SPJIMR Centre for Wisdom in Leadership's (CWIL)13th Research Presentation - Dr Tatiana Trevisan
CWIL's thirteenth Wisdom Research Presentation was conducted by Dr. Tatiana Trevisan - Unit Convenor at Macquarie University and Energy Solutions Specialist at Green Energy Group, on Friday 20th October 2023.
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00:00:00So, very warm welcome to the 13th edition of Visitor Research Seminar and we have Dr. Tatyana.
00:00:16A warm welcome to Dr. Tatyana for agreeing and taking time out for this presentation.
00:00:23Dr. Tatyana is a unit convener at Macquarie University and energy solution specialist
00:00:29at Green Energy Group.
00:00:31She has over 15 years of work experience with sustainability and social impact in several
00:00:36sectors of society, government, private sector and even NGOs.
00:00:40Driven by justice and making the world a better place, she moved to Australia in 2017 to understand
00:00:46how to develop business leaders who will use business resources to create positive impact
00:00:51in the world.
00:00:52A part of her research was conducted at SPJMR and she investigated how impact of NCL units
00:00:59in developing such leaders.
00:01:02At SPJMR, we have a unit called non-classroom learnings and we cover different courses there.
00:01:08So, we teach spirituality, we ask students to work for NGO, we send students for rural
00:01:14internships.
00:01:15So, her research was focusing on how these NCL initiatives are translated into a leadership
00:01:24development or developing certain competencies among students.
00:01:27So, we are actually very excited to know what are her findings and this is more like experiencing
00:01:35or observing how teaching is translated into students learning or actually are we really
00:01:40achieving those course objectives or learning objectives.
00:01:45So, the format of this presentation is going to be like first 30 to 45 minutes Dr. Tatiana
00:01:52will present the research, followed by a Q&A and discussion.
00:01:56So, without taking more time, I will invite Dr. Tatiana for our presentation over to you.
00:02:06Thank you so much.
00:02:08And yeah, for me, it's really an honor to be presenting to you because I spent almost
00:02:14three years talking to students and professors and like people that work for the courses
00:02:24to happen at SP.
00:02:25I'm going to say SP because I never get the role.
00:02:28Yeah, perfect.
00:02:30And I started researching with SPJ and then it changed.
00:02:34But yeah, so for me, it's really an honor and I will say it from the beginning that
00:02:41I'm very inspired about the work that you do and I really hope, because sometimes we
00:02:47spend years doing research and nothing is really done with them, but what I really hope
00:02:52is that more and more universities get inspired with the work that you do because I have no
00:02:58doubt that our world, our society needs much more leaders like the ones you're developing.
00:03:07I'm going to share my screen.
00:03:11Can you see my screen?
00:03:12Yes.
00:03:13Yes, we can.
00:03:14Okay, perfect.
00:03:15I'm trying.
00:03:16If I get too dark, please let me know.
00:03:20So I will be giving you an overview of my PhD, which was granted, conferred on the 22nd
00:03:29of this year, so pretty new, brand new.
00:03:33The whole theme was Elevating Consciousness in Business Leaders, Connecting Personal Development
00:03:40to Positive Impact.
00:03:42And I will give you an overview about the other two articles that I wrote, but I'm going
00:03:47to focus on the article on SP.
00:03:51And first, I just wanted to give you a bit of my background because you will see it along
00:03:55my presentation that I'm much more like a practitioner than a researcher, the way I
00:04:02present and the way I speak.
00:04:05So I'm from Brazil, developing country, so I relate to many of the issues that India
00:04:13goes through as well.
00:04:15And when I decided to move to Australia to do my research seven years ago, I had already
00:04:21been working around 15 years, more than 10 years in Brazil with sustainability in business.
00:04:28And I've always been passionate about it.
00:04:32So there are many studies that show that business have the main resources to create positive
00:04:39impact or to help society solve our main challenges such as poverty, climate change.
00:04:45So business, if they decide to use their resources for good, the impact that they can create
00:04:51is incomparable.
00:04:55And so my last role, I was working at Walmart, and this is when I went to make a speech at
00:05:01the Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015 to talk about retailers and deforestation.
00:05:07I was the head of sustainability at Walmart, and I could see the impact that when companies
00:05:14use their resources to create change, the massive impact that they can create.
00:05:21But I could also see Brazil by that time started to go through an economic crisis.
00:05:27And I could see that when you actually take off the main leaders of companies and organizations,
00:05:37people that were really engaged in taking the sustainability agenda, sustainable development
00:05:42forward, if you actually end up losing that leaders, the whole agenda moves backwards.
00:05:51And I got very frustrated, but I used my frustration in a good way.
00:05:55So I decided to actually try to understand how we could awaken this will to do good in
00:06:02more and more business leaders.
00:06:03And that's what really drove my research.
00:06:07And also, when I was at this Climate Change Conference, for the first time, I saw someone
00:06:14talking about spirituality and sustainability together.
00:06:18That was 2015.
00:06:19There was a sister, Sister Jayanti from Brahma Kumaris.
00:06:24And she actually said that the only way to make a transition to a more sustainable society
00:06:28was integrating spirituality into the sustainability agenda.
00:06:32And by that time, for me, it really made sense that it was really about bringing up personal
00:06:38growth and development to individual leaders, that we would actually be able to promote
00:06:43more change.
00:06:47And by the end, what has always driven me is justice.
00:06:50I was born with that.
00:06:54And why justice?
00:06:55So for me, when I see inequality that keeps going to unprecedented levels, let me just
00:07:01because, yeah, there we go.
00:07:07And even though the rates of poverty have been reducing in the world, for me, it's still
00:07:14not acceptable that more than 700 million people still live in extreme poverty, meaning
00:07:21an income lower than $190 a day.
00:07:25I've got a son, probably most of you have got kids as well.
00:07:30For me, seeing children still dying because of not having access to clean water and
00:07:36sanitation and malnutrition, it's very heartbreaking.
00:07:43And what keeps happening is that we are seeing rich people getting richer and
00:07:50poor people getting poorer.
00:07:52So the gap just keeps increasing.
00:07:54So even though we sometimes have like this impression that things are getting better,
00:07:59they actually are not and inequalities keep growing.
00:08:02And with all that scenario regarding social challenge, we still have a four degree
00:08:09warming scenario that is being accepted.
00:08:13And we also know that most vulnerable people actually suffer more with the impacts of
00:08:19climate change. So when I look at all that, it really triggers my heart.
00:08:26And for me, overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, but it's an act of justice.
00:08:31And the best way we can actually tackle that is if we use business resources.
00:08:40But yes, so we were talking about leadership and then I had to answer this question
00:08:45many times because I was asked so many times, why do we need another leadership theory?
00:08:52As I said, for me, it was much more about really making sure that leaders embody the
00:08:58values and the ethics that leadership theories go for.
00:09:03And we keep seeing a lot of a lot of scandals happening, such as the one that
00:09:09happened with business top business leaders, such as the one that happened with
00:09:14Commonwealth years ago, or even when we see the wars that have been happening currently.
00:09:20So why is that still happening if we think that society has been moving forward?
00:09:28So, yeah, there is a lack of studies and understanding on how we can really.
00:09:36Make leaders integrate the moral values that are required for them to use business as a force for good.
00:09:50While I was still working at Walmart, I got in contact with this book, Conscious Capitalism,
00:09:56which can be very tricky, like talking about conscious and capitalism.
00:10:04But it's a really good book to read.
00:10:06And they talk about this new leadership model that they call conscious leadership.
00:10:15And what actually caught my attention to conscious leadership was that the focus is extremely on shaping a better future.
00:10:25But it also talks about igniting a passion and a sense of higher purpose while also being aligned
00:10:33with your own true values and being authentic.
00:10:37But the main thing for me to actually decide to explore conscious leadership is because it could be founded
00:10:43and developed based on the concept of consciousness.
00:10:48I'm going to explain more consciousness on the next slides.
00:10:52And it also brings the importance of having more intelligence.
00:10:57Emotional intelligence is very well spoken, like it's very well spread nowadays.
00:11:05But it brings the importance of also having spiritual intelligence, high levels of spiritual intelligence in leaders.
00:11:12So both the opportunity to explore consciousness development and also the importance of spirituality in developing leaders
00:11:23actually caught my attention to explore conscious leadership.
00:11:29Talking a bit of the background, that's the structure of my PhD.
00:11:34My main research questions were, what is conscious leadership?
00:11:39And why do some leaders choose to use business to create positive impact on society?
00:11:44Because we see the most don't.
00:11:47And how can conscious leaders be developed and what can be done to support this process?
00:11:52So my research, my dissertation was by publication.
00:11:57I don't know if you can do that in Australia, in India, but in Australia, we can choose to write the full thesis or together articles.
00:12:06And that's called thesis by publication.
00:12:08So mine was by publication and I and I end up writing three articles.
00:12:14The theoretical framework of my whole research is a constructive developmental theory,
00:12:22mostly loving this theory of ego or consciousness development that was further explored by Torbett and others on studies on leadership.
00:12:35So basically, what this theory talks about is that we all evolve through stages of consciousness.
00:12:42And when we hear consciousness, it's like the frameworks and mindsets through which we interpret information.
00:12:51So, for example, myself and one of you can go through the same experience, but we will experience it completely different.
00:13:00And that's because we have mental frameworks that are completely different.
00:13:05And that will depend the way our frameworks were built, will depend on how we were raised, our culture, our experience.
00:13:13So all that we go through in life actually build and model our frameworks.
00:13:19And that's what actually is structures like lenses to giving us the different ways we see the world.
00:13:30And what. And so and they also say that we all evolve through stages of consciousness.
00:13:38So as if in each stage of consciousness, we have different levels of maturity, different capabilities, different skills and different ways of behaving.
00:13:48And the way we evolve consciousness is through disequilibrating experience.
00:13:55In other words, experience that actually trigger the way we understand the world, the world.
00:14:03So our individuals normally seek to restore the equilibria and to make sense of the things that they see.
00:14:11If anything disequilibrates or shakes it, they will seek to restore the equilibrium again.
00:14:17And they can do that in two ways. One is assimilating the new information to an existing schema or mental framework or accommodating this new information to a new schema.
00:14:32And that would be evolving to a new stage of consciousness.
00:14:39What also caught my attention to use such theory, theoretical framework in my studies was because if we look at previous studies from Torbitz and others,
00:14:57they showed that and other authors show that as well, that if we look at the latest stages of consciousness, such as strategists and alchemists in these stages,
00:15:08there are studies showing that, for example, CEOs promote were more effective in promoting changes.
00:15:15They usually such leaders generate organization and personal transformation.
00:15:22And they also exercise power of mutual inquiry, vigilance and vulnerability for both the short and long term.
00:15:30And an alchemist, the latest stage, which now even has another one, they are individuals and leaders.
00:15:37They usually generate social transformation and they also integrate material, material, spiritual and social societal transformation altogether.
00:15:46So it seems that when we look at the studies available, there are not many higher stages of consciousness actually leave to individuals that are more aware of societal problems and actually have the capabilities to do something about it.
00:16:03So based on the studies available, I decided to deep explore that.
00:16:10What are the research gaps? So there were no clear definitions and conceptualizations of the conscious leadership construct, any leadership construct that would actually be founded in the consciousness development framework.
00:16:28What I said before, we still lack a lot of research, empirical research actually showing how and why some leaders choose to serve a higher purpose and use their skills and power to make a lasting, positive impact in the world.
00:16:43What is the difference? Why do they choose and how can we support that process?
00:16:49And there needs to be more research on leader development as a long term process of adult development.
00:16:57So in my research, I really look at the leader development process as an individual through the lenses of adult development theories.
00:17:08Right. And from the beginning, it's important to say, because I will be talking a lot about leader development, the individual.
00:17:16And it's different from leadership development because leadership is the capacity to influence others towards the same goal.
00:17:23And leader development is how these individual actually develop and grow, not the capacity to influence others.
00:17:32So we'll be talking about both.
00:17:36I won't have time to talk about the three articles, but I just want to show you the framework that we that that was created to actually conceptualize conscious leaders.
00:17:48And that was my first article. So I did a big literature review on the main positive and values based leadership theories such as transformational leadership, servant, authentic, spiritual leadership.
00:18:02And also some that are not that well known, but they're also really important, such as mindful and wise leadership.
00:18:11And what I got from them is that there is still a lack of integration between leaders that serve themselves or others in society.
00:18:22Most leadership theories, what they do is either the leaders, they are focused on being authentic and benefiting themselves or they will focus in serving their followers and consumers or they will they will actually have a spiritual bounding to actually engage internal employees.
00:18:44But I couldn't find any theory that would actually look at the individual in a more holistic way and a leader that would be very empowered if it was possible to serve the triad at once.
00:19:00And also the main thing that I looked at was that the main goal of this leader should be to to serve a higher purpose and create positive impact. And that's also not clear in most of the positive leadership theories.
00:19:17I also did a literature review on the unconscious leaders and conscious leadership. There's not much. There's more books than academic articles.
00:19:28And the main similarities that is in all the definitions is the focus on making the world a better place and also individuals that operate from high levels of consciousness.
00:19:43And these were the main things for me. So I knew I should keep calling what I was proposing as conscious leadership. So what I did was I developed a framework to be the ground of my studies where the main goal of the conscious leadership is to make the world a better place for all and create positive impact.
00:20:11But the aspects of conscious leaders were developed based on the latest stages of consciousness development capabilities. So I gather all the studies that actually brought these main capabilities and I divided them in three groups.
00:20:27The first group is self mastery that groups everything that is necessary for someone to be the best version of the self with the self and others. The higher purpose. So this connection that there is, that's the spiritual connection. There is something bigger leading from self transcendent values and really doing something that benefits something larger than the self.
00:20:57And then and also the characteristics that are necessary to become a positive impact catalyst because change is key on conscious leadership. And these characteristics are also well shown in the latest stages of consciousness.
00:21:18So this was just to give you a little bit of background. The second article I won't have time to go through because I really want to spend time on the article from SP. But just to give you an overview, I interviewed 35 CEOs of multinational companies or social entrepreneurs that were considered conscious leaders through my selection.
00:21:45And I went, I did, I did in-depth interviews to understand in their life stories what happened that actually changed the way they saw their role as a leader in business.
00:21:59And this is just a joke, not a joke, but I saw a strong, this is not a joke, I saw a strong connection between healing and creating positive impact. As if many times leaders that are very focused on creating impact, positive impact, they are actually consciously or unconsciously healing from some previous trauma.
00:22:27Sometimes the cause that they choose is directly related to the trauma they've been through. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just a way of releasing the anger. And that's the joke. I always now make this joke that I'm going to create this movement, Anger for Good.
00:22:43Because imagine, guys, how good it would be if all this anger that people keep putting into wars or to gain power, what if we use? Because anger is a very strong emotion that gives us a lot of power and energy. What if we use this anger for good?
00:23:01So this is just a joke. If anyone is more interested about these results, I'm more than happy to talk on another day with you guys. But it was just, I'm not going to, yeah, I'm not going to even go, I will, because I really like this example.
00:23:19So this was one of, very important example of one conscious leader that I interviewed. So he is a founder of a multinational company. And he shared that suicide was a recurrent issue in his family, including his father, and how he worked hard to overcome the fear of committing suicide himself.
00:23:41Years of self-development and making the choice to serve others and society healed him by replacing his fear with hope. From his interview, it was also clear that he demonstrated high levels of awareness, what I call know, and that his intrinsic motivation and works resides on giving hope for others.
00:24:07And his quote that I find very beautiful is, I don't live without hope. The desire for committing suicide is not present in my life. I believe I was able to get over it during my lifetime and work. I keep doing things and accumulating more reasons to believe that we can make changes in our lives.
00:24:30We can make changes in the life of community. My father did not believe, but I believe. And I know it might sound a bit depressing, but to be this guy, he is one of the main, he's the CEO of one of the main companies, most sustainable one, it's a multinational company.
00:24:50And he actually creates so much positive impact and change, and he lives such a happy life. But yeah, so it was very clear that because he had gone through this trauma that he couldn't see his family having hope, he keeps working harder and harder to make sure that people always have hope in their lives.
00:25:13Just a little bit of background, let me see how I am with time. All right, so let's get to SB and cheer up a bit article, which my main research question was, how can business education challenge students' schemas and develop competencies required for personal growth and conscious leadership?
00:25:38So what is the big problem? With all that I've already said, we know that business schools have become increasingly interested in developing leaders who can address societal challenge. And we also have the United Nations SDGs, or Sustainable Development Goals, or now the ESG platform that has been demanding more and more from companies to be able to access investment.
00:26:09So companies have been really demanded. That means business schools are demanded as well to develop leaders who will be able to drive companies for good.
00:26:21However, as I've said before, even though there is a lot of things being published on responsible management education, there is little guidance on how business schools can do this.
00:26:36And what we're going to, I say we because, yeah, this article I wrote with my two supervisors and we are arguing that business schools must prioritize conscious leadership through leader and personal development as part of broader adult development process. And I will explain you why.
00:26:58I've talked a lot about the main research gaps. I'm going to go through the literature review.
00:27:07So what we used, we first based on, I tried to understand what was there through the literature review, talking about competencies of such positive leadership theories.
00:27:20What are the competencies that have been highlighted that leaders should have, right? And competencies we define as the underlying characteristics of a person that lead to or cause effective and outstanding performance.
00:27:35Oh my God, I forgot the word. But when we definition of competency, we need to define the competencies of the person that lead to or cause effective and outstanding performance.
00:27:52So we use these, oh my God, I forgot the word, but when we definition of competency, we enable a focus on the developmental aspect, which is what we want.
00:28:11So we are looking at soft competencies, mostly, which are competencies that focus on relationships, not the skilled ones, and relationships with the self, others, and society, as I said previously.
00:28:28We will call them based on day proposal, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and societal competencies. I looked, we use a lot day proposal on the difference of leader and leadership development and their competence base.
00:28:49So we grouped the competencies in self-awareness and self-regulation and societal awareness and social skill, and I will show you with more detail what we are proposing.
00:29:02One of the things that we realized is that there's not much written on competencies of how a leader relates to society. There's no definition for that.
00:29:16So we are proposing that we should start talking more about a group of competencies that is called societal competencies.
00:29:26And there's a difference between social and societal because social address the relationship between two or more people, me and the others close to me, but societal refers to one's connection to society as a whole.
00:29:42So if we talk about social management, it's confusing. If we talk about social responsibility, it's not clear that we are actually talking that a leader should actually have responsibility towards society as a whole.
00:29:58So that's one of the things that we realize and we are bringing as one of the results of this article.
00:30:05And also, we will be talking about schemas and we, as I explained before, the mental frameworks, but we are also looking at schemas that are very important for leadership development, and there are two schemas that have been shown in the literature as important for leadership development.
00:30:30One is called leadership structure schema, and it's people's general understanding of leadership and the meaning that derive from it.
00:30:40So how do you understand what leadership is? How do you understand how a leader should influence others?
00:30:48And a person's schema of a leader, and that's one individual implicit understanding of what a leader is and what a leader is not. It's like when I ask you, who is a leader for you? Depending on who you say, we can understand what you expect from a leader.
00:31:07What do you see as a leader? So we looked at both of these schemas to understand the changes that SBMBA was promoting in students. So what did we use? We use the case study approach with the MBA from SBJIMR.
00:31:29And why did we choose the program? Because it's very clear the message that the leader, the SP, wants to development is a different kind of business.
00:31:45Who will live of authenticity and meaning, and will lead with the heart. And the non-classroom learning units that are compulsory in the MBA, they will help students to work on self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness.
00:32:04And this social awareness also means societal awareness. So it's very rare to find MBAs that actually have these units as compulsory. And this is what actually made, after doing a big selection, we chose the MBA from SP.
00:32:30And some of the quotes that are even in the website is that we aspire to being just most innovative and socially responsive school of management. But I really like this quote from the former dean, that it's a journey of mastering courage to be comfortable with who you are.
00:32:48And the heart that sees meaning in a life of contribution. NCL builds a holistic leader, an individual with courage and heart. And talking about courage and heart and life of contribution in business is actually very inspiring and rare.
00:33:11So I, we, SP really helped me. So we invited 237 students, 714 alumni. By the end, 20 students accepted to participate, current students of the MBA, and seven alumni.
00:33:34I did three rounds of interview, longitudinal study, and that before the course, during the course, and after the course. And that's because I really wanted to see how the course was actually impacting the way these individuals were becoming leaders, developing their leadership.
00:33:54By the end, only I could do the three rounds of interviews with 14 students. I also did participant observations at journey towards self mastery or spirituality course and document analysis. And I also interviewed some of the staff.
00:34:14This is just the methodological procedure, but we won't have time to go through that because I've talked too much.
00:34:23For the ones who don't know, so the NCL units, there are five. One is the PG lab that focus on personal growth. The students go to a site and they stay there for a couple of days doing a lot of activities to better become more aware of themselves and others.
00:34:43Understand their strengths, their triggers, their weaknesses. At MAP, which is a unit that gives students tasks, and they have to learn how to get things done without having power over others. So they need to learn how to collaborate.
00:35:02Abudaya, which is a mentoring program, the students mentor sitaras or unprivileged kids for months. So they go to their houses. During COVID, there was a bit more challenge because they had to do it online.
00:35:19So they really get to experience the life of these kids and their families. Journey towards self mastery, which is taught by the head of science of spirituality. And it's really how you master yourself, how you learn, how to make the best, how to develop and become the best version of yourself.
00:35:49And GOCC, which is an internship in rural areas, in non-profit organizations, they're actually rural and social internship. They give students the opportunity to see how they can actually create impact through their work.
00:36:10So, based on these interviews, I did a theme analysis to see the main themes and competencies that I could see developed in those students.
00:36:28This is the day's framework that I showed you before. Everything that is in gray, we are proposing that should be added and that should be incorporated on conscious leader and leadership.
00:36:42So on the leader column, there were very important new themes and competencies that appeared. One is these students learned the importance of becoming aware of their mental models and how that could actually drive or not, if they could have distance from it, their behavior.
00:37:10And the locus of control perception was one of the main things that students learn. And I could see a lot of changes on behavior when students realize that they do not control the results.
00:37:26What they control is to do the best they can, but then the result is not under their control anymore. So that actually gave them the chance to forgive themselves for past things, to live a lighter life, to stop with so much self-judgment and really self-harm.
00:37:50It was beautiful to see. Another new thing that came was self-integration. And for self-integration, two important aspects, self-acceptance, just accepting themselves the way they are, and the courage to be themselves and become authentic.
00:38:10So it was really this growth of self-love, accepting who they are, and being the best version of themselves towards talking about authenticity.
00:38:23On the leadership column, BG Lab mostly brought so much to the students, the courage to open up and show their vulnerabilities.
00:38:37And I had many examples of them saying that once they started talking about personal stories in an exercise, in an activity, and they could see that not only them go through hard stuff, they understand that everyone does.
00:38:55And they also realize how they connect much better when they are real and vulnerable. And that would actually impact their understanding of how a leader should behave with others, how a leader should actually be managing a team, because they started understanding the importance of vulnerability in creating bonds and connection.
00:39:18Collaboration and a lot of art map. They developed a lot. They saw the importance of really learning how to have power with and not over others.
00:39:30And then we are proposing two new groups of competencies, societal awareness and societal relationship management. So leaders need to have the will to create change.
00:39:49They need to first be aware of societal challenge. And both DOCC and Abu Dhabi awaken a lot of empathy and gratitude in students.
00:40:04And it was almost all students shared that if it wasn't from Abu Dhabi, how would they experience and see the reality of those kids? They would have never had that if it wasn't for Abu Dhabi. Some of them even shared they didn't even think that the problems that the challenge that they go through existed.
00:40:29And the societal relationship management is the next step. OK, once you're aware, how can you actually manage this relationship?
00:40:40And there was and I'm going to talk more about that on the next slide, but something was really important in the MBA and the way SP actually delivered the course is this alignment between the message given in the institute and all different units.
00:41:01So social responsibility and this information that a business needs to has more than one or two stakeholders to look after and the environment counts, society counts. There was a big alignment of this information among different units.
00:41:20A development of a self-transcendent purpose. So students actually with DOCC, most of the times, and I saw that a lot with alumni, they could see that they actually could use their work in a different way that would also benefit others, not only shareholders.
00:41:45And it would not only be for money and also positive impact capitalists. So it's really important that they also develop all the change master competencies that are important to promote change.
00:42:01And oh my God. OK, I think this is the last framework. This is the main model that I developed based on what I observed at SP. So the schema changes, they actually happened due to different things that SPJ offered.
00:42:29So the units offered this equilibrating experience that would challenge their current way of understanding things such as a budaya, letting them experience the life of vulnerable kids or vulnerable families.
00:42:44And there wasn't a one experience. There was a medium term experience. What's also very important for promoting change, because if you have a disequilibrating experience, but then you go back to your normal life, it's very rare that any change will happen in your way of seeing things and mostly maybe will in your perspective, but it will not go to your changes in your behavior.
00:43:12So many disequilibrating experiences were offered by the NCO units. Right. And that's what. And there were two very important aspects of SP that allowed the changes to happen and develop the competencies and capabilities that conscious leaders need.
00:43:35One was the whole environment. So the whole institute worked as a whole environment.
00:43:45Holding environment means the explanation of a holding environment is as if a mom that nurtures, they hold the space for the changes to happen.
00:43:57As the institute had the message so aligned through different units and the students were actually living there for this year and a half, two years, they could actually every time they were triggered or they were challenged by new information and they would see the message in different places and they would have time to see that more than once.
00:44:19This whole environment was essential to give the time and the alignment for changes to happen.
00:44:27And adding to that, mainly as journey towards self-mastery taught students a lot of practices such as meditation, breathing, that helped them to create an internal environment that is also key for students to change.
00:44:50So very based like I will read some quotes so you can understand better what I'm talking about.
00:45:00For example, one of the students I observed in a class, he said, when we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.
00:45:12The impact of that's huge because it's really stepping back from blaming and judging others through taking responsibility for the way they operate and that's definitely going to make them become better managers.
00:45:25By the way, one thing that you would like to hear is that I asked alumni that were back in the market, if they could see a difference between what they would see as the main difference between them and students that were coming from other MBAs.
00:45:41And what they said to me is that the students from SB are definitely better with people and they definitely have like more empathy and they are much better with relationship management.
00:45:57That was very clear for them. They would even say maybe sometimes we can not be much better on skills, but we are definitely much better with people.
00:46:10There was another student and that's one of the examples of developing self-management that said, I didn't know one particular course could have that much impact on me.
00:46:22So I tend to be a little short tempered, especially at home when I want a lot of me time.
00:46:29And with work and everything, I tend to get a little easily irritated.
00:46:34But then ever since this course started and we've had a lot of reflective practice and everything, my father just came to me and said one day that you are a lot calmer right now.
00:46:47These days, I've seen you don't get angry so often and everything.
00:46:51I've seen myself taking more steps towards that. So I could really see them changing along these two years and how happy they were to actually change and better understand.
00:47:05I don't know if I had, there was one student that even said to me, I never knew I could control my emotions. That's big.
00:47:15An example of social relationship management. Yes, I've been able to trust people again.
00:47:23I started looking at how our mind plays when we are under stress.
00:47:29I understood that there might be many reasons why people behave in certain way.
00:47:34And it doesn't make sense to hurt our feelings according to other people's emotions.
00:47:38They definitely started to see different perspectives and understand people's behavior from their shoes.
00:47:47And that is key to improve relationship management and leadership.
00:47:53What else? Social responsibility. There has been a shift in how I understand my own actions.
00:48:00Every time I think of doing something now, and even if it's completely isolated from the lives of everyone else, I do have to realize that whatever I do, it does affect the world in some ways.
00:48:15That shows that a sense of whatever I do has an impact. So I can have a positive impact in the world.
00:48:24And an example of societal relationship management.
00:48:29Previously, before my MBA, all I ever wanted to do was get a job, pay the bills, go on vacation once in six months and have a nice time.
00:48:39Now my work is a lot more than just getting paid at the end of the month.
00:48:44There is a purpose attached to what I do. My purpose, as well as the purpose of my employer, are quite aligned.
00:48:51Which is why it's been two years since I joined the workforce, and I'm quite happy.
00:48:57My employer has a certain set of values, and I have a set of personal values.
00:49:03So those need to go together. Those are very important. Otherwise, you will never enjoy your job, no matter how much you get paid.
00:49:12And from the alumni, that is one of the limitations of my research.
00:49:18Unfortunately, we did a big effort together, SP and myself, but we couldn't get more than seven alumni.
00:49:26That is one of the limitations. I would have to get more alumni to have a good sample.
00:49:33But from the ones I interviewed, most of them tried to find companies that had values aligned with them.
00:49:43I just want to say thanks again for this opportunity. There were interviews that I even cried.
00:49:50I fell in love with many of the students. As you can see, I'm very emotional.
00:49:57And I will just finish with this quote from one of the students, which is before SPJRMR, we thought MBAs were all about making money.
00:50:12After we realized that knowing ourselves better, working on ourselves, and being the best version of ourselves is equally important.
00:50:22And if I can get something from all my research, it's that there's no point of trying to create an impact on others before you actually create an impact on yourself.
00:50:39So it's definitely a journey of treating ourselves better to then be able to treat others and the world much better.
00:50:48And this is one of my favorite conscious leaders, guys. It's my son. He's a musician and he has already organized a festival that was all powered by renewable energy.
00:51:07And if you want to check his music, I like to make his ad. It's Lex Travis.
00:51:14And I will leave you with the no wish to be anything but what you are and try to be that perfectly.
00:51:22So thanks a lot once again. And I'm here to answer any questions.
00:51:28Thank you so much, Dr. Tatiana for this wonderful presentation. It's very heartening to see the results and actually reading these quotes of SPJRMR alumni.
00:51:42And they're talking about meaning and purpose and doing something for people. That's really fascinating.
00:51:49So the forum is open for questions. If anybody has any questions, please unmute yourself and ask a question.
00:51:59Yeah.
00:52:03So, yes, I'm just going to think because David Rooney is here. And if there's one, if there's a person that was responsible for this happening, it was him.
00:52:14Hello. Welcome, Professor David.
00:52:17Yeah, thank you. And sorry, I came in late. I was.
00:52:24Yeah, I was out running and I ran a bit further, actually a lot further than I intended. So I was late.
00:52:33That's a good, good, good reason.
00:52:38Sorry, who was going to ask the question?
00:52:41I wanted to know that you have interviewed around seven alumni. So what was the timeline where they just passed out recently or they were like and what kind of roles they were leading in their companies and all?
00:53:00That is a good question. They they were probably they had finished the MBA probably an average of two years, two to three years.
00:53:12They were not in high positions.
00:53:15They were not in high positions.
00:53:18But I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to tell you now. I definitely have all this information, but I don't know it by heart. I can definitely send it to you. Sorry about that. But they were not like in high top positions. They were still.
00:53:34Probably in a management position, I would say.
00:53:36Yeah, because it would be interesting to know that if definitely the MBA had an impact on them, the non-class activity. So is it a lasting impact or a short duration? So that needs to be like, yeah, no. And yes, of course.
00:53:58That is a very good point. And to be honest, it was one of my questions as well.
00:54:03I really wanted to know. I just didn't have time anymore. But to know the ones that are actually growing on the company, if the systems and everything that we know, the challenge that we go through and the pressures, if they would still be able to keep with this focus and this mentality. That's a very good question.
00:54:33But I don't have the answer. Sorry.
00:54:35It's OK.
00:54:40Anybody would like to ask a question?
00:54:45I would like to ask one.
00:54:48Sati, what do you think the implications are of your research for, I guess, organisational culture and leadership culture in, you know, basically in the corporate world?
00:55:08What I believe, David, is that the findings about the whole environment, they are very important for organisations to understand that it's not going to cause any important changes in leaders if they send leaders to leadership development courses.
00:55:32And they come back to the organisations and they don't have the environment that will actually allow them to change and integrate, or as you always say, to embody whatever they've learned.
00:55:45So and that's culture, right? So I think it just shows how important it is to have this alignment among the company.
00:55:57I see a lot of similarities as universities that they actually have electives or they have one sustainability, sustainable development unit in the middle of the course.
00:56:16And that doesn't really bring any change. Or what happened that I saw at SP that there was an alignment in different units and even units that didn't have the focus on social impact, they would also bring the importance of actually benefiting all different stakeholders.
00:56:36And the same for companies. So if you're trying to bring ethics or sustainability to companies, and you have one department of sustainability, that's not going to work. You really need to have the culture and the alignment integrated to be able to do that.
00:56:56So I think the whole environment is one. And the second, David, I think for me, it just becomes so clearer and clearer that the only way, or one of the ways, you know, they always said, I need to learn a lot about how to talk academically.
00:57:18But one of the ways, but one very important way of helping leaders to relate better with people and lead better teams is helping them to solve their internal triggers, issues, and traumas.
00:57:36It's just so clear that there's no more. I can believe that we are still not doing and helping leaders to actually understand themselves better in a way that they also get in touch with their emotions, and they are able to heal whatever the triggers are.
00:57:56So they will stop throwing all these traumas into others and that they will just lead people better. So, yeah.
00:58:12Thank you. Right answer.
00:58:17Yes, yes, Banuji.
00:58:20Hi, Tatyana. So nice to hear from you. I'm from Nepal. And I could relate the story that you were narrating.
00:58:33I just wanted to understand what your motivations are in taking up this project. I'm sure this had a lot of emotional fatigue involved, talking to this many people and understanding the emotional burnt out they have been part of. So your motivations and how fatigued were you?
00:59:04Thanks for the question. Banu, I need to tell you that for me, talking to people was the easiest part because I like talking to people. What was really hard for me was sitting by myself, reading and writing, reading and writing. That was really hard. And analyzing data.
00:59:26So it's interesting. That's how we are. Right. And that's why we need to accept ourselves the way we are, because we keep trying to say that these are the qualities that a leader should have. But no, we all have different qualities. Mine is talking to people.
00:59:43But yeah, so it was the hardest thing I've done, a PhD, together with moving to Australia. And mostly for me, because it's very specific to a topic and because there's a lot of time on yourself, by yourself and going through a lot of content.
01:00:07And I'm not a person that is good focusing on details, which is what you really need to do. My motivation is, I don't know, it's, that's what I said in the beginning. I think it's justice. I was, I just, I'm, for some reason, I'm very passionate about using all the resources that business have.
01:00:37To help to overcome societal challenge. And with my experience, I realized that we need to do something to awaken more and more top business leaders consciousness to this opportunity and this responsibility.
01:00:56And yeah, I think, I think that's it. But yeah, and what keeps going. I had a lot of help that kept me going. I had a boyfriend that had a PhD as well. That was a very important push. My supervisors were very lovely and really helped me.
01:01:20But by the end, it's your own journey. So yeah, I think for me, it's just, I see that as a big opportunity. And I just wanted to do my part.
01:01:35I don't know if that answers, but.
01:01:42Can I ask you a follow up question, Tati?
01:01:45Yeah, sure.
01:01:47So when, in your darkest moments doing your PhD, when it was really, really hard, what kept you going?
01:01:58Okay, I had two moments.
01:02:03There was one moment.
01:02:09Okay, this is not going to be good. Yeah, well, I'm very honest.
01:02:14So in the beginning, what kept me going was my visa.
01:02:20But then I'll never forget, I think when on the, like the middle, when I got to the half of my PhD, and I was in Australia studying.
01:02:30So in the beginning, what kept me going was my visa.
01:02:36But then I'll never forget, I think when on the, like the middle, when I got to the half of my PhD, and I actually tried all the ways of staying in the country while I was doing my research, because it was really hard for me to keep going.
01:02:53I just, and that's my spiritual cuckoo side, I just understood that that was my role, or what the universe wanted me to do, or that's exactly what I had to do, because everything that will have, every time I tried to do something else, it wouldn't work.
01:03:15And all the help that would come to me and support was related to my PhD.
01:03:21And because spirituality for me is also so important, I had to leave it and I decided to accept that I didn't have that much control.
01:03:32And that was what I had to do, and I decided that was what I was going to do.
01:03:39So for one year, I was waking up every morning at 5.30 in the morning and doing my PhD before going to work because I accepted my PhD.
01:03:50I don't know if you guys are interested or not, but my journey on the PhD was really interesting because I could see, I was questioning myself and learning a lot about myself at the same time.
01:04:04And all these about lockers of control, about acceptance, about, I was using to my life as well, because it was what was happening.
01:04:15And one of the darkest moments, David, was when I made this connection through creating impact through business or with my passion and a trauma.
01:04:30That was one of my darkest moments because that was when I kind of had to just deconstruct all the naive or the fairy tale part of an inspiring leader.
01:04:51And understand that we all have our challenge and we all go through hard times, but that doesn't have to be bad.
01:05:04We can make the best of that to do good in the world.
01:05:08So, yes, I think it was hard.
01:05:12I had to separate what I was learning on the research, but a lot of times it would connect.
01:05:18So, yes, that was a bit of my journey.
01:05:24Great answer.
01:05:28I have one question because you said that you're coming from more of a practitioner's background and not so academic, so I'm refraining myself from asking you a very particular research question.
01:05:41So, my question from a recommendation point of view is what would you recommend for us being SPCM and NCL?
01:05:52What would you recommend that how we can improve it further?
01:05:57I will just give you a small context that we are in the process of restructuring some of the elements of NCL.
01:06:05So, any particular recommendation that you can suggest?
01:06:10OK, that's really good.
01:06:12And even after today, I'm going to give a good thought and get all my notes because my memory doesn't help me, but I definitely have many notes about that.
01:06:24So, I remember two students that became entrepreneurs and they felt that they didn't have.
01:06:37So, what I understood is that and we know it's really hard to become an entrepreneur that has a business that goes against the status quo or is a social enterprise.
01:06:49It's even harder.
01:06:51And what they said is that they didn't feel that the course gave them the tools to become this conscious entrepreneur.
01:07:01It was more about people that would go directly to work on a large corporation.
01:07:09So, maybe if you guys want to, there is something to explore.
01:07:18Let me think.
01:07:21I just.
01:07:32I'm thinking because.
01:07:35I don't know, I'm so.
01:07:47I just like that's a good.
01:07:51I will have to think about it.
01:07:53Nothing else comes to my mind.
01:07:54Teddy was in your work.
01:07:56Was there any.
01:07:58Did you pick up any kind of link between purpose and self-awareness and all those sorts of things and innovation or creativity?
01:08:12Self-awareness and creativity.
01:08:14No, I don't think I did.
01:08:18No.
01:08:21I don't think I did, to be honest.
01:08:24No, I don't think I did. No, I don't think I did, to be honest.
01:08:43So I think, well, I think maybe because I think all the power like for the interpersonal competencies is so well developed, and the interpersonal as well, the way they relate to others.
01:09:04I think maybe apart from the alignment.
01:09:11Apart from the alignment, that is really important that the units have about the responsibility of business in the world.
01:09:23I think maybe bringing and showing them innovative, that's I think then even getting inspired by what you're talking about innovation, David, I think, apart from inspiring them and connecting them emotionally, but maybe bringing examples of all these different
01:09:44ways that business can occur and happen, not only nonprofits, but actually now there are so many different business models and ways business can operate, then can promote change.
01:10:00I think that would be really inspiring and that would open up the options in the future of what they could do.
01:10:11I think I didn't see that actually, that's true, I didn't. And there are so, even when now I teach at Macquarie, there are so many ways that business are talking about economy, regenerative economy, circular economy, there's so much happening that I think
01:10:39you give this step forward and show all these different possibilities.
01:10:45Yeah, I only ask because it's pretty clear that social entrepreneurs need to be good innovators and need to be able to innovate with business models and they need to be able to innovate with technology.
01:11:03Yeah, that's true.
01:11:07That might help Ajinkya a bit as well, thinking entrepreneurship.
01:11:12Yeah, that's very valuable input.
01:11:18And one of the things that came from when I was interviewing conscious leaders, they actually brought to my attention something that is really important if you really support social entrepreneurs.
01:11:34It's a group of support, because they need to be very resilient. What they actually end up making me realize is that if you decide to have a social enterprise or a business model that is different from business as usual, you are much more demanded from society.
01:11:57So apart from having the challenge of a business succeeding, you also have the challenge of people pressuring you because you're saying you're doing good, so we want to see if you're doing good.
01:12:08So it's much harder for them to make a business successful than it is for a normal business, and usually they need a lot of emotional support.
01:12:22Yeah, that's interesting, emotional support.
01:12:32Okay, so I think we are heading towards the end.
01:12:37So let me express gratitude to Dr. Tatyana for this wonderful talk and a very insightful discussion that we had.
01:12:47Very grateful to Professor David, to Bhanuji, to Banerjee and all of the participants who joined us and participated in this seminar.
01:13:01So we keep continuing this research seminar series every month and we invite people across the globe.
01:13:07And people like Tatyana, David or Bhanu, they actually make it more international and more inclusive by giving different thoughts.
01:13:17So thank you so much once again, and we will meet after a month with some other researchers who will present their research.
01:13:26So thank you once again. Have a great day. Have a great weekend ahead and see you soon. Thanks a lot.
01:13:33All right.
01:13:34Thanks a lot.
01:13:35Thank you.
01:13:36Thank you. Bye.
01:13:37Bye.