Shakti - Closing the Leadership Gender Gap - Featuring Puneet Sadchev

Today's guest is Puneet Sachdev, a global people and culture leader passionate about leveraging data, technology, and humanity to create inclusive and innovative workplaces. 

In a world of incremental technological changes, Puneet believes staying close to people is the key to success.  

In this episode, Puneet will share his views on the existing shortfalls in how organizations are developing senior female leaders. Puneet talks about Shakti, which is the principle of divine feminine, and how it can help bring balance to leadership in a world that is still predominantly masculine.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party Over to learn how to close the gender leadership gap in organizations.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You lived in so many different places, so many different countries. What have you learned from all these traveling and all these experiences?

Puneet Sachdev: When I look back on this and who I am as a result of it, of course one of the things which comes from doing that and having, like you said, lived in four or five different continents, worked in all over US, UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, a bit in Africa as well, actually Botswana off for very short period of time. 

I think you have to have a lot of tenacity or you will develop that. Because remember each time you go in a new context, some situations I've had to go and create my life there. And then you have to start networking and you're dealing with a lot of stereotypes, a lot of mental unseen barriers. That's one thing which I have learned that just constantly have to be upping your game, build your networks, try to find people who understand who you are, what's your value proposition. That's one. 

It makes you very adaptable. It just makes you extremely adaptable. You can be, you can hit the ground running in utterly, I can talk myself that hitting the ground, running in no time is absolutely becomes a part of, you know, who you are in. 

In a way it's adaptation for survival as well to an extent. The challenging side of that is that networks, friends, because when you go to these places, they are people who you would like to hang out with, but they have their local schoolmates college friends. You gotta be there for a long period of time. And then also it depends on the culture. So I think it's you know, it's been a number of these different things. So it's, it's got it ups and it's got it's it's downs as well.

Stephen Matini: Have you always known that you wanna be in change management, leadership development, or is it something that unfolded over the years?

Puneet Sachdev: Not really. Stephen, no. My dad's from the Indian Navy, the area in which I grew up, whatever, where, you know, when finishing off college school in, in the nineties, the middle of the nineties and all of that, there were very few options available. 

There was in India, the engineering, doctor, lawyer, armed forces, rights? So mainly these were where you would get the jobs. I have a very, I had a very impressive uncle, my mother's brother, Tenesh Tata. I mean, until today, I don't think I met anybody else who was as impressive. 

Very charismatic, very handsome guy, dresses up extremely well. Very intelligent international chap, one of the pioneers in the hospitality business in India. One of the first few people to go overseas to Salzburg and study and come back and he joined the Roy Hotels as a management trainee in their first batch in the 1970s.

I think subconsciously that was planted that I want to be like the mau. That's what we call Uncle Mau in India. I finished my college and then I applied just for that program. Nothing else. I just applied for The School of Management. Now it's called The Center for Learning and Development. I actually don't know what I would've done had I not got selected for that way stringent the talent acquisition process. But two thousands of people apply and they hire only 10, 15, whoever they think would be general managers down the line, right? 

I think I was one of those eight or 10 who managed to make it that year. That's the way life started for me. Transition into OD work, which I do right now, people, culture, organization development, change management. It wasn't a part of my plan. I was doing very well where I was. What happened was General Electric was ramping up, scaling up at India considerably. Okay. This is I think like two thousands now. 

One of my fathers grand, Dr. Cherian, he was a management consultant in organization development working globally. He had suggested, why don't you think about stepping out of the hotels into corporate? 

So yeah, the transition was completely happenstance, but I love the work I do totally, you know, number of things, right? Which for me, create flow at work is connection with people is very important for me to know that, to have a sense of contribution into the world, into people is important, it creates that to me. 

As far as I have the ability to do that, to be creating the solutions I design to be, to bring in research, to bring in technology, work with smart people, solve problems. I'm happy , honestly. And I think the choices that I've made, it has given me all these options. So I really think it's been really lucky to have been doing all this work for so many years.

Stephen Matini: You have traveled hard, you have worked hard. Because you have seen so many different cultures, you have experienced at so many different organizations. From the perspective of someone whose specialty is change, you know, is organizational development, have you noticed any elements that seem to be consistent across all these experiences?

Puneet Sachdev: It's very easy to now get squared data driven and tech and all that. Fantastic. I think it has its place, but we don't want the tale to act the dog in many ways, and the dog in many cells, many sense it still remains the people, it still remains the humanity of the world, right? 

And we have a very privileged show to play, in my opinion, to raise the consciousness of organizations. That's the lens through which I do my work is to go there to elevate the consciousness of this organization, whatever that looks like. Consistent elements for me will always remain staying close to people, no matter what you do. 

Let's look at it in two different ways. Explain close to people. If you look at it in the sense, if I'm leading a team and I'm dealing with stuff, then having a regular one-to-ones with the people having two-way communication channels, having the opportunities to, to best practice sharing, to understand, to help grow and all of that.

So I think, I mean always staying close to the people has been important to me to understand the people as much as I can. I'll give you an example. 

Hotels, at least the Old Roy is very, very strict on the customer satisfaction scores. The the board or the leadership team of the organization, every day they would get these CSAT scores from all hotels, 30 hotels in the world. They would go through it. They would actually give a call to the general manager of a property if they saw anything that was, so it was a measure higher than I think for them money was the employee experience, right? 

In that context, the teams that I ran over there, we always ended out with the highest CSAT scores consistently throughout f and b operations. And the other part was the highest density of employees of the month. And I can attribute it to one or two things. 

We are still remain universal no matter where you go. I really, honestly, genuinely care for the people that I've worked with. I not only knew them, I knew about their families, I knew about their dreams and desires. I used to go to the houses, give them flowers and cakes. If there was any occasion, I've done that all personally. 

Even today when I'm working organization consultancy, I feel that what has made me successful and because it's me, right? I'm walking through all these cultures and everything else, I think is that first of all, that ability to just care about the people, build the rapport and be honestly on their side. Everything else will fall into place. 

I believe when you do that, when that's the soil in which you are cultivating what you are doing. Yes, there's people analytics there, employee experience there, employee external strategies, all that will come. But the essences, you're serving these people today. 

The other very important aspect, which has to be recognized by any leader is wellbeing. It's very overwhelming all around. Whether you look at t