Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Spanish Janice. I'm Janice Burt, and today we're diving into conversations that inspire growth, connection and confidence. You're watching now Media Television. Welcome, my friends, to Spanish Janice, where we explore leadership, growth and real stories behind success.
I'm your host, Janice Burke. Today I'm joined by Srijatha Bhatnagar, leadership challenges strategist, executive coach, keynote speaker, and the creator of the Setback SOP framework. I can't wait to get into that. She works with leaders from around the world to transform adversity into clarity, confidence and growth.
Srijata, you focus on these leadership challenges. So what are the setbacks that most leaders that you coach and deal with are facing today? And by the way, thank you for coming on Spanish Janice. It's so great to see you.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Thank you, Janice. Thanks to have me. And thanks to you for having me on this. And we quickly figured out the timing and shooting it, so amazing thing, amazing job at that.
Coming to your question around, what are the kind of challenges that leaders today face? Face?
So, so the kind of challenges that I see are essentially, essentially divided in two categories. One is internal challenges and one is external challenges. Now, external challenges are your socioeconomic situation, sociopolitical situation, the layoffs, the, you know, the AI revolution, and so on and so forth. Whereas the internal challenges are like, am I good enough?
Can I be a leader? Should I speak? Should I not speak? Should I stand up? Should I not stand up? How do I ensure that I project myself properly? And so on and so forth.
Yeah, so these are the, these are the kind of challenges that I work with leaders when I work with them. So it's mostly internal as well as external.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Oh, okay. So. And that's a lot to, to cover.
Let's start first with the internal because I truly believe that everything kind of starts from the inside out because you could even have a, we could say a bad external situation.
And the way you process it, your mindset around it can be different from somebody else in that same situation. So internally, if somebody comes to you, a leader, a CEO, an executive,
[00:02:50] Speaker B: what
[00:02:51] Speaker A: do you tell them first off that they need to explore on the inside, within themselves?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: That's a great question, Jenny. And I truly believe that when you've really worked on your internal challenges, you, your external challenges don't go away, but they start feeling much easier to deal with, you know, and they know exactly what to deal with, how to deal with, and what exactly to be done to do a better decision making, better productivity, and better, you know, output from a, from a leader. So when leaders come to me with internal challenges, or any challenges for that matter, I face. I seen in my experience that when a leader comes with a.
With a challenge, it's most often it is an external challenge. Well, it's something like, hey, my team is not really listening to me, or I need to promote one person versus another person. How do I communicate? Or for example, I need to lay off this person. How do I go about doing it?
Or let's say my. My team is not being productive. They're not behaving, you know, they're not behaving the way they should be, or they're not performing the way they should be. What do I do?
And most often when they come with that, there is a much deeper internal issue going on in their mind. And that is where I kind of start probing. You know, I start asking probing questions and then try to figure out what is the root cause of it. And majority of the time, it is to do with value system, it is to do with belief system, it is to do with their past experience experiences, it is to do with their biases and so on and so forth. Right. So what I tell these leaders is that, listen, we can always solve the external problem easily if you have really worked on your internal issues. And that's where I work with the, you know, with the framework that we will be talking about coming up. So that is what I pretty much do with leaders. I sit with them, I kind of ask questions. Questions. My style of coaching is not about telling them what to do, rather probing them or asking them questions that bring out or that ring a bell in their head. And once that rings a bell in their head, they're like, I think I should do it like this versus that. And I'm like, yeah, that's it. You got it. And when they find their own solution in the process, then the application of the solution is much easier and. And they own up. They. They become accountable towards it. And, you know, that kind of makes them more, I would say, successful and more happy about the whole process that goes into. And the results come out better.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: I really love that. And I love.
I mean, I feel like we all need coaches, we all need mentors. We all need the people that can see our blind spots.
So tell us a little bit about this setback SOP framework that you have created. First of all, what does it entail?
Let's focus on that first, and then we'll do specific examples of how we could use that in somebody's own life experience.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, this is a particular framework that I created based on my own personal setbacks and how I was dealing with them in the past and then changed my way to deal with it. And plus talking to many leaders, different kinds of leaders from the industry who have faced different kind of challenges in their respective career and life, and how they have utilized those very same challenges as a springboard for their growth. So these leaders, when I was studying them along with my own leadership journey, I figured that normal situation. In a normal situation, every person is resilience.
They can be resilient, and they are, they're. They're always, you know, in the best form of themselves.
However, what happens to many of us is that the moment we have a unknown challenge thrown at our way, it's like a curveball thrown at our way that we never expect.
Think of, for example, Covid. Think of sudden AI revolution. Think of the sudden layoffs, or think of sudden hiring just after the COVID All of these things are a sudden curveball that came our way, which we did not know.
Now, in that situation, what happens is that our brain goes back to our primal response system, which is most often flight or fight or, you know, or flight, basically run away, right? And that system, that mindset, that mental model, does not really help us when we are going through a challenge. Because generally, in my case, I've seen, when I've worked with other leaders as well, that when the challenge is there in front of you, it is actually an opportunity for growth.
It's a hidden gift, treasure that is hidden behind that challenge. And once we unravel it, we can really grow exponentially.
But our primal ways of reacting to a challenge does not allow us to go past the challenge itself and find that gift of opportunity.
So that's when I started thinking about this particular framework. And what I realized is that it has three components. When we had to really grab a challenge and grow with it, along with it, grab that opportunity and grow with it. One is your mindset reset. And second is your process revamp. And the last is the tools that you need to move forward in the right direction.
That's what I call a setback. Sop, you know, so what it does is that it works. On your primal response to a challenge. It could be anything. And I'm not saying anything is good or bad or, you know, somebody has a good response versus somebody has a bad response. All of us, including me, all of us, normal response is a bad response. We. We do not get a response that is a productive and proper response that can Help us grow out of this. So what setback SOP does is it hits your mental model at the first place, and it allows you to go ahead and change that mental muscle to calm down. Firstly, without quickly responding to it, just take a moment, pause, right? That's what it does. And then after you pause, it allows you to go into a situation where your breathing becomes normal and you don't have any emotions attached to it.
When you don't have any emotions attached to the challenge itself, your mind thinks clearly.
And that's when I say that you should respond and not react to the challenge. So that is the mindset reset. What is the process? The process is basically, okay, when a challenge comes my way, I respond to this, and I quickly respond to this. That's your process. Now change that process to know I am not going to respond this challenge right now.
So you change that process to something completely different that works on your favor, and that depends upon person to person, how they change their processes. So I work on their process change. And last but not the least, we need to all have the right tools to respond to a challenge in a most conducive manner, in a most productive manner. And that's where I bring in the tools that I suggest to these leaders to work on and utilize to actually grab the opportunity from the challenge and grow with it. So that's how this entire framework works. And it's a.
It's. It sounds simple, it is simple, but it is not easy. It takes time to kind of get results with it because it's. It's something like if you, let's say, want to be fitter. Right? Right. You want to build muscle. Right. You need to go to.
You need to go to a gym. And once you go to the gym one day, if you go to the gym, you're not going to have your muscles. You need to continue doing that process on a regular basis. The more and more you do it, the more and more you utilize, whatever you've learned, the better you will get at it. Your mental muscle will change in that direction, and your resilience at, you know, when you are in a challenging situation will not be. It will stay strong. It will not, you know, Weaver that way. So that's how it works. I hope I answered your question easily.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: You did. And we are going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to take a setback in my own life as an example. I'll present that to you, and then you can help us use your framework and we'll Go step by step through that setback and things that I could have done maybe a little bit differently, maybe a little bit quicker back then when this setback happened. So everybody stay with us. We will be right back. We'll be right back with more insight, inspiration and real conversations. This is Spanish Janice on NOW Media Television. And we're back. I'm Janice Burt and you're watching Spanish Janice. Let's keep growing together.
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Welcome back. We are with my amazing guest Sri Jata.
And I want to give you a setback, a challenge in my own life.
It happened about 13 years ago and using your framework, I'd love to kind of walk through to see the steps that had I known your framework I could have used back then.
And this doesn't have to do with business, although it kind of morphed into that. But I went through a divorce 13 years ago.
I had been married 14 years.
That ended at the time I was very codependent, so very attached emotionally. You know, felt my, like my world revolved around that relationship.
I had two young children and I know that I needed to start working, but I had been a stay at home mom up until that point. So I had that kind of on the table to figure out.
So using your framework, someone has just gone through a divorce, is disconnected from themselves. I, I didn't have a strong sense of self and I didn't know exactly what I was going to do for work.
What, let's start with the, the, the first, the, the three phases and tell me your opinion about how to move through that challenge.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: You know, Janice, this is what I call it serendipity. Because while you're going through, I mean, while you went, you're talking about your divorce. I'm actually working with a friend of mine who is going through her divorce right now.
Okay. And the reason I say this is because I truly, genuinely feel and understand what one person can go through. You know, when this kind of a life change that happens to us, and especially us women who, who become codependent and who start giving everything to, to their partner and to the new life that we are building and so on and so forth.
So the first step, mindset reset.
This is something that all of us women first need to understand. I want to give a message out to everyone out there, including you, me, and everybody else who's listening to this is that don't lose yourself in the.
In the relationship, which is what we often do, you know, and it unintentionally happens. So it is very, very important to keep that thing done. Right now, as you going through the divorce or as soon as you, you know, started the process of the divorce, there's a shock that comes your way.
Can I ask a little bit more about, you know, about your divorce so that it. I kind of able to get the details of it? Do you think that's okay with you, Janice?
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm an open book.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Perfect. So who. Who filed for the divorce?
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Firstly, so I requested the divorce because I was in such a bad place. You know, they say when the pain of the situation that you're in is worse than the pain of the unknown.
I was kind of put into that position, so I was the one who requested it.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Great. Now, when you.
When you were going through this pain and then when you requested for the divorce, I'm assuming you knew from beforehand that this is coming your way. It did not happen in a snap of a finger, I believe. Right.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: I had that small voice inside that kept saying, you need to leave him.
You need to let him go for at least a year before I was courageous enough to even have that conversation of saying, this isn't working. This is not what I signed up for kind of thing.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And. And that is the prime period, you know, that one year when this. There is a voice that is going on in your head is the prime period for mindset reset.
You know, that's the time you should slowly and gradually detach yourself emotionally. And at the same time, work on something that will strengthen your worth of self so that you know that even though this is not going. Even. Even if this goes away from my life, this relationship goes away from my life, I will still still be strong enough to continue in the direction. I will still be strong enough to take care of my kids, or I will still be strong enough financially, emotionally, you know, physically, and every other way possible for us to function the best way. So most often what happens is that even though that voice is there in our head saying it to us, we are not listening to it, and we are going back to our again, the primal self. Fight or fight or flight. Like, most often we avoid it, which is basically flight.
Right. So that's what I work. I would work on. I would tell my clients who are going through a divorce, I would say, okay, if you are thinking about this situation.
Now is the time to build on every other aspect of your life without keeping them in the equation. That is your mindset reset right now. What is the process? The process is, okay, I have this conversation going on in my head. What do I do to figure out, is this even real or I'm just hallucinating. That's what many women would think about, right? That I might be hallucinating. Oh, no, no, no. This is not right. Oh, no, no, no. This is a red flag, but, oh, he's good in other places, and so on and so forth. But most often these red flags are actual red flags, and it is not going to get sorted.
So the process is basically okay from now on until I actually, actually sign or actually ask for the divorce. What are the things that I need to do?
What are the things that I need to take care of without emotions attached to it that will put me in a better position even before I ask for the divorce?
And last but not the least, what are the tools do I have in front of me? Do I know? What are my, you know, like, in my friend's case, right now, she's going through it. She did not even know the rules. She did not know her rights. She did not know all of those things. So I sat down with her and I asked her, okay, how long have you been married?
What has had to happen in your own life for you to be married and things like that? And can you really create a process? Can you really create a tool list that you need for you to have a better understanding of the whole situation and then make a conscious judgment, you know, now this is how I will, you know, solve it. As I said, I'm still working on this woman with this lady, with this friend of mine. And this conversation that we've had, this. This particular conversation with her has made her so clear in her head that she is actually dictating terms with her lawyer for her benefit, keeping everything in mind without emotions attached to it.
That's how setback SOP can really make you, you know, gain more, become more successful, and get the best for yourself, for your growth and success.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: That's so good, because sometimes emotions do cloud judgment. It clouds our. Our intelligence.
So to be able to have someone else that is not as entrenched in the emotions of it to help you through is such a great idea.
Now, one other thing I want to talk about, because I know a little bit about your story about coming from India here to the United States, which could be seen either as A setback or as a, you know, something incredible. I don't know how you saw that, but tell us a little bit about that. Because moving to another country, living in another country, I've had that experience as a child, but never as a grown woman.
So what has your experience been in that realm with coming to the United States recently?
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah, so I. I moved to the United States in 2022, and I have had three careers before that in India. So I have been pretty established, you know what I mean? So I've been a corporate senior leader. Then I became an entrepreneur and I ran two businesses, and then I became a professional speaker, wrote two books. And then after all of this was set up, I had to kind of uproot myself and bring myself here.
Now, I remember having a conversation with my husband when he came up to me and said, hey, my boss is thinking of, you know, me moving to the U.S.
he works in a corporate, by the way, he's a senior leader in the corporate.
And so his boss has. He said. He came to me and he said, sri, you know, my boss is expecting me to move to the US and wondering if I can or should I want to, or should we go about it and things like that. So I sat down with it. I did not answer him right then and there, working setback, SOP right there. Right. I know it is coming my way. It could be a challenge. It could be an opportunity. I need to figure this out. And I thought through it, I kind of, you know, figured out where my career was, how I wanted to move forward, where all I wanted to go, and so on and so forth. And I wanted to see, okay, where his career can move, where our daughter's schooling and education could move if we moved into US From India, how the whole thing will come about. And then I said, it's an opportunity.
It is a big opportunity, and it is a scary opportunity as well, because that's where it is important that you take the right decision. And using the setback sop, I made the decision saying that along with my husband, of course, that, yes, we should move to the US because it's a big opportunity for us.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: I am so glad you are here. It has just been a pleasure getting to know you. We met through the National Speakers Association Group, and Yes. So I'm delighted that you made that choice. But I know that that's a lot of change. It's a transition. And even though it's an opportunity, I'm sure it also comes with its costs and its sacrifices, family and such.
But we're going to take a short break and when we come back, I want to dive into what a lot of leaders struggle with, which is this concept of burnout where you're just putting, putting, putting everything, all your energies into work and then at a certain point, there's this period of burnout. So I want to hear your thoughts on that. Everybody, stay tuned. We will be right back.
We'll be right back with more insight, inspiration, and real conversations. This is Spanish Janice on NOW Media Television. And we're back. I'm Janice Burt, and you're watching Spanish Janice. Let's keep growing together.
Welcome back, everybody, to Spanish Janice. I am here with my friend Srijata, and she, she is going to tell you all how you can connect with her. And then we're going to go into talking about something that a lot of leaders struggle with, which is burnout and exhaustion and like, I just can't do it anymore.
So before we dive into that, Sri Jata, how can everybody find you and connect with you?
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the easiest way to connect with me is look me up in Google. Srijata Bhatnagar. There's only one piece in the entire world of 8 billion people, fortunately or unfortunately.
So you can reach me out just by searching my name on Google. That's one way of easily looking me up. Second way of doing it is reaching out to me in LinkedIn. I'm very, very active and, you know, like responsive on LinkedIn. So you can find me in LinkedIn with the same name.
And last but not the least, you can check out my website, which is my first name, dot com. So srijata dot com, that's my website. Very simple.
In any of these three ways, you can reach out to me. And if you do, when you do, and if you give reference of Spanish Janice, I'll be the first one to respond to you.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Thank you for that. Yes. And you, you're just such a delight and so much wisdom.
I cannot wait to talk about this burnout thing that happens to a lot of people. First of all, has that ever happened to you in your life? Have you ever gotten to a place in business, maybe when you were in India where you just felt that immense level of burnout and like you're burning the candles from both ends and exhausted. Has that happened to you?
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Multiple times? Multiple times.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Tell us about your experience with it, what brought it on, what you noticed about it, and then what you did to bounce back from that, to be a little bit more balanced and, and truly Treasuring those times of rest and rejuvenation and relaxation. So tell us, take us through your journey with that.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so it has definitely happened when I was back in India and I was working in the corporate and then moved to doing, like there was a point I was doing three jobs at a time and I was also running my startup. So then again, it happened. But I want to actually shed my. Shed a little bit light to my life in US the moment I moved from India to us, you know, and I feel it is right live right now and I'm still working on it. And I'm the reason I say I'm working on it is, well, I'm also human. I am not, you know, burnout proof. So.
So when I came here, I thought, okay, how. How bad could it be? How difficult it could it be to shift to a new country? I mean, yes, in. In India, it's. It's a. Plenty that you get a lot of help. You get house help. You. You get cooking help. You have family, you have, you know, your neighbors. Everybody pitches into ensure that your house, your family and everything runs well, you know, so the first thing that happened to me that came across as a rude shock when I came here was that all the support was taken away and you got to do what you got to do, right? And I was like, okay, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, and I will also build my business together.
What I didn't realize is that in that process, something or the other will lose its focus.
So it so happened just after a year later when I went back to India, I figured that my body had taken a toll on it.
You know, when I went for my checkups and everything else and my doctor said that these are the reasons why you are going through this toll and you need a surgery.
And I had to go through a surgery that year, and they said that we couldn't complete the surgery. You need to come back next year to finish the surgery. So two years in a row I had to go through surgery because of my unnecessary burnout, unnecessary stress that I was taking on myself, and unnecessary pressure that I was putting myself through through different ways. And so that happened. So once that happened and when I finished the surgery is when I put my foot down and said, no, this is not happening. I know there are no help available here, but I am not going to toil everything in my way. So I sat with my family down and said, hey, I cannot do all of these Things, certain things needs to be pushed on to people, or we need external help, doesn't matter, or the standard of experience expectation needs to change. So I had that conversation not only with myself, but also with my family so that I can get that support.
And believe it or not, after having that conversation about it's been about six, eight months, things have drastically improved, not only in my personal front, not only in my, you know, health, even in my business, even in my mental health and emotional health and everything else. So that is what happens when you go through burnout. You suddenly go down first. You don't even believe that you're going through a burnout. You know, you say, ah, this is stress, I can take care of it. That's not how it works. It just, you know, it's like a, it's like those wood, wood spoiling insects. I don't know what are they, what are they called? Weeds or whatever they, those kind of insects that kind of, you know, makes you hollow from inside and makes you weak from inside. And by the time you realize that that is happening, it is already too late.
So it's essential to work on it genuinely. It is really essential to work on it. I feel whoever, whoever leaders are listening right now. Please, please, please, it's my urge to you do not let it go to the last minute. I've seen two of my friends in the last one year falling prey to heart attack because of burnout. And one could not survive. One, fortunately, has survived so far.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: So please, you know what? I think that is such an important part because a lot of times we talk about burnout and it's just like, oh yeah, you know, you're just working too hard, you're a little tired, you still need a little break, maybe a little vacation.
And we forget how interconnected our mind, our body and our spirit are.
And so thank you for that reminder because it is a wake up call to all of those people out there who feel the stress, who feel the exhaustion to go, you know what, that's your body giving you these warning signs.
But there will be a day where it, you'll be in the hospital, something actually will shut down or fail or not work in your physical body. And I think a lot of times that connection is lost on people. I mean, especially for, for me too. I, I don't think about that sometimes until it's just too late. So thank you for bringing that up into our awareness.
What?
Besides, I love how you said you had a conversation with your family and you said, here are the things that need to change. That sounds like setting up boundaries of going, here's things for me to take care of. Now we're going to delegate responsibilities.
Besides doing that, were there other ways that you helped yourself with the overworking and with being able to take that time for yourself of relaxation and renewal? Is there anything else you did?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Yes, a lot of things actually. So first thing is it's, it's like taking a step stock of what is happening, what is working, what is not working, what is possible, what is not possible. So it's like how you take your, you know, physical stock in a, in a store, right? That this is there, this is not, that this is needed, this is not needed. So that is what I did with my family to understand, okay, what's, what's happening, what's not happening. And you're right, it was setting boundaries not only for myself, but for others as well, you know. And so that was first thing that I did. Second thing that I did is I said nothing doing health, physical health is absolutely essential.
So when I come to the came to the US I stopped exercising for some time because I was too busy. Well, I'm too busy for exercise. I've heard this so many times, it rings a bell. I'm sure other leaders will recognize with that. I'm too busy to exercise. You are not too busy to exercise. You're just not prioritizing it. And that's what I learned. So I went, I went to start exercising and not only going to the gym, not only signing up in the gym, I also hired a personal trainer who will keep on giving me push, who will keep on motivating me so that I do the right exercise and I don't ruin my other body parts or my bones, you know. So that's something that I did. The second thing, the third thing that I did is I, I worked on my emotional health. I hired a coach who will work on my emotional health because it was, it can get really depressing when you move from a country like India where it's a lot of, you know, a lot of activities happening. People are keep on coming, going and you have so much of known people, you have so much of social life and so on and so forth from there. When you move to a country like you us where you do not have or you did not have, I mean I, I did not have any personal connect like I had connections of my husband's workplace. That's not connection. You need to have your own connection, you need to have your own circle and so on. So I was. I was really going down emotionally and my emotional health was deteriorating. So I hired a coach to work on my emotional health and also get into meditation. I was meditating very, very regularly every day, twice, you know, so 20 minutes twice. And that kind of brought a lot more perspective, a lot more stability into my entire life to realize, okay, what is actually important for me and how can I go after that and ensure saying no to every other thing. So these are the things that I've done so far, and it has been, trust me, going beautifully.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: What great advice to everybody out there. And I have to agree with you that the meditation part, the taking time and stillness, just being with yourself, even the discipline of that is really beautiful. And there are those days where it's like the last thing you want to do, but the consistency and the discipline of showing up for yourself, whether that be in meditation at the gym, taking care of, doing something that brings you joy, all of those things are so important.
And with that, we will be right back. Don't go anywhere, everybody. We have a great final segment for you coming up. We'll be right back with more insight, inspiration and real conversations.
This is Spanish Janice on NOW Media Television. And we're back. I'm Janice Burt and you're watching Spanish Janice. Let's keep growing together.
Loving what you're watching. Don't miss a moment of Spanish Janice or any of your favorite NOW Media Television shows. You can watch it live or on Demand on Roku iOS or anytime. At www.nowmedia.tv we are streaming bilingual programming 24. 7.
Welcome back with my very special guest and I have a question for you. Since we are in 2026 now the time of AI, artificial intelligence and all of these changes, what has been your experience working with leaders and in the leadership realm with how AI and technology is transforming everything, is it for the better? Do you see that? It's for the worse. How do you see AI impacting the leadership community?
[00:38:57] Speaker B: It's a loaded question, Janice. You know, one side, you know, AI is doing such cool stuff and doing such amazing stuff. Stuff and making solutions or bringing out products, bringing out solutions quickly at the snap of a finger. On the other hand, we are seeing a bloodbath happening in the technology world where people are losing their job. There is no ethical AI out there.
There is all sorts of things happening. There is no regulations, no compliances. And that is okay with the leadership teams, with the senior leadership of companies.
And that's what baffles me. What baffles me is that when we started out, in fact, I was having a conversation with someone very, very senior, 85 year old man who used to be one of the early employees of hp and he, I asked him this question that you have been in the Bay Area since, since probably 50 plus years. How do you see it? And he said what was running in my mind as well. He said that technology has gone for the worse, the leadership in Bay Area has gone for the worst. The competition is killing all of us. And I couldn't agree more with this man, this very wise man who said this because I'm seeing it happening. I mean, we started out to build technology so that life can get better and human beings can get better and we have a better society. But the way AI is going and the kind of cutthroat competition that is going on in the world, especially in the Bay Area, and how all the leaders are burnt out, are stressed out, are worried about their job satisfaction, which is what is creating a ripple effect in their physical, mental, emotional health, not only for themselves but also for their respective families. I feel there's someone who has to stop, pause there and decide, is this what we really wanted?
I mean, we hear people like Sam Altman saying that so what? Kids are becoming dumber. I'm still going to continue doing AI and I'm okay with my kid being dumb as long as the AI is intelligent.
I mean, is that what we really want to see in the world?
I don't know.
So I'm, I'm positive, I'm hopeful, I'm an eternally hopeful person. But at the same time I'm worried the way the world is going towards.
And I think it is time that we hold our rein back and take a call on what do we really want to achieve in the future of our own lives, for our future generations, for this beautiful earth that we are living in.
So yeah, that's, that's my point of view here.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: What advice would you give if a leader came to you and they're obviously using AI and whatever it is that they do, what advice do you give them with how to use it and also be ethical and heart centered at the same time? Can that happen?
What do you see as a solution or a nice kind of middle ground to how we can navigate having this tool and not letting it just completely derail us to somewhere where we just don't want to be?
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. I think firstly is, you know, ethics is a big part of me. I mean, I have always been ethical no matter what work I have done. Whether I was a senior leader or entrepreneur or now as a speaker, professional speaker and keynote speaker and a coach, I've always seen ethics is the highest level of things. So when we are working on AI, it is not like, okay, so what this is happening. I'm getting money out of it. That's not ethical.
That is not ethical. So you got to have really high standard of ethics when you are implementing AI in different ways in your respective organizations or workflows and things like that. That's number one. Number two, there needs to be rules and regulations. It can't be a free flow.
If it is a free flow, we have too many, too many bad power to utilize this for.
Not for the betterment of the humankind, but, you know, for the worse. And they're worse for them and only for their gain. I mean, I'm going to talk about a quick, you know, I would say metaphor here. When dynamite was, you know, first invented, right, with hot dynamite, the person who invented dynamite wanted to use it to create roads to ensure things where we could not go, we could go there and things like that. But then dynamite started getting used as a bomb as, as a, as a tool of distraction. I think that is what that is. When rules came out, that's when, you know, there were controls that came up and so on and so forth. I think AI right now is in that nascent stage. In that stage, it's a very, I would say, delicate stage where we can become an amazing tool to betterment of the humankind or take us all down along with it.
It's us who have to decide that. How do we want to see it, where do we want to take it? And in that process, what are we going to achieve, not only for ourselves, but the generations that will come after us?
Are we going to give them an asset or a liability?
It's on us.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: And as you're talking, I just can't help but think that it comes down truly to the heart of a person.
Like you were saying to the ethics of a person, the character of a person.
How do you best teach those things to leaders?
How do you teach people to be loving and kind and generous and giving, all while, you know, saying, yes, we can be ambitious, yes, we can make money, and we can be all of those things as well, like character, true, solid character people. What are some of the things that you would tell CEOs and executives high up to really focus in on that kind of heart stuff, you know, like the goodness of humanity?
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Yes, that's a great question. And you know, I have, I have seen in my career and in my life and I've spoken to different kinds of leaders and studied different kinds of leaders.
The leaders who have been through setbacks in their life and I'm being very mindful of what I'm going to say right now. The leaders who have been through really big life changing, life altering challenges and setbacks in their life are more heart centered, more kind and more empathetic.
Why is that?
Normally we human beings don't care about others until and unless it impacts us.
And when it impacts us is when we are realizing, oh, this is what is happening and I need to get better at it.
So to teach leaders to teach CXO CEOs and senior leaders about kindness.
See, there are two ways to learn it.
Either by faltering, either by experiencing it in your own life or seeing others where you don't want to experience it in your life.
Getting better and learning this, until they do that, until they realize this, it's going to be a pain. And how do I teach them? I just, I would, I can't really teach them. You know, these are all adult human beings. If they choose not to learn, if they say no, I want to be the way I am and I don't care. Like, to be honest, I don't know. I mean, what's your emotions with leaders like Elon Musk?
I have a very strong opinion is like, well, you may be a great inventor, but you're a bad leader and a bad human being.
So I, I respect your inventor or innovation part of it. But as a human being, as a leader, you're too bad. And unless you learn to get better, it's very difficult for me to teach you.
We just have to bring back people who genuinely care, people who genuinely want to see not only their business growing. And I've seen leaders like that and I've worked with companies whose leaders are amazing like that. Like, I mean, one of the leaders that I want to mention who's an amazing leader and is a, is someone who not only sees business growing, but also seeing his people or you know, his employees and all the people together growing is Bill McDermott from ServiceNow. An amazing and a charismatic leader there. So it's either you have it or you don't have it. When you know you don't have it, you either learn it or stay deprived. That's all I would say.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: And I would just encourage those of you out there that have a leadership role just to take some time to truly connect deeper, to go a little bit deeper to really see and ask yourself what is this life truly all about?
And I love what you said, Sri Jata, about setbacks and how some of our deepest pain can become our purpose.
They say our mess can become our message.
So those set setbacks that you have the framework for and everything that's so amazing to help leaders work through can can be a stepping stone into greater things to come. So I just want to thank you so much for giving us your heart and your soul and your wisdom here on this show. Sri Jata, you are amazing. The United States loves you.
I love you and everybody else. All the leaders out there take some time, a little bit of stillness, a little bit of that pause and just reconnect to what is true and meaningful and come at your business, at what you do from a place of love and generosity and this world can become a much better, more connected place. We'll see you next time everybody. Bye Bye.
