Sally talks Self-Leadership with DK Bakshi

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Interview Transcript

– Hello, and welcome to another SPARK Self-Leadership video interview. I’m absolutely delighted to be having a conversation with DK Bakshi, who is the Chief Mentor and CEO of Global Talent Company Limited. So welcome to SPARK DK.

– Indeed. My pleasure to be with you on this show, Sally. And I’m here

– oh, thank you.

– Ready with all the questions you have in mind, it would be my honour and my privilege to respond to.

– Fantastic. So first before we jump into me interviewing you about self-leadership, I know you’ve got a few nicknames, so tell me your nicknames and tell me a little bit about Global Talent Company Limited.

– Yeah. Sally, my nicknames people call me Mr. Moderator, Mr. Energy, Mr. Communicator. And based on what I have spread last more than two decades in the global world. Global Talent Company is my brain child, what you see behind. And it is my passion. It is my personal passion rather, I am romancing with my destiny. And global talent is you are global talent, I am global talent, those people who are watching around the world, are global talent, each and every one person is global talent in this world. And it’s a company which is into 360 degree HR solutions, talent acquisition excellence, talent development excellence, HR excellence, manufacturing excellence, education excellence and business excellence. We have spread Bangkok, which is the headquarter, India and Canada. And then we do work in near about 15 to 16 countries in the world. Some of the signature programmes are very famous, “Roadmap To Success,” “DNA of Leadership,” “One Dream One Team,” “Romancing With Your Destiny,” these are my signature programmes. And obviously we have people from different local, regional and global players. So they have been part of me, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Singaporeans, Malaysians, not only Indians, it’s a spread around the world.

– Yes, I have to agree with you. I’ve been involved and connected with you for a little while now and doing the power women global was, when you first initiated that project to have a zoom screen full of international fantastic faces around the world, it was an honour and a privilege. So, you do a million things. So, I’m absolutely amazed you can squeeze in some time to have a conversation with me. So let’s get into it. So DK, tell me, what is self-leadership to you?

– Wow. It’s a very important thing you talk about. Not leadership, you’re talking about self-leadership. Sally, I believe that self-leadership is a regular practise on influencing my knowledge, my thoughts, my peelings, and most importantly, turning these thoughts, knowledge, feelings into action on day-to-day basis with my mission of life. Because when you done thoughts and do things by action, then only it is possible. Otherwise it’s not possible at all. Because people always say thoughts become things only with action, action and action. In case there are no actions, thoughts will remain thoughts, and it will never ever become a thing. And that we all know that Peter Drucker said, that being a self leader, is to serve as a chief or a captain or a CEO of your own life. I repeat. The chief, the captain, or the CEO of your own life. That is what impact in life over a self-leadership been set.

– Yeah, I love that. Thank you. And I have to agree with you that if our feelings and our actions and our thoughts and words are not aligned, then how do we know that what we’re doing is true to our purpose? And then the ripple effect is that people look at us and something’s not quite right. Something’s not lining up here. And it’s very difficult to lead when you’re giving out mixed messages with your thoughts, your actions, your behaviour, your words, very messy. And I imagine also, if you don’t sit and take that moment to align your thoughts and your feelings, your words, and your actions to your mission, it’d be quite draining and quite tiring.

– Sure, sure. I pretty agree with you. Because in case there’s only thoughts and you’re not acting, you’re not taking steps forward, it’s tiring. Because it will tire your mindset. The moment you start action, let’s go. Let’s go, grow and glow. And the moment you do that go, grow and glow, what happens? You start enjoying it. And when you start enjoying it, you start performing. And performing, you start winning. You may loose in between, doesn’t matter. But then you may fall, is like soccer. So when you are into the game plan, you may fall, but get up again and go. Get up again and go. That is a new pure life.

– And when you performing, what I’m hearing you say, and what I’m interpreting what you’re saying, is that as you performing, you may have some mistakes or some loses, but you don’t go back to the zero. You just, you constantly S curving upwards. So I love that. I love that. Look, you work with a lot of leaders and you and I both know that if you’re a leader, you need to be able to influence others. And you need to have a level of confidence and some courage in making the decisions and being an effective leader. So confidence, influence and courage, are three core things I think every leader needs. Tell me from your perspective, what impact does self-leadership have on those three things, confidence, influence, and courage?

– Very great question, indeed. You are talking more CIC of leadership. Confidence, influence, courage as a leader. And in case a leader does not have the CIC, I don’t think he is a leader. Let me respond to you one by one. First is confidence. Confidence is one of the most important ingredients of self-leadership. As those leaders who have confidence, they take risks to accomplish higher level goals, which others do not even try. This kind of leadership with a high risk taking ability and confidence more of it, they have confidence more of it, and he’s taking a huge value to people who work with this kind of a leader. And the leadership gets huge respect from the teams, as well as the organisation and the community wherever we are. When we go to the second part, which is the kind of leadership style, the leader impacts his people and the teams, rather influences them to develop their own self confidence. I would say, the leader is the one who can influence people to drive excellence, to unknown, unheard, unbelievable, horizons of business reach. It results in high-performing teams, I call it one dream, one team. One dream, one team. High-performing teams passionately working with leaders to strengthen the leadership pipeline. A pipeline at various levels of progress. Not that you are the only leader, you need to create, not followers, you need to create a complete pipeline into the community, into the country, into the company, into the global world. Because leaders do not actually work for themselves, leaders work for others.

– Yes I love that.

– So leaders have to have that kind of influence not to produce these followers, rather convert these followers into leaders. This organisations, communities, countries, can develop many leaders at various levels of influence. And now we come to the third part of CIC, which is very significant. And you talk about courage. And COVID and beyond COVID now, courage of conviction is the best step to move forward direction. Look into the next orbit. Leaders who are courageous, are the most wanted in the organisations or into the community. And they actually did develop trust, transparency. They develop trust and transparency, and ignite passion for excellence. With this trust and transparency, they can work into togetherness. So I’m talking about three Ts now. Trust, transparency and together. When three Ts work together, it should become a way of life leading to change the mindset, working on various unpopular, unknown difficult decisions and calculating passion or performance. At the end of the day leaders have to deliver performance. Leaders have to deliver numbers, leaders have to deliver excellence, leaders ever deliver, which has not been delivered yet. So the CIC should be one of the important aspects combined with three T. And I again say another thing also, which I have been propagating last couple of months, let’s change the designation of CEOs. Let’s change the designation of CEOs to CLOs. Chief Learning Officers. Leaders have to learn themselves.

– Oh, I love that.

– Leader learn himself so he pulls the entire organisation into the learning frame. But in case a leader thinks I know everything, then the organisation is dead. So learning start from ladder, on top.

– Before you go on. I just wanna jump in on that pace there, DK. Sorry to interrupt you, but I don’t wanna miss this. There’s Chief Learning Officer rather than Chief Executive Officer. And you said if the CEO or the leader thinks I know everything, I think that point is so important that self-leadership is about being a lifelong learner. And if we think we’ve gone, as far as we can go, then that links into being, having a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. So I think you’re picking up on something that’s just so instrumental to how you show up in the world. So thank you for that. I really, CLO.

– And not only that CLO and CPO, Chief Passionate Officer. You should be passionate. You should be mad. Because of passion when it starts from the top it goes to the entire organisation. Chief Passion Officer, Chief Learning. It’s not Chief Business Officer or CEO only. Chief Passion Officer, Chief Learning Officer. It has to be passionate from the leaders.

– Yeah, thank you. I love that. I love that. Look, I want to ask you something and because we often find that the best learning comes from a little bit of adversity or when something quite hasn’t gone to plan. And not that we ever want the negative, but we both know that sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone in order to learn and grow. So has there been something and you don’t have to share the story if you don’t want to, but you can, if you want to, maybe there’s a COVID story, but has there been a time or an incident, where your self-leadership took a bit of a beating and you needed to re-ignite it again? One of the things I’m trying to really explore with a lot of senior leaders and smart people like you, is what are the lessons you learned to reignite your self-leadership when something has gone wrong.

– They rightly say, when going gets tough, tough gets going, am I right?

– Yes.

– With that I have two examples. One is an example when I left India 17 years back into work into the global world as an Indian, as this face. And I went to Asia-Pacific, I went to U.S I went to Europe especially, and I tell you, it was very tough for people to accept me. What will this Indian teach us? And I want to tell you, I gave them so much inputs, they used to say when I’m coming next? Because I worked hard on myself to give them something which they did not know about it. And it became lifelong learning for them. Second, which is more important to talk about is COVID days. One of the most toughest, difficult and unprecedented situation of lifetime for all of us. The name itself is so shivering is shivers us. I remember one and a half years back, February, 2020, when entire human race got caught into this. Every where around the world, it did not look at the prime minister, He did not look at the secretary, it did not look at the PM, it look at active work man, it looked at human beings. It did not look at colour, It did not look at religion, it did not look at age, and it did not look at nationality. So entire human race were affected around the world. You could see prime minister of England getting COVID, you could see a PM, you could see an active worker, you could see an executive officer, you can see a politician, every one of us. That is where the story is more relevant. So my story is not different. I was zero on this social media before February 2020. Zero. I didn’t know what to do. And I want to tell you, I am a peers to peers man in action all the time terms of my programme, which I run globally in three continents, rather, four continents. I did not know how to put the status on the WhatsApp. I was on the Facebook, but I was one-to-one comment, but never giving a public comment. I was on LinkedIn but not using much. One of my girls who work with me here, you know her, Waar Shah, and she even threatened me she even removed me from the Facebook because I don’t even comment on her dress she has put on the Facebook. Because I was not used it. The real story gets changed immediately. And what did I do? I learned from Waar Shah, she taught me, to be effective on the social media. And world is watching me today, Sally, around the world in 40 countries, 220 webinars around the world. Hashtag woman power a global movement. 1 million people on this page by 2024 and 20 chapters, around the world. You are one of the members of Women Power from Australia and Dubai. First show, when Dr. Kiren Beghi from India was there. So what happened? A challenge, a difficult, a tough situation? The divine thought, that’s why I’m saying thought become things with action. The divine thought which was tough, which was not possible for me to do, immediately I could take control of it and I remained focused. I learned, learned, learned, learned, everyday. And today I am on entire social media around the world. I could learn and no business school can teach you. No university can teach you. It is only that you need to have a will. And that is the heart. That is the passion that I need to break this tough situation. And I need to convert this difficult situation into an opportunity. Okay, I have not made any money, I did not get any dollar, I didn’t get any buck, I did not get any rupee, it’s all free of course. But then I decided, that whatever, that time they did not know that the pandemic is going to be one and a half years, we thought maybe one month, two months. But we decided we’d carry on, carry on, carry on, today around the world, I have this hashtag Women Power at Global Moment. 1 million women to be on this platform by 2024. 700,000 already covered. And I have another programme which is going on hashtag New DNA of Leadership. And I have people coming into the programme from 20 odd countries. From us, to UK, to Canada, to Europe, to Africa, to middle east, to Asia, to Australia, you name the countries, people have come. And I’ve just placed the posters of this few days back. You must have one of the posters from me. So it has to be the fascinating journey, for me, personally, a young girl called Waar Shah, and I take it, why I’m a keen learner I take it forward so strongly, that it’s when going gets tough, tough gets going. So what did I do? I challenged that. And I pulled and I’m a keen. And I worked in holidays, Sally, 14 to 15 hours without any reward and recognition. Because there’s no cash. But I got a lot of pat on the back to the people talk about being the world, what he’s doing. And in the process, I learned a lot.

– Yes, and I want to jump in. You said you didn’t get payed and you put in lots of hours. But I wonder, one of the ways that when I’m talking to a lot of leaders and enlisting, I did a very similar thing, they put in the hours, and it’s almost like you’re putting it into the bank account for future. So, when the opportunity comes later, you’ve actually got that credit sitting there because you’ve actually shown up and you’ve pivoted, you’ve been challenged, and what I love is, ’cause I do know who you’re talking about. You gave her permission to challenge you.

– Yeah.

– And I think that’s a really great thing too, yeah. So, sorry, I wanted to just catch that piece about, we often put in a lot of hours and a lot of free work in certain situations, but particularly it was evident during the early COVID days, but the payoff will come.

– And Sandy, I want to add, the learning on both the programmes have been anonymous for me personally, because I have lot of shows with people from 30, 35 countries. And whatever they have spoken, has added a lot of value to me and I’m going to put it into the digital book. It’s all available on YouTube, but coincidentally I have gained a lot if not in cash. I don’t care, but at this point of time, am more learnable because I have learned from people from all parts of the world. And they’re not only HR, they’re business leaders, manufacturing leaders, sports leaders, community leaders, RB leaders, police leaders, they’re from different walks of life, these leaders both men and women. So me, today, I am so honoured and privileged and through show of yours, I would like to thank each one of them. From Australia, to Middle East, Russia, Canada, Africa, United Kingdom, to USA, for their great–

– I’ll put a map of the world right here for you.

– Good contribution to this human race. And we have saved businesses of some people, we ever saved jobs of some people, we have saved people to commit suicide. We have done that because there were people in mess, we have motivated them to live. We have certainly given them an opportunity. Doesn’t matter, these tough days will go. We all got to live, we all got live, we all got live.

– I love that. I love that. Yeah. So what I’m hearing you say is that, being open to being challenged, especially when things aren’t going well and being open to hearing the input from others that can help you shift and focus in a way that helps you to get your momentum going, get your motivation going. And therefore, start acting on something that comes back to the alignment of your feelings, your thoughts, so that your actions align with your purpose, which sounds like, Global Power Women, which began right in the thick of it all. Is very much aligned to who you are, your ethos. So I think that there’s some great lessons in there, that have come out of the COVID situation. Look, I just wanna to ask you, I just wanna be respectful of time. So we’ve got time for one more question, DK, if that’s okay. And what is the one you wish you knew about self-leadership when you first stepped into a leadership role?

– I would say it’s based on advantage on couple of things. I call ABCD formula of life. Always I’m looking for a big, big chance, as a leader. B, born to take decisions together with people and team. C, cash on the strengths and strengths and strengths of team members. D, develop clear, concise, effective communication to team members, no hidden agenda as a leader. And E, empowering inspire the team to work on the set mission. F, faith and trust on team members to drive the mission forward. And G, genuineness to the core. And I, involve everyone into the mission. J, joy of rewarding and recognising. I mean, I can go on and on.

– You can do the whole alphabet.

– These are some of the steps which can make us very powerful and make things to be happening.

– When did these become clear for you in your journey, your leadership journey?

– Yeah, I would say when I became a general manager human resources, way back in 1997, in a company called Gillette Parker. like I said, it’s an American company. That was the time I moved from a normal human resource job, to developmental job. And that is where I started talking about nation building, global building, global talent, and one human being, one love around the world. One human race. And it has been tough for me. It has not been easy. It has, you know, like this. But then I consistently, as a tough taskmaster said, I need to move on. And I travel, travel, travel to near about 30, 35 countries around world. My passport is so huge and I believe the humility and the compassion and the learning of mine has been a norm. I learned with every person I met. I learned with every nationality I met. I learned with every woman, every man I met. I learned from everybody’s something. And what I am today is a package of learnability because I always say, I am a student management and leadership. And those people who believe in, and I always talk about my guru, Britam Sihng in last year, he left us in COVID. He said, leaders who work for others do not die. Leaders who work for them selves are not leaders and they die. So I believe with that philosophy. Having said that it’s going to be for me before I leave the world, not so soon, maybe another 20, 25 years. I’m still young to go home, I want to give this knowledge to the world. Irrespective of past, creed, colour, nationality, and religion. I don’t care the human race. Global talent. Global talent.

– I love that. I love that. I love that one thinking and that you’re so open and you’re curious, and you’re inquisitive and you love learning. So thank you so much. I appreciate hearing your insights into self-leadership and so important that you’ve linked that with learning. So before we wrap up, do you have any final words you’d like to share?

– Yeah. First of all, Sally, thank you very much for bringing me on your show. I am really honoured and privileged. Knowing you your background and what you do, I certainly settled for your contribution to the human race again in Australia.

– Oh, thank you.

– And with you, when I started knowing you and we were supposed to be doing some work in the United nations, everything was puzzled out. But when your background, talent, core capabilities to deliver excellence, to teachers, to business leaders, I am sure you will be part of my Global Talent, something to come soon. And in case this new one, which we are working, we work together and help some of the people for them also to go, grow and glow.

– I love go, grow and glow. I love that. I love that. Go, grow and glow.

– And you are real global. You are real global talent. You are global talent, I am global talent, We are all global talent.

– We absolutely are. Thank you so much DK. And I absolutely appreciate, and your enthusiasm just fires me up. So thank you so much. I just want to thank DK for being with us and sharing his insights under self-leadership. I’m Sally Foley-Lewis, and that’s been another episode of the SPARK self-leadership series. We’ll see you again next time. Bye for now.