Leadership School
Weekly conversations with leadership experts. Hear their stories, get their tools, and be a strong, emotionally intelligent leader.
We feature diverse leaders from all corners of the globe. Culture-impacting discussions include conflict resolution, DEI, and the psychology of leadership. Listeners of Leadership School desire to be emotionally intelligent, well-balanced, and to lead with integrity.
Leadership School
Ep. 69: How to Encourage Change with Guest Dr. Karuna Ramanathan
Have you ever just wanted to press reset and change everything? Have you ever noticed something that needed changed but weren't sure how to facilitate that? In today's episode with guest Dr. Karuna Ramanathan, we discuss just that. We also talk about
- how to coordinate large group conversations
- how to encourage people to make changes
- 251 storytelling
- and so much more!
Karuna Ramanathan is a transformational leadership expert with nearly three decades of experience in supporting senior leaders and organizations through difficult transformations. He is a former naval warship captain who went on to lead and architect leadership transformation and systems-level change in the Center for Leadership Development. Karuna is currently the Principal Consultant for KR Konsulting, bringing with him deep experience gained from designing and facilitating more than 2500 sessions. He is a Marshall Goldsmith Global Certified Coach, Global Coach Group Certified Leadership Coach, and a trained Erikson Executive Coach.
Karuna is an expert in large system change programs, co-creation and collaboration techniques, organizational storytelling and narratives, and tacit knowledge elicitation/transfer methods. He has more than 2000 paid coaching hours with senior leaders and nearly 1000 pro-bono coaching hours, helping leaders grow. Karuna's book, "Navigating The Seas of Change," published in 2020, is a leadership primer for change leaders.
Karuna has been featured as “Top 10 Organisation Development Consultants 2023” by the Asia Business Outlook and nominated by the CEO Insights ASIA, a business magazine, as one of “Asian Leaders & Achievers-2023”. His expertise in growing leaders and building teams is available to help you become an internal and self-starting change agent—and start your journey to navigating through organizational transformation.
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Leadership School Production:
Produced by Kyla Cofer
Edited by Neel Panji @ PodLeaF Productions
Assistant Production Alaina Hulette
Welcome to the Leadership School podcast. I'm your host, leadership and self-care coach, Kyla Cofer. Here at the Leadership School, you'll hear leaders from around the world sharing their stories and expertise on how to lead with balance and integrity. Our goal teach you how to be an extraordinary leader. Welcome back Leaders! Today my guest is Dr. Karuna Ramanathan. Karuna is, as he prefers to be called, is a former Navy ship captain. He took the leadership skills that he learned on ship into working with the Prime Minister's office. And from there, he now consults companies and organizations on leadership skills and on transformational change. So while Karuna has some really great tools, and you'll hear one of them, his 2 5 1 storytelling method, he has some great tools and resources. What he really focuses on is the personal development of the leader. So you're gonna hear a lot of conversation about respect and respect for yourself and what it looks like to really encourage personal development as you're encouraging transformation and achievement of success. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Karuna Ramanathan. Well, I have a long history of anxiety and depression and that I talk about that a lot, but I found out when I was starting to learn to let go of some of that, that I felt safer being sad and stressed. And
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Oh.
Kyla Cofer:Because I was so used to it and I had to realize that in myself that like, oh, part of the reason I'm not getting out of it is because it's unknown to me. But I, that I had to go wait, but that's not what I, I actually want to be happy. Like if I actually wanna be happy, I've got do exactly that, what you just said, stop courting misery and yeah, it's what I was doing. And, but we have to like have that mental shift of it's not what I want and who I wanna be, but sometimes we just forget to do that in our heads. I dunno why.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Yeah, I mean, in my work with middle managers we, we have a right to be happy. As well as a right to succeed. And what are you not doing about that? You know, it's like, why are you putting yourself through this mess? And therefore, it's all about choices and commitments and risk that we will take because to mitigate those risks, we actually put in some effort, right? I mean, if it's worth the while. So I'm a big person on extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation. When I talk to companies, I say organizations, I say, The buck stops here. If you're not paying your people enough, they are gonna walk. I mean, this is not a talent pipeline conversation. It's simply the decent expectation of what is fair wage. So, so, so, and people will stretch a little up to a certain point when they feel that it's worth the effort. I mean mm-hmm. So it's the effort. If I'm gonna work at night, it obviously has to, there has to be a payout.
Kyla Cofer:Yes.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:And, and what's so difficult about, oh, you need to work for the passion. You need to work for your legacy. I say, can you, can you drill all that often and kind of let people go back home and spend that hard-earned money on people they truly love? I mean, that's their choice.
Kyla Cofer:Yeah. But my passion might not put food on my table or a roof over my head.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:And by the way, hella, that's also a choice. I mean, if you choose to live that, and there are many good people who do that all around the world, but those are choices you need to let them make and not determine that for them.
Kyla Cofer:Yeah. Absolutely.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Yeah. It's just like, it's like we are all entitled to this. I mean, it's just, it's just a basic element of respect, which is like, respect yourself. Come on.
Kyla Cofer:Yes. Right. Respect yourself. And I don't know why that's so hard and, but sometimes, I mean, it took me years to learn that. I don't understand why it took so long to learn that. Well, look at us. We were like, already started the conversation in the interview without Oh yeah. We just like, we're having so much fun talking that we just jumped right into it. But seriously, Karuna, thank you for coming. And you said that you like to go by Karuna, but your full name is Dr. Karuna Ramanathan, correct? Oh yeah. Did I say that right? I,
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:yeah. I used that to get upgrades to business class, which never happens.
Kyla Cofer:Well, Karuna, you're full of jokes and I can't wait. This is gonna be such a fun, delightful conversation cuz you've already had me like cracking up this whole time. So I, I just love, like as soon as I jump on the call with you, you're just like this bright, wide, giant smile that's. It just says here, you're safe and we're gonna have fun. It's so great.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Totally happy. Happy to help in any which way kind.
Kyla Cofer:I love that. Karuna, maybe you can give us just a really brief history of how you got to where you are right now, like your career history a little bit, and you can throw all the personal and fun things in there too, of course, but just your little history of how you got to where you are and kind of what you're doing now.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:My goodness. You know, every time I get asked this, I just like try to throw myself back all the way into my teenage years. I had no clue. I would end up in no idea that I'll end up where I am today. And kindly for jokingly say that I'm the accidental consultant. I, I, I did not have this vision. I did not have this idea that this is what, what I'll be doing at this stage of my life. But it all goes back to a pivotal point when I was 19. Basically in Singapore there's compulsory national service. I was always a distracted student in school. The grades were just average. And at 19 something happened and I got some good grades and basically, and that was the A levels. And yeah, I got picked up in the Navy and we got sent to the UK for the Royal Naval Training College. And that's, that's in Dartmouth. And that's where it all changed for me because I didn't realize that leadership training for a year was actually pretty serious stuff. And it was not about textbooks, it was about self-discipline, self-motivation, self-awareness, self-management, self-control, everything that we kind of talk about EQ now. It was got played out there and being all of 19, 20 years old, it all became very exciting, very intense, and basically a simple factor matters. The Royal Navy does not, and most Navys are like that. They don't send you to sea until you're a leader. They can't afford to assume you're a leader, and that has tremendous implications for organizations today because the positions on partnership are all leadership positions, including the chef. The chef is a leader. So a lot of that, a lot of that foreground training is about making you become more aware of yourself and how you relate to others. And then, and once that's sorted out, the technical training starts at the end of my one year in that they gave me a whole stack of books and said, now go read the technical stuff. So it was like 80% outdoors. It was, it was all that stuff. Right. It was amazing. I, I mean, looking back, it was the one thing that happened to me that actually shifted my entire perspective. So when I came back to Singapore, I went to the university, played sport, did all that. Started to do time on the ships in vacation and picked up all my credentials and qualifications. And then I started working with teams on, on onboard ships. They're called crews, ship crew. And basically you are in a tight environment, highly stressful, goes on for two days, three days, that kind of thing. And it's all, all Navy in the world have that and then ended up magical sense of belonging together. More than, because you spend so much time with each other start, you start to realize that you have to trust people, Kyla, and that's really where I picked up the element of trust. Because you cannot stay awake. One can't stay awake for three days in a row. I mean, you have to fall asleep at some point. And I think that is a huge definition of trust. Are you, are you prepared to fall asleep leaving your self in the hands of others, and you must believe they are good enough, they will look after you. And, and that's a principle I have actually used for many years. I'm falling asleep in the belief that all these people are good and they will look after me. But in order to do that, I need to spend time with them to make sure that they are at that level where I would like them to be so that I can fall asleep. Now, that's now called mentoring. It's called coaching. It's called nurturing people, right to do their best. That you can depend on them and they can, they know that you depend on them. I spent gosh, 19 years in the Navy well into my mid thirties, and the last parts of it, I was actually privileged enough to be selected for command after having a stint in Australia with the Australian Navy. At the age of 33, I was in command of a mine hunter did very well there, became the best ship in the navy. Very small type crew, 35 people. And then I went for the, I went to do my staff college work that's a one year stint. And I did well there well enough to be able to be asked to for my preferred posting. And here's the deal, right? I mean, this was the ambition and this was the young man saying, whoa, let's take the bigger ship in the Navy. And there was one being built and I said, I'd like to command that ship. Now, problem was that that ship was brand new. Everybody was new, and the big big ship required 120 people. So this is like a threefold jump in in the team, so to speak. And the crew size is so big. And I learned some valuable lessons there how the same style of leadership does not apply in a different setting. How bigger organizations would have to work with leaders. And then at that point, I was having so much fun, Kyla. I mean, you imagine it, I could spend days gazing at a open sea. This was way back in 2002. I call home and my wife says, your daughter's crying nine years old. And I said, okay. So I guess that. Sea time had to come to an end and I told myself, I'll get off the ship when I returned to port in Singapore, it was a two and a half month stretch. It was quite, quite a separation and I was lucky to have enough bosses to point me to a opening position in the leadership center for the military. And I, it was a new, new position and I spent 10 years there doing some really amazing work with amazing people being given amazing opportunities to try. So we're talking like, Gamification, narrative storytelling, all the stuff that had to ease up the traditional mid military culture of yelling and screaming and, and ordering into learning and nurturing. So my first experience with culture shift was actually in that.
Kyla Cofer:So you started at 19 in the Navy. Got a whole year of self-discipline, self-development training at Dartmouth. Went into Singapore Navy. You ended up starting to work with teams, learning about trust on the teams, commanding your own ship, figuring out that it was time to retire from the Navy and move on. So you went into a leadership program.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:That's right, a leadership center where I was actually the deputy head. And basically, I mean, the, the part of that was it gave me a lot of leeway to try new things as to help people learn, help people understand themselves. There was the formal side of it with, with the usual assessment and tools, but I didn't do much of that. I did stuff like action learning, getting into the, getting into roles in the jungles, you know, like how do people actually squat and reflect on exactly what they've just seen and that kind of stuff. And it was just amazing because I still believe we were the forerunners to that stuff because of all the, with all the experimentation work we could do. And, and some of that stuff's still there, Kyla. I mean, you know, it's just continuously being practiced. At that point, I also dived a little into a passion call knowledge management, which was quite big. And I actually got, I got a fair bit of travel included in my role, and I remember in 2009 I actually shared a storytelling model that UNICEF picked up. So I'm really proud of that. It's a 2 51 model. You know, it's still in use in India literature.
Kyla Cofer:We're gonna get into that. So we're gonna put a tag in that and come back to the 2 51 model for our listeners. Totally. And you wanna hear this so
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Totally. And then after that, so basically after I did about 10 years in the leadership center, it was time to retire formally from the military. So I. I retired in 2014, a couple of years ago, about 10 years ago, and basically at that point I was wondering again what to do it, and I actually applied for a job or two. Got rejected for one, and there was this other one in the government service in Singapore in the Prime Minister's office looking for people to help with change. Five interviews later. I find myself in a pretty senior position, and I actually spent three years there.
Kyla Cofer:In the Prime Minister's office?
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Yes. It was a unit under the Prime Minister's office called the Public Service Division, and I was the senior principal organizational development consultant. So basically I was the most senior in-house consultant for change in the government. And the understanding there was very simply, they needed someone in-house because of the confidentiality of certain conversations. And you don't want that going out commercially, you know, or an external consultant. So I did a lot of that kind of work and there was some major projects here that I was actually I actually would knit the conversations together of 50 to hundred 50 people in a room pretty senior and would land on something. There is a skillset that I'm still appreciative of today that I managed to actually build.
Kyla Cofer:Let me kinda understand what you were doing there, because from what I'm, I'm hearing you had, you were kind of helped negotiate, thought and agreements in a room with a lot of people, and you all had to come to an agreement on something and so you were the person in the middle, like helping everybody navigate different thoughts and different opinions and coming to a conclusion.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:So in organizational development language, it's called large group interventions. So basically I would design and facilitate large group interventions. I've, I would've gone from like 25, 30 people in a room to I have had one point 260 people in a ballroom. Oh, how do you get 200 people? How do you get them to,
Kyla Cofer:that was my question. You were about to answer it.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:It's, it's like a wedding dinner.
Kyla Cofer:Wow. How do you get 260 people to come to a mutual agreement on something?
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:They come to a mutual direction. They would agree in the first instance, but they would not necessarily accept. But it's a, it's a first step in getting people to converge on some important things that needs attention, let's say the next six to 12 months. So I'm, I'm, I'm actually, these days I'm actually known for that. Okay, so you've got a lot of, I'm just grateful. Those three years are amazing. Yeah. So it's like you bring 200, 250 people unwilling, but they're politically correct into a room and you kind of get them to work on it, just a few things and basically get them going so that work can start.
Kyla Cofer:Okay. So I have a lot of questions for you and I don't wanna get too distracted, but I do wanna know how you do this. Give us your, oh, yes. One page sheet, a summary on Okay. If I decide I wanna go and I've, I've got this group of people that I'm trying to coordinate with what are some of those tools that you use to help navigate those conversations and get people started?
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:So it typically goes from the client into the client principles and then into the client system. Now this is a bit technical, so the client would be the person who asked you in for some help. It could or may or may not be the c e o but it would probably be say someone, maybe the strategy director. Or maybe someone like that and then you would kind of say, okay, this is what you wanna do. Let's get a few key people in the room. And this would generally be, Kyla, people with power, they are probably okay, and I hate saying this, but this is what it really is in, in good organizations, tribes form. And, and you need to get the tribal chiefs in a room. And it's not a meeting, it is start of a fruitful leadership conversations, and this is for all the listeners out there. Please do not run it as a meeting. If you do stuff like this, you would need to actually facilitate a conversation. So the organizational development people who actually do this kind of stuff would actually set the room up properly for this conversation. There'd be no tables, there'd be no PowerPoints. It might actually even be over an extended lunch where people can actually kind of toss up. What they think ought to be discussed. And here's always the part that surprises me, Kyla, at the end of the day when this conversation takes place, the actual ask was quite different from where we landed. It means that perceptions of leaders are quite different from what the CEO or the sponsor might think so to be. So with that, we actually or I go to craft out what might be a useful day spent together with key people in the organization as to what we might need to attend to. And then we play with the magical timelines and we play with basically the priorities as a strategy. We unpack that a little bit and we get that going in a gamification manner through facilitation. And we actually build, when the 200 people come in a room, 150 or 200 people come in a room. There are a lot of these models that you can use and approaches where you let people go to tables they'd like to get to that's relevant to them, and they talk about what they can do, what they have done, and it's magical when that happens. At the end of the day, it is an action planning session. I mean, the term action planning is quite well known, but people actually are capable of deciding what they would like to be doing in the next few months if only we gave them the chance.
Kyla Cofer:Absolutely. And, and sometimes we forget that, right? We think that people need us to just tell them everything, but, but they don't need that. We need to give people the opportunity to create those things on their own, and then they excel at a greater rate.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Totally. And it goes back to the fundamental premise. I mean, we look at the leaves and values. I mean, it's, it's always being called out now, right? The, the issue is, There's a lot of leadership ideals around authenticity, compassion, love. Yeah. All that's good stuff. But, but actually in doing this work what I would suggest to, to colleagues and, and people I get the privilege to work with is, are you capable of respect? And if you are capable of respect, you would hold yourself back and just allow people to kind of, Surface what they think is important and not try to correct that or dumb that down. And then when you allow people to do that, it's fundamental, right? You actually have people who actually step forward to say that or most of them will look, I can actually do this if I had this and that I could do this. And then that relatability of that to where the organization is heading is actually just a hookup. And that's what I do right now. In doing so, if you can and will demonstrate and practice respect, don't do unto others what you don't expect done to you, right? Then you would be someone who would be as a leader, practicing empathy, which is an amazing ask these days, I mean, Leadership is influenced, and I cannot see influence without empathy. It's no longer, there are some organizations that simply try from the hierarchical, dumb down. But and command and control works there. But for the most organizations I have come into contact with, that's not gonna happen for them. So with empathy, you then get leaders who hone their practice of humility. I mean, basically that becomes observable, right? If I'm boarded enough to f. To kind of work with you and moderate and seek balance, and I thought, you know, balance is such an important point here. Where is the balance between an interaction? Then the issue must be that I actually am respectful of you and I would respect you and I would expect you to respect me so, I would actually lower the bar from authenticity to simply humility. I, I don't have to necessarily show my full and true self at work, but I certainly wanna show a good right self and that is probably underpinned by respect.
Kyla Cofer:And what's fun about all those is that they can be taught. It's not like you either either have respect or you don't, or you have empathy or you don't. Those are actually skills that can be taught and we forget that. I think we forget, oh, well, if that person doesn't know it, then we'll just throw them out with, you know, they just don't get to deserve to be here. But, you know, we can teach empathy and we can also model it.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Oh, totally. And, and here we go. Right? Most people, the, the starting point for respect is not at work. It's at home. And so basically if you've been brought up decently enough, which most of us do have been, you know what I mean, like, you know much, as much as we watch a lot of TV shows on where the world goes wrong, actually. It's a lot of right and good in the world. And so basically most of us are capable of that respect, and I don't think that is too difficult. Starting state for most people in organizations. I'm actually working with an organization, a wonderful organization that actually has respect as its core value. And I said, wow, I will work with you because we can actually work on that and it's really fundamental, so, so I like to see respect show up a little bit more, and it actually would probably be the backbone of self-awareness and self-management and self-control and all those other concepts that we'd love to bendy around. So respect is really important these days, in my opinion. Kyla.
Kyla Cofer:Yeah, I, I think we kind of got off on our timeline here cuz you were telling about your, your history and your career and when you were working with those big groups of people. But now what you do is you're, you're not doing that as much anymore, but you're doing the consulting and you're helping people. Tell me about a little bit ex exactly what you're doing right now, because I think all of those things play into that and then we can, we've got some really good lessons and some tips and tools that are gonna really help our listeners.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Totally. When I, when I stepped out of the government this was like six years ago, I started doing pretty much what I was doing, but without any structure. So I'm not internal. I'm an external consultant now and then, and the kind of first pieces of work was pretty much what I used to do in government. And basically I learned some important lessons there. Two, first two, three years. It was very, very hectic and heady stuff. You know, you'd do like workshops, get people to talk, you'd do a baseline leadership training to get people to work together and all that's fun stuff. But these days what I do is I actually work with organizations that wanna transform and change and. We because we are a team of associates with a consulting firm that I've set up as we spoke, and I'm just so happy that it's actually got picked up as one of the top firms in Asia, you know quite independently out of after six years of work. So we have three consultants locally and we have about four associates overseas, and we have a small tech team at a bank. And what we do is we specialize in helping middle managers change. We think that that's a huge untapped area. You know, Kyla, in any organization, you have like one or 2% of top manage leaders in positions, and everyone underneath of that in the organization chart down to the supervisors that we have, say maybe 30 or 40% of the organization are middle managers. They're, they're in the middle. It's the bottom and the middle. And we specialize in kind of helping them more change more confidently depending on whether it's a change project or it's working across. And we guarantee success for 75% of them within six to eight months. That's a big call. It's really a big call, but we don't do it by whipping them into shape. We actually kind of nudge them into spaces that they need to get to based on where their success might be. And so it's very bespoke work. If you say passion, it's, it's simply, I mean, there is a intrinsic value in this work. It's just amazing to see how many people actually realize that they can shift and they come back and tell you. Wow, thank you. There was just one thing you said in that session that actually helped me. So I believe that the reset switch is in all of us and we actually don't need to get upset. It's, it's a play of words. Just find that reset switch at work, right? Because the people at work are not choice relationships. The people at work are necessary relationships. They are professional relationships, they are team relationships. I don't wanna fall in love with you at work. I mean, I, I, I, I would decide what I do at home with that, you know, and those are choice relationships, our family and yeah, your family, your siblings. Your best friends, your, your fishing buddies, your vacation pals. Those are choice relationships. Hey, I want to show more of myself. I need to be authentic in those relationships because that is the ask. But at work, I don't need to do that. I could do that, but I mean, if you're tuned towards love and compassion, all well and good, but for the rest of us, we just need to reset ourselves. Kind of tick the static out, you know, in tech language ourselves a little bit, so that we can be a little more chirpy and receptive and relatable and, and work a little better. And that's what we specialize in doing. We actually ask people to reset themselves and get them to do it.
Kyla Cofer:So how do you encourage and motivate people to do that in a compassionate way? Like, I mean, I don't know how I would take it if you came up to me and said you need to change. You know, I, I probably wouldn't respond well to that. So when you're seeing that someone does need to make some changes and you're wanting to encourage those in that, how do you approach that and then what's the next step after that? I mean, okay, yeah, I can tell someone they need a change, but how do I support that?
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:I'm glad you asked that question. Most people don't wanna change. I don't wanna change.
Kyla Cofer:I definitely don't want to change.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Most mornings I d I have the same breakfast, you know, I mean, I, I will not change I, I don't like my car parked in another area. You know, I just will not change At lunch, I just like to eat the same thing, and when I go away for vacations, I must have my own coffee. So I don't like to change. So the approach is not, you need to change. The approach is you can be successful. Are you willing to, and you know what? Most of us at work want to be successful, just like most of us at home want to be happy. So if you are unhappy at work, yeah, it's probably because you're unhappy at home. But if you're not successful at work, you probably could press that reset button. So what is the reset?
Kyla Cofer:Wow. Yeah. And you know, we talked about this, about wanting to be happy and that we, we not only deserve it, but we are allowed happiness and we are allowed success. Like, like we are allowed to have that in our lives.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Don't, don't caught misery. I mean, what is this? You know, I mean, seriously, and you know, in Singapore it's really, really very surprising to me that we are actually showing mental health statistics. I, I think it's just, it's terrible. We are actually saying that people need mental health help. They need all kinds of workshops, and they need to, like, they need to be watched. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. Okay. Stress never killed anyone. It would make you sick, but it never killed anyone. I mean, at least for my background, I've come out of that, you know and I've been nurtured that way. It's just are you happy? You know? Happy enough, and, and, and the sources of that cannot be work. The triggers for your unhappiness might be work, but the source of that is in your personal relationships at home. And actually, there's no such thing as a work-life balance to me. It's basically your life is not in balance, so work becomes a problem.
Kyla Cofer:So I started this podcast because I wanted to learn and grow in my leadership journey, and I have been so incredibly inspired by the guests and the conversations, and especially recently with this college tour, I've really learned so much. So once the interview ends, I actually keep the conversation going because I have found that sometimes the richest part of the conversation is when we feel like the interviews over and we can just kind of have a relaxed, more casual conversation. Also, if you've noticed, if you've been following this podcast for some time, I used to ask every guest two questions. What does Integrity mean to them and what does balance look like to them? Well, I haven't stopped asking those questions. We're just putting those over on our Paton page, so go check it out at patreon.com/leadership school, and for $6 and 50 cents a month, you can support this podcast. It takes a lot to produce every single episode, and honestly, I could use a little bit of support. So anything that you're able to contribute would really mean a lot to me and would able to help me to continue to bring these high caliber guests in to have conversations on what does it look like to be an extraordinary leader, and how do we practically do that. So those conversations are continuing over at patreon.com/leadership school where I'm asking guests some extra questions, some bonus questions, and you'll get some bonus content over there. So be sure to go check it out. Thanks so much for your support and thanks for so much for subscribing, listening and sharing this podcast. It really does mean a lot, and I'm so honored to show up here in your podcast feed. Oh yeah. Yeah. And we were definitely gonna talk about that too, that if you're not, if you're not balanced, then there's problems. There's gonna be a problem somewhere. You know, it's interesting to hear you say some of that though, because I do believe that we do need mental health support. You said stress never killed anybody, but as a burnout specialist, I know that the stress can actually kill you. Because it does build up and build up.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:I'm sorry to hear that.
Kyla Cofer:But if you find ways to get out of it, then you can heal and recover from that. And if thankfully you've had a lot of training in how to like mitigate that stress. And so for those of us who don't have that, it sounds like what you're doing is you're trying to bring that kind of training into people so that they don't have that type of stress at work and they don't have this angst or this misery in all parts of their lives that they can learn that they do have some control over their situation. And I love how you reframed this. Well, I'm not telling you to change. I'm asking if you wanna be successful. And yeah, it's just shifting our perspective to say, if we wanna be successful, we're here to support you and we want you to be successful. And especially at work, I mean, we want the company to be successful. We want our goals to be successful and to do that our people have to be successful.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:I'm a living example of that. I'm the only reason I'm successful is because I'm happy.
Kyla Cofer:Wow. I would actually ask them, what's your version of success? Like, definition of success. Because being happy could just be that, that is, you're successful because you're happy. Like success, happiness is your success, but that definition might be different for different people. So trying to give that idea of let's, let's create success through wellbeing is really beautiful. It's something I'm a huge proponent of.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:You, you're really pushing me on this one. I love this. Okay, so basically the way I see it, I, I have yet to meet a successful person who is not happy. Wow. They, they probably tell you that they're unhappy about a few things, but when you dig it and dig it and dig it down, oh yeah, that gives me great happiness. You know, that's my, my sabbatical every year is that there are signs of happiness in successful people, but I have often met people who are unsuccessful, who are unhappy. So as we coach, we dig into the whole person and, and when you get to understand the whole person, you'll find the sources of tension and deeper stress. Not they don't lie at work, but they're triggered by work. So I always say these to the people I coach. You don't have to pay for too many coaching sessions and your organization does not have to send you for coaching because if you decided to settle down with someone, your best investment is to turn that person into your life coach. And that person is your partner, your spouse, your your best friend, whoever that person might be, you know? And that's the source of happiness for most people. Kyla, for most people. It's simply the cavemen who actually left out to go hunt. The, the hunting packs were never the best pals. They, they, they just went out to hunt. They brought food back into the cave and then nightfall, and they felt safe, and, and they were in there. They felt safe. The other occupants in the cave felt safe. They were making a choice as to which cave do this is. This is our DNA. Humankind has always been about feeling safe, feeling warm, feeling comfortable, feeling happy. So if you, if you're not experiencing that in life, then please don't go to work and demand that your leaders do better. I mean, seriously. Okay, so I'm holding the view, and it's quite an extreme view that everyone in the organization is already a leader. Actually, I'm. I just wanted to share this little story. I was coaching someone yesterday, and so we are running this program for a client and he said, I actually want to give you some feedback. We've had two out of eight workshops on next six months, and they're full day workshops and they're to train middle managers to be adaptive leaders. And I said, I actually nearly walked out of the room. When you sit in the very first workshop, all of you are middle managers. I took offense at that. I am not a middle manager. I actually lead a powerful team. So I was gonna walk out of the room and I was texting people and someone said to me, just stay there. Don't do anything stupid. And after the session, I went to consult with someone who had actually attended one of your workshops before a year ago. And he said to me, I just need you to hang in there. It will all become clearer. And then in the second workshop he said, and then there was this. Okay, I get it. And so my boss speaks to me after the second workshop, quite accidentally, you know, we are talking about something and says, so you're attending Karuna's workshop And said, yes. How do you rate it? I mean, this is the client, right? And, and said, well, I give it a three out of 10. In the first workshop I was pretty distressed and angry, and I give it a seven out of 10 the second workshop. I say, what did he do to take you from three to seven? And this person says, I don't know, but it just happened. Okay, Kyla, that's the reset.
Kyla Cofer:Resetting their, resetting their perspective.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:I am not pressing your buttons. I shouldn't, I, I, that will be disrespectful of me to try to influence when manipulate and change. That's not what we do. We just show you that this is where your button might be and is it worth pressing? Because you might really be foregoing the chance to be successful, whatever that means. So extrinsic motivation, earn more money, get that promotion, get it advance, cut down your working hours, whatever that is. So that you can bring all that back home and become happier. It is just simple logic and it works for most people because we don't really love what we do. We try our best to love our job and all that, but that comes a little later. So at 59, I love what I do. I mean, I'm making my choices right, but I can tell you at 38, I had to feed the family just like most middle managers do. And it's, I, I've really empathize with them. So we have a right to be successful. Do you want to change? And we'll help you get there because change, Kyla, you know this better than me, is so difficult for all of us. It really is. Let's not spend time setting five life goals. You know? I mean, come on, just change the one thing that's gonna reset you.
Kyla Cofer:Oh, that's so funny. I remember like New Year's resolutions. That's my favorite example. I don't know what you do in Singapore, but here we have New Year's resolutions and, but my favorite is seeing people who are like, I'm gonna do these 35 things this year. And I'm going, you're not gonna do a single one of those. Pick one to be successful. Like, especially if you're trying to do something different than your norm, than your normal, you need to like really give that one thing a lot of attention because goals, you can't one thing do all your goals at once, like, Do one. And as soon as you get that one mastered, then you can start thinking about the next one and approach and, and move forward. And now I say this, but I don't, if you wanted to do a deep dive into my life, I don't know if I'm living it perfectly out. I probably have 17 goals happening right now, but we're working towards them.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:I and only I can judge my life. I, I'm not gonna allow anyone else to do that. And like I said, that's the joy of misery these days. Kyla, I look back at all the people who annoyed me through life and I just wanna reach out and thank most of them. I said that if not for that provocation, they were actually setting my reset for me. I said, I'm not gonna take this something you said earlier. I can be a better version of myself at work. Because I can be successful and that success will get me somewhere back home, whatever the conception of home is. So I no longer judge people who actually buy big cars, rich, you know, live in big houses. I mean, that's their call. I mean, just let them be. But have they earned a right to do that? Yes, they are successful people and that's fine. I mean, enough said. So everyone is beautifully different and everyone's worthy of respect. But the starting point for that has to be whether you respect yourself better, to kind of think about how you could be more successful and what that might mean for you a and if that simply means working in an NGO and living off attached heart and all that's all, well, that's fine. That's you. So that's really where this balance between happiness and success is. And it, it kind of, it's like where you see yourself, why you see yourself there, what exactly are your choices that you might need to consider? So we kind of, we don't change people, we don't tell them they need to change. Okay. Then the question becomes, okay, tell me how do I do this? And then as behavioral consultants, what we do is, or what I do is I, I find an appropriate little data set for them. It's called like a, might be a Myer's Briggs or a file or something, you know, like strengths finder or something. And you kind of say, Hey, look at this data. You know, I mean, okay, what might I do you really wanna do something about this? I mean, are you interested in the space that you're working? And that's what a lot of consultants do anyway. And then they talk and they coach right through. So, so it comes with that. You find your reset, please. I, I don't know where that is in you, but it's there somewhere. That's the time. Self-awareness.
Kyla Cofer:Self-awareness. You know, it's so interesting cause I got, I got on this call really excited about hearing your methods. We're gonna talk about the 2 51, I wanna make sure we get to that here in a second. But some of the transformation things the things that you learned in your career as a military. Talk about failure cuz I, I know that you had your share of them, but. It's so fun to hear that we can talk about these tools and advice all day long, but it just really comes down to that, like, who are you and who do you want to be? Are you being that person? And if not, then you're responsible for doing something about that if you want, and we're just gonna support you along the way. And, and, and that's what's fun about leadership, is I'm not telling you how to be, I am leading you to where you wanna go.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Totally. I resonate totally with that. As we get into a certain stage in life, that becomes a little easier for us to reflect than to actually think about where, where we've, where we've been and how we've arrived and is this where we want to be. But I'm actually empathizing with people in their thirties right now because it, it's become a lot harsher for them. It's not a generational thing, it's simply the environment has become a lot more tense. It's come a little brutal at times. Uncertain, and, and those pathways that might have worked for us will not probably work for them and, and we need to actually download this collective wisdom and help as many people as we need to help. But you cannot dictate the direction for them. They need to let that emerge and decide, and its choices and commitment. So you're right. I mean, there are many good ideas out there as to how you actually kind of deal with this. So let's take an example that we discussed. It's a pre-talk. I mean, I, I am tuned to waking up at four 30 in the morning. I up, I mean, up, up to a few years ago would actually run three times a week at five 30 in the morning for an hour. The reason I was able to do that was because as a 19 or 20 year old, this was kind of indoctrinated in me as part of a habit that formed and I need to start the morning with. And I think you'll speak to anyone in the United States who's gone through a military service. He'll tell you, we need to do pt, right? So let's do pt. So today, when I work with someone like that, Go for a run and, and this person will immediately say, Hey, I can do that. And when you run, think about this. So that's one intervention. Right? But if I said that to you, Kyla, not that I don't think you're capable of it, you might say, you know, I'm not a morning person. My engine starts up a pretty late, go for a coffee. You know, go for a long walk. And we find every conceivable opportunity to actually help people to realize that they can think a bit more about themselves. And I actually had someone argue with me on this in her workshop, and I actually asked her how long you spend in the shower? And she said, half an hour. I say, well spend another 30 minutes, half an hour shower, you'll actually figure this out. So find your reset switch. And think about how you can be more successful and why it's worth it. It will not make you necessarily happy at work, but I guarantee you it will find some part of that would transact and find its way into your happiness quotient at home.
Kyla Cofer:We keep talking about this like personal development part, which is extremely important to me anyways. And then I thought, well, but people really want like practical stuff. But then I realized you spent an entire year, an entire year working just on personal development as part of your training for the military, and I thought, This matters, this stuff, this conversation, these things, they matter. The tips, the tools, the tests, the Myer Briggs, the Strike Spider, all that stuff. They might be helping you along the way, but this caring about how you show up really truly matters. And that's why we talk about it so much here at on my podcast.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Oh, totally. And it goes back to respect, right?
Kyla Cofer:Yes, yes. Absolutely. Well, okay, let's, let's switch, let's make sure we tell me what is 2 51. It's a storytelling method that UNICEF picked up and is still using that you came up with or your team came up with and, and, and what is it?
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:How this started is we were out at sea and I was in a leadership center. And I actually brought a small team up to look at young officers who actually were in training and, and out in the sea, and they had to share their experiences and they were simply terrified by the rank in the room. And people actually stood, I mean, in the context of organizations, people don't speak up. And, and the psychological safety aside. Basically when the hierarchy order is very visible, people hold back. I mean, we do that. We don't share our thoughts with our parents, you know, I mean, we hold that back. So it's, it's just a basic human condition. But what they had experienced would be very important. And so they were busy writing they were writing perfect, near perfect scripts and speeches as to what they were gonna share. And it was all cognitive Kyla. And I said, well, stop it. All right. Why don't you just talk about what you feared most. And they said, huh, what do I fear most? And I said, and I didn't tell them that. But psychology kind of resonates with, we always think of the bad things. We hardly think of the good things first, right? We always think of, oh my God, oh my God, this is gonna happen for most of us, right? Well do, if I did this and oh my God, that happened and all that. So why don't you talk about what you are most fearful about? So for example, you know, last week I was actually in this, in this project and I just feared that I would wake up one morning and not be able to think through it and, and basically I've been caught off guard. So that's a fear that I would carry. And then I would say then with that fear, how might that have translated into something that you should be concerned about? So let's just pack, unpack that a little bit with that fear. I remember that. Oh, I thought that, oh, I'm thinking that I should be looking simply at this one point and watching that today and checking in with Tom or Dick or Harry to just confirm that. And then, you know but actually when I think of Tom, Dick, or Harry, I'm particularly unimpressed with Harry because he actually pisses me off each time. It's his style of working. So, Hey Harry, I just wanna tell Harry that you piss me off. You and I don't work the same way. But I'm just gonna hold it back. But I just wanna tell you the impact you might have on me is I might get angry with you and please forgive me, right? But Harry, can you actually tell me what are you are exactly doing? And that's the frustration that I would like to bring up and surface out rather than to keep it bottled in me. And then Harry and I might decide that this is the one thing we must remember as we discuss these things. And Harry might actually, or I might tell Harry in the form of a story, I don't wanna make the same mistake again like I did two years ago. It caught me off guard. So that's really worrying me. Harry, please take that in. And finally, I would like to say I actually visualize us doing really well in this program. Now, how does the 2 51 work? The two is actually an introduction. Hi, my name is Karuna and you know, I've been in the Navy for 19 years. So for some people are total strangers. The two is really important. I would like to share with you my, that's the second part of the two after the introduction. First part of the two is me introducing myself very briefly. I'm Karuna, who I am and why you, what you need to know about me. And then the second part of the two is I actually wanna share with you what I encountered last week or on the subway, on the train, or while I was driving to work. And then the five relate to the five fingers. So the little finger is the most vulnerable finger, least bone in the hand, and basically that should stand for fear. If I, if I actually got hurt, my little finger would be actually very pained. My ring finger is my concern. I am concerned about something. This is where I choose to wear my ring. My middle finger is my frustration, and let's not kid ourselves. We are frustrated with something nearly all the time. Why don't we just bring that up and let people understand that so that people can, oh yeah, that's really pissing him off. I need to make sure that I don't trigger him. And then when we discuss this, I would like to say particularly as a leader, there's one thing that I would like to remember in this work and this project, and I don't wanna have to like worry about this because if we did this well and we worked all these areas, we might actually end up well. So it's the use of the five fingers to remind ourselves that that typically, for most people, a few of these states, Emotional states that actually affect how we interact at work and in our projects. Now, the big deal about the 2 51 and the little one at the end of it, Kyla, is simply as in all storytelling forms to kind of remind ourselves what the key message is in the story. And actually when you use that for indexing in terms of how you bring the narrative or the story into a system, that one becomes very important for taxonomy and tagging. So we actually do that in some of the KM work that we do. The 2 51 is possibly done in three minutes or less. Actually, when we've run this with thousands of people in our work, most people don't need three minutes to share an experience. They take one minute and 45 seconds. Isn't that amazing?
Kyla Cofer:That really is amazing. I would expect people to kind of go on and on and on.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:No. When you give them something to hold onto their fingers, I've actually seen them play the guitar. You know, like, okay, let me start my fear. Some people say, look, I'm I, I don't wanna discuss my fears. I just want to bring out my frustration. I say, fine, go ahead. You don't have to work all five. But as a leader, you don't want to caught misery. So make sure you leave people in a place of visual joy. Let's all work towards this. This is for cardinal to leadership, right? But you need to understand that what might be irking, you might be a little deeper, and that sharing that fear, okay? The term that is used as vulnerability, it actually shows some degree of vulnerability, especially when you can relate to what your fears are. And, and most people say, yeah, you know what, I hear you. You know, I mean it's really, yeah. Yeah, me too. Can we sit down to discuss this? And it's amazing just how story forms actually, and this has been from ancient times, I mean, We would actually resonate with story better than we would PowerPoint. So that's exactly where this is. So that's 2 51, right? And and busy Singapore, what we do is we tell people to get their headphones off and their eyes away from TikTok and spend a little bit of that train commute time to actually build a story. So we actually do this for leaders in presentations. We actually say, when you have to communicate a strategy, why don't you start with a story and end with a story? And I, I think you've seen the, the late Steve Jobs duties really well. There's a couple of them are really. Good storytellers.
Kyla Cofer:Yeah. Yeah. The story changes us when we can interact and engage with a story. We feel the message and we feel the lesson and we remember it better, so, well, that's a great tool, 2 51, and gives people something to focus on so that they, they know what they're, yeah. Expected of what they're required of. That's great. Oh, totally. Karuna. Is there anything else that I, I mean, we've talked kind of about a wide variety of different things, but I'm curious if there's maybe one thing that you hope someone starts doing as a result of what we've talked about.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:Oh, yes. I, I get asked this question, who's the leader that you admire most as a leadership consultant coach? And I think sometimes my answer surprises people and I would like this to go out when I get asked this question. I say, it's my wife and, and, oh, your wife? And I said, yeah. I've spent some time tracing my background and so, you know, I've only recently started thinking about how difficult it must have been for her to have made that choice to stop work and stay at home and look after the children so I could enjoy the seven seas and spend 11 years at sea and those choices. And you must have been hard choice for someone who actually had a full life ahead of her and she made that choice and the commitment to do this. So today, she's my life coach, has been said, and I've said it's quite unbe. I will only listen to one person. I mean, it's basically that. And that to get to that stage, you actually have a chance of being a real mentor to someone out there. And so instead of being upset, press the reset button and get back home and enjoy all that joy and bring all that happiness to each other. Because at the end of the day, they are real leaders at home. We really need to be leaders at home and, and, and before we even start to tackle how to transport. So, so I'd like to, it's a shout out to everyone out there. There that you are already a leader. It's just that you can, and make this happen for you. And, and that's really a, that's for all of us and is really, is really accelerating to think of it that way. Everyone a leader, we all are. That's what I wanna say.
Kyla Cofer:Karuna, thank you so much for this really fun conversation and telling us about your story and just, I love the story and just your experience, expertise. It's been really valuable and I'm really grateful. Thank you.
Dr. Karuna Ramanathan:It's been a real pleasure being with you on the show and, and I will make the commitment for anyone who wants to reach out, you know, they can reach out to me. I might take a few days responding back, but you can reach me at Karuna@krk.sg I'll happy to take any questions. Thank you, Kyla.
Kyla Cofer:Awesome. Thank you. Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you've liked what you heard and you want some more tools and resources to help you on your journey, go check out kyla cofer.com/free stuff.