speaker-0: It's just a technique. It allows and gives you the right to build connection. Then you've had a good meeting, you've had good rapport. The only friend you have is repetition, right? Through making decisions, through seeing the consequences, feeling the discomfort and doing it all over again. The question is what's the headline? If the audience wants to remember one thing, what is it?
speaker-1: It's so insightful and a powerful reminder of the role of that preparation. I'm Dr. Amy Aitheet. As a licensed psychologist and performance expert, working with elite athletes, C-suite executives, and high performers operating in some of the most demanding environments, I've seen what it truly takes to perform when it matters most. From supporting members of the Naval Special Warfare community to advising leaders in high stakes, high pressure situations, one truth remains consistent. The tools that drive performance are the same. You prepare in a way that allows you to show up ready when the moment arrives. Arrives. Each week I'll share practical tools and insights to help you strengthen how you think, lead, and perform. Welcome to Still Evolving. Today's conversation lives at the intersection of two capacities that separate leaders who navigate complexity well from leaders who quietly get lost inside of it. These are clarity and judgment. Both are talked about constantly. Both are exercised far less often. Than most executives assume. Let me start with clarity. Most people treat clarity as the absence of complexity, as if the goal is to reduce every situation until the messiness is gone. That is not what clarity is. Real clarity is the discipline of holding all the complexity and then deciding deliberately what matters most and leading with that. It is an act of editing under pressure, not an act of avoidance. The leaders who do this well have often walked a long road to get there, because our natural instinct as leaders, especially the ones who love to unravel a hard problem, is to keep layering the analysis until we have proven to ourselves how thoroughly we understand the terrain. That process is genuinely useful, but it is not what the room needs from us. The room needs the headline, the evidence that makes it credible, and a clear ask of what to do next. Everything else belongs behind the scenes. In my book Moment Ready, I write about the four capacities that allow high performers to show up well when the moments that matter most arrive. These are composure, clarity, connection, and courageous action. Clarity is the second of those, and it works as a bridge between the first and the last. Without clarity, leaders who are otherwise strong performers end up stuck in the middle of a big moment. Well regulated on the outside, but paralyzed on the inside, because the picture of what actually matters has never been distilled until they can act on. Clarity is what turns the noise into the decision, our ability then to take deliberate action. The second topic of today's conversation is judgment. And this is where the conversation gets particularly interesting for moments that we are in now. Information has never been more abundant. Frameworks have never been more accessible, and every question a leader might ask has been answered in some form, somewhere online, and now with generative AI agents that can be summoned in seconds. What all this access does not give us is judgment. Judgment is not accumulated, it is earned. It is built through repetition, through the decisions made under real high stakes, through the slow accumulation of consequences. That have shown up when you have been in the room enough times to feel the difference between an obvious pattern and a subtle one. The concern that runs through today's conversation, and one that I share, is that our very tools that make our lives easier may be quietly hollowing out the practice ground where judgment used to get built. If we outsource too much of our thinking, we lose the reps that would have otherwise trained us to think well in moments that tools cannot help us with. What I find so compelling is how clarity and judgment reinforce each other over time. Clarity gets easier when your judgment has been well trained because you have seen enough patterns to know quickly what actually matters. Judgment gets sharper when clarity has been well practiced, because the act of deciding what to lead with over and over again teaches you to see the shape of a decision more accurately the next time. Neither one is built in a single meeting or in a single reading. Both are built in the accumulated repetitions of a career, and they are built most reliably by leaders who take time to reflect on those reps after they happen, rather than simply moving on to the next one. That is the through line of today's conversation is delivered by a guest who has spent years across cultures and continents refining exactly this practice. My guest today is Harsha Mrapur. And Harsha is a global business leader with more than two decades of experience helping organizations translate complex ideas into decisions that hold up in real conditions. He has led teams across the United States, Europe, and Asia, working with clients at the executive level on some of the most challenging transformations in their industries. His path has taken him through global consulting, enterprise technology, and advisory work. And he brings a particular rare combination to that experience, which is the analytical depth of a complex thinker paired with a practical discipline of someone who has learned to communicate across every culture and context that he has stepped into. He is known for helping leaders separate signal from noise and decisions where the stakes are high and the answer is not obvious. And he is generous about the mistakes that have taught him how to do that. What makes him exactly the right voice for a conversation anchored in clarity and judgment is that he has felt the cost of getting both of them wrong. And he has done the work of building both of them back up. And he brings the clarity of thought about how the next generation of leaders will need to develop these capacities that is well worth your time. Harsha, welcome to Still Evolving. I'm grateful to have you here.
speaker-0: Thank you, Amy, for having me. Look forward to the the conversation today as well.
speaker-1: Awesome. Aja, you have in your journey led global teams. You've also led teams that are in the midst of what many could argue like very complex, fast paced, dynamic pressures. So today I really wanted to hone in and and better understand kind of some of the lessons learned in your journey about what works in that discipline, specifically when things are really complex. ⁓ and perhaps, you know, as humble leaders will say, we don't always have All the answers. And so what have you found to really help you in those complex dynamic conditions?
speaker-0: Yeah, it's a fascinating question, Amy, because we don't have all of the answers. In fact, there are more questions and answers when you come to sort of the topics that don't seem that that that obvious, right? So when you work across cultures, especially when, you know, you're straddling between the US on one side, which dominates a lot of the the capitalist sort of conversations we have today with customers, and that seems to become the pattern that we start following elsewhere in the world. And you come into Europe, for example, and you have twenty seven different countries and microcultures and you wanna sort of apply that template, it can get very, very complex. I think ⁓ the first thing that I've learned is you need to understand what credible means in every culture before you even walk into the room because ⁓ you know, I had this this experience back in two thousand ten and eleven when I was in Germany, for example, and you know I've been I've been lauded for being a direct, fast, sort of decisive person in my career. So I take this first client meeting in Germany and I give a very sharp, punchy recommendation and three slides and as a conclusion there's hey call to action and the room went really quiet. And you know, to me I I I thought they were impressed. They had no questions, they had no comebacks, they they were really impressed, right? They I figured that out later the hard way that they weren't, right? In fact One of them told me they were slightly offended because you know it was not the recommendation that I gave, but by the speed at which I moved in the room to give that recommendation. Because in German culture, as I found out later, a recommendation delivered that fast just signals that you've haven't thought through the topic very deeply deep enough. And you've not engaged with men multiple people to figure the answer out, right? So in a in a high context culture like like the Germans where where credibility lives in the nuances in the details. The process of arriving at the answer is itself part of the evidence that you're trustworthy and you're thoughtful and you're credible, right? And I just walked in performing the absolute wrong way in that specific culture. So I think credibility in every culture therefore matters and understanding what it means in the room that you're walking into matters a lot. The the the second thing I have learnt is all of us have our defaults in terms of how we operate. By default I always operate in the expert mode because I I I tend to appear like the one who knows most of the things. That's my default, that's how I behave. I or I or or I walk into a room. But then it just doesn't work. You have to switch. Not your core values, but the way you communicate, the way you pace yourself, the way you register the audience and the way you intonate. I think all of that needs to s to change to the room, right? So being intentional about it matters because there are moments in my meetings where I start being Very intentional, but somewhere in the meeting I I switch to my default, which doesn't s sort of begins to break the meeting. And then I have to intentionally recognize it and switch back. And that's my last learning, right? Don't switch. Don't keep switching. Once you've read the room, you stay consistent. You and that takes a lot of practice because switching styles just signals inauthenticity at every level. And I've learnt it the hard way. So I think this is where the complexity lies, Amy, according to me. It's not about preparing a pitch. It's not about coming up with a great solution to problems. It's really about then how do you understand the context? How do you intentionally adapt your style and you know don't fall back into your defaults through that that entire process. That that is a very difficult and complex thing individually and personally for for me as well.
speaker-1: it's it's so insightful and I think a powerful reminder of the role of that preparation. Oftentimes in our performance domains, you know, I've worked across sport, military, and now predominantly in private industry. And when we think of preparation, everyone initially goes to the performance domain, knowledge, skills, and abilities. So in sport, it's let's go run that offense over and over and over or throw the ball until We we hit our target consistently. Military. Let's jump out of a plane fifteen times today and rehearse these skills. And then in private industry, maybe it's that pitch presentation. Perhaps it's the role play of the negotiation, or to your point, the knowledge base of preparing the deck or the recommendation. But how we show up in those key moments that matter requires more than just that performance domain expertise. And you're highlighting it's it's how we execute and how we show up in those moments. So I'm very excited. My book's coming out tomorrow. I'm a moment ready, shameless plug. And where I talk about four key tools in that moment that matters. One, the the tool of composure, how we can regulate our own energies, and then also lead with this the the energy that's gonna most meet the demand or the context in which we're showing up in. ⁓ the role of clarity, you know, we talked about the complexity and and I hear for you the clarity that came in understanding the people and their individual backgrounds and how that influences the process of conversation in the rule room to be able to for the third the third C connect. Be able to connect with those people and the purpose and take the courageous action, the fourth C that really helps us be able to access all of that performance domain expertise and and show up in the way that feels authentic and certainly brings out our best self. So with those four C's, this clarity that came for you that helps, I guess, signal what is most important. In that moment, it may be connecting with those people, as you mentioned across cultures perhaps. But in what what other ways have you seen the role of clarity become such a s significant tool for you leading in in complex environments, or perhaps you've observed in other leaders?
speaker-0: Again, another great question and I did speak about my experience the last time we spoke. I mean my mentor and she used to rubbish my presentations all the time and you know, and send me back every time that the feedback I was receiving was from a complexity standpoint, you've really layered in your way of thinking and you know how you came to the conclusion. That's not the problem. The problem is understanding who you're delivering this this idea or this concept and the how are you communicating the the the idea across rooms. That's where the issue is. And then the insight for me was, you know, clarity isn't the absence of complexity, right? It is not. It's the discipline of actually deciding what matters most and leading with that. And I'm a complex thinker, so a complex creative if you will, and And if I didn't learn how to simplify, then I've always had these moments where I'm only talking to myself all of the time, right? Very early in on in my career, because it's so complex. You want to unravel things and the only person who seems to have empathy is is yourself. And you keep sort of talking to yourself. But that's a skill that one should should learn as well. The real sort of intellectual work is isn't in building that that argument. layer by layer and really unraveling complexity. It's actually editing it down to what another person can hold in their head. So when I when I sit down these days after after having spent so many nights wondering how I should navigate clarity from complexity. And this is sort of the mentoring that I've received from from a few of our from my mentors in my life. The question is what's the headline? If the audience wants to remember one thing, what is it? And For example, if it was, hey, look, this this solution will allow you to take pricing decisions fifty percent in fifty percent of the time, eighty percent of the time. Right? So if that was my headline for the audience, now I have to look for supporting evidence that makes that headline credible. Yes, I have implemented it for you in in this region. I have tested it for all types of scenarios and the model doesn't break. And then I have built a number of reusable frameworks that will allow it, allow this framework to be implemented across the globe. Some such thing, some messages like that which support the headline makes it more trustworthy. And then the third thing I always ask my teams and myself is what do you want this audience or this person listening to you to do? What's the action you want them to take, or what is the decision you want them to take after having seen this piece of content, right? So in a typical sort of life, you know, you you have a PowerPoint deck in many cases and you flip through a lot of these things and you don't expect people to take decision on every slide, but you have to chain some of those thoughts into a decision framework. So essentially those are my three tool sets I I lead with when I when I think of clarity these days, whether it's a deck or whether it's a narrative in a room or a compelling sort of persuasive pitch that you make. ⁓ it's the headline that matters, it's the evidence that supports the headline that matters. Are you giving them enough evidence and What do you want them to do after listening to you? If people take care of some of these three things and if they can answer that within a minute of you asking those questions, then there is clarity. If I don't get that answer within 60 seconds, then I know there is work. And not to take away all of the context of the culture and the people and reading the room and all of that, but that comes later once you have a clear message on hand to deliver.
speaker-1: And so that process for you, it sounds as if that is part of the preparation, right? And honed in in the what and then the how, as you mentioned earlier, perhaps the dynamics, the communication, the individual differences across culture certainly comes into the execution part. You mentioned your team, Arsha. I'm curious about your experience working with a team in that preparation process, or perhaps even in a high stakes decision moment. What has been in your experience with the role of connection with those team members to be able to facilitate that execution? Or is that in your mind rapport? Could you sh speak a little bit about the role of connection for you with your team and and perhaps maybe client client base?
speaker-0: I think it's very, very important, Amy. Connection is sort of the bedrock of everything that we do, isn't it? And whether it's with your other team members or with clients, because you all work, you know, in an ecosystem that facilitates an outcome. And if I really think about rapo and connection, I feel people sometimes confuse between the two, at least in my opinion. And my team many a times think of repo as connection and vice versa. And They come to me and then they say, Look, you know, I've had this great chat with a person who wants to buy something from us and I think we can convert that, right? So in my view, that's just rapport. It's just a technique. It allows and gives you the right to build connection. It just makes someone feel good in the moment they're speaking to you. And if you have had a great conversation, if there's there's a bit of laughter, there's back and forth, there are no awkward silences and you just bounce off each other well, then you've had a good meeting. You have had Good rapport, but that is just the start. How do you build a connection using that foundation? Because you've had great meetings where there's great rapport but there's no outcome after that. There's absolutely no follow-through. But there are meetings where you know it's they start off rough and they go all over the place, but then you understand the individual. You make the the room feel that they are being understood by you and you deliver on your commitments, you do the hard things to make things successful. builds credibility and that brings connection as well. So keeping keeping sight of that that you know Rappo gives you the the the right, but then delivering on your commitments, following through, doing the hard stuff, showing up when nobody shows up, right? When when it's hard. I think that's that's that's the most important thing in building connection with people, at least in in my experience. And it is across, it's probably the same across cultures. I've not seen a big difference when when you come to connection across cultures. So yeah, making sure the team understands that and and people people kind of know when you're performing warmth versus it's an act, people can see through that. So making sure the team and when we are in front of customers, they feel that we are genuine and genuinely curious about their situation, genuinely empathetic about what we can do for them is something that needs to be on the reminder pretty much every day for us.
speaker-1: Absolutely. I I appreciate that showing up when it's hard. Right. And sometimes that is the messy meeting, right? Where perhaps there's frustration being shared or it feels more tense. Rapport certainly is one of the skills that can help strengthen and and even repair, perhaps if there's a missed step, but being able to actively like sit and listen and be present and curious to the pain that's before you, perhaps better taking a diff a shift in your own perspective, trying to be able to see it from their lens if there is a point of conflict. That power of perspective taking can be so powerful in that connection building as you were describing. I'm I'm kind of reminded I had a when I was much younger, I had a mentor remind me, and this is more my personal life than professionally, but certainly we have relationships that this may occur in in our work life too. But they said always show up for funerals, weddings here and there if you can make it, right? Like but you always are there if there's a loss. And so that kinda talks about goes back to your point of when it's hard, you gotta show up. You gotta show up to build.
speaker-0: Hundred percent. And yeah, I think there's a very simple test for that, right? If you are the person that your clients call you when things are hard, then you have connection with them. You do have connection. And some of these are very simple giveaways, right? But when things do you know that the client is in trouble, a program is not going to plan, they are falling behind, they're out of budgets, they are getting yelled at by by people around the company. You know all of that, but still you haven't received that call. It does show. that, you know, you haven't really built that connection. But yeah, in a corridor when you meet those people, they have a great laugh with you. You great repo, but you don't have connection yet. So I think a hundred percent. I think you show up when it gets hard and you be there for people when it gets hard, then yeah, it builds a tremendous amount of credibility.
speaker-1: No, Harsha, we've talked about the role of preparation both for the what and the how, like how we can leverage clarity, the tool of clarity to build kind of as you were talking, like honing on what's the most important and even in when things are complex and certainly understanding the role of culture when we are executing and then having that connection. I'm curious if you could pass down to the next generation of leaders. You know, today we see Every time I turn around, there's like this quick hack or this next tool. But over your journey, it has been a grind. And in the midst of that, perhaps if you're early in your career and you're drawn to the next quick tool, what advice would you give to that next generation? Or are there worries that you have that they may be missing in this hurry up and find the next next thing to improve efficiency, for example? But what do you worry that they may miss?
speaker-0: ⁓ it's a loaded question, Amy. Lots of ⁓ ideas come to mind. But ⁓ let me peel the anion, you know, in layers. The first thing is, you know, I see today's leaders, they have the gift of a lot of tools and and now AI and frameworks and everything is accessible on their fingertips. It's very easy to learn. I don't think we can complain that we don't have access to information or intelligence these days, right? Very, very powerful tools. But information isn't judgment and Judgment comes by practice and judgment comes from failure of having been there, done that. And it's today you have so much of information. It's I I get reminded of our open book exams, right? At school, you know, there were subjects and professors who who used to challenge us. They said, you know, bring any book in the world you want. But yeah, you've got maybe three questions and only three questions and you've got two hours to figure out an answer. And yeah, you might feel that you had all the knowledge in the world right in front of you. But you don't know which which where to look for for answers, right? And it was never a straight answer. You had to be able to understand what's written there and be able to connect the context and the dots to come up with the answer, right? Today most most leaders have that challenge. They have information, they have access to a lot of things very quickly. But it's I fear that the judgment part is is suffering because of that. So When the stakes are high, you always want to look for a template, right? Your fallback is, ⁓ is there a template that people have used to solve this problem? Because it's ambiguous. And unfortunately nothing prepares for you, prepares you for that moment, you know, through through reading or accessing books or looking through information. The only friend you have is reputation, right? Through making decisions, through seeing the consequences, feeling the discomfort and doing it all over again. Right. So when we when we pitched to clients ⁓ many years ago and it was a very large program and we're going going through a big decision architecture. There were teams in in in Benelux, there were teams in DAC, there were teams in the US, UK, everybody trying to sort of then make their own decisions, but it's a fairly large program that we're deciding for and stakeholders spread all across. And Every time you walk into a certain room, the decision architecture is different, the culture is different, the consensus architecture is different. So you repeat all of that, but there was there was no time to actually prepare for every room. So you kept showing up based on a template. And the first or or the second time it worked, but the third, fourth, fifth time you failed to read the room. And you know, in in some cultures directness works in your favor, like the Dutch culture, but in a German culture we spoke. It's a high context culture, details matter. But in the UK again it's a low context culture. They just want to get to the bottom of what you're trying to say very quickly. Right? So we failed. And only through all of these repetitions we come to know that when there is a program like this, obviously we'll have to prepare accordingly, right? So I feel for the next generation a lot of AI and chat GBT is hurting critical thinking and taking away all of the practice. So Putting yourself out there and putting a little bit of practice in the field and learning from it is perhaps my urge to the next generation. And that brings me to the routine that ⁓ that subconsciously or consciously I am forced to follow now because there's just so much of bias now in us about a topic. So I try to reset every Friday. So it's like the reset button and you try to put some time in your calendar to sort of question your assumptions and really look at, you know. the performance gap as we call it, right? So I wanted this to happen in a certain situation and it didn't happen. Why not? What was the gap? And what have I learned that I would want to repeat next week and so on and so forth, right? Sounds extremely simple, but it's just incredibly hard to be consistent at it week after week. So I feel some of these simple things if done consistently over a period of time will yield a lot more impact. than just reading another article or another article, just accumulating knowledge, right? You just don't have the the hardening of all of that experience in your in your routines. So I urge for the next generation that they build a little bit of thoughtfulness and intention in how to reset their assumptions, question their assumptions because of all the things that we read and all the information that's coming at us, it's equally the faster we are building a lot of bias as well and we are falling prey to assumptions. So those would be the two sort of takeaways from my end.
speaker-1: Like speaking my language, I I I am so, so, so aligned with all that you're sharing. There certainly there's plenty of information, but we are gonna have to get the reps and get out there and have the conversations and only by the actions are we going to be able to learn from those experiences. I love the the deliberate ⁓ reset and Want to echo that as well. ⁓ we talk often on the show about what is an immediate and actionable strategy that enables our leaders to sustain that high performance over time and the ability to kind of pause and have an opportunity to reflect and adapt, right? I I love the questions you're asking. You mentioned the performance gap, what's going on there? We often relay we talk about the role of a balanced critique tool. So it's intentionally non-judgmental, taking an opportunity to reflect on those experiences as data, if you will. So what's one thing I want to keep doing and what's one thing I want to do differently? And you're absolutely right. By the deliberate rehearsal of an an adaptation, right? Like implementing those actions over time, that is where you see leaps and bounds of growth occur. So Arcia, it's been a pleasure. I I love learning from you as well and very much appreciate you sharing your experiences. And lessons learned with us today. Thank you for joining me on Still Evolving.
speaker-0: So thanks a lot for again having me. It was lovely speaking to you and ⁓ I hope you continue to inspire and and teach the next generation and the generations after that with all your wisdom because this is not something that people talk about a lot and I hope the the four C framework I I resonate a lot with that. So hopefully I think the next generation also sort of really intentionally thinks about communication, clarity, the way they show up and how they how they contextualize every time they show up. Thanks for having me again.
speaker-1: Thank you so much.
speaker-1: It's so insightful and a powerful reminder of the role of that preparation. I'm Dr. Amy Aitheet. As a licensed psychologist and performance expert, working with elite athletes, C-suite executives, and high performers operating in some of the most demanding environments, I've seen what it truly takes to perform when it matters most. From supporting members of the Naval Special Warfare community to advising leaders in high stakes, high pressure situations, one truth remains consistent. The tools that drive performance are the same. You prepare in a way that allows you to show up ready when the moment arrives. Arrives. Each week I'll share practical tools and insights to help you strengthen how you think, lead, and perform. Welcome to Still Evolving. Today's conversation lives at the intersection of two capacities that separate leaders who navigate complexity well from leaders who quietly get lost inside of it. These are clarity and judgment. Both are talked about constantly. Both are exercised far less often. Than most executives assume. Let me start with clarity. Most people treat clarity as the absence of complexity, as if the goal is to reduce every situation until the messiness is gone. That is not what clarity is. Real clarity is the discipline of holding all the complexity and then deciding deliberately what matters most and leading with that. It is an act of editing under pressure, not an act of avoidance. The leaders who do this well have often walked a long road to get there, because our natural instinct as leaders, especially the ones who love to unravel a hard problem, is to keep layering the analysis until we have proven to ourselves how thoroughly we understand the terrain. That process is genuinely useful, but it is not what the room needs from us. The room needs the headline, the evidence that makes it credible, and a clear ask of what to do next. Everything else belongs behind the scenes. In my book Moment Ready, I write about the four capacities that allow high performers to show up well when the moments that matter most arrive. These are composure, clarity, connection, and courageous action. Clarity is the second of those, and it works as a bridge between the first and the last. Without clarity, leaders who are otherwise strong performers end up stuck in the middle of a big moment. Well regulated on the outside, but paralyzed on the inside, because the picture of what actually matters has never been distilled until they can act on. Clarity is what turns the noise into the decision, our ability then to take deliberate action. The second topic of today's conversation is judgment. And this is where the conversation gets particularly interesting for moments that we are in now. Information has never been more abundant. Frameworks have never been more accessible, and every question a leader might ask has been answered in some form, somewhere online, and now with generative AI agents that can be summoned in seconds. What all this access does not give us is judgment. Judgment is not accumulated, it is earned. It is built through repetition, through the decisions made under real high stakes, through the slow accumulation of consequences. That have shown up when you have been in the room enough times to feel the difference between an obvious pattern and a subtle one. The concern that runs through today's conversation, and one that I share, is that our very tools that make our lives easier may be quietly hollowing out the practice ground where judgment used to get built. If we outsource too much of our thinking, we lose the reps that would have otherwise trained us to think well in moments that tools cannot help us with. What I find so compelling is how clarity and judgment reinforce each other over time. Clarity gets easier when your judgment has been well trained because you have seen enough patterns to know quickly what actually matters. Judgment gets sharper when clarity has been well practiced, because the act of deciding what to lead with over and over again teaches you to see the shape of a decision more accurately the next time. Neither one is built in a single meeting or in a single reading. Both are built in the accumulated repetitions of a career, and they are built most reliably by leaders who take time to reflect on those reps after they happen, rather than simply moving on to the next one. That is the through line of today's conversation is delivered by a guest who has spent years across cultures and continents refining exactly this practice. My guest today is Harsha Mrapur. And Harsha is a global business leader with more than two decades of experience helping organizations translate complex ideas into decisions that hold up in real conditions. He has led teams across the United States, Europe, and Asia, working with clients at the executive level on some of the most challenging transformations in their industries. His path has taken him through global consulting, enterprise technology, and advisory work. And he brings a particular rare combination to that experience, which is the analytical depth of a complex thinker paired with a practical discipline of someone who has learned to communicate across every culture and context that he has stepped into. He is known for helping leaders separate signal from noise and decisions where the stakes are high and the answer is not obvious. And he is generous about the mistakes that have taught him how to do that. What makes him exactly the right voice for a conversation anchored in clarity and judgment is that he has felt the cost of getting both of them wrong. And he has done the work of building both of them back up. And he brings the clarity of thought about how the next generation of leaders will need to develop these capacities that is well worth your time. Harsha, welcome to Still Evolving. I'm grateful to have you here.
speaker-0: Thank you, Amy, for having me. Look forward to the the conversation today as well.
speaker-1: Awesome. Aja, you have in your journey led global teams. You've also led teams that are in the midst of what many could argue like very complex, fast paced, dynamic pressures. So today I really wanted to hone in and and better understand kind of some of the lessons learned in your journey about what works in that discipline, specifically when things are really complex. ⁓ and perhaps, you know, as humble leaders will say, we don't always have All the answers. And so what have you found to really help you in those complex dynamic conditions?
speaker-0: Yeah, it's a fascinating question, Amy, because we don't have all of the answers. In fact, there are more questions and answers when you come to sort of the topics that don't seem that that that obvious, right? So when you work across cultures, especially when, you know, you're straddling between the US on one side, which dominates a lot of the the capitalist sort of conversations we have today with customers, and that seems to become the pattern that we start following elsewhere in the world. And you come into Europe, for example, and you have twenty seven different countries and microcultures and you wanna sort of apply that template, it can get very, very complex. I think ⁓ the first thing that I've learned is you need to understand what credible means in every culture before you even walk into the room because ⁓ you know, I had this this experience back in two thousand ten and eleven when I was in Germany, for example, and you know I've been I've been lauded for being a direct, fast, sort of decisive person in my career. So I take this first client meeting in Germany and I give a very sharp, punchy recommendation and three slides and as a conclusion there's hey call to action and the room went really quiet. And you know, to me I I I thought they were impressed. They had no questions, they had no comebacks, they they were really impressed, right? They I figured that out later the hard way that they weren't, right? In fact One of them told me they were slightly offended because you know it was not the recommendation that I gave, but by the speed at which I moved in the room to give that recommendation. Because in German culture, as I found out later, a recommendation delivered that fast just signals that you've haven't thought through the topic very deeply deep enough. And you've not engaged with men multiple people to figure the answer out, right? So in a in a high context culture like like the Germans where where credibility lives in the nuances in the details. The process of arriving at the answer is itself part of the evidence that you're trustworthy and you're thoughtful and you're credible, right? And I just walked in performing the absolute wrong way in that specific culture. So I think credibility in every culture therefore matters and understanding what it means in the room that you're walking into matters a lot. The the the second thing I have learnt is all of us have our defaults in terms of how we operate. By default I always operate in the expert mode because I I I tend to appear like the one who knows most of the things. That's my default, that's how I behave. I or I or or I walk into a room. But then it just doesn't work. You have to switch. Not your core values, but the way you communicate, the way you pace yourself, the way you register the audience and the way you intonate. I think all of that needs to s to change to the room, right? So being intentional about it matters because there are moments in my meetings where I start being Very intentional, but somewhere in the meeting I I switch to my default, which doesn't s sort of begins to break the meeting. And then I have to intentionally recognize it and switch back. And that's my last learning, right? Don't switch. Don't keep switching. Once you've read the room, you stay consistent. You and that takes a lot of practice because switching styles just signals inauthenticity at every level. And I've learnt it the hard way. So I think this is where the complexity lies, Amy, according to me. It's not about preparing a pitch. It's not about coming up with a great solution to problems. It's really about then how do you understand the context? How do you intentionally adapt your style and you know don't fall back into your defaults through that that entire process. That that is a very difficult and complex thing individually and personally for for me as well.
speaker-1: it's it's so insightful and I think a powerful reminder of the role of that preparation. Oftentimes in our performance domains, you know, I've worked across sport, military, and now predominantly in private industry. And when we think of preparation, everyone initially goes to the performance domain, knowledge, skills, and abilities. So in sport, it's let's go run that offense over and over and over or throw the ball until We we hit our target consistently. Military. Let's jump out of a plane fifteen times today and rehearse these skills. And then in private industry, maybe it's that pitch presentation. Perhaps it's the role play of the negotiation, or to your point, the knowledge base of preparing the deck or the recommendation. But how we show up in those key moments that matter requires more than just that performance domain expertise. And you're highlighting it's it's how we execute and how we show up in those moments. So I'm very excited. My book's coming out tomorrow. I'm a moment ready, shameless plug. And where I talk about four key tools in that moment that matters. One, the the tool of composure, how we can regulate our own energies, and then also lead with this the the energy that's gonna most meet the demand or the context in which we're showing up in. ⁓ the role of clarity, you know, we talked about the complexity and and I hear for you the clarity that came in understanding the people and their individual backgrounds and how that influences the process of conversation in the rule room to be able to for the third the third C connect. Be able to connect with those people and the purpose and take the courageous action, the fourth C that really helps us be able to access all of that performance domain expertise and and show up in the way that feels authentic and certainly brings out our best self. So with those four C's, this clarity that came for you that helps, I guess, signal what is most important. In that moment, it may be connecting with those people, as you mentioned across cultures perhaps. But in what what other ways have you seen the role of clarity become such a s significant tool for you leading in in complex environments, or perhaps you've observed in other leaders?
speaker-0: Again, another great question and I did speak about my experience the last time we spoke. I mean my mentor and she used to rubbish my presentations all the time and you know, and send me back every time that the feedback I was receiving was from a complexity standpoint, you've really layered in your way of thinking and you know how you came to the conclusion. That's not the problem. The problem is understanding who you're delivering this this idea or this concept and the how are you communicating the the the idea across rooms. That's where the issue is. And then the insight for me was, you know, clarity isn't the absence of complexity, right? It is not. It's the discipline of actually deciding what matters most and leading with that. And I'm a complex thinker, so a complex creative if you will, and And if I didn't learn how to simplify, then I've always had these moments where I'm only talking to myself all of the time, right? Very early in on in my career, because it's so complex. You want to unravel things and the only person who seems to have empathy is is yourself. And you keep sort of talking to yourself. But that's a skill that one should should learn as well. The real sort of intellectual work is isn't in building that that argument. layer by layer and really unraveling complexity. It's actually editing it down to what another person can hold in their head. So when I when I sit down these days after after having spent so many nights wondering how I should navigate clarity from complexity. And this is sort of the mentoring that I've received from from a few of our from my mentors in my life. The question is what's the headline? If the audience wants to remember one thing, what is it? And For example, if it was, hey, look, this this solution will allow you to take pricing decisions fifty percent in fifty percent of the time, eighty percent of the time. Right? So if that was my headline for the audience, now I have to look for supporting evidence that makes that headline credible. Yes, I have implemented it for you in in this region. I have tested it for all types of scenarios and the model doesn't break. And then I have built a number of reusable frameworks that will allow it, allow this framework to be implemented across the globe. Some such thing, some messages like that which support the headline makes it more trustworthy. And then the third thing I always ask my teams and myself is what do you want this audience or this person listening to you to do? What's the action you want them to take, or what is the decision you want them to take after having seen this piece of content, right? So in a typical sort of life, you know, you you have a PowerPoint deck in many cases and you flip through a lot of these things and you don't expect people to take decision on every slide, but you have to chain some of those thoughts into a decision framework. So essentially those are my three tool sets I I lead with when I when I think of clarity these days, whether it's a deck or whether it's a narrative in a room or a compelling sort of persuasive pitch that you make. ⁓ it's the headline that matters, it's the evidence that supports the headline that matters. Are you giving them enough evidence and What do you want them to do after listening to you? If people take care of some of these three things and if they can answer that within a minute of you asking those questions, then there is clarity. If I don't get that answer within 60 seconds, then I know there is work. And not to take away all of the context of the culture and the people and reading the room and all of that, but that comes later once you have a clear message on hand to deliver.
speaker-1: And so that process for you, it sounds as if that is part of the preparation, right? And honed in in the what and then the how, as you mentioned earlier, perhaps the dynamics, the communication, the individual differences across culture certainly comes into the execution part. You mentioned your team, Arsha. I'm curious about your experience working with a team in that preparation process, or perhaps even in a high stakes decision moment. What has been in your experience with the role of connection with those team members to be able to facilitate that execution? Or is that in your mind rapport? Could you sh speak a little bit about the role of connection for you with your team and and perhaps maybe client client base?
speaker-0: I think it's very, very important, Amy. Connection is sort of the bedrock of everything that we do, isn't it? And whether it's with your other team members or with clients, because you all work, you know, in an ecosystem that facilitates an outcome. And if I really think about rapo and connection, I feel people sometimes confuse between the two, at least in my opinion. And my team many a times think of repo as connection and vice versa. And They come to me and then they say, Look, you know, I've had this great chat with a person who wants to buy something from us and I think we can convert that, right? So in my view, that's just rapport. It's just a technique. It allows and gives you the right to build connection. It just makes someone feel good in the moment they're speaking to you. And if you have had a great conversation, if there's there's a bit of laughter, there's back and forth, there are no awkward silences and you just bounce off each other well, then you've had a good meeting. You have had Good rapport, but that is just the start. How do you build a connection using that foundation? Because you've had great meetings where there's great rapport but there's no outcome after that. There's absolutely no follow-through. But there are meetings where you know it's they start off rough and they go all over the place, but then you understand the individual. You make the the room feel that they are being understood by you and you deliver on your commitments, you do the hard things to make things successful. builds credibility and that brings connection as well. So keeping keeping sight of that that you know Rappo gives you the the the right, but then delivering on your commitments, following through, doing the hard stuff, showing up when nobody shows up, right? When when it's hard. I think that's that's that's the most important thing in building connection with people, at least in in my experience. And it is across, it's probably the same across cultures. I've not seen a big difference when when you come to connection across cultures. So yeah, making sure the team understands that and and people people kind of know when you're performing warmth versus it's an act, people can see through that. So making sure the team and when we are in front of customers, they feel that we are genuine and genuinely curious about their situation, genuinely empathetic about what we can do for them is something that needs to be on the reminder pretty much every day for us.
speaker-1: Absolutely. I I appreciate that showing up when it's hard. Right. And sometimes that is the messy meeting, right? Where perhaps there's frustration being shared or it feels more tense. Rapport certainly is one of the skills that can help strengthen and and even repair, perhaps if there's a missed step, but being able to actively like sit and listen and be present and curious to the pain that's before you, perhaps better taking a diff a shift in your own perspective, trying to be able to see it from their lens if there is a point of conflict. That power of perspective taking can be so powerful in that connection building as you were describing. I'm I'm kind of reminded I had a when I was much younger, I had a mentor remind me, and this is more my personal life than professionally, but certainly we have relationships that this may occur in in our work life too. But they said always show up for funerals, weddings here and there if you can make it, right? Like but you always are there if there's a loss. And so that kinda talks about goes back to your point of when it's hard, you gotta show up. You gotta show up to build.
speaker-0: Hundred percent. And yeah, I think there's a very simple test for that, right? If you are the person that your clients call you when things are hard, then you have connection with them. You do have connection. And some of these are very simple giveaways, right? But when things do you know that the client is in trouble, a program is not going to plan, they are falling behind, they're out of budgets, they are getting yelled at by by people around the company. You know all of that, but still you haven't received that call. It does show. that, you know, you haven't really built that connection. But yeah, in a corridor when you meet those people, they have a great laugh with you. You great repo, but you don't have connection yet. So I think a hundred percent. I think you show up when it gets hard and you be there for people when it gets hard, then yeah, it builds a tremendous amount of credibility.
speaker-1: No, Harsha, we've talked about the role of preparation both for the what and the how, like how we can leverage clarity, the tool of clarity to build kind of as you were talking, like honing on what's the most important and even in when things are complex and certainly understanding the role of culture when we are executing and then having that connection. I'm curious if you could pass down to the next generation of leaders. You know, today we see Every time I turn around, there's like this quick hack or this next tool. But over your journey, it has been a grind. And in the midst of that, perhaps if you're early in your career and you're drawn to the next quick tool, what advice would you give to that next generation? Or are there worries that you have that they may be missing in this hurry up and find the next next thing to improve efficiency, for example? But what do you worry that they may miss?
speaker-0: ⁓ it's a loaded question, Amy. Lots of ⁓ ideas come to mind. But ⁓ let me peel the anion, you know, in layers. The first thing is, you know, I see today's leaders, they have the gift of a lot of tools and and now AI and frameworks and everything is accessible on their fingertips. It's very easy to learn. I don't think we can complain that we don't have access to information or intelligence these days, right? Very, very powerful tools. But information isn't judgment and Judgment comes by practice and judgment comes from failure of having been there, done that. And it's today you have so much of information. It's I I get reminded of our open book exams, right? At school, you know, there were subjects and professors who who used to challenge us. They said, you know, bring any book in the world you want. But yeah, you've got maybe three questions and only three questions and you've got two hours to figure out an answer. And yeah, you might feel that you had all the knowledge in the world right in front of you. But you don't know which which where to look for for answers, right? And it was never a straight answer. You had to be able to understand what's written there and be able to connect the context and the dots to come up with the answer, right? Today most most leaders have that challenge. They have information, they have access to a lot of things very quickly. But it's I fear that the judgment part is is suffering because of that. So When the stakes are high, you always want to look for a template, right? Your fallback is, ⁓ is there a template that people have used to solve this problem? Because it's ambiguous. And unfortunately nothing prepares for you, prepares you for that moment, you know, through through reading or accessing books or looking through information. The only friend you have is reputation, right? Through making decisions, through seeing the consequences, feeling the discomfort and doing it all over again. Right. So when we when we pitched to clients ⁓ many years ago and it was a very large program and we're going going through a big decision architecture. There were teams in in in Benelux, there were teams in DAC, there were teams in the US, UK, everybody trying to sort of then make their own decisions, but it's a fairly large program that we're deciding for and stakeholders spread all across. And Every time you walk into a certain room, the decision architecture is different, the culture is different, the consensus architecture is different. So you repeat all of that, but there was there was no time to actually prepare for every room. So you kept showing up based on a template. And the first or or the second time it worked, but the third, fourth, fifth time you failed to read the room. And you know, in in some cultures directness works in your favor, like the Dutch culture, but in a German culture we spoke. It's a high context culture, details matter. But in the UK again it's a low context culture. They just want to get to the bottom of what you're trying to say very quickly. Right? So we failed. And only through all of these repetitions we come to know that when there is a program like this, obviously we'll have to prepare accordingly, right? So I feel for the next generation a lot of AI and chat GBT is hurting critical thinking and taking away all of the practice. So Putting yourself out there and putting a little bit of practice in the field and learning from it is perhaps my urge to the next generation. And that brings me to the routine that ⁓ that subconsciously or consciously I am forced to follow now because there's just so much of bias now in us about a topic. So I try to reset every Friday. So it's like the reset button and you try to put some time in your calendar to sort of question your assumptions and really look at, you know. the performance gap as we call it, right? So I wanted this to happen in a certain situation and it didn't happen. Why not? What was the gap? And what have I learned that I would want to repeat next week and so on and so forth, right? Sounds extremely simple, but it's just incredibly hard to be consistent at it week after week. So I feel some of these simple things if done consistently over a period of time will yield a lot more impact. than just reading another article or another article, just accumulating knowledge, right? You just don't have the the hardening of all of that experience in your in your routines. So I urge for the next generation that they build a little bit of thoughtfulness and intention in how to reset their assumptions, question their assumptions because of all the things that we read and all the information that's coming at us, it's equally the faster we are building a lot of bias as well and we are falling prey to assumptions. So those would be the two sort of takeaways from my end.
speaker-1: Like speaking my language, I I I am so, so, so aligned with all that you're sharing. There certainly there's plenty of information, but we are gonna have to get the reps and get out there and have the conversations and only by the actions are we going to be able to learn from those experiences. I love the the deliberate ⁓ reset and Want to echo that as well. ⁓ we talk often on the show about what is an immediate and actionable strategy that enables our leaders to sustain that high performance over time and the ability to kind of pause and have an opportunity to reflect and adapt, right? I I love the questions you're asking. You mentioned the performance gap, what's going on there? We often relay we talk about the role of a balanced critique tool. So it's intentionally non-judgmental, taking an opportunity to reflect on those experiences as data, if you will. So what's one thing I want to keep doing and what's one thing I want to do differently? And you're absolutely right. By the deliberate rehearsal of an an adaptation, right? Like implementing those actions over time, that is where you see leaps and bounds of growth occur. So Arcia, it's been a pleasure. I I love learning from you as well and very much appreciate you sharing your experiences. And lessons learned with us today. Thank you for joining me on Still Evolving.
speaker-0: So thanks a lot for again having me. It was lovely speaking to you and ⁓ I hope you continue to inspire and and teach the next generation and the generations after that with all your wisdom because this is not something that people talk about a lot and I hope the the four C framework I I resonate a lot with that. So hopefully I think the next generation also sort of really intentionally thinks about communication, clarity, the way they show up and how they how they contextualize every time they show up. Thanks for having me again.
speaker-1: Thank you so much.
