No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership
Leadership isn’t rocket science, we just overcomplicate it. This podcast delivers real talk on building trust, tackling brilliant jerks, and developing leaders who coach and develop others with integrity, with practical insights for talent and HR leaders as well as external coaches and consultants.
No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership
Standing Up for Values Without Burning Out
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What do you do when your values no longer align with the culture around you, but speaking up comes with a cost?
In this episode of No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership, Stephanie Licata talks with Shweta Kelkar, CEO and Founder of the Work360 Foundation, about moral courage, toxic work environments, values-based leadership, and the fine line between standing up for what matters and burning yourself out.
They explore how to pause before reacting, choose the right moments to speak up, build allies, protect your energy, and recognize when a system may not allow healthy influence.
For talent leaders, coaches, consultants, and anyone questioning whether to stay, speak up, or walk away, this is a grounded conversation about integrity, restraint, and what Shweta calls principled pragmatism.
Host: Stephanie Licata, M.A. A.C.C. | Learning & Leadership Consultant
Contact: stephanie@stephanielicata.com
Join Stephanie June 3rd from 11am-12:30pm for a Live-Virtual Interactive Workshop: From Coach to Facilitator: Create Trainings Organizations Will Pay For
REGISTER HERE: https://bit.ly/Coach2Facilitator
Schedule a Call with Stephanie
Guest: Shweta Kelkar | Sr. IT Transformation Leader & Founder, The Work360 Foundation
So before we get into this episode, I know we have a lot of listeners who are coaches and people practitioners. So I just wanted to just share a little something with you. So I know that many coaches, people practitioners have a lot of powerful ideas, uh, things that they want to share with others and convert into trainings. So turning ideas into powerful trainings or training programs is a very specific skill set. And coaches or practitioners might get stuck in asking themselves, like, how much content is too much? How do I design exercises that don't confuse people? How do I balance small group work and paired sharing of reflection and discussion? And yes, you can pop everything into AI, but many times what you're getting back is very generic and you need to customize it to your client. And so, well before AI, I spent many, many years developing content by hand and customizing it to different industries, different size groups, live virtual delivery, in-person delivery. So I'm going to be hosting a free interactive workshop. It's called From Coach to Facilitator: How to Create Training Organizations Will Pay For. And it's going to be Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026, from 11 to 12 30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. So 11 a.m. to 12 30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. And if you'd like to register, the link is going to be in the Apple or Spotify show notes. If for some reason you can't access that, please feel free to email me at Stephanie S-T-E-P-H A-N-I-E at Stephanie Lakata L-I-C A-T-A-L-I-C is in cat appletomasapple a t a dot com. And I'll be happy to send you the link to register. And so what we're going to do in this workshop is I'm going to share with you very practical guidance on how to structure content so it's not going to bore people, how to write very clear instructions, how to create very helpful participant guides.
SPEAKER_01Please don't give people that really tiny slide guide with the three notes and the slides are really super tiny. Like we're old now, we can't read that.
SPEAKER_02So please, if you want to join us Wednesday, June 3rd, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Again, the link will be in the show notes, or send me a quick email. Thanks so much, and let's get on with this episode. So welcome to this episode of No Jerks Allowed, a real talk on leadership. My name is Stephanie Lakata and I am a learning and leadership consultant. I am really excited today for today's episode. Because I know that a lot of us really feel burnt out right about now. So today's episode is all about standing up for your values without burning out. And how do you do that? How do you stay anchored in who you are? If you're in an organization where there might be some toxic leadership where you might have a toxic boss, and you know that you're in an organization where your values really are not aligned, right? How do you stand up and do the right thing? How do you know when it's time to do that? So this is really about wise courage. It's about clarity, empathy, boundaries, and the choices we make to protect our energy. And what better way to do that than to invite someone to the podcast that has had to make those decisions? So I'm really excited to bring to the podcast uh Shweta Kelkar, who's going to join us. And Shweta is the CEO and founder of the Work360 Foundation. And she's here to discuss this topic with me. So, Shweta, would you please join us? Thank you, Stephanie. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So excited.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02This is the great part of social media. Shwata and I connected over LinkedIn and we just had some similar things, like-minded similar things to talk about. And here we are. So thank you so much. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, what you do, how you got here, a little bit more about your background, and we'll go from there.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Uh first of all, uh Stephanie, uh, for inviting me. And I hope I can share uh some of my experience with your uh audience. I'm Shweta Kirkar. I've spent over 20 years leading technology transformation across banking, telecom, and large organizations. My work sits at the intersection of technology leadership and people navigating change, especially when things are complex or ambiguous. I'm also the founder of the Work360 Foundation. We help organizations navigate AI and digital transformation by aligning people, process, and technology for sustainable, human-centered outcomes. One thing I've learned is that people often think living your values at work means big, dramatic acts of courage, but actually it's not. It's actually small, consistent decisions about what you speak up about, what you refuse to compromise on. So yeah, uh looking forward to this conversation, uh Stephanie.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. I like the way you made that distinction, right? It's not this big dramatic moment, this movie moment where you stand up, so I'm gonna date myself. There's a movie, I think it's called Network. It's a very old movie. It's from the 70s. And this man sort of reaches out the window and he says, I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore, right? He's at his workplace and he sort of does that. Now, I'm sure many people listening here don't know what that is. They're gonna Google that. But it doesn't have to be this dramatic moment. It is these small moments. And you know, when you and I talked, we talked about it takes self-work. It takes a lot of self-work to operate from these principles. So when when you say that, when we say it takes self-work, what does that really involve? What does that mean practically?
SPEAKER_00For me, self-work means being honest about your motivation and your reactions. And I've also built this over time. It's not come to me uh, you know, all of a sudden. For me, there are three uh standing principles that I really uh rely on when it comes to um, you know, self-awareness. Um, I think self-awareness is noticing your triggers, you know, what you get triggered on. Second, I think is clarity, be clear on what you stand for. And then I and as I said, that comes with practice. The third one is emotional regulations. You know, it's always easier to just come out of uh uh uh if you get triggered. It's very easy to sort of stand up and feel very courageous and to say something. But I think restrain, staying calm and constructive, even when something feels wrong, is the key to navigating uh, you know, those sort of situations in your life. And this comes with practice, as I said. And the first step is acknowledgement of any shortcomings that you have in you know these three areas.
SPEAKER_02And a lot of what you just talked about is a lot of some of the domains of emotional intelligence, right? Self-awareness and self-self-regulation are those first two domains. I do a lot of training, a lot of leadership training around those areas. And there's some debate about can we really train people on those things? Are we able to? We can make people aware of those things like you just did, right? Making people aware of how do we become clear on the things that really do trigger us and how can we manage it. So, how can though maybe if we know those things, right? And we are clear on the values that matter to us, how do we balance that without understanding that other people also have their values and their triggers? How do we then have empathy for those other people and their perspectives?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's the key. One of the biggest traps, I think, is thinking your values make you right and others wrong, right? In complex organizations, not that way. In complex organizations, most people are not bad actors. They are responding to pressures we may not see. I try to separate intent from impact. Uh, someone's uh decision might conflict with my values, but the intent may still be reasonable given their constraints. Generally, three questions I like to ask is what pressure might they be under? What outcomes are they trying to achieve? What am I missing generally? So I think those three sort of questions give me a good perspective of what others might be thinking.
SPEAKER_02So it's so important. Everybody listening is so important what you just said. So what you just said is stopping to pause because the questions you just asked yourself, right? What am I missing? You know, what might they be dealing with right now? Whatever I'm I'm not repeating the questions exactly. But that is how we help separate the identity from the idea, right? This person might have just suggested an idea, suggested a strategy, and maybe we disagree with it. But we have to remember we're disagreeing with the idea, not disagreeing with the existence of the human. It's just the idea, right? Now, they may have a way of presenting the idea that is rough around the edges or that is hard for us. Maybe it's the presentation of the idea that is the trigger for us. We don't like the way they speak. The way they speak reminds us of someone in our lives that is really just grating on our nerves. They speak in a way that's very demonstrative or very forceful, and that is triggering to us. And so we can't even hear what they say. Uh, and we can't even hear if there's any value in what they're saying because of the way they're presenting it. And that's why tone and framing of things mean so much, right? So sometimes, you know, we have to remember that our values are a guide, not a source of reactivity. So, how do you keep your values from turning into this reactivity system, this this sort of this board that lights up all the time? Like, how do we stop that?
SPEAKER_00I think exercising restrain has helped me a great deal uh when such situations arise. It's always, as I said, it's natural to sort of go out there and you know, just face it, right? But it's restrain is so very important. Small pauses between feeling and action is the key in, you know, not turning your values into reactivity. When something doesn't sit right, instead of reacting uh immediately, I ask, is this a real uh value issue or is it just a disagreement? Or uh sometimes it's really some is it really from a place of ego? Uh that's a very good question to ask. Is this the right moment to address it? What outcome am I trying to create? Um, and what other other, you know, the the person is also trying to create, maybe. Sometimes the most uh values-aligned action is raising the issue calmly, asking more questions, sometimes just not taking any action. I've I've learned that the hard way, but it really works. I mean, you don't really have to always react. Uh, it can, as I said, restraint comes uh very handy at such times. Right.
SPEAKER_02And what you're describing also is a coach approach, both self-coaching and coaching in the moment. So asking questions, one of the things that I, when I'm training managers, I'll I'll say, get curious before you get furious, right? So ask, hey, help me understand where this is coming from, or help me understand what the what the outcome is that's going to benefit us as a team. And when we get curious, you can really start to interrupt some of that intimidation or some of that. If a leader is having a negative response from their team, it could be because they're not utilizing that curiosity. I think curiosity for leadership is one of the most important uh skills that you can re- I don't know if it's a skill. I don't know if I wanted to call it a skill, but I think it's an approach, right? To be curious and to apply curiosity before assumption, before assuming, like you said, assuming a person's a bad actor. Now, don't get me wrong, there are bad actors. That's why this podcast exists, right? But we've got to, and for some of those who may be on the borderline of, am I a bad actor? Everybody's responding to me this way, or I can't get anybody to do anything. Start getting curious. Start asking questions before you react. So you can understand what the intention is. Intent isn't always obvious, right? So I always tell people to think about intent like when you have a cold. When you have a cold, what do you see? You see a runny nose, you see your eyes might get red. But the cause of the cold is not any of those things. It's a virus that we can't see. So we often can't see intention. We're gonna see the symptom, we're gonna see what comes out of people's mouths, we're gonna hear what people say, but their intention might be completely hidden from our view. We have to kind of ask and dig deeper, if that makes sense. So you mentioned values in the context of complex situations. It's not really that simple. So we talked, you know, we were speaking about preparing for this episode, we talked about moral courage in some of these more complex situations. And, you know, you spoke about yourself where you had to sort of make difficult decisions. So, what does moral courage look like in a complex situation? Not the easy ones, not just the meeting where should I speak up, should I not address it? What does that moral courage look like in some of those more complex situations?
SPEAKER_00Most times, as I said, people are driven by the circumstances around us. It's not always right versus wrong. It's always challenging right versus the right decision. I think it's between choosing good. It's not actually choosing good or evil. It is making a choice between two rights. For example, a team, um, a loyalty to a team versus uh truthfulness to a client, right? Most times we navigate those sort of situations in an organization setting. Nuanced uh whistleblowing is one of them. It involves strategically uh managing an issue rather than just making a public scene out of it, such as building uh a, I think, evidence-based trial um and and process presenting findings more clearly and calmly to a higher authority, keeping in mind that there could be uh repercussions, a personal cost involved. Um, also, I think uh maintaining personal identity under pressure, uh that's also uh you know one of the nuanced uh uh modern-day uh sort of dilemma most people have. It is refusing to let the organizational culture or group think erase your personal values, such as refusing to participate in unfair group gossip or discrimination against you know uh vendor staffs uh when it makes you sort of all the others are doing it, but you don't want to do it because it's not your value. So, you know, these sort of small things, but they do have a larger impact when when you know you are somebody who uh is uh exhibiting value-based leadership.
SPEAKER_02So what I think I hear you saying is if you sometimes it might just be like a lack of participation and aspects of the culture that are not values aligned. If you make those smaller choices over time, right, that sort of protects your values in the in the matter of how you're conducting yourself and the organization. But when we talk about leadership style, you know, people have different leadership styles. Some people may be more demon, like I said, demonstrative, more directive. Some people may be more sort of hands-off. I'm gonna give you your autonomy. You come to me if you need me. Some people may be more volatile, they may get angry. Like I've seen leaders get really angry and I've seen them chew people out in front of other people. I've seen that happen. So, what's the line between different leadership style and unhealthy leadership? What do you see as that differentiation?
SPEAKER_00In diverse organizations, people will have different uh leadership. You may like it or not. I've struggled with it myself because I have a very high standard of leadership, and I thought my leadership standard was the only standard. I was completely wrong. Some leaders are very analytical, as you said, some are very direct, some are extremely results-driven. So those differences are not automatically unhealthy. These signs that actually should raise alarm are people afraid to speak up. If mistakes are punished instead of uh learned from, if pressure is persistent rather than uh situational. So these are some of the very classic signs of uh toxic leadership, I think. And that is where you know that's an indication of the there is not a I mean, it's not unnecess necessarily a leadership alignment, but it's more from uh the cultural, the toxic culture or you know, the the negative impacts of a not so good culture.
SPEAKER_02So it has to really be consistent. Like, you know, people aren't saying anything in meetings, they're just keeping their head down. There, you know, if there if there's a mistake, again, there's no learning opportunity. There's, you know, there's just, you know, again, punishment or discipline. There's no, it's more like the power distance is really wide. Like it's like, okay, I'm gonna come down hard on anything that's not up to a certain standard, or I'm not gonna engage with you or get curious and say, what happened here? Right? We don't always know the reason why a mistake is made. We might not know. And in the increase of hybrid and virtual environments, we're not with people every day. So we don't, yeah, we're not always two doors down from people. So we might not know. And I think, you know, that causes some growing assumption of why people may have done what they did. You know, we want to have this hope for the future about this principled leadership. And we talked about principled leadership and how important it is now more than ever. And if we don't do it, we pay the price. You know, we pay the price for ourselves and for future generations. So, you know, sometimes, you know, what is paying the price look like in real life? What's the emotional, you know, professional fallout? What's the price we're paying for not having principal leadership in some of our organizations? How are we paying for that?
SPEAKER_00Think uh when people talk about moral courage or principle leadership, etc., we sometimes romanticize it, right? But in reality, standing by our values can have very practical costs. And I know because I've paid it. For example, uh, you might do the right thing, but the culture or the people around them are so scared about their own uh sort of jobs that you may be completely sidelined. Uh, you may not be included in most of the major in initiatives that are going on. Uh, you might be simply seen as being difficult or being uh inconvenient, right? And you will be pushed out uh eventually. You must not always be part of the inner circle. You don't get information or you are you know keep the information is kept uh from you. Most, I mean, very drastically, you may lose your job or you may be just kicked out. You know, those are some of the uh, you know, uh uh your uh price to pay. Emotionally, it can also be tiring because you're constantly navigating uh tension between what feels right and fitting into the system. And I think that is more uh concerning uh for me. But I also believe there's different costs to not acting, right? Yes, um, when people repeatedly compromise their values, frustration builds, cynicism grows, uh, and over time it affects your well-being. And then you are to that level of completely being burnt out and not being able to bribe any value whatsoever for yourself as well as for the people around you or for the organization.
SPEAKER_02And what you're describing, and I just want to make a parallel here. So for many people who are listening, it it mirrors personal life. So, you know, my backgrounds in organizational psychology, which stems from family systems theory. This is uh what you're describing is often similar to scapegoating in dysfunctional families. So when a person sort of names the dysfunction, similar the way the way to a person in an organization might name a dysfunction in a team, they become the scapegoat, right? So they become the person that sort of is blamed or the person that names the problem becomes the problem because you are exposing the system. And that's dangerous for everybody else. Like you said, everybody's protecting their job, protecting their role. And that's what happens in families as well. If you name the problem, you become the problem. And so now everybody wants to keep their job, everyone wants to keep their paycheck. Don't say the problem, don't say what's wrong. We've got to keep our dysfunction in place, right? So you now, like you said, you'll get ousted from a meeting, you'll get cut out from something. We're gonna cut you out because your truth is too much for us to bear. And so it's easier for us to paint you as the problem than to face the dysfunction. And that's what's happening. People that speak up, and and I want to point out some of the people that speak up in a lot of these organizations are often people with the capacity for great empathy. They are sensitive to those dynamics. And so it is, they're more sensitive to, they're more intuitive and they're more sensitive to what's happening and they can see it and their toleration level for it is lower than some other people. Like some other people can compartmentalize and be like, oh, sure, I'm gonna tolerate this absolute harmful, abusive situation. I'm gonna get my paycheck. Right. Whereas you know, I can't live like that. I'm not okay with that when I put my head on the pillow. Like that's not okay with me. Because it's probably not just happening to me, right? It's probably happening to other people. I know other people are suffering, suffering. So, how do you avoid becoming the values martyr who then burns out? What's how do you avoid becoming that person? Well, I know how I avoided it, but how do you avoid it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think one of the biggest lessons that I've learned is uh that values are not about constant resistance. If you try to challenge everything, you will exhaust yourself and lose influence. Yes. Instead, I try to think about three things choose your movements. One is choosing my movements. Not every issue requires, you know, as I said, a reaction. Sometimes influence works better through quiet conversations than confrontation. Secondly, I think building allies you know go long way. Um when it Comes to exhibiting or actually showcasing that something is not right. If you are only the person who's speaking about it, people may not take it. But if there are group of people saying the same thing, then it has a bigger impact, I think. I think the lastly is protecting your energy. If you're constantly in conflict with your environment, it's worth asking whether the system actually allows healthy influence or not at all. So if it does not, then there is no point fighting the lost battles, in it. Right.
SPEAKER_02You're not gonna interrupt the system. So I'll share with you part of how I interrupted some of this. And then I'm gonna ask you personally. It's part of how, you know, I worked in a lot of toxic situations. Uh and and I I really like, you know, was a diehard. I stayed in some of them too long. And that's why I'm so, you know, passionate about this topic. And I made a commitment to myself to seek out partnership with, I mean, now I work for myself, but a lot of my business is built on strategic partnerships. And those strategic partnerships are with like-minded, like-valued people. So I said to myself, if I want to venture into this new way of work, I have to make sure that I'm values aligned with the people that I partner with and that I grow relationships with. And that's really made all the difference. And now my entire experience of work is different because I have the power to choose. I get to say, I'm going to partner with you and I'm not going to partner with you. And I can, I'm my spidey sense is really good at this point. So I can tell if I'm really going to. And it doesn't mean that, you know, I get along perfectly with every person, right? I have really long-standing strategic partnerships with people that I respect, that I trust, that we have mutual trust because we have like values. And I know that at the core that every person, every organization that I partner with, these people are just such good humans. And I know like I would trust them with my life and that they would really not harm another person in the way that I've seen organizations harm people. So that's the that's the shift that I made. Looking back for you, is there anything you would do differently or uh and or is there a moment that you're most proud of?
SPEAKER_00I think the time is right. I think many of us would say we could have handled something, and I'm surely I am one of them. I think I should have handled conversations with more patience or rather better timing. I think timing and patience are the key uh takeaways for me. Not always, as I said, there has to be a right time to do right things. So, and that experience teaches you also to how to read the room, when to speak, speak sub publicly or you know, when to speak privately, and how to frame difficult messages in a more acceptable way or a constructive way so that it's not coming out as a personal attack rather than a more constructive way of saying something. There are certain things that remain non-negotiable for me. Those I think uh are again aligned to my values. One is treating people with respect, no ways, you know, I'm I'm going to go on along when people are not being respected. Uh creating environments where people feel safe to raise concerns. So that is again non-negotiable for me. I need to have give people the room to be open and honest and transparent with their feelings. And not normalizing behaviors that harm self-worth or you know, self-respect. That's that's being challenged, then you know, I'm going to put my foot down so in one way or the other.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, those are the things. So I love those non-negotiables. Those are great. So everybody should listen, go back rewine, and listen to Schwarz's non-negotiables. They're excellent. Awesome. So we talked a little bit as and we were preparing about servant leadership. So that's kind of like looking at leadership beyond hierarchy, beyond like, I'm in charge of you. So but when people hear servant leadership, let's talk. What is your understanding of servant leadership? And then where do people, where do they get it wrong, right? So, what is your understanding, your definition? And then where do people kind of misinterpret it?
SPEAKER_00I mean, people think servant leadership is giving in off people and teams around us and being very submissive, or rather taking on more work and then, you know, making it all about good. I don't think that is what servant leadership is. Servant leadership is more creating an environment where everyone can bring their best work out. I think that is servant leadership. And in that, what I mean is joining teams or making synchronicity work between teams is key in making sure that uh each person's abilities or strengths get amplified and the weaknesses are covered by others in the team who have you know better strengths. So it's a misconception that servant leadership is the you know the all good and nothing bad. It's not always like that. It is more of uh you know bringing out the best, but also making uh some room for the weaknesses part of it.
SPEAKER_02And it's more of a practical approach, right? It's more of a I'm here to help you be your best. I'm here to help help you develop. I'm not here to rule over you, right? It's it's removing that hierarchical structure of leadership and being more like I'm here to serve you in a way that's I get better work done through you if I help you be your best, right? And it's not in a manipulative way, like let me see how I can get you to work, you know, like it's not in a manipulative way, right? It is in it as an act of service. Like if I'm helping you to develop and feel more confident, you're gonna be more engaged. We're gonna get more work to get done together, we're gonna be more productive. That's a win-win for everybody. Okay. And that's how we can be hands-on without micromanaging. So, what's that line? Like, how do I how do I act hands-on but not be too controlling or micromanaging? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00Hands-on leadership for me means being engaged with the work and the people, but not controlling every detail. Um, think staying close to the reality, knowing what bottlenecks, why not? And as a leader, you need to be in advance, you need to know what sort of bottlenecks we can expect. But at the same time, holding uh the team through those hurdles, you know, at the right time, the support that they need, being there for them uh during those hurdles and during those bottlenecks. Not just the hurdles, but you know, major milestones being there uh and guiding them through those and encouraging, as I said, open conversations within the team is I cannot stress that enough. I think that is what I think hands all leadership plays a very important role in encouraging those sort of conversations, not necessarily being part of every conversation, but making sure that each of these conversations within the team happen with or without you being in the room. So I think that's the major thing. Right.
SPEAKER_02And I think, you know, especially for people that get elevated to a leadership role for the first time, and maybe they've been a subject matter expert, they have a hard time understanding that your job is to see that the work gets done, not to do the work. Right. And they have a time hard time making that distinction. It's not your job to do all the things, it's to guide people to do all the things, right? And that's a hard transition. We also talked about, uh, we talked about differing leadership styles a little bit before, but when you and I were preparing, we talked about sometimes you're gonna work for different kinds of people and you also have to adapt. And there are gonna be some people that are gonna be my way or the highway. There are gonna some people who are gonna have total lack of control and let everybody run all over them. How do you what have you learned about working with different kinds of leaders that maybe are different than you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh search styles are inevitable in organization. Some are very directive, some are very fast-paced, some are results-driven. And if your own style is more collaborative uh or reflective, that can feel uncomfortable and you know, not that's just an example of because you know, my style is very irreflective, collaborative, but I haven't always had leaders who are that way. So uh I think the first step is curiosity rather than judgment. So just because they are different, you cannot judge them or you cannot, you know, say that, and you know, you cannot say that you know this is not the right way to lead. Understanding what pressures they're under, what outcomes they are working on, how they prefer uh things to be done, how they make decisions. I think once you have that understanding of how they want to be uh given data, if they are data-driven, then you know possibly you can give them more data uh to back their decisions. I think that sort of once you get into a rhythm of how of how they want things to be done and and and a bit of how you get things done, I think that's the key to uh existing uh in a more collaborative or rather, you know, in a what's the right word, in a good environment, creating a good environment for both to both sides to flourish. Right.
SPEAKER_02So, but sometimes it it's just a mismatch. And you know, we're we're here to to try to help people not burn out. So, what are some early signs that you might be headed towards burnout because maybe there's just a mismatch of style there?
SPEAKER_00I think uh constantly having to second guess your decisions uh because uh they did not set sit well uh with others, having to compromise on your values again and again, most of the times in the name of you know, this is how it is done here. Uh, you know, we can you can you cannot do uh your thing. We have done this in this way. Finally, no sense of accomplish accomplishment or uh uh acknowledgement of your point of view or how you have uh driven some of the change uh around in the organization, our classic science burnout, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up. Um, you know, I know there was a turning point for me. I was asked to do something that I knew was unethical, and it was going to be presenting something to customers that was not true and it was unethical. And I pointed it out before it was presented to customers, and they basically said, that's okay, we're gonna do it anyway. And at that moment, I knew that was that was it for me. But I couldn't leave in that moment. So I had to like think more, but I knew, okay, my values, I am not okay with telling non-truths to customers. I'm not okay with that. But I had to stay grounded because I knew in that moment this is not okay with me. Okay. So what keeps you grounded when you are super clear, this is not where I belong. I am now 100% clear. This is a values misalignment. I will burn out here. What is gonna keep you grounded and in that moment when you can't leave immediately, but now you're clear, but now you know without a doubt, what's gonna keep you grounded?
SPEAKER_00One thing I've come to accept over time is that no system is perfect. So you have to, that acceptance has to be there. Organizations are complex with competing priorities, pressures now with geopolitical uh pressures as well. So um, I used to get frustrated earlier in my career trying to fix everything at once. What helped me stay grounded now is remembering uh uh, you know, a couple of things. Your circle of influence is very important. So you need to understand what you what you can influence and what you cannot influence or control over, right? Exactly, exactly. So you cannot control everything, and it's such a in a big organization there's too much going on, so you cannot actually influence each and every decision. Second is accepting that progress often happens gradually, incrementally. It does not happen dramatically, and you know, you you might want to influence like like this in two minutes, but that you know, it takes time, it takes time to for good work to uh come out and show its results, right? So you need to have that patience. So when you approach systems with that mindset, you can still act from your values without uh feeling overwhelmed or not feeling positive. So yeah, excellent.
SPEAKER_02So what's as we start to wind down, what's one thing? If someone is in a values misaligned environment right now, what's one small action they can do to stand up for their values but not burn out? What's a simple thing they can do right now for themselves?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think um pausing and reflecting. Three years back, I had no pause word in my dictionary, no reflect word in my dictionary. For the last, I think, four to five years of very, very consciously started to reflect, pause and reflect, and you know, question myself whether that came from a place of actually doing the right thing or being right. So being right versus doing the right thing is a lot of different uh, you know, it means a lot differently when you actually ask yourself that those questions. So I think uh pausing and reflecting is one, and that is a very simple that it doesn't need any financial sort of commitment or any just a course, pause out small, small thing that you can do. It could be every week or every two days, but yeah, that that time is very important to giving yourself that time.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you so much, Swadar, for sharing your wisdom, your experience as a leader, as now a founder. Tell us more about where people can find you. And we're also going to be sharing a link to your website uh and your LinkedIn in our show notes. Uh, but anything else you want to share about where people can find you?
SPEAKER_00Yes, uh, I'm on LinkedIn and the work360foundation.com is where uh all of our work is listed. Yes. And thank you, uh Stephanie, for inviting me and uh hope this was useful. One last thought I think I should should uh mention. I think over the last uh couple of years I've taken up this phrase value, sorry, it is principal pragmatism. I think if each one of us can use this, because usually in most organizations it's more of a pragmatism that is used, you know, we we have to do this this way or we'll be left behind. But principal pragmatism is the anchor that you can keep to making sure that you're not just running on um something, you know, just for the the financial aspect of it or just to be right, but your actions are anchored in your principles and your values.
SPEAKER_02I think that's a very key uh takeaway. I love that. That's excellent, really so having some integrity to the why of what we're doing, right? Some other sort of check, some balances for some of those actions. That's so great. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I appreciate your time. I know your time and attention is valuable. Thank you so much for being here. I hope this was valuable for all of you, for any of you who are stuck, feel stuck in an organization or feel stuck with a toxic leader. Just know that you are not stuck. That is a construct you can get out. And it's not the end of the world and it is not the only job. And you might say, you don't understand, Stephanie. I left many a toxic job without a partner supporting me, without any rich parent giving me money. I did all of those things. So you can do it and it is possible. And so I hope for all people that are listening here that if they need to leave an organization, that this is your wake-up call, that it's okay. And if you need to stay and take care of yourself, that you also have that option too. So you're listening and you have that courage within you, and we are here to support you. All right. So thank you so much. Thank you. And have a wonderful day. All our listeners, Shwata, thank you so much for your time, and we'll see you all soon. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye everyone.
