Ep. #41 Building a Mindset of Servant Leadership - Dr. Maria Pressentin

Hi everyone and welcome to Making Sense of Work. I'm delighted today to welcome Dr. Maria presenting to the podcast. Welcome, Maria. Thank you so much, Jean. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Maria is an expert in servant leadership, and we're going to talk in depth about that today. She works by helping individuals and teams design their best engagement strategies, and she consults organizations on their leadership and talent development needs. She. Work specifically on topics such as turnaround. Looking at how can we take a lack of engagement towards engagement, or helping teams embrace conflict resolution. She focuses on rebuilding a road of trust, reducing attrition, and removing m and a integration roadblocks. All of this resulting in incremental cost reduction during critical times, such as culture change, restructuring, shift of business direction, and downsizing. And I'm imagining that many of you are thinking, wow, we're experiencing all of that at the moment. She has also helped organiz. Build corporate universities and change cultures from a bottom up approach. Maria has received many awards, including being awarded as top 100 Best Global Coaching and Leadership Professional by the global HRD Congress. She was awarded Iconic Woman for Creating a Better World for All by the Women Economic Forum and many other awards in the scientific research field of leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship. And her most recent publication is entitled Key Factors and Use Cases of Servant Leadership Driving Organizational Performance, and we are going to really talk about servant leadership today. So Maria, thank you for joining me today. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Let's kick off by asking you how's work at the moment. Work is intense, but brilliant. You probably know me by now, Jean, that I'm really restless, so I'm constantly seeking for things to do and interesting things to do. So, very curious about behaviors all the time, all my life, whatever work that I've done so far, it's, kind of like a healing process, a self-healing process for myself. So work is both exciting, it's intense, and, with a hinge of curiosity all the time. I Love this idea that we are doing work that heals ourself. I really subscribe to that, that I think often the path in work that we choose is about us resolving things that have come up for us in our life, or, and how we lead or how we are as a human. Yeah, absolutely. And for you, you've said that you are restless, you enjoy exciting, and yet intense. What does a good day look like for you in the midst of that? You know, I've got a foot in both worlds. I've got a foot in the world of research and consulting. I've got a foot in the world of the corporate life as well, right. I'm constantly doing two things at the same time. And from time to time I'm invited to teach here and there. A good day looks like when it's invigorating, when I know that I've just made a difference in people's lives. It doesn't matter who, it's somebody that I just met. And they would come up to me and say, oh my gosh, this conversation was invigorating. Oh, this conversation just got me into the right direction. Not that I specifically sought out to give people any direction. I'm too humble to do that. I don't even know that sometimes I'm making a difference in people's lives. I Think our conversations when they are, mutually supportive of each other, no matter what type of conversations, right? whether it's work conversations, whether it's private conversations or people that you just met recently and that particular moment when something was inspiring. For them or for me, gets us to a new direction, a aha moment that's really cool and invigorating. And that usually could be just one time a day and it just makes my day. That's what good looks like for me usually. Great. I've got this sense of it being a kind of a co-creation, a sharing something or an insight and. Is created with the person you are with. That's right. Because we're constantly learning from each other. I shared a little bit about you and what you're doing. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about how you came to be here, your career journey? Yeah, I'd love to. So I'm originally from Macau, Portuguese, Chinese from Macau turned Singaporean recently, but I was very little, in primary school. I told my parents, I'm gonna speak 10 languages one day and I'm gonna travel the world. And. My mom was really a brilliant, you know, self-made woman and she picked on that and she was like, right, let's get her ready for that then. Oh, so brilliant. My mom was really a servant leader in all corners, cuz you know, she built orphanages, she built homes for the elderly and she was a businesswoman. So really brilliant. One of my role models, obviously. And, she goes, okay, prepare her for this and so, I go at 15, I started my international life all by myself. With that in my blood, I would always go and study a lot and be curious about everything. And so my husband actually calls me a nerd, so he says it in the most loving way, I guess. So then I went into business. And worked for corporate many years. Came from the IT manufacturing business, industry luxury at some point, changed industries five times I realized, and you know, that's all and great. I gained so much experience and in sales, had many years of sales, and then I started to realize, is that it? That can't be. And I said to myself, wait a minute. What else could I do? And in that crossroad timeframe, something really, impactful. And traumatic happened in my life and that shifted my thinking. I was always very charitable person, but I started to shift and say, wait a minute, charity is not the right way to go. But rather, what can I do as effort and really give back to this world, just as a gratitude that I actually exist and people have been helping me. So, I was, seeking for a very long time and I said, what can I do? And just being a very practical woman also, right? What can I do to reuse my business skills, but do good for the humanity? And so I started to realize that I could do this thing called coaching. And at that time when I started about 15, 16 years ago, here in Asia Pacific was like a rare species, you know? Oh, bet. Yeah, right. And then I joined the International Coach Federation and, moved up the ladder there because I wanted to make a huge difference. I didn't want to be the president of the International Coach Federation in Singapore. I always have a tendency to get just enough position power so that I could make a difference. So I became the vice president, but I wasn't really interested in becoming the top, because that's kind of like you deal with the maneuvering of politics, which is necessary. And I respect that. but that's not me. I'm more operational. I just wanted to get things moving. So we built the business for coaches developed a lot of coaches, created a community and we started to increase. And other than that, I built my business and then went straight into full on consultancy that brought in coaching as well as training and as well as facilitation. And so my background is very business oriented, very sales oriented, but with that expertise now, in coaching and training and so forth. Developing people and that's what I'm passionate about. And along the way, you've done a PhD, how did that come about and what did you do that in? Yeah, well that is that sense of curiosity, always learning, right. I go back to my mom all the time, bless her. And she was like, why are you studying so much? You know, you don't need all these degrees, you know? I'm like, yes, because there's something missing here that I don't know. and so, and my husband is very patient with me, It's like, there you go. She has to study again. You know, because then she's gonna write about it. So I think it's just that sense of curiosity and that feeds, that void that sometimes just shows up in my life, which is I'm just bored. I need to learn something. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the answer, really. I, that's really it. Jean Great. Well, also, I'm noticing that you must have been right at the beginning of the, of Social Coaching Federation here in Singapore. That would've been one of the early members, I imagine? I didn't really look into the statistics in terms of how early I was, but I do know that we created the business when the team, that I was part of, it was a very invigorating team. They Were all working towards making a better world. for organizations, but mainly people in organizations. Well, thank you for sharing all that. When I first met you, the thing that I was curious about myself was your research and your work in servant leadership. Something that, I've read about and known about for many years and you are been working and reading and researching about that in Asia, and it would be great if we could talk a bit about that. I guess starting with how do you define servant leader? That's really interesting, Jean. Yeah, absolutely. I've learned a lot about different leadership styles also because I was always curious about that. And coming from a leadership consultancy as a background, that's kind of my core to live with leadership styles every day and research about it. When I came across servant leadership and I've published around comparing and contrasting le different leadership styles, I started to observe servant leadership, in action. And I started to read a lot about the servant leadership outcomes, in terms of behavior. Around the world and also in terms of the research and there's like 30 plus years of research on southern leadership. Although there's some in Asia, it's not prominent. And, you know, coming from a consultancy that was American as basis and as I was at that point in my life really leading professional services for the consultancy in Asia Pacific started to realize that the Asian behavior of leadership needs to be really taken into. And so I set forth in really just studying deeper and deeper because I was just like, yes, okay, you've got universal leadership styles that you could use as basis, but then how do you actually apply it in different cultures and can you actually cluster cultures? So I got really interested in that and started to do research. And so we basically, you know, designer research that was really comprehensive all in law took three to four years to finish it. And, you know, a few papers came out of it and it essentially a book as well as a few papers. And we looked at eight different countries and leaders. And what was really interesting was that I decided not to interview. Organizational leaders as leaders per se, in terms of their position power, but in terms of being followers of other leaders. And so the research that I actually did in Asia was looking from the perspective if you were the cheese in the sandwich, so you're a manager, you've got certain level of position power, but I wasn't really interested in that. I was interested in, Hey, you've got a boss as. So how do you manage up and how do you look at your boss and how do you interact with your boss and how is this boss, this leader working with you in terms of leadership style? And so from there I crafted a research to see to what extent in Asia are we implementing servant leadership? Are we are we using it in a different modality with the basis. Of what server leadership really is, and then kind of like in different cultures, applying it differently, so that, that was the basis of the, you know, almost four or five years of research into play. Now, how I define server leadership is very interesting because there's no one, after 35 plus years of research, there's no one consistent. Agreed upon definition of servant leadership, what I have a tendency to do is I'd like to go back to the origin of the concept. which is a philosophy, it's a mindset, right? it's really just two points. It's so simple. Are you growing people? And define what that growth means, and also as a result of your interaction with the people, are they feeling. Nice. Yeah. It's as simple as that. Yeah. So it's very practical. It's very application based. So if you, if people are talking about server leadership as only as a philosophy, I think it's high time that I support people to put it into practice. And that, that, that's. Makes me excited. You know, I write about it, I research about it, but now how do we actually put it into action? And that's what I'm curious about. But what you've just described as, are we growing people Is a kind of beautiful crystallizing of that, I think, because that's a question that we could each ask ourselves many times a day in our behavior as leaders. Yeah. Is how I'm showing up now, helping the people I'm leading to grow and to be better. Yes. Very straightforward and I'm very careful about when people. Tell me, oh, I know whats leadership is. It's just empowering and I wear two hats all the time. The practical hat is, you know, how do I show up? And the research hat then you're going into this research on power. What does power really mean, right? Yes. Yes. And that's a completely a huge effort the people are still doing research on that. And it's great research on power. But if you, on the practical terms, if you bring it back to earth in terms of the layman language, there are all sorts of power, right? And power is energy. And money is energy. Influences energy. So it's a state. It's got a potential to be optimized and do good, and it's got a potential to be suboptimized and do bad. In the research on servant leadership, there's a portion on power as well that I've actually published in the book and it's a minor extraction on relating back to leadership style, what people. Even in Asia, I'm more prone to nowadays. It's also because we're talking about different generations coming up on globalization, right? The availability of media and people interacting with each other and really seeing position power not as the most important thing anymore. Rather reverent power information, power. Anything that's got to do with education that's more powerful than anything else. Right. And it's really no matter what position power you're in and how senior you are in the corporate world or organizations, the way you show up and how you make people feel is the most important thing. So when people come to me and say, oh, I need to empower my team members, and I'm like, wait a minute, okay, let me challenge you on that. So first of all, do you have position power? And if you do have a position power and somebody comes back to you and says, Hey boss, I've got this particular idea. It's a sure win. And this is how we're going to make it happen and make it successful because I've demonstrated doing this before somewhere else, and a sub definition of servant leadership, if you really wanna use the word, I'm empowering somebody and therefore I'm a servant leader. First of all, do you have a position, power? And the second thing is, when was the last time you've agreed? with a team member, letting them make a decision on something you didn't agree on. So that's empowering, that's true. Empowerment. Because if those two things are not combined, if you just listen to your team member with a great idea that has been demonstrated to be successful in other parts and you still decided do it my. that's not empowerment. You just heard them. Maybe you did some listening, but you didn't empower the person. And when you empower somebody, you trust the person. Yeah. And you trust that you're making a good decision and you trust that it's okay. Even if there's certain things didn't go so well, then you sit together and learn it together. So I'm usually very careful about using the word purely empowerment for certain servant leadership. I'd rather say servant leadership is a process of enablement. Okay. Yeah. No, that makes absolute sense as you've described it. In fact, I was thinking back to myself, you know, those moments of such a beautiful description. If somebody comes to me with an idea that I disagree with, how am I with that idea? That's right is a test of really whether I'm in servant leadership mode. And I love what you just said because it's is that conscious observation as a leader. And you don't have to be a position power leader. You know, you're you're a leader when you're influencing somebody with your decisions. With the way you interact with them. Right? It's an influencing process. And what you just said was really beautiful because you said, how am I with that suggestion that you just gave me? Team name? Team member. And so part of the initial process of getting into servant leadership is acceptance, need them where they are. And then work with them to enable them and partner with them to get to the results that we both define together if we are working together. And they have to sit well with the results they want to achieve, obviously within the parameters of an organization. So we are always in the context of an organization. Right. So people need to really. Be clear about themselves, about what is leadership and what is management. Both are very important and they live hand in hand together sometimes, most often than not in the same person. So leadership is really influencing and enabling, right? Yeah, it is. Enabling for results, enabling for satisfaction, enabling for wellbeing. But then, management is really managing projects. It's really managing results within the boundaries of a certain agreement or organization or team. Both are necessary and servant leadership is a style that actually accepts it's a mindset. Yeah. In leading. that you would bring in and say, Hey, you know, I can use other leadership styles like inclusive leadership style, like situational leadership which is very practical and I love it. You could also bring in empathy, you know, but it's the foundation is do I have my mindset right? And what I love what, what you just said, it's really a huge contribution is how do I sit with this situation right now? I'm being an observant about how I'm being, and the next step would be, and this is all like in two seconds, right? The next step is how do I wanna show up for this team member or team members? And you are so right about that in the moment because it requires us to learn as leaders and to find the way of being, because we of course, are human and will be triggered. Yeah. And derailed and all the things that go with that pressure. Yeah. It kind of leads me on to this question that's been coming up for me a lot in my own coaching practice with the leaders I'm coaching with the people I hear on our coaching programs who are describing incredible pressure inside organizations at the moment. before Covid. I think we thought we were at capacity. It feels like people's, the pressure has continued to rise for people. Yeah. Now on top of some kind of residual exhaustion, I think from all that's happened over the last couple of years, we also know from leadership theory that when we're as leaders, not at our best, we often function out of our worst places. and I guess I'm curious. To think with you about how do we help leaders in these incredibly pressured situations to be able to continue to lead in a way that is mindful, that is aligned with their own leadership values, whether that's servant leadership or whatever their leadership values are. But how can we help leaders in this pressure to continue to be. Who they would aspire to be? That's a great question. What we really need to be doing, at least I do it for myself, is being really conscious about how I wanna show up. And I usually ask people that I influence you know, team members, clients. Friends when they feel a little bit troubled and they just wanna have a chat with me and sometimes it's coaching. And I asked them, when was the last time you felt that you made a difference? What were you doing? And it's as simple as that. And so what is the energy that you bring in when you know you're making a difference? It's as simple as that because you don't really need to look back the 30 years of your life or the 20 years of your life, or the 60 years of your life because it's kind of like a long process, you know, and if people are like me, I'm not very good at talking about myself. I'm very good at talking about research Situations at work and stuff like that. Then I'm really not somebody that is gonna look back my 40 plus years, 50 years of life, but I do remember the consequences of when I was contributing. Wow. I do remember, and they're very present. Even if it was 20 years ago when somebody said to me, oh my gosh. that was an aha moment. I do remember when people come to me and say, because you said this to me today, I've achieved this. So that makes a difference, right? And, when you made somebody smile today, you immediately know that you did that for that person, and that person would feel like, oh my gosh, I've just conquered the world. And it could be anybody. It could be, yeah. The lady that everybody ev every day, I say good morning to that cleans our office and just be respectful to people. And that along is the immediate trigger that brings people back into their values. Now everybody contributes in a different way. Everybody contributes and has a an energy of contribution in a different. And so the next step I would ask them is what excites you at work? And that is the fastest way to get to your values. So very often we adopt our parents' values or you know, people that took care of us when we were children and we adopt that. They're not necessarily our values, many of them we've adapted to it. If they still resonate and we still on a daily basis behave that way, then those are seriously our muscled developed values. But if you say, oh, my value is to not lie. Yes. But if you're constantly saying a white light to protect others, that's still a lie. Yeah, exactly. Right. So your behaviors have to track your values. Yeah. So track back based on what are you already doing today? Those are your values. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was listening to somebody speak recently about purpose and she was saying the same thing about purpose. Your purpose is how you're being right now. How are you? What are you doing and how are you showing up? Yes, that's right. What comes up for me here is this idea that. It's about our common humanity and this idea of what difference am I making to the person I'm with now? And when the business pressures are bearing down on us, which is happening for many people, a lot of the time it's about remembering to ask the question, how do we manage? business pressures, or how do I lead through these business pressures in a way that's, I as a leader, can come out of it thinking, okay, I was pretty aligned with my values, or I'm okay about what I did, or I made a difference to the people around me that even in that pressured situation, yeah, we were, we continued to see each other as humans. Yes. In the pressure, and that's really the key word, Jean, because you know, you happen. To work together for efficiency purposes, cuz a, a company is created so that you work together and you the company becomes more efficient and effective. But if you're not working together, how's that working out for the organization. An organization aside, how do you feel at the end of the day? So I think what's really important, it starts with the premise of what we started off with our conversation today. How do I sit with the situation? Do can I accept it and can I accept that my team member already has some strengths? And so the key point upon accepting let's look at what we have already and how am I sitting with it? How am I accepting my team members who can do what? And I'm really talking about pressures in terms of firefighting and stuff like that. And the next step would be, okay, if I'm a controlling type, what am I fearful of? So when I talk about trust in server leadership, I don't talk about the methodology of how do you build trust. There are a lot of programs out there that already do that very well, but it's external. It's how do I trust others? So the trust in server leadership starts with me. Why am I not trusting myself? Why am I being controlling? Right? and that goes back to fear often. Exactly. So the opposite of love is actually fear. You know, Ken, came up with a recent book on summer leadership. Like, the practical how to put. Servant leadership on a daily basis or something. And and that's Ken Blanchard? Ken Blanchard, yes. Yeah. Uh, Ken and I, you know, we exchange ideas and he also loved my book and so he, he wrote something for me on my book as well. I used to work for the Kent Blanchard companies, right? And so he always like Maria go ahead and, you know, write more about servant leadership and we really need your research in Asia. So he and Randy Conley, a great friend of mine, just co-authored a book. I think it was published at beginning of this year. But basically, you know, they already talk about how to put trust with others, how to establish trust with others, but it's very external. Yes. The trust that I'm talking about is how do I conquer my fears? Yeah. And as Randy actually talks about, you know, the opposite of trust is not distrust, it's control. And seriously, the trust that I'm talking about on servant leadership is how do I relinquish that control rather focus on the way I can contribute. And that comes back to the conversation that I just had with you in terms of values. How am I best contributing when I'm a team leader? Yeah. Right. And then the next step, so we talked about two steps, right? Accepting, observe and accept, trust myself and contribute. And then the third thing, the most important thing in terms achieving results. is, am I ready to invite others to the playing field instead of me taking charge of everything? Yeah. So invite, So the key word here is to really invite, so these three steps are a process of shifting your mindset. And they're all. Things that we can do. Yes. With ease, yes. If we choose to, yes. Very easily. But you've gotta be able to be somebody that goes inward. Yeah. Works with yourself. So this actually came out of the Asian research on seventies. I've simplified it into practical words. Cause in terms of research there are other words, you know, but when you're putting it into practice, these are the three steps. They're not necessarily in in sequence. So you could actually, you know, Come in and out and can you say them again? The three steps are, well, the, so I'm just gonna put it in sequence cuz it's easier for everybody. It's accepting, you know, sit with what you have in front of you. And it could be a team member's situation, it could be emotional situation, it could be a practical competence or lack of situation. So really understanding the situation and set boundaries around it. Set. Goals around it. The next thing is building trust, but you build trust with yourself first. Yeah. Right. Relinquish what is the type of control that you're sitting with right now? Understand that, observe yourself and working on values is a great thing. And many people talk about working on values. I do too. I've got a process. But the easiest way is how am I best contributing? when I work with people what? Invigorates me. And then start from there because it's so easy and so fast. Yes. And then from there onwards, you know your values and you know, don't come up with 10 values, come up with three. Maximum five. And then define them in terms of behaviors that you are already doing today. Because if you are not, those are your values, those are wannabe values. And that's really hard, right? Yeah. That other people's ideas of your values Exactly. Exactly. Just cause somebody like, you know, somebody. Thinks that, honesty is the most important thing and I have a lot of respect for people that are focusing on that. But if you are constantly saying white lies to protect others, then maybe your value is to protect rather than honesty. Yeah. That's where you show up best. Right. And then the last thing, so that's, you know, building trust in yourself before you build trust with others. And then the last thing is, Now I'm ready to build trust. I'm ready to accept others. Then am I inviting others to share? Am I inviting others to teach me? Even though I've got the highest position power? And that's usually the case, right? Yes. For a lot of your listeners, people that are already very successful in the world with big position powers, but really talking about am I inviting others? How am I inviting others? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, am I letting others contribute the best way they can in their strength? Am I developing others to get to that contribution that they can be the best at? Am I listening to them not to be right, but listening to them so that. listen to their ideas and enable them to make decisions, even if I don't agree. as you are describing that, I'm thinking that we can't do step three if we haven't done step one and two. Sometimes it's like that because if I don't, if I'm invite you and I don't accept your offering, or I don't trust myself and how I'm being, or I don't trust you, then the invitation. Can cause have a negative impact rather than a positive impact. Absolutely. So, so for those of you that have just started this conscious work on yourselves then you need the foundational steps that I just described. Yeah. But if you've been already like a very accepting person And open to different ideas from people, and you've got a strong foothold in terms of who you are. A servant leader is very strong human being in terms of understanding who they are, their limitations, and be vulnerable about it and be okay to be vulnerable about it and say, Hey, you know what? You know, I'm the. You know, and it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it really I would invite people to really kind of gauge themselves, if you like, a rating and a scale of one to 10 on each one of them. Where am I today? Yes. Yeah. Today is what you said. Then I thought that's so appropriate because each time I check myself every day. Yes. I check on myself every day. Yeah. Especially when I'm firefighting on huge projects and I've got a team, a set of team members to support me on them. Bless. Bless them. I can't do everything alone, you know, and I see my husband as one of my greatest mentors and he says, Maria, you know, don't be such a professor. You know, you're a bit clumsy in doing this. So I know that I'm not good at everything. You know? And then he would say things like, oh my gosh, you know, you you're so good at speaking. But then there's this particular project that it's very manual and you can't do it. You know? And I'm like, can you help me? Please help you get somebody else to help me. So we really. You know, life is like that, right? We're here to have an experience. We can't know everything. And in leadership positions, you certainly don't know everything. And it's good and it's important. Find good. It is good. And it's important that we see ourselves as a work in progress. That we are in a constant growth journey ourselves. And that every day is gonna bring a new opportunity and a new challenge. Maria, I'm very aware of time and aware that we are gonna have to draw this conversation to a close. I could talk to you all day about this. You've shared so much rich content and ideas about servant leadership and coming back almost to where we started on it, this idea that if we're growing people and we are helping people to feel better. Right at the heart of it then we are moving towards being a servant leader in those moments when we are doing that, and I'm personally inspired to go away and do more of that. I'm wondering as we come to a close, whether there's any final thoughts that you'd like to share with us. Yes, definitely. You know, servant Leadership you could put any, almost any word before the word leadership. It becomes a leadership style. So I would encourage people to not put so much weight on names and labels, but just do it and what feels right when you deal with others and what feels right. inside your gut. And it's all about really just contributing. So I would encourage people to just. Do it. You know, it's like the old Nike you know, emblem that says, you know, the tech line. Just do it. And more often than not, you'll be surprised that you just made a difference in people's lives and in retribution. You have a wonderful day because it feels amazing. Yeah. Fantastic. Ah, that seems a fabulous place for us to end. Thank you, Maria, for sharing your insights and wisdom. I will put a link to Maria and to her book and other places that you can find her in the show notes and kind of hoping maybe we'll have another conversation further down the line about, I'd love that. Thank you so much, Jean. Thank you.