) And if we were to kind of fast forward, and this is something we’re seeing happening globally at the moment, the very, very high rates of mental health, burnout, these sorts of issues that are happening in every organization, you can actually track it back to the problems around poor leadership.

Melissa

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(8:02) Don’t just watch act. (8:04) Oh, so good. (8:06) I get the goosebumps talking about this, because it’s funny, I’ve literally had an owner of a company say these exact words to me, it’s my company, and I’ll run it however I please.

(8:16) And if you don’t like it, you can find another job. (8:19) And I’m thinking to myself, what kind of narcissistic behavior would say something like that. (8:28) And I think the problem too, is if organizations measured leadership, the same way they measure revenue, they would absolutely be surprised at how much more revenue they would have when their leaders are happy, and they’re working collaboratively, because I think in really toxic work environments, nobody trusts anyone.

(8:56) And if you don’t trust anyone, how can you get things across the line, or work together to kind of accomplish anything, because everybody’s kind of protecting their position or their desk. (9:09) And I also think that these kind of bottlenecks in leadership affect not only the growth of the individual employee, but the growth of the company. (9:24) And so I love that you mentioned the cost associated with it, because I think a lot of times we can correlate in business, how do you measure leadership?

(9:35) Well, it depends on how your CEO looks at leadership. (9:38) But when you look at it from a cost standpoint, it makes it something that’s easy to measure. (9:46) And so let’s talk a little bit about all these incredible leaders that you’ve worked with, but why some of them still struggle.

(9:57) They may be great, accomplished leaders, but they’re still struggling. (10:03) And as a person who identifies as a high performer, I often find we fall into some of these traps. (10:12) And so talk to me a little bit about where success sometimes creates blind spots for us as a leader.

Shaheena

(10:24) Yeah, that’s such a great question, Melissa. (10:27) If we think about many leaders, we know individuals I’ve worked with, I have no doubt individuals you’ve worked with as well. (10:35) The profile for many leaders is very, very strong academic, very accomplished in their careers.

(10:41) And if you trace it back, they have not experienced large amounts of failure early on in their careers, and even more so academically. (10:50) And it really then comes down to one thing, they don’t have the opportunity to build tolerance for failure. (10:56) So what happens, you’re a very high functioning individual, you are incredibly intelligent, you are very capable, you are used to being successful, you build success upon success.

(11:05) That is one of the reasons why you move into these leadership roles. (11:09) And in doing so, then, as I was saying earlier, when things go wrong, you can’t even begin to imagine that it’s got anything to do with you, it must be the external environment, because you’ve almost created this sense of being impenetrable, right? (11:23) You are successful, you know what you need to do, you go and do it in another organization, or you do it at the next level, it works, it works until it doesn’t work.

(11:32) And right now, there’s a lot that’s not working because of the huge amounts of instability and turbulence globally, and what that means for organizations. (11:40) So what we’re seeing with leaders at the moment is things that they have worked previously are no longer working, they’ve kind of been applying models that they may have learned throughout their training and leadership development, those models only work as a reference point, they are not foolproof, they’re not going to take you through every, every eventuality and every certainty you face. (12:02) And if you do not have the tolerance for failure, you are not ever going to learn from failure, you cannot learn from failure, unless you’re able to internalize what went wrong and say, okay, if this happened, maybe it’s because I did x, y, and z, and then going and having those conversations with your team as well.

(12:18) So for me, a big, big, big area is about building tolerance for failure, which again, you can do it at any point in your life, you do not have if you haven’t done it when you were at school, you’re in your 50s. (12:30) And you’re saying it’s too late, I can’t do this. (12:32) But it takes a huge amount of courage and a healthy dose of humility to be able to say, this is something I need to start developing, because this is what my organization needs.

(12:42) And this is how we’re going to be to prove the organization and the leadership within the organization.

Melissa

(12:48) Money Ripples is on a mission to help professionals like you get their money working harder, their clients free up an average of $35,000 their first year without having to work extra hours to show you how they’ve put together a powerful training called cashflow secrets. (13:08) And as a listener of the executive connect podcast, you can get it completely free. (13:14) Just visit money ripples.com forward slash secrets and enter the promo code e x e c. (13:25) Yeah, and I love that you mentioned that I’m sitting here thinking I’m like, God, I have had so much failure as a leader. (13:32) And you know, I think I think back to my first leadership job. (13:36) When I was, you know, 17, I was leading, I’m like, what do I know about leadership?

(13:42) And I, you know, in that first role, she, you know, I’m like, Oh, my goodness, like, I have to know everything about everything. (13:48) And I would, you know, spend all this time trying to figure out how to know more than the people that, you know, I was leading. (13:55) And now as a leader, you know, I think it’s the opposite for me, I lean on my people to tell me what I don’t know.

(14:05) And so their expertise of in a certain area, and I’ve hired them to be an expert in this area. (14:10) So I let them leave that area versus, you know, trying to know more than them as a leader. (14:18) And so and I do think, for me, and I don’t know how it is with the clients that you coach, but I’ve had to adapt my approach many, many times in my career, I think back to 2020, where I had people all over the world.

(14:37) And I was now remote, I had a remote staff. (14:42) And I’m so I turned it like trying to be funny with my staff. (14:47) And like, every time we had a team meeting, I would, you know, do something goofy or share something funny, just because everybody was so stressed during 2020.

(14:56) And so I think the other thing, kind of to your point, is we’ve got to be kind of adapting and shifting the way we think about leadership and how we’re leading. (15:09) And we’ve seen it a lot in the world today, as we are, you know, 2026. (15:14) And there’s a lot of stress in our world, there’s a lot of tension, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

(15:20) And I think uncertainty really changes people’s behavior. (15:25) They’re fearful, they’re not fully, you know, fully 100% all in on their day to day. (15:32) But I really think, you know, being a leader who approaches it understanding, okay, my people are up against these things are really struggling with these things, how can I approach it?

(15:45) So I guess the question is, how do you approach, you know, leadership today in a world that’s constantly changing?

Shaheena

(15:52) Yeah, so one of my big, big, big words at the moment is agility. (15:57) It’s huge, right. (15:58) And it’s, it’s always been important for leaders, you know, whether you talk about zooming out balcony view, and then getting in, you know, jumping in and working with your teams when you need to.

(16:08) But the level of agility that’s needed now is just kind of at super skill level. (16:14) I think, you know, when you talk about the level of turbulence, it is almost impossible to predict, I mean, where we are now midway in 2026, compared to where we were at the beginning of the year, no one could have really genuinely predicted the year would have turned out the way it has so far. (16:29) And it’s almost impossible to predict what the next six months will bring.

(16:34) I what is so important as a leader is understanding your team and understanding how they deal with uncertainty. (16:43) Which means that level of self reflection is so important, (16:46) knowing how you deal with uncertainty, and where you need to working on yourself to handle, (16:51) not just uncertainty, I’m going to actually, you know, we’ve gone from the kind of volatile (16:55) VUCA environment towards one that is Barney, which is about brittle anxiety, nervousness, (17:00) and irritability, because people are really, really tense about things.

(17:04) So you knowing how you deal with the environment, but actually observing your team, what patterns do you see amongst your colleagues when they are facing uncertainty, because that’s going to allow you to figure out who you rely on and who needs extra support and who you can lean on when that next wave of uncertainty hits the organization.

Melissa

(17:24) Yeah, I love that. (17:25) So I think context plays a huge role in leadership development. (17:31) I’ll give you an example.

(17:32) If you don’t have children, you can’t understand what it’s like to be a mother. (17:37) I did not understand that as a leader in my 20s. (17:43) And in my 30s, until I had children.

(17:46) And then I had a transformation in myself as a leader. (17:52) But I had that personal transformation because I had contacts of what it must be like to have to be to work by eight o’clock and have to get children to school before eight o’clock. (18:03) And so I think contacts around who works for you and what they’re up against.

(18:09) And it’s interesting because, you know, one of the employees that worked with me, or worked for me, she was a single mother. (18:19) And so she’s trying to run kids around. (18:22) And I didn’t really understand the context.

(18:24) But when I had a child, my relationship with her shifted because she knew that I knew that hidden kind of like, oh, now, you know, it’s hard, isn’t it at eight o’clock to get going and get moving. (18:40) And so I had contacts. (18:41) And so, you know, let’s talk a little bit about how leaders know when they’re outgrowing, you know, this old model of themselves as a leader.

Shaheena

(18:54) Yeah, I think again, you know, it’s so much of this is going to come down to self reflection and self awareness. (19:01) And what you’ve just shared, it’s a really great example about there’s a point when you don’t know what you don’t know, and then your environment changes. (19:09) And you reflect back in your 30s, you would have reflected back on your 20s and say, said, you know, this is how I saw the world.

(19:15) This is how I see it now. (19:17) And I have worked with leaders who will take a view, you know, I treat everybody equally. (19:24) So if I’m dealing with working moms, I will still treat them in the same way that I treat their male counterparts.

(19:33) And you can see that need to sort of be equal, but not equitable. (19:37) And it’s a bit of a blunt sword, because you do actually, in order to get the best out of your teams, you’ve got to know them well, you’ve got to understand what’s going to help them perform at their best. (19:46) And the only way I honestly, genuinely, I’ve seen the results with this, I’ve had the most phenomenal breakthroughs with coaching clients when you get them to just pause for a moment, and give them space to reflect deep self reflection.

(20:01) And I’m not kind of doing the superficial top level, was it a good day today? (20:06) Did I deliver well with my team, but you know, going into those really gnarly, difficult problems, where they kind of gloss over them, because they don’t actually want to deal with them. (20:15) And usually, again, it’s linked to failure in that sense of this didn’t work, I don’t want to deal with this.

(20:20) So let’s move on. (20:21) But self reflection is so critical. (20:24) Because that’s the point you start stepping away from, you know, this is what my training tells me, or this is how a leadership leader needs to behave into, okay, this actually isn’t working for me.

(20:36) So let’s figure out why it’s not working. (20:38) But I will also say something here, Melissa, at the same time, it’s also really, really important, when people are successful, to get them to understand why they’re successful. (20:48) And recently, I was speaking to a client, and she was phenomenal, she’d made this amazing breakthrough.

(20:53) But when I pushed her and said, why were you successful, she couldn’t articulate it. (20:58) And she gave me a lot of conversation. (21:00) And she kept using one word, which was clarity.

(21:02) And it was only after they said to her, do you realize the word you kept using, she had no recollection, because it was a subconscious making sense. (21:10) So it was as it is as important for somebody to recognize what they’ve done well, so that that becomes in their leadership toolkits. (21:18) And they recognize this is the thinking and the approach they’re bringing, and empowering them with that.

(21:24) And at the same time, when people are not doing well, to help them understand why they haven’t done well, and what they could be doing instead. (21:30) And that to me is how you get leaders, especially when they’re under so much pressure, give them space and time to reflect and understand why the models aren’t working and how they start to build and trust their instincts.

Melissa

(21:44) Yeah, yeah, it’s so true. (21:45) I think, you know, I talk a lot about the, you know, as we get older, our IQ doesn’t necessarily change, it’s the same, but our EQ and our behavior and how we, you know, deal with our emotional intelligence, sometimes, and most times it needs to change. (22:05) And so a lot of times, when we’re doing these training programs, corporately, we’re training on a specific skill, we’re not training on a behavioral change, we’re training on, you know, this is the way you need to do this specific task.

(22:24) And so I really think, you know, emotional intelligence and being really aware of the behavioral side of leadership is really important to teach emotional intelligence to our leaders to understand, you know, kind of what I was mentioning in the intro, when people are withdrawn, to have awareness that we have, you know, Melissa is usually really engaged. (22:48) And for the last five meetings, Melissa hasn’t said a word, something might be wrong with Melissa, let’s set up some time to figure out what’s going on. (22:57) And so talk to me a little bit about like, the behavioral changes and how, you know, important it is to have that, you know, emotional intelligent piece in the workplace.

Shaheena

(23:09) I mean, look, the phrase emotional intelligence has been around for about 25 years, right? (23:15) It’s not new, but we’re still getting to terms with what it means in the workplace. (23:19) And I think this is fascinating for me, because, you know, for so long, I think there’s been this approach for leaders, which has been, leave yourself at the door, and you come in, and you take on this leadership persona.

(23:35) And, you know, you talked earlier about the types of leaders who will say, well, it’s my workplace, I’ll do what I like. (23:40) We see that time and time again, particularly in family offices or entrepreneurial businesses. (23:46) But you also see it in large corporates as well, that sense of ego and kind of the hubris that kicks in with leadership as well.

(23:53) And it always surprises me, but we still have to say it about reminding people to be human and to be human beings in the workplace. (24:02) Because for so long, it was as though your personal and your work identities were completely separate. (24:09) The skills that we know are going to take leaders forward are the skills that build around emotional intelligence, creativity, innovation.

(24:19) You can’t ask people to be creative, you can’t ask them to trust you with their crazy, wacky, absolutely brilliant ideas, unless they trust the process, trust you that you’re not going to diminish them and exclude them for saying something that could seem so crazy, but actually might just turn a project around or the business around. (24:38) And I can tell you, I’ve run so many workshops and programs around creativity and innovation, and the point at which things make a difference, the point at which you see people shift their behavior is when they can relax and actually start thinking from a different perspective. (24:53) It is absolutely huge.

(24:56) At the same time, I was just going to say, one of the things that I can imagine, you know, people listening to this nodding and getting it, but at the same time, there’s a bit of eye rolling. (25:06) Let’s be honest, when you talk about emotional intelligence, people will roll their eyes and say, you know, empathy, emotional intelligence, not again. (25:13) But if we think about how we want to behave, if we think about how we want to be treated, we think about how you and I are connecting on this podcast, connection is everything, right?

(25:23) That’s it. (25:24) You get the best out of people when you connect with them.

Melissa

(25:27) Yeah, and I agree. (25:28) I think back to a leader that I worked with once. (25:31) It was two days before Christmas, and he made every single employee do extra work two days before Christmas.

(25:38) So we’re all on the like down slope for the holidays. (25:42) And he, you know, gets all of us leaders aggressively on a call, you know, verbally says this has to be done or it’s our jobs. (25:51) And so the way he dealt with things was aggression and aggression and fear and fear.

(25:57) And it’s interesting, because I think, you know, awareness, like we all knew the behavior. (26:07) But it translated for us as a team into action, like, the behavior was aggressive and fear. (26:15) So being aggressive, this has to be done.

(26:17) If you don’t fear, and then it translated all of us into action. (26:24) And we all were kind of accountable to getting these things done. (26:30) But back to what you were saying at the beginning, you know, there was no empathy whatsoever.

(26:35) And it’s the holidays, you know, all of us were still trying to finish shopping with for the season, we had family coming in town, but we were all working till midnight to get something done, because of his poor planning during the week of Christmas. (26:51) And so I feel like sometimes organizations reinforce the bad behavior, and we allow it to go on. (27:04) Instead of the new behavior, like we could bring in and I, you know, worked for an organization that brought in a lot of consultants that were teaching us about working together and collaboration and teamwork.

(27:15) The consultant left the next week, everybody reverted back to the bad behavior, we were good for like two days. (27:23) But it’s because it started at the top.

Shaheena

(27:26) Yeah.

Melissa

(27:26) And, and I use that example, because we could have 700 consultants, if the new behavior isn’t reinforced, and there’s not accountability wrapped around it, then it’s never going to stick. (27:40) So I’d love to kind of get, you know, you know, what does sustained change actually look like in a healthy organization that you know, you work with to make them, you know, we realize you’re, you know, maybe there’s conversations where you talk to the CEO. (27:58) And so hey, like, you’re pretty aggressive there, maybe we should get you a coach.

(28:02) So your staff understands the direction because a lot of times, working for somebody like that, one of us saw one thing and the other saw another, and we’re trying to do what we were instructed, but we were going the opposite direction, because there was poor communication and poor emotional intelligence. (28:21) And so how do you actually change this behavior?

Shaheena

(28:25) Yeah, so I’m going to just take us back a step, because (28:28) the example you shared at the beginning of this conversation about the you know, the run up to (28:33) Christmas, it is something that I have seen happening so much more frequently since COVID, (28:39) because during the pandemic, everybody went into a sort of very authoritative or direct sort of (28:45) command and control leadership style, because everybody was under panic. (28:49) Now it does get the results, we know it gets the results, the research talks about that.

(28:53) But it also leads to unbelievably high levels of burnout. (28:57) So as you said, you guys got the work done, but then the resentment stays and over time, if people keep working at that level, they do get burnt out and resentment kicks in. (29:06) But for many leaders, it becomes their go to leadership style, because it gets results.

(29:11) That’s the real challenge. (29:13) So when you see that with leaders, and especially when you start having conversations with leaders, they bring me in perhaps to say, I’m having problems with the team, because, you know, in many cases, high functioning organizations, the sales, the delivery is still there. (29:28) But the team is absolutely drowning.

(29:30) That’s, that’s reality. (29:31) And that’s the toxicity you see in the team. (29:34) When you start speaking to the leader, you can work out very quickly whether this is the rot at the top, or whether it’s sort of the next level or what’s going on, and you can identify that.

(29:44) And then it takes a certain amount of delicate negotiation to be able to say to the leader, in order for that shift to change, we need to start working with how you’re demonstrating and how you’re creating that role modeling for your team as well. (29:59) A lot of the time leaders will send their senior managers or kind of see minus one, minus two, offer coaching and leadership programs. (30:07) But to your point, I completely, completely agree with it, it actually has to start with leadership, it has to be communicated, and transparency and accountability.

(30:16) Again, accountability is my biggest word when it comes to leadership at the moment, because unless leaders are willing to be accountable and to say, okay, here is, here are the changes we’re making, I’m not going to get it right all the time, but we’ve got to figure out what we’re doing, it becomes almost impossible for that change to happen. (30:33) And I have seen it time and time again with leaders where they send their teams off for training, they expect miracles to happen, the team have an amazing time in the program, phenomenal time in the program, you know, whether it’s about collaboration, de-siloing the organization, innovation, you name it, right, I’ve delivered these programs. (30:53) But then when the leader walks in, the team just, just clamps up, and nothing, nothing actually, that shift doesn’t happen.

(30:59) So a really big part of my work now when I’m working with clients, I’m focusing on the impact, what happens six months afterwards, nine months afterwards, what is actually sustainable behavioral change, but it absolutely has to happen at the top. (31:12) And that takes bravery.

Melissa

(31:13) Today’s episode is brought to you by Renaissance, redefining success for modern Mavericks, a book I co-authored with Michelle Klein. (31:23) It’s a straightforward guide through reinvention, leadership, and building real freedom. (31:29) Inside, you’ll find practical frameworks, the Maverick test, and stories that help you take action today.

(31:36) Pick it up at executiveconnectexperience.com forward slash Maverick. (31:42) Use the code EXEC for 10% off. (31:48) And I agree.

(31:49) And you know, it’s funny, I love that you mentioned that. (31:52) So here’s what I did in this situation. (31:55) I saw consultant and consultant and nothing was changing.

(31:58) I went and got myself some coaching to deal with this situation. (32:05) And I figured I was going to have to confront it head on. (32:11) And so I started to make the changes in myself to even in a very toxic environment, I started making the changes.

(32:27) And I watched other leaders follow suit behind me, watch the way I was dealing with it. (32:34) And how I did this was placed boundaries in place. (32:39) And I was very clear.

(32:41) And what I would do is I would, what I should have done in this situation was, what I’m hearing you say is two days before Christmas, you would like me to do da da da. (32:57) And I verbalized back to this person what they were asking to do in a way that was reframed that made them think, wow, I’m kind of being a jerk, right? (33:10) Because in most cases, most people are taking the day before Christmas off and a day before that off.

(33:18) I wish I would have had the, you know, the, you know, the skills then to do that. (33:25) And but when another opportunity presented itself, I took the liberty to try and practice it. (33:31) And let me tell you, I was very nervous, because I’m like, I’m either going to get fired, or this is going to be a great culture shift for the company.

(33:42) And so I want to talk a little bit about the culture, the culture shift at work, because this is what really needs to happen is this shift, and it starts at the top. (33:54) But if the top isn’t shifting, somebody internally has to make that shift. (33:59) And so I know you often build cultures where everybody can, you know, lead with their own possibility and their own purpose.

(34:08) So talk to me about what that looks like to build a culture that’s actually working collaboratively instead of against each other.

Shaheena

(34:17) And you know, it’s one of the hardest things to do. (34:21) I mean, it’s easy to say it, it sounds great, but it is so incredibly difficult, because when somebody is so ingrained in the way they want to lead, and you know, nobody sets out to create a toxic environment. (34:31) From their vantage point, the work is getting done, the needs, the motivations of a leader will be very different to their teams.

(34:42) So in order to get to the culture shift, we come back to the fact about empathy being really important, getting clarity on what the goals are, what are you trying to achieve? (34:52) Do you understand? (34:53) Are you all aligned, actually, on what the goals are, and where you’re going, what you’re trying to achieve?

(34:59) Because the number of times I have companies saying, okay, we want to build more collaboration. (35:04) Yeah, so what does that look like? (35:05) What’s the end result for you?

(35:07) And of course, more often than not, it’s financial, it’s about increasing sales or saving costs. (35:13) But at the same time, it’s also understanding when you’re working across different functions, how are you bringing those different functions together to build empathy to understand what’s going on? (35:23) And there’s so many examples I have when I’ve worked with groups or individuals or teams where, you know, the IT sector will say, for example, an IT team will say, well, we’re not giving people access to data because they delete all the data.

(35:37) And, you know, there was a group who was furious because this has happened in one of their companies. (35:42) And I’m saying to them, from a curiosity, problem-solving point of view, what do you do? (35:46) Because they’re working in a company that’s operating 24-7.

(35:50) They’re not going to be available around the clock. (35:52) But if somebody needs data at 11pm at night, you can’t expect them to wait until the guys start the next morning at 9am. (35:59) But by taking them through a process of empathy, mapping, really understanding what problem they are solving for, rather than what they think they’re solving for, overnight, just giving them time to really, I call it getting stuck in the problem, like sitting with the mess, not trying to solve problems so quickly as well.

(36:19) You know, these guys came back to me the next day and they said, OK, I know what we can do. (36:23) We’re going to put all the data on the cloud. (36:25) Now, it was such a simple idea, right?

(36:27) It’s so logical and commonsensical. (36:29) But for these guys, they went through a whole mindset shift to get to that outcome. (36:35) And that for me is about behavioural change, right?

(36:37) The end result may not look outstanding, but actually that mindset shift is huge because I’ve broken it down for them in a way that they understand, OK, we have to be really clear on the problem. (36:48) We need to develop empathy mapping and we need to find different ways to challenge the assumptions we make. (36:53) If we can get those three things and give people the permission just to sit with a problem, whether it’s for five hours or 12 hours or 24 hours, you can see huge change, absolutely huge change.

Melissa

(37:07) Yeah, and I, it’s, yeah, I, wow, I definitely agree. (37:10) I think, gosh, I’m trying to think of how I want to unpack it, but I think it’s, it’s amazing what happens when you practice something. (37:23) So I’m a math and science brain person.

(37:26) So my brain functions in solutions, solution, problem, solve, problem, solve. (37:33) When your brain functions in that place, it doesn’t mean I’m a non-empathetic person. (37:39) It just means solve the problem is above empathy.

(37:45) But when you’re running organizations, I’ve had to learn how to put my problem solving personality back to bring the empathetic forward before I bring in the problem solving. (37:59) And so what happens is I’ve, I’ve learned how to do that with a coach, right? (38:04) I didn’t just show up.

(38:05) I didn’t just show up doing this. (38:07) And so, which is important, the work that you do, because I’m a fantastic problem solver. (38:13) I’m a fantastic strategist, but if I don’t have, and I didn’t have in my twenties, when I started this, the empathy part of it to rally my team around that vision.

(38:30) And so when I learned that emotional intelligence with the strategy and empathy, it was like gasoline on fire and it just helped everybody move things faster. (38:44) And then the other thing too, is you, you can learn all of this working with, like I had a lot of culture around me. (38:52) I had all age groups.

(38:54) I had people in other countries where I would show up to meet with, you know, like the Europeans and I would get right down to the brass tacks because that’s how a lot of my clients in the U S wanted to do it. (39:09) And I showed up to Europe to get down to the brass tacks and they’re like, let’s go get a beer first. (39:14) I’m like, get a beer.

(39:15) It’s like noon. (39:16) I don’t drink at noon. (39:17) And so any, I was drinking beer at noon so I could eventually get to the problem.

(39:22) But that’s a lot about learning how to deal with emotional intelligence, getting coaching, working across diverse teams and practicing it. (39:32) I had someone I could practice it with to bring back what I was learning. (39:39) And so, you know, how can leaders create those environments where they can thrive?

(39:48) I believe part of it comes from getting a coach where you can practice the situations and get really comfortable going and fixing the problem. (40:00) So I became really, really comfortable because I was practicing it before I was executing it. (40:09) And so a lot of times in my twenties, I would have said, I would have been so maybe not insecure, but not authentic in my presentation of what I wanted the team to do.

(40:22) Now, after practice, I’m very clear. (40:24) I’m very confident because I’ve practiced it. (40:27) And so I think what you do in building and helping people, it’s so important.

(40:33) And when you can build, you know, maybe we can unpack how important trust is in leading teams and culture. (40:41) I think, talk to me a little bit about how important trust is today.

Shaheena

(40:45) I’m going to talk about trust, and I’m also going to pick up what you’ve said about what leaders can do to build empathy. (40:52) So like you, I have been historically a very, very fast problem solver. (40:57) My tagline was just do it, right?

(40:58) Just get on with it. (40:59) Just do it. (41:00) Okay.

(41:01) I have had to learn to really, really slow down. (41:05) And that’s one of the great things about developing the coaching skills, because I have empathy with my clients who are often high performers, extremely, extremely experienced, but something’s not gelling with them and their teams. (41:18) And either they feel it or their managers are feeling it and saying, you know, this person has so much more potential, but things are just not working with their teams.

(41:25) And we need you to come in and help them and support them. (41:29) And one of the most important things that I work on with them is giving them a moment, and it’s building up to this. (41:40) It sounds, again, unbelievably simple, but a big, big part about building trust and empathy is about observing without judgment.

(41:50) Now, I know this sounds kind of, you know, a bit woo woo woo, you know, yeah, okay, fine. (41:54) But actually, when you are able to stop and observe what your team is doing, observe why is X behaving like that? (42:02) Why has Melissa just gone quiet for the last five days?

(42:05) What’s going on with the team? (42:07) And shifting from, well, I know the answer. (42:09) It’s because of X, Y, and Z, which is how I used to think, to now nurturing curiosity.

(42:14) Why are they behaving like that? (42:16) Why haven’t they picked up this problem? (42:18) Why has Melissa gone quiet?

(42:19) Just asking the whys around the behavior and not necessarily being the person that has the answers. (42:27) This becomes a game changer. (42:29) It’s absolutely huge, because it doesn’t mean you’ve got to go and sit by that person and kind of get all kind of warm and fuzzy, especially if that’s not your personality.

(42:37) It can be very daunting when we talk about emotional intelligence or empathy when people kind of feel you’ve got to go and metaphorically start hugging people, right? (42:46) That’s where people start to get a bit icky. (42:48) But actually, this is about just observing what’s going on.

(42:52) And I had one particular client, absolutely phenomenal human being, really keen, really enthusiastic. (42:58) But he really struggled with his team, really, really struggled. (43:01) And the team struggled with him.

(43:03) And what I realized during the coaching was, he was setting his team up to fail, because he tried to do that with me as his coach as well. (43:11) And I had to call him out on it. (43:13) We had built trust.

(43:14) We’ve gone in gently, built trust, but I had to call him out on it. (43:17) And culturally, it wasn’t an easy thing to do with this guy, but I did it. (43:23) And when I saw through the BS that he was presenting, everything, the mask slipped, everything slipped, right?

(43:31) And we had the most honest conversation. (43:34) We had the most honest conversation. (43:35) And I was able to say to him, if you behave like this with your team, how on earth are they supposed to trust you?

(43:41) Because this is what you’re doing to me, and I’m supposed to be helping you. (43:45) And it was that level of honesty, phenomenal. (43:47) But that was the real breakthrough moment.

(43:49) And actually, from there, things started to get so much better, to the point where I had HR and the manager reaching out and saying, please tell us what you’ve done, because something quite transformational has happened in this period of time. (44:03) And then it was a case of saying to him, right now, do you understand what’s going on? (44:07) Start observing.

(44:08) I’m not asking you to jump straight in and shift your behavior. (44:11) Give yourself time to observe. (44:13) And to your point, Melissa, giving him space to practice, what he wanted to do, practice it, literally role-playing the conversations, working out what language worked for him, so he could then take it back and use that with his team.

Melissa

(44:26) Yep. (44:27) And it’s so, so true, so much truer than all of that. (44:31) And, you know, I think a lot of times we think leadership is about just having a vision and growing a company.

(44:37) You know, it’s not just about that. (44:39) And it’s not just about the communication. (44:41) And it’s not about just having charisma and being, you know, a, you know, a motivational leader, but really what stands out to me most about what we’re talking about today is leadership is ultimately a design challenge and organizations that actually get that correct, enjoy the outcomes of fantastic employees that stay long-term.

(45:09) And so you’ve, you know, talked a lot and you remind us today that systems are not built by accident. (45:16) They’re built with intentionality and performance will follow right after that. (45:22) So thank you so much for being here and any final thoughts or anything that you would like to leave with our listeners?

Shaheena

(45:31) Yeah, there are three very quick things I’m going to share. (45:33) First of all, leadership is not a status per se, it’s practice. (45:41) It’s for creating a culture for learning, which is where you get growth and performance.

(45:47) Number two, leaders really, I would encourage every leader to break free from the models that they have been working with and build and trust their instincts so much more. (45:58) Please don’t get trapped by the models that you think you’ve got to work within these frameworks. (46:02) And finally, invest time and resources into your growth.

(46:05) We’ve talked a lot about coaching. (46:07) It’s such a critical resource in terms of being able to build that very confidential space for self-reflection and experimenting and allowing you to move into that new type of leadership, the approach to leadership that you want to practice and support that culture within your organization.

Melissa

(46:23) And wow, that’s great because the tagline for this podcast is break free, design your own legacy. (46:28) And so for anyone that’s interested in organizational performance culture or building teams that thrive under pressure, we’ll link Shahina’s work and her website and research in our show notes. (46:41) And if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, be sure to visit the Executive Connect podcast on YouTube where you’ll find conversations like this with executive founders and leaders on business, AI, wealth, and human performance.

(46:56) And don’t forget to also subscribe to the Executive Brief, our newsletter where we turn these insights into conversations and strategies that you can apply immediately. (47:09) Thank you so much for being here today.

Shaheena

(47:12) Thanks, Melissa.