Transcript
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Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Speaker: I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida. Today, i am going to be discussing mindful coaching with Pankar Singh from Singh Leadership, which is based in Florida, USA.
Speaker: I've been told that I should call Panjasingh Singh is the name that everybody uses. I have been to Florida and when I do go, i always make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
Speaker: There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Speaker: As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest Independent Mind is Panja Singh from Singh Leadership.
Speaker: Hello Singh. Hello Michael, how are you? I am very well. Thank you very much. Hope you're all well. Yes, sir. Great. Could we please start with an introduction as to your history and how you came to set up SING Leadership?
Speaker: Yeah, sure. So SING Leadership launched in 2024 formally. There are ah two different frameworks. One is around leadership that talks about bringing the team together culturally, but then also individually, how we get them moving in the same direction.
Speaker: And the genesis of that really was a few different incidents that happened in my career growing up in professional life, as we say, especially the last incident of ransomware attack right in the middle of COVID-2020.
Speaker: That led me to start thinking why certain things that came naturally to me was such a big issue for others. Based on that, 21, 22, I worked a lot to put together some frameworks that I then tested back both in my own team and in teams that I knew folks would would make in, but also through a lot of friends on LinkedIn through ah different countries. And I started collecting feedback.
Speaker: Two things that stood out from a traditional leadership training standpoint, there is a lot of information out there, right? But there is nothing that brings everything together as one platform. So for example,
Speaker: when I put together the PROGRESS Framework, which stands for Purpose Reflection Optimization, Grit Resilience, Empowerment, Support, and Self-Improvement. If you look at everybody that's working with you, they all come with a very different background, not only in education and living ways, also in the way they consume information in today.
Speaker: That enforces or informs their limited beliefs, their limited understanding about a topic, So if I bring 10 people in my team and I want all of them, for example, let's say I want all of them to have empowerment, they will all have different set process around what it is.
Speaker: The framework that existed in leadership training is almost 15, 20 years old when we didn't have the digital space, right? So the only way somebody would get trained is put everybody in a room and train them on that.
Speaker: All individuals in your team get trained on the same thing the same way. And that's why we had to think about a holistic framework that can address that difference in learning, difference in temperament, difference in background, yet be able to bring everything on the same page.
Speaker: No small task. That's that's where it it goes back to years and years and years of learning as I had built teams in the last 25 years to understand where I have failed, what did not work, and pull all those bits and pieces together to be able to say, i understand there is goal setting. So everything needs to be good, whether it's individual or organization, there has to be goal setting.
Speaker: But what goal are you setting? Is that goal related to a purpose? But then it becomes, what is your purpose and what is company's purpose? And and one of the places where people mistake is in in today's world, no matter where you go, 68 to 75% engagement of any employee depends on if they associate themselves with the purpose of the company or not. Yes.
Speaker: Now, The purpose of the organization depends on the purpose and intention of the leaders. How would you bring that purpose of individuals, purpose of organization and purpose of leadership together?
Speaker: It becomes a debate. That's where I put in a second framework, which was expected to say, passion and energy is what brings people put together.
Speaker: If you think about a leader who is not at all passionate, does not have any energy, walks in the in the building office his building, people try to get away from them versus some another one who actually has that presence of passion and energy energy, everybody gravitates to at least say hello to him.
Speaker: That then translates into how do we have empathetic conversations with every individual that we meet? Then we go into transformation in development.
Speaker: That's how step by step we created the framework that we then coined ascendancy action system. Ascendancy means something that can take you to the position of dominance and influence.
Speaker: Action because everything that we teach and train in 12 week period is all action based. Everything is action based. And then system because there's a proper system behind it that we provide as part of the coaching. So that's ascendancy action system. right The last bit of this whole thing was when in 2023, when I started rolling it out at a bigger, larger level, the missing component was the mindful practice that actually grounds me all through my life.
Speaker: Right. So we've got three aspects then to the SING leadership concept. One is this idea that in order to be successful, in order to manage people successfully, you need to manage them as individuals before you manage them as a group.
Speaker: And you need to but get them to see what is in it for them, but then also to see themselves as part of the team. Exactly. As well as managing the individuals and the team, it sounds like you also have to manage yourself as the manager, as separate from being the individual you. And think about how you behave, interact and build your reputation, your own personal brand, I suppose, in many ways.
Speaker: which will make people want to work for you, want to be on your team rather than somebody else's team, want to be on your project and will gravitate towards you because you are seen as someone who is not only doing a great job, but is also adding value to the people that work for them or work with them.
Speaker: That's right. And then that's where a lot of conflict comes in is you have to start everything with yourself. not with people outside of you.
Speaker: so it's like if you are going to aim as part of your one of your career objectives is to take on a management stroke leadership role you can learn all of the information about motivation delegation time management all of the practical skills but part of what you do a large part of what you do seems to be that you've got to learn about yourself you've got to dig deep inside yourself to learn how not just to be you as an individual, the best version of you as an individual, but the best version of you as a leader as well.
Speaker: But the two of them together, yes. But the first step is to be able to understand yourself. Yes. Yeah. And a lot of people don't. Looking back over my career, I can see managers who didn't understand themselves and didn't understand other people, but hid behind the job title.
Speaker: and the power that was inferred upon them because of a job title. I can tell you what to do. That doesn't necessarily mean that you want to do it, but I have power and I can tell you what to do would would be their approach, which is totally the opposite of the sorts of things that you're talking about.
Speaker: It is different. And then that's where I think that's ah that's a very critical point that you make there. That behavior, that extreme exists even today. in the business world. And that's the one side of relentless dog-eat-dog culture, right? a phosphate fast-paced growth at all costs, where leaders and team constantly push for results.
Speaker: What that leads to is burnout, turnover, reactive and bad decision-making, lack of innovation.
Speaker: And what it has led to today is such a high level of income. No, I would not say incompetence, but just lack of self-awareness, which then leads into my favorite word of frustration, because frustration is just your own angle of something you could not do.
Speaker: it So I don't blame those leaders either. It is just that they were never taught to know differently. They were never taught to do differently. I i see what you mean, yes.
Speaker: Yes. Right. I mean, I agree with you. And I always give example of, um you know, there was a there was a time in 80s, 90s and all the way to early 2000 where somebody preached that, you know, the top 10% of the company has to go.
Speaker: ah We all know who who preached that concept. ah But then that is not how you manage companies. That is not how you manage people. and And the lack is because you're not trying to understand what does that mean.
Speaker: Does it really mean to get rid of them? Or does it mean to change their behavior to make them better individuals in your organization? So it's the bottom 10% of the workforce in any given period would be those people who would be put on performance improvement plans or would be dismissed from the organization.
Speaker: Correct. Right. I agree with you that there's a lot of Machismo, masculinity, I can't think of the right word. There's lots of bravado around the power of a job title and what it and allows you to do.
Speaker: And listening to was thinking the traditional way of doing it is that sort of power-based, but it's also the lazy way of doing it. The frustration that you talk about for a manager who doesn't know.
Speaker: In order to be frustrated, you have to know how the job could be done and be aware of how differently from what is the optimum level of performance that you are actually doing, how you how far away you are from that.
Speaker: Is that fair? and then that is That is on point. and And I think the lazy way is because, again, it starts for themselves. They did not take time to learn. to do differently yeah let's talk about some of the learning that you've done because you've done it over a long period of time and in some quite unusual ways you've spent some time in tibet uh that's that's right i was blessed to be called upon to be there um this is back in my childhood i grew up in a very affluent family back home in india and uh right at
Speaker: my really very uh instant ages i was very um aggressive kid so to help me manage my aggression and being a large joint family i was introduced to um indian uh classical percussion instrument and i started doing that i used to spend a lot of time so that i'm not diverted and doing something wrong and the result of that was that i graduated with a post-masters in Indian classical percussion, age of 13, 14. Congratulations.
Speaker: Thank you. Migration did not go away. So at that point, ah somebody recommended and my dad had me ah organize a trip to Tibet where then I stayed with a llama in one of the monasteries there for three and a half months.
Speaker: So the summer of 2014, where my age kids were actually playing around what initially seemed like I was being punished but to go somewhere away from the family all the way to Tibet in those mountains and and ice.
Speaker: But that shaped who I became after that. That that changed the the the mindful practice I learned there, the humility I learned there, the true value of time, the true value of the simple breath that we take.
Speaker: Since then, it had been my goal to always participate little differently in the society that I am, which led to doing a lot of um volunteering work when I was doing my engineering in Bangalore. And then the other part of that also was by the time I came into workforce, because of those practices that stayed with me, I had i was fortunate and blessed to have a very fast career trajectory in my life. I mean, I was a partner of investment bank when I was 24.
Speaker: Since then, i never turned back. Again, the but thing that we live with day in and day out, we take that for granted that everybody would know it, right? I mean, if we know a particular technique of brushing our teeth, we expect everybody in the world brush us like that.
Speaker: And if they don't, then they're weird. Right. Right, right. Because they're doing something different to us. So we make ah we make a value judgment about people who do things differently to us. They must be weird, which validates our own behavior.
Speaker: Exactly. Exactly. and and and But i did not I did not come to a pause till the ransomware attack where I thought everything that I was doing and the way I was doing Oh, that's the natural way of doing. Everybody should be doing it. So people are dumb or they don't know enough or they are not trained, whatever it is.
Speaker: But then it hit me in 2020, December, a couple of months after the ransomware attack that no, I had this learning. I was blessed to have this particular learning on mindfulness and the practices to be able to be present all the time.
Speaker: to be able to be manage my emotions all the time, to be able to focus on cognitive clarity, right? Which allowed me in different situations in 25 years to make those decisions, to make those choices, to make those actions that led to the results that I had.
Speaker: So yes, I had the degrees. Yes, I had all the accolades. Yes, I had all this, um you know, diplomas in my career. But the true thing behind, i realized was lack of that simple mindful practice.
Speaker: Now, I'll clarify one thing. Mindfulness is not meditation. A lot of meditation that is being preached today, a lot of mindful what is being preached today,
Speaker: is nothing but simple basic breathing exercises. It's simple canting exercises, right? That is not meditation. It includes sense and um um believe me, I've been there for three and a half months with Lamas.
Speaker: I know what meditation, if if somebody gets in a meditative state, even for a minute, somebody else will have to come and shake you up out of it. right What we are talking about is just a moment of mindful presence and that forms the basis like all of those experiences have fed into the sing leadership models that's correct and and that's where we then put together the mindful leadership program where the idea is not to make you ah meditator the idea is not and again this program does not call for you to
Speaker: you know, come to a mountain for three months or come to a resort for two weekends. No. Mindful leadership simply means two things.
Speaker: You are mindful about who you are, where you are and what you can do.
Speaker: And you can use that mindful presence in the moment to navigate the situation, not just for yourself, but for your entire organization and your team.
Speaker: The mindfulness it's is not the same as meditation. The mindfulness is being aware of not just yourself, but everyone and everything around you. And that made when you said that, that made me remember the times when I've obviously been with managers who are thinking purely of themselves.
Speaker: And what is in this for me and almost abandoning their team, abandoning the organization and just thinking what's in it for me. And yet what you're saying when you build it all together is that the mindfulness comes into this understanding yourself as an individual, your strengths, your weaknesses as a leader, as an individual, and how then You can best use all of your skills and talents to lead a group of people, to communicate with a group of people, to make them want to do things as well because of how that ties in with you.
Speaker: And use you you use you as the source of the energy which is going to make other people want to work for you and work with you.
Speaker: but thats That's on point. and And I think one thing to clarify, Michael, it's not just about, again, i become I'm very passionate about this whole thing. that Yes, that's absolutely one one piece around mindful practice. I mean, even if you don't do mindful practice, right, just come from a simple humanity perspective.
Speaker: is it As a human, if you expect people to respect you, you should sit down and write down, what are three or five things I expect everyone to do? And I will guarantee Here are the 90% of those things.
Speaker: One, everybody listens to me. Two, everybody obeys me. Three, everybody wants to work with me. Four, everybody wants to talk to me.
Speaker: In all those four critical things that I just laid out, wouldn't others who want that respect from, who want who you want respect from, want the same thing from you?
Speaker: Yes. And the key... The key in all those four is just ah active listening. Yes, it is. Right? So yes when you are actively listening, that is the moment of mindfulness that you experienced.
Speaker: That's true. and And that's the beauty of the program. That's the beauty of the program. The way we laid out is Every minute, every second, you can. So let me, um um I think one of the things I shared was transformation, right? One of the models that we always have transformation in in development.
Speaker: So one thing I personally try to do is any interaction that I have, like I'm having with you, I leave with something that will be transformational. So one simple, very simple meditative mindfulness, whatever you want to call it. I call it mindfulness stop.
Speaker: STOP. It's very easy for anyone. Next time you're stopped, either at a signal, at a bus station, at a train station, at your work, whatever that stop is, just think about S-T-O-P.
Speaker: Stop thinking. Think about the last thought.
Speaker: Observe the sensations in your body with that thought. Put a name to it and move on. and And here is the science behind this, the neuroscience behind it. There is a concept in neuroscience that's called body emotion connection.
Speaker: So what body emotion connection is, a human body starts giving signals even before that emotion is fully baked in your brain.
Speaker: Is that instinctive? It is instinctive. It is your cellular brain. the knowledge that your cells have built over time. So for example, if you light a matchbox,
Speaker: till if you close your if you close your eyes, right, your brain will not know that your hand burned till it actually feels the burn. But your hand will start tingling at the edge even before the fire gets to the edge.
Speaker: Because the cells on your fingers knows it is coming. Right, I get that. But the brain does not get the signal till you get the burn. Different stages of the process.
Speaker: Yes. and And that's where, going back to everything that we talked about, right? Managers who behave a certain way, they are doing that because that's how it is manifesting in those actions.
Speaker: But the problem... the and They're reacting though, aren't they? When you say they're behaving in a certain way, they're reacting to the environment. Exactly.
Speaker: In the same way as if you, like you say, if you're wearing a blindfold, the brain doesn't know the match has been lit until you get burnt, but your body starts to sense it.
Speaker: Right. Right? And what you're saying is that a bad manager is responding, reacting to the stimuli that create a bad manager within that organization.
Speaker: Whether that is across the whole of the management team, or just how one individual manager is treated. Their behavior, as with all of us, our behavior can be very much driven, triggered by the environment that we're in.
Speaker: And what you're saying with the mindfulness is that we can overcome those triggers and deliver a more authentic, genuine version of ourselves and create transformation as a result.
Speaker: Absolutely on point. And then that kind of segues into the compass. Yes. But but before before that, I will just use one word differently in your in your explanation.
Speaker: And instead of saying those individuals bad, managers or individual, I would say unmindful. Right. okay i think perhaps saying they're unmindful is a mindful way of describing someone who is bad he said just to play devil's advocate for a moment if i say somebody bad then i am being unmindful too right because bad is not an absolute term it's a competitive term
Speaker: Yes, i can I can agree with that. And I can see the the issues that come. where if you If you view someone in an unmindful way, in a and an unpositive way, then you are going to receive back what you are giving out. it's um One of those sorts of things is that you don't need to be told by someone that they don't respect you that they don't value you their behaviors will tell you but it's only when you are slapped in the face with something which is very obvious that they don't value don't trust you don't respect you that your brain gets the burn of that situation
Speaker: So if you if you are having negative thoughts about someone that even though you want to cover those up, keep those to yourself, exactly you will find that very difficult because how you think drives how you behave and that will be picked up by the other person.
Speaker: subconsciously consciously, and then that will drive their behavior, which means that you're on a spiral downwards until somebody says, enough is enough.
Speaker: We need to be thinking more positively, more mindfully about our relationship and what we need from each other. You don't need to like one another, but you do need to respect one another.
Speaker: Are you just to be mindful of and and I want to two things one I'll talk about the compass, but one phrase that I use all the time is we as a human need to learn to appreciate limitations of others.
Speaker: Oh, that sounds very wise and so true. Right. So where where that comes with is that's the compass, right?
Speaker: We need to learn to respect limitations of others. That is one of the things that I see so often in managers. Managers manage the people that report to them as if they were they are mini-me's, mini versions of the manager.
Speaker: I manage other people as I want to be managed. I manage other people, not me personally. Managers manage other people as they want to be managed. And yet, if those people were like the manager, they would be the manager and they're not. And people, managers again and again, don't manage people as individuals. They manage them in the way that they think they want to be managed because they don't take the time to learn about them as individuals.
Speaker: Thank you very much, Singh. For me, it's been fascinating. You've certainly made me think. Thank you very much. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abbasida. And in this episode of The Independent Minds, I have been having a conversation with Panja Singh from Singh Leadership.
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Speaker: Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye. you
