Every time you speak to your management or team, share your verdict on a challenging situation or admit that you don’t know what to do, you audition for leadership. Others expect you to spark hope within them and help them become the best they can be, show confidence to stand alone and the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. So what are you doing to make sure you pass such auditions every time?

Contributors

• • Michael Cartoscelli, Chief Information Officer (PCF-49) / Technology Site Lead, BNY Mellon Ireland
  • Sarah Naqvi, Executive Vice President / Chief Information Officer, HMSHost

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:

Hello, and, welcome to CTN. To learn more about the show, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. So today’s topic is, Does Your Leadership Pass The Audition? What do I mean by that? Well, so every time you speak to whether your team or management, you may be emoting in some way. You may be saying things or doing things, and everything is seen as a form of audition. So you could be looking at a challenging situation and giving your point of view or a verdict, or sometimes you may not know things, and in today’s day and age, that happens quite a bit as you do not know what to do, and you admit that. You are still auditioning at all of those instances Because the idea here is for a leader or the the way we define leadership or all of us at least see the way the leaders are, they are supposed to inspire us. They should instill hope in us. They want us they they are supposed to. I mean, that’s how leadership’s, leadership is defined is that they are supposed to help you become the best you can be, show confidence that they can stand alone and you can stand alone, and also make sure that whenever there is a situation or predicament, a tough call to make, they are able to do, and finally, with all of that said, they should have compassion. They should take care and take first of all, listen to the needs of others and also take care of it. Well, that’s a lot to ask from a leader. So what does it take to pass these auditions on a regular basis? And what are you doing as a person who’s either aspiring to be a leader or is a in a leadership position to make sure that all of these auditions you pass with flying colors. So to talk about this interesting topic, I have with me Michael Cartoscelli. He’s the Chief Information Officer, Ireland, BNY Mellon. That is the BNY Mellon Ireland, and we also have Sarah Naqvi, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer with HMSHost. Hey, Mike. How are you?

Michael Cartoscelli[00:02:41]:

Doing very well, Sanjog Aul. Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:02:43]:

Great, and, Sarah, how’s life?

Sarah Naqvi [00:02:46]:

Well, very well. Good morning, and thank you. Happy to be here.

Sanjog Aul [00:02:50]:

Beautiful. So, let’s start with you, Mike. So we know that we all have to continue to develop ourselves.  And, we have to first in a way, let’s talk about this in a second. Do you think the very definition of leadership, is it the same that we had, like, 30 years ago? Or would you say that true north of a leadership itself has shifted because of whatever we have seen in the last few years?

Michael Cartoscelli[00:03:22]:

So I think that, the traditional style of leadership that was very, shall we say, top down, it was command and control, it’s based off the military. It even goes back to Frederick Taylor and scientific management methods of, trying to really define each individual piece of a company and lead by that. That’s gone by the wayside, and you’ve seen it happen over the last 20 years. Kind of the rise of the West Coast management style through the .coms and having to attract and retain talent in a very fluid and different dynamic than it’s ever seen before. That’s only been accelerated globally due to the pandemic. Companies having to put 100% or nearly 100% of their workforce working from home and leaders having to readjust their style of understanding and goal setting and communication to their teams and reaching out to folks and really communicating, connecting with them when they can’t see them in person, and that has been a massive shift. The leaders that have done a very good job of understanding how to adapt to that and quickly shifting will be successful. I think we’ve seen plenty of cases that have hit the public newspapers and public internet sites that have said, out of New York, one of our large banking peers said, I want 100% of the people in the office and 32% showed up, and that was, a pretty striking number, and that number hasn’t changed, and because people know that they can do the work at home, leaders absolutely need to adjust.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:54]:

Sarah, one aspect is what Mike mentioned is, we saw the adversity, and to be very frank, a leader, they are not invited to have a cruising journey.  I mean, they will always be invited, and they will actually rise and shine or they’re expected to rise and shine when the things get tough. Just because they get tough and if someone stepped up to that, that in a way is stable stakes for leadership. Would you say, the DNA of a leader, does that require a switch based on the times ahead, or would you say leadership is same old, same old, same old?

Sarah Naqvi [00:05:34]:

No. There is, definitely a significant change that is happening in our industry. In fact, it’s happening in the world, that is going to define new leaders as we move forward. I mean, COVID has definitely accelerated the focus on what styles are going to work, just alluding to the point that Mike made. Diverse workforce that is not there, that you’re not going to see, that you were required to develop them. That, I think, came into focus with COVID, but if you really truly look at the new generation that is going to be the makeup of the workforce of future, leaders like us that have been traditionally, in these positions for decades are gonna have to adapt to the styles and expectations. I mean, the newer generation that’s making up the workforce, they don’t have barriers between private and public. They are a product of social media, and they like to talk about, private and public things all combined in workforce. People like us that have been in this industry, for instance, so long. I mean, we do have, like, very fine boundaries between what’s professional discussions versus personal life. So these are, like, subtle changes that started, as with the evolution of social, and now with COVID, it has added, another factor to it. Therefore, it’s going to be important for us to really take all of those into consideration and create that environment, engaging, developing, embracing, and really driving that change. So I think as leaders, we have our plate pretty full.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:09]:

So would you say that the fact that the plate got pretty full, Sarah, does that leave you the breathing room? Like, when we talk about our employees, we want to say, hey. Don’t make the plate so full for them that it’s spilling so they don’t have any breathing room to grow. Do you think while, yeah, you will never have a dull moment as a leader, are we truly having some room, or are we creating room for us to get ready not only for today, but the faster future ahead and the more complex future ahead?

Sarah Naqvi [00:07:41]:

I think it’s a happy balance. It’s really recognizing what the future is going to be, taking a look at the culture, taking a step back, and revisiting all of the assumptions that we had made in the past about what our culture is going to be. Because, honestly, Sanjog Aul, we are talking about culture here. What type of a culture that we want to create as organization, as leaders, and that is going to create an environment that addresses the needs of the employees? So, play it really full for leaders is a true fact, but if you do it in a way where you are stepping back and revisiting assumptions and we, the other day, I was attending a seminar where Gartner was saying that absolutely no one has the right answer. We don’t know where the future holds when it comes to hybrid workforce and culture is concerned. So, as leaders, we do need to continue to really revisit the assumptions, continue to reassess the culture, and pivot and be ready to evolve and change and really be proven wrong if our assumptions if we are grounding on wrong assumptions. So it’s going to be a very agile environment, at least to say.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:57]:

So, Mike, when you are looking at whether your organization or your peer group, did they feel, did you feel that there were a few muscles which you needed to develop or to strengthen when you encountered what you saw or you say, Hey, bring it on?

Michael Cartoscelli[00:09:17]:

So I think, for myself, I’ve always been in a remote capacity. I’ve been in technology firms for 27+ years, and for the vast majority, I was the one team member in New York when everybody else was in LA, or I was the one guy in Ireland when everybody else was in San Francisco, and, I’ve built teams that are global teams, and so I’ve always come at the leadership style of understanding that I won’t see my folks every day, and when you run sort of global teams, you build them from the ground up or you inherit them. You need to really sit down and figure out with each person what their motivations are, kind of what their work passions are, what their personal passions are, and what kind of drives them, and then from that, you can start setting goals for each person and how they work. The folks that haven’t had to do that in the past, and they’ve had a team that was traditionally sitting in front of them, they had a nice classed in office and they could look out and see a sea of heads sitting in seats, and that made them happy. They knew that the job was getting done, or the folks that were used to putting a stack of work in an inbox and getting a stack of work in the outbox at the end of the day, that’s the way they worked. If they no longer had that, there’s absolutely a set of panic that came with it. I’m sure folks were able to kind of flub through it for the first 6 to 9 months. When we start hitting the year to the 18-month mark, those habits had to change. Unfortunately it’s been a bit disconcerting to see how quickly those habits have reverted, and when you look at things like in Ireland, our fuel crisis costs are incredibly high. So the government may turn around and say, everybody work from home again, so stop driving, because fuel prices are too high and we don’t want to put that on folks. So as a government, we’re going to say, work from home, please. So you’ll see that, and then all of a sudden that throws all those returned office plans up in the air, depending on what country you live in and what individual companies in those jurisdictions do. So I think that the muscles that need to get stretched are the ones of people setting really well defined goals, whether those are SMART goals or just well defined and then increasing the number of team meetings, one on ones, virtual water coolers, whatever you want to call it, to connect with your folks, to remain connected, and that’s how we’re going to have to work going forward because there’s an entire generation. We recently went to a business school in Pittsburgh, and every business post grad student that walked up, the very first question out of their mouth was, do you have a fully remote work from home policy? And if you don’t, I’m not going to even talk to you. So there’s an entire set of generations that are now going, no. I’m not going to do this. So responding to that, the leaders need to be able to embrace that and need to be able to show that they can change a culture of their team, to Sarah’s point or change the culture of the firm or the industry to say, no, we embrace this, and this is why we embrace it because we realize that things have changed and that’s okay. We need to remain agile enough to embrace that change. Otherwise, we’re going to lose market value.

Sarah Naqvi [00:12:26]:

Hey. If I may, Sanjog Aul, if I may add, just to what Mike said. I think the challenge as leaders will be going to have, and I do share this at the table often. How do we develop business skills of those that are introverts that may not flourish and grow and adapt? See, if you really think about business skills, a lot of your presentation skills, your engagement, your leadership skills, they develop when you are around people. You’re face to face interaction. When you’re faced with, like, 200 people in person really presenting. Those are the skills that are going to be important. So as leaders, we really have to think about how do we develop people and their leadership skills and their business skills when they are going to be remote 100% or more? How do we do that? I mean, it’s a challenge. I don’t know if we really have arrived at an answer, but the intentional approach, the way that we’re going to do this is really be intentional in identifying what are the strengths and development opportunities for our employees and invest in those and then try them out. That concerns me more than anything else when it comes to remote workforce. How are we going to build the leaders of tomorrow?

Sanjog Aul [00:13:48]:

Very, very fair point, and I think, yes, that is something which we all have to look at. So where we stand today, right, we actually have to make sure that for them to become leaders for tomorrow, they first understand the value of being effective in whatever they do, and to some extent, it’s our job to bring out that effectiveness in them. You cannot strong-arm that. You have to influence that, and on the other hand, while you make them effective, you also have a duty and an obligation towards the business to get them to become productive, and on top of that, you have to pass the leadership audition. Well, I didn’t ask much from a leader.  So how, Sarah, would you build this three legged stool where the productivity is high of people, you’re making them more effective, you’re passing the audition so that the outcome of that is the stepping stone to your past comment, the recent comment that you just made about making them the leader for tomorrow. So it’s almost like them paying it forward.

Sarah Naqvi [00:15:01]:

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a balancing act.  I mean, sitting at a leadership position, you certainly have to balance between productivity and investing in employees. I certainly have given opportunities to people to lead projects that they had no background on or no experience with, but I did have a strong feeling that given the opportunity, I will be creating a leader of tomorrow. So it’s a balancing act. It’s a risk that you are willing to take, and you have to make these decisions on a case by case basis. If I were to have to make a decision between driving productivity versus investing in employees, if I have to pick one, if I was forced to pick one, honestly, I would lean towards investing in employees and really giving them an opportunity to lead projects that may take longer to be productive. The reason being that this investment would really produce positive results in the long run. Because after going through such a cycle, knowing, having trust in management that says, if I’m going to fall, I know I might fall because I’ve never done this before, but I do trust my management that they’re going to have my back. You’re building strong leaders. Next time around, they are better positioned and your productivity progressively is going to increase, not to mention the culture, morale, and all of those things. So, I would say that it’s a balancing act, and you need to look at potential. Can they do it? Do they have the capabilities? How big of risk you’re taking? What’s the demand from the business for productivity? As far as your question about how do I pass the audition, in my view, there are two types of leaders, those that really thrive by being the superstar and having a team that’s weak, and there are others that thrive by having a very strong team and themselves being invisible. I plan to choose the latter approach. I think it’s more effective, and it allows me to pass the audition while building a very strong team around me.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:12]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and, Mike, when we come back, I’d like to build upon what, Sarah said. When you have to, I’m just gonna set in the context before we take this break, but when you are supposed to do the right thing, which Sarah said about, letting these people get the opportunity so that they won’t, you know, make mistakes or learn from it and get up again, and that’s the bruises is what makes you a good leader, and you want to get all of that going as part of how you, get the work done. However, when there is a continuous pursuit of the next quarterly results, what is the luxury or how do you afford the luxury of pausing, if you will, or slowing down what you’re doing to invest in people or to some extent, how do you build the plane while flying it? Let’s talk more when we come back. Please stay tuned.

Speaker 0 [00:18:15]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:19:09]:

Welcome back. So, Mike, build the plane while you fly it. Pass the audition, give them the time, keep the management happy, get the projects done on time. Man, that is a lot to ask.

Michael Cartoscelli[00:19:23]:

It is, and it’s one of those things where oftentimes people look to leaders not necessarily do the right thing, but to do the hard thing, and really focus on that and to make those decisions. I’ve worked for startups, I’ve worked for very large companies. I’ve worked for everything in between, and one thing that has always been true is when you’re building a new team, you’re building a new project, you have to be clear to your stakeholders and understand from your stakeholders what the goals are, what the timelines are for the project and meet those. Because obviously, technology folks tend to be a cost center. We tend to be looked at as a shared service. We’re a business enablement team, at the end of the day, and it’s our jobs to understand the business and help the business to thrive and to grow, but also to our teams to do the same. So, there are times where I’ve had to run projects. I used to run them in a very agile manner where we did a couple-week sprints and I would say, okay, one person’s going to cycle off of this 2-week sprint to do some learning, to do some project stuff, and the next time up, somebody else is going to cycle off. So to try and keep folks having a blend of they’re doing project work, the project’s still working towards that goal in the end point, but folks are still also learning along the way, and when we would get downtime, I would book in even more training classes or training opportunities into the schedule so it couldn’t get overwritten, and it’s always a balancing act. If you have to pull training for folks, you have to sit down and honestly tell them and say, look, the business has come back or this project just got bumped up priority. We really need to focus on this for the next 4, 8, 12 weeks, and after that, we’re going to kind of try and take a break so everybody can go back, get some vacation time, get some learning time, and try and connect with that. It’s being able to sit down and have honest and transparent conversations with your team. People pick up on that emotion. They pick up on that sentimentality and they understand, they see you working hard and they go, well, you know what? The boss is here. I’m not being fed a line and we’re all in this together, and by having that group motivation, by leading from the front, people pick up on that and they absolutely will align themselves to you.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:42]:

Sarah, so you mentioned about what a leader should do and so did Mike, and both have made very valid points, and I’m sure many of these things people may have heard in different forms and ways, and people have tried to adopt them or help put in place, but some people succeed, others don’t in making that happen. What would you say are the differentiators between the two categories of leaders? Some get it done, others at most try.

Sarah Naqvi [00:22:17]:

Sanjog Aul, I would say that the big difference is the type of talent that is the makeup of your team. You as a leader understanding the needs of the business and recruiting against that need and also anticipating the needs of the future and building the team around. You become better leader by having better teams around you, and I do think that some people succeed, because the team allows them to become better leaders as well. They are aspirational. They are asking for it, and they are motivated. They are connected. They are engaged, and because they are connected and engaged, they are allowing you to become better leaders, and they are managing their careers better as well. So at the end of the day, I do believe that the combination of the team and your leadership style is the catalyst for change, and it is an enablement for how you can achieve some of these objectives.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:21]:

It’s a very good segue to my next question, Mike. So think of people you’ve hired.  And you saw the resume, and even as they start working, you look at their profile. The HR even maintains or your department would maintain a profile of people on what projects they did, and you kind of validate and or assess their capabilities and abilities based on what they actually did, but in many cases, this dream of fit for purpose profiling on where their natural talents lie versus what the work they have done takes a back seat, and then to Sarah’s point, if you want to be a good leader, would you not want to have the people really be aligned to their true talents versus what they have on their resume? And if you want to do that, again, it comes down to how do I get the work done if I try to chase everybody’s respective dreams and give them the projects they want. How would you handle something like this? Because that’s what will make the team become the reason of leaders passing the audition if they are given the chance to blossom at their respective levels and where their true talents lie.

Michael Cartoscelli[00:24:34]:

Yeah. It’s difficult. I’ve joined teams. I’ve built teams from scratch and obviously it’s much easier then because you know going into it, you’ve worked them through the interview process and you’ve kind of sussed out how that works, but when you inherit teams, that becomes very difficult because the previous management teams and leadership teams could have said things, could have promised things, Hey, in 6 months we’ll be here, in 9 months we’ll be there, in 12 months we’ll be running the whole thing, and you come in and that may or may not be the truth. So sitting down and, and obviously having sort of the experiential background, the academic background, and then tying that into just talking with people, the first time of taking over a team and working towards what folks really get behind, ask them what motivates them. Hey, do you want to be completely autonomous? Do you want to talk to me once a month? I give you a bunch of work and as long as you’re hitting the dates, you don’t need to talk to me. Fine. We can work that way. Or do you want to talk to me once a week? What do you want to be when you grow up? When I talk to folks about their career plans, I want to make sure that all my folks have training plans every year that they work towards. I want to make sure that their performance is measured monthly or biweekly and they know what’s coming. So, mid-year reviews, end of year reviews are never an issue for them, and when you get that sort of groove between yourselves and your folks, you can say, look, Bob, are you really happy doing this? You seem to be cranking out the work, but is that what makes you happy? And they go, well, yeah, I’m really happy doing this. I’m still learning a load. Okay, fine. The second that you start to be unhappy, let me know and we’ll try and look towards something else for you, and somebody came to me, in my last position, they said, Hey, your company bought ours. I was really looking forward to being a manager and I was on that career path, and now you’re the manager and I don’t get that career path. Can you still help me out? And I’m like, Yes, I would absolutely love to, and then you start to delegate projects. You start to delegate other work. I made them a scrum master. So you’re still coaching folks. You’re still mentoring all your people, and by understanding where their passions lie, you can start to build them towards those goals. Obviously the project end dates do have to come first, but people will understand that you’re trying to work with them. When you start doing things like adding it into their growth plans, their career plans, they see that you’ve understood and you’ve heard them and you’ve taken that to heart and you’re actively working them towards that goal, and there are times where I’ve said, Hey, we can do a secondment to another team. If you want to be a storage engineer, a systems engineer, a project manager, we can have you work over there for a couple sprints or a couple months and we’ll see how it goes, and so, those are the teams that have stayed with the company for a very long time, and that’s part of the key of retaining high performing talent is by understanding those folks and tapping into that talent and helping it move towards what’s best. At one point in time, I promoted 85% of my team in one year to other teams and I had to backfill from scratch. I didn’t see that as a bad thing. That was a success to me because those folks stayed in the company and 95% of them were still at the company 10 years later. So I’m quite happy with that.

Sarah Naqvi [00:27:57]:

If I may, Sanjog Aul, in 2013, I assumed responsibility of CIO, and I had to build the team from scratch, and now I am pretty happy to say that 75% of that was homegrown talent, in leadership roles that they have never been in that role before, and the identification of these resources were two faced. One was the natural talent, certainly to Mike’s point, asking them what the interest was and aligning it attempting to align it with the interest, and then the second was the potential that I saw that sometimes they themselves didn’t see. I am telling you, when we placed a couple of the employees in these leadership positions, they freaked out. They were very nervous. They were very scared. They didn’t think they could do it. So it’s in my opinion, it’s aligning, really speaking to employees, understanding the interest, attempting to align that, but also as effective leaders seeing what the potential is and then driving the resources towards that potential and helping them achieve a higher standard more so than they themselves thought they were capable of.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:13]:

So, Sarah, if you were given a free hand and, like, Mike even tried to do things what he did, I’m sure both of you must have had to deal with the HR, and I’m not gonna paint HR in a bad light. They do a tremendous job. Okay, but many times when you have to run an organization and you want some predictability and some structure, you try to create specific roles, the entry and exit of the career ladder and career lattice and salary bands and everything else, and that’s done for a reason, and then here you come and you want to become that, not maverick, but you’re trying to bring some changes. How do you get HR to come on board and not just getting them on board? How do you not remove the very reason, those structures, and those processes, and those focused approaches to how talent enters or exits the organizations or departments so that you maximize the potential, you produce leaders or foster leaders, and at the same time allow the organization to have a sustained and predictable existence.

Sarah Naqvi [00:30:27]:

You know, I would at least in my experience, I’ve necessarily not had any issues dealing with this challenge or collaborating with HR on predicting the future. As I said, in 2013, we took a step back and did a full talent assessment of who we had versus what we were in need of as a business. Partnering with HR is highly recommended to really help them see what your journey is, where you’re coming from. Technology is changing at such a rapid pace that, to really position strong IT teams, I feel like it’s two phased approach. One, when you’re hiring talent, talent acquisition, really think hard and not hire people who want to be in a box. Traditional IT, it was okay for me to hire a programmer analyst that was great at SQL or great at programming and then put them in a box. Tomorrow’s workforce is not like that. Everything is changing at a very rapid pace. So both in universities as well as the talent pool that’s gonna come in, you need to make sure that you’re training them or you’re hiring, recruiting people who want to scale and don’t want to be in a box. So that’s one. The challenge becomes if organizations have really low turnover, how do you really build the existing team? For that challenge, I think it’s a change in culture. It’s collaboration with HR. We did an in-depth skill assessment. What do we have? What’s the future? Where’s the gap? Are we going to fill the gap by recruiting? Are we going to fill the gap by training? Or are we going to fill the gap by transitioning and backfilling? So those were the three things, and in order to do that, best advice is for CIOs to really connect with HR, go through the business case, help them, bring them along on the journey. You’ll find that they are going to be better partners in helping you recruit for the right reasons.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:29]:

Let’s take a quick break. We’ll be right back, and, Mike, when we come back, we have to talk about of course, as people are coming back from the pandemic, it was really tough for people to handle things personally and professionally, and things have not fully, you know, cured yet, if you will. The situation is still there lingering to some extent, and we got to make sure that we do a little more than the regular job of raising people’s spirits and keeping them there because there is a lot of unpredictability in the business, in the home life, personal life of everyone involved. So what should be the should the leaders be doing, and what did you try which worked for you, and how are those needs changing where you are not just a boss, but someone who’s not truly a parent either, but someone in between who is helping them and someone they can fall back on and see, look up to you for them to get the support and the strength to get through the days that we are facing now and what we are likely to face ahead. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:33:49]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:34:44]:

Welcome back. So, Mike, pep talks, we can give them all day long, but that only goes so far. People are looking for support. People are looking for a caring hand and someone who they know is there for them no matter what. They would like support from family. I think they are going to be looking for that in a leader as well.

Michael Cartoscelli[00:35:09]:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:10]:

Have you seen what worked?

Michael Cartoscelli[00:35:12]:

Some of the traditional things of just being transparent and being caring towards somebody, when you create emotion, you create memories. So people base memories off emotions, things make them laugh or be unhappy, be sad, or be happy. People will still tie into that. When getting back to post pandemic or even during the middle of it, the very first question was always, how are you doing? And trying to be honest about it, how is the family? Is everybody okay? Is there anything that we need to do as a company, or I can do as a manager to help you out? Is the work life balance okay? I see log anomaly. Is that because you’re effectively managing your day? It’s totally okay to take breaks when you normally wouldn’t have to in the past. If you have to do the school run and grab kids or drop kids off if you’re a parent, that’s okay. Letting them know that they shouldn’t feel guilty for having a life and living their life in the middle of a pandemic. Asking how their work setup is, are they an analyst that’s stuck working off their kitchen table? Is that the only place where you can effectively do the work? Well, let’s make sure that we send out an ergonomic chair at least for you so that you’re comfortable and make sure that your setup is right for you. Or maybe we can work something out where we get you like a small desk that can go out that’s even better for you, and then traditionally I would take a walk or go to lunch with somebody and walk around the block a couple times and try and connect with them, and sometimes you have to do that virtually, and just say, Hey, this one on one’s not going to be real heavy on what we’ve been doing. It’s just going to be a catch up, and do what’s right for your family. I’ve had a couple of conversations where people are like, Somebody’s come after me and they’re offering a whole lot of money, and I flat out said, is it life changing money? Is it going to do best for your family? If so, then I encourage you to do what’s best for your family and to go for it. If it’s something that you think is going to be better for you, then off you go. If it’s not, maybe it’s not the right decision and you can have that conversation too, but I think by being transparent and building trust with your folks and being honest with them and telling them of your own struggles, making that connection and saying, Hey, it’s been really hard. It is really tough. Here’s our employee assistance programs that we’ve all had as a perk for most of our companies that very few people really ever use, but during the pandemic, the usage has spiked up 35–45%, and that’s a good thing, that should be encouraged. That should be celebrated and talked about in weekly or biweekly communication emails out from the team to say, hey, if you’re struggling, it’s okay. Take a mental health day. Take a break. Go on a long weekend. Take an extra two days on the back end of that. Folks aren’t using nearly enough of their vacation. It’s okay to not be okay and to walk away, and people will connect to that. Especially if you are honest, you are being honest, which hopefully folks who have those conversations are, and you will continue to build that level of trust between your teams. You will continue to build that loyalty in your teams, and hopefully, if people need to go, because if something better pops up, that’s great. If they want to stay, that’s awesome, but it’s past the normal like, hey everybody, we just need you to buckle down for the next two weeks and we’ll get through this project. Now you have to take a much more humane view and see the whole picture of what’s driving the person’s life to understand how their output will be measured.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:00]:

Sarah, have you ever had a thought across your mind that, hey, I need my leadership to pass the audition every time? And I’m trying to be nice to people, and I do see some signs that there is an abuse potential there. So shall I take a step back? How do you not let that go to either extreme where you become too much of an external validation seeker and at the same time not become a jerk as a leader?

Sarah Naqvi [00:39:37]:

In this transition period, when we were going from being in the office to being remote, it was difficult as a leader. Historically, in the past, when people worked remotely, it was assumed productivity isn’t there, or work from home was such a perk where productivity couldn’t be managed and maintained. So I do believe that in this transition phase, we struggled to not be a jerk or be empathetic or be real and be managing productivity. All of those were real challenges as a leader, but as we are coming out of this pandemic, I do believe that we’ve gained some stability. Couple things that we absolutely need to do, in this hybrid environment. First of all, to really make sure that we are not calling it work from home, but it’s a remote office. Some of the work that gets physically done in the office, the rest gets done in an office space, call it your home office. I think it does have a psychological impact that the work is continuing. The other realization that we’ve had as a part of this transition is I personally used to appreciate Friday very much. You’re done with your work week. You’re driving home on Friday. It feels good at the start of the weekend, but now when you’re working from home, that appreciation that this is the end of the day, I lost that, and as a result, the personal space and the professional space, everything is mixed up. So that transition period, as leaders, we just need to recognize that people, just because they’re working from home, they’re working long hours and late nights, and they don’t know when to shut this off, and we need to help them really strike that balance back and recognize that and not be a jerk about it. Couple things that we’ve done, in order to really strike that balance, we stopped scheduling meetings from 12:00 to 1:00. What I noticed was when people were working from home that they were scheduling meetings, and it was okay to schedule a 12:00 meeting when, otherwise, they weren’t when they were in the office, for instance. So that was, we deliberately set no meetings between 12:00 and 1:00. Fridays during summer, let’s not schedule meetings from 12:00 to the end of the day on Friday. Give them flex time. Let them just relax and start the weekend. So those were the kind of things that really helped us to manage a remote workforce, create an environment that their employees really appreciate, and just to add to what Mike said, I think employees want to be visible and recognized. In a hybrid work environment, they are somewhat invisible, especially in the IT field. So we, as leaders, need to make sure that they are getting the due recognition. Calling out, recognizing it, giving them a shout out are all the things that actively, as leaders, we need to do. We need to make time to thank them because I have seen productivity go very, very high during the pandemic than I’ve ever seen before. So let’s, as leaders, be effective in calling that out and recognizing our employees to create that positive environment rather than judgmental.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:15]:

So, Mike, I’m sure you would have seen that there are a lot of people who get to a place where they have the stripes of a leader, which is a title, but they themselves got there because somewhere, in our business world, at least, we reward people achieving things for the business, and that’s why they get there, but they truly may not be having compassion to the level that a leader must have. How can someone who reach there do justice to that role by developing genuine compassion versus faking

Michael Cartoscelli[00:43:57]:

it? Sure. So, there’s nothing wrong with being a very senior individual contributor. If somebody has gotten into a leadership position and you can see that they may be struggling a bit, you have to sit down and say, is that position really right for them? The amount of times I’ve had one on ones or even skipped levels and said, Hey, what do you want to do in the next 18, 24 months? Oh, I want to be a director. Okay. Great. Why do you want to be a director? Well, I want to be able to set the technology direction for this product that we’re doing, this infrastructure that we’re doing, and I’m so enthusiastic about it. I think we’re doing it wrong. I really want to change it and move along this path. I’m like, great. You don’t want to be a director. You want to be an architect. Those are the folks that are really driving this, and when you start breaking down, you’re like, hey. If you want to be a director, shadow me for a day, and when you spend 7 hours straight in meetings and realize that you’re not changing a lot on the old architecture side in this role, that might not be what you want to do, but that’s okay, especially as we move towards cultures and companies that really embrace neurodiversity, you shouldn’t put people into roles where they’re not comfortable doing those roles. However, if it is somebody that does want to learn and they might be struggling a bit, there are loads of resources out there. Look at anything from Dr. Richard Boyatzis out of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, and some of the work he’s done where it shows how a functional MRI shows what parts of the brain light up when you give different types of feedback and how to manage that, how to manage cortisol flushes through the brain, and how to talk to people in different ways so that you manage their stress. Even Daniel Pink’s flow video on YouTube, which is based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work, the Hungarian psychologist, where he talks about flow states and how to encourage people to get into those and to set up their environment to get into that. A flow state and somebody working in that, that’s infinitely better to them than money. So that’s a motivating thing. There’s tons of books, The Culture Map by Erin Meyer is amazing for understanding global cultures if you work in a global team, and looking, near shore for me, my good friends at the Irish Management Institute and some of the work that they’ve done, I work with them as being a mentor as part of the 30% club to ensure 30% gender diversity for all C-suite and board positions, for female representation. They do some incredible work and have some amazing training courses, and it’s okay to reach out outside of your own network and say, Hey, you’ve gotten into this position. We’re trying to drive compassion with the skillset. Maybe I’m not doing a good enough job. Let’s get you a coach. Let’s get you a mentor. Let’s find somebody who’s a mentor who’s outside of technology. If we’re talking about a tech leader, let’s go find somebody from marketing. Let’s go find somebody from sales, because they’re seeing the world and the company in a different way and they might have a different vision on how to help folks. So, to understand that and to Sarah’s previous point around that decompressing side, we really focus on mental white space. How to decompress your brain at the end of the day or during certain parts of the day and really managing your energy throughout the day, and that can be difficult. So, developing that compassion is the same way that you develop any other skillset for a leader that you’re really focusing on, coaching, mentoring. There’s plenty of books out there. There’s plenty of articles, quick articles, and just look for some tidbits that may help folks get over that hump.

Sarah Naqvi [00:47:31]:

If I may, I think Mike, you make some really good points. I also believe that if we do have a leadership team, we should allow them to be vulnerable. We should allow them to be genuine, and the more that they can openly speak about what they are capable of and what they’re not, and the more that we can encourage them to be real and authentic and genuine, it’s going to create compassion. I do think that people fake it when they feel that they have to be somebody that they are not and then they’re just not made that way, but when they are allowed to be exposed or vulnerable in a trusting team, then they end up being better leaders. So I do think that we need to create that environment where people can speak of what they can and cannot do openly in a trusting environment.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:22]:

So one last question, which both of you I would love for both of you to share your insights. When you are a leader, it doesn’t mean you’re only leading the people who are reporting to you. You’re leading sideways. You’re leading upwards, and all along, you want to pass that audition. Now the audition which you may have or the parameters of an audition of people reporting to you could be different from the people above you and other people sideways. Can you imagine being an actor and having three different flavors of what will get you to pass the audition? How would you do all of that and while still being human? Sarah.

Sarah Naqvi [00:49:13]:

Being a leader of an IT organization, I think that role is even more important because in my opinion, IT is the conduit for the business. It is the connecting entity across different parts of your business. Therefore, playing that part across, above, and below, it’s just as important. I do believe that by consistent performance, building in trust, showing that you understand the business, showing that you can recognize the people, showing that you can step back when your team really achieves and give them the limelight, give them the recognition, are all the ways. So when you’re speaking about your peer engagement, building that trust, consistency of performance, and really driving forward, when you’re speaking about your engagement with the top tier showing that you are strategic thinkers, and when you’re speaking about your teams, really giving them the recognition and supporting them and taking the risk in their development are all the areas that make you a better leader. As IT leaders, my advice would be do not be invisible in the organization. Just running IT is no longer your job. Being a business partner, being visible, an enabler of execution of strategy is your new role, and you need to do that by being visible and being an active intentional player in this game.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:43]:

Mike?

Michael Cartoscelli [00:50:45]:

I 100% agree. You know, the traditional where the CIO, it’s weird. There was a CIO article that was quoted in 2004 where I mentioned this, and it was where the CIO is leaving the behind the scenes role and has to be in front of the business. We have to be understanding of the business. For me personally, it was difficult. I moved from being very technology company focused. I understood we made a product, the product got sold by the people. It was easy, and now I work for the oldest bank in America and I’m in a massive financial role and understanding how that all works is very foreign to me, but I’ve been trying to learn as quickly as I can as I go, and you have to absolutely understand what the business does to help them out, to be able to challenge them. Sitting in a board meeting or working with a regulator, the number one thing I get asked is, can you discharge your duties by offering effective challenge? And that basically means, can you sit and have an argument that makes sense and gets the company to a better place? So by having those types of conversations, pulling your peers aside and say, Hey, from my perspective, this is what the world’s looking like. What does it look like from risk? What does it look like from finance? What’s going on there? How do we work with our compliance team or our audit team? What’s going on? By making those breakouts, making those connections with your peers in the other teams, you have to build that leadership team. This is a team sport with no one person going to be out there that’s going to drive the corporate bottom line through the roof, and that gets picked up on. As long as you are true to yourself, you listen to your feedback from peers, from mentors, from coaches, you bring that forward. Don’t shy away from confrontation because it’s just offering a contrasting view. You’re not trying to be argumentative, but you’re just trying to avoid group think acceptance. You’re trying to avoid that. Everybody in the same board meeting goes, Yep. Yeah. I just really want lunch and I’m going to say yes to this, and as long as you’re authentic, transparent and empathetic, that gets noticed, and to Sarah’s point, as long as you are out there and you’re trying just to be visible to all parts of the business, or at least a chunk of the business, people will start to pick up on that, and it’s like, again, by staying true to yourself, it’s not something that you have to keep up and forget which thing you said to which person. So by being authentic and transparent, people will notice. They’ll look to you as a true empathetic leader that’s based in things like emotional intelligence and some of these traditional soft skills. At some point, you just take a stand on that hill and you say, this is the person I’m going to be and how I’m going to lead.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:41]:

Once again, thank you so much, Sarah and Mike, for sharing your insights about how leaders can work on themselves and, of course, influence the environment, and flying colors is what you would call it when they pass the audition every time they go in and try to create value. Thanks so much again.

Sarah Naqvi [00:54:00]:

Thank you for having us.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:02]:

And listeners, please, follow us on social media. Subscribe to our podcast. Once again, thank you for listening to CTN. This is your host, Sanjog Aul. Till next week. Take care, and God bless.