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Welcome to the show, where we expose new perspectives on our ever evolving world through the lenses of various industries, cultures and backgrounds.
Our guests are disruptors, united by a common goal to bring their purpose to life.
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Whether they’re from the commercial world or third sector, from the Global North or the Global South, expect an inspirational journey that will transform your perspective on just what is possible.
My name is Philippa White and welcome to Thai Unearthed.
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There are conversations that land exactly when you need them, even if they don’t make it into the world quite when you plant.
Welcome to episode 112 of Thai Unearthed.
Now, this was recorded earlier this year.
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And then, well, life threw me a bit of a curveball shortly afterwards.
So while this conversation sat quietly in the wings waiting, its message only became more relevant.
Because this is an episode about purpose.
Like real purpose.
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The kind that steadies you when the ground moves, the kind that gives energy when everything else feels like it’s draining it, and the kind that leaders desperately need right now.
My guest is the brilliant Nicola Pai, Leadership Coach People person, former EY Global Talent Director, and someone who has spoken to over 40 purposeful leaders across sectors, continents, and pressures to understand what makes purpose work inside organizations.
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Now, before we dive in, I want to invite you to sit with a few questions.
What gives you energy and what quietly steals it when things get messy, chaotic, or uncertain?
What anchors you?
And as a leader, are you building purpose intentionally or perhaps hoping it appears on its own?
2:03
In this episode, Nicola and I explore what purposeful leadership looks like in practice and how leaders build purpose step by step, how they sustain their energy and what happens when teams aren’t aligned, and why stepping outside your comfort zone is no longer optional if you want to lead with clarity and courage.
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It’s practical, it’s grounded, and it’s full of insight that will stay with you long after you finish listening.
So let’s dive in.
Nicola, thank you so much for joining me today on Thai Unearthed.
2:37
How are you?
I am good.
Thank you, Philippa.
Thank you so much for having me on the podcast.
Oh, I’m really excited for this conversation and our listeners will find out why shortly and we will get there.
But before I even get to any of the questions, where are you sitting today?
2:53
I am sitting in Tunbridge Wells, which is in Kent, just outside of London in the United Kingdom.
Yeah, I love Tunbridge Wells.
I spoke to Sally Henderson a few casts ago and I was remembering my time skating pre Christmas.
3:09
Such a beautiful city.
It’s really really pretty and where the exact point I am at is this little bit of best of both worlds.
Nice and close to the town, nice and close to the shops, but also this like absolutely stunning part.
Oh, that’s so nice.
3:25
Yeah.
I mean, literally, the architecture, the scenery, the nature.
It’s amazing.
So, Nicola, tell us a little bit about you.
We will obviously to get to all of the incredible work that you’re doing and the work that you have done and what’s brought you to what you’re doing now, but it would just be great to understand your story and just who you are.
3:44
Yes, of course.
So I am an identical twin, which is a big part of my story and she, my sister Katie will probably feature a few times in some of the things we talk about.
I think that set the tone for who I am in my heart, which is very much a family orientated person.
4:03
I live with my husband and my my daughter.
She’s 13.
She thinks that she’s 30.
We have ongoing battles about makeup and skirt lengths and all those sorts of things, but she’s also the light of my life.
I am also very much a nature person.
4:21
I think I’m a bit of a kind of contradiction.
I love being with people.
I love socializing.
I love my own time.
I love reading books.
I love being out in nature and, and walking and I think I’m quite a sort of reflective person, quite considered person that’s kind of who I am in my heart and, and who I am as a person.
4:43
Perhaps a little bit more about me professionally was at EY for 22 years.
So in essence, that was kind of my first professional job.
And ironically, given that I was there for 22 years, I really did go there with the sort of thought that I’ll get a year on my CV, kind of step towards doing something that I really want to be doing.
5:03
As opposed to this like slightly bizarre role which is training accountants in how to do finance.
So how to build, how to kind of do all the things they needed to be doing with Ey’s clients had kind of come to that role with a sense of of trying to discover who I was.
5:20
Throughout my teens and into my early 20s, I’d had a condition called chronic fatigue syndrome.
And so I’d missed some of the formative, like really establishing what my identity looked like and what I wanted it to be.
It was like kind of a chance.
Oh, I think I could do this job at EY.
5:37
Almost kind of prepared myself.
I wouldn’t get it because it was this big kind of corporate firm and I didn’t really particularly have the right experience.
I still to this day cannot understand why they have tired and non accountant.
As somebody who’s not even that good at maths, I’ll be honest to train these accountants on how to do finance better.
5:56
But I’m so glad that they did.
So that that early part of my 20s was a point at which I sort of really got my health back on track.
And I think a lot of that was because I was enjoying what I was doing so much.
I was enjoying working collaboratively with people.
I was enjoying working with these really quite impressive leaders.
6:14
I don’t think I’d really been exposed in the sort of ad hoc jobs I’d done prior to at that point.
I’ve been exposed to kind of leadership as a real skill, found it fascinating.
And I’m not sure I kind of realized that was the bit that I was finding fascinating at the time, but looking back, I can see it was.
So I started this, yeah, slightly bizarre role, as I say, thinking a year on my CV, then I’ll step into something that perhaps feels a little bit more like the, the kind of learning and development type roles that I thought would really interest me.
6:42
And I just found that over time, I just kept finding myself in new experiences.
Why?
Why I was amazing at giving different opportunities and I kind of put my hand up for anything that I was offered, really anything that I thought I could have an impact on.
6:59
So I sort of had this kind of slightly meandering career.
And then I, I did eventually find myself probably 6-7 years later in a learning and development role.
And that’s when I sort of started to feel like that first sense of purpose.
I knew that there was something I had that could just help people be better at whatever it was almost like up into the best version of themselves.
7:24
Around the same sort of time I it was when I was having my daughter.
And so kind of took some of that for granted and focused on what for me was a quite a miserable pregnancy and got through all of that, Came back to EY with an amazing opportunity, got promoted whilst I was was EY to senior manager and came back and was responsible for leading our student boarding program.
7:46
So that’s about 800 graduates, some school leavers every year coming into the business.
This was just for the UK and seeing the world, seeing even the business through these fresh eyes, through these like super talented, super intelligent young people was really grounding and an incredible experience.
8:06
I did a few different roles.
I started to work more closely with one particular part of the business, EY, our strategy and transactions business.
And I think that’s where my first little glimmer of kind of entrepreneurial spirits started to, to shine through.
That’s what I loved with work, that team and that part of the business that yes, we were part of something huge.
8:25
We were part of this massive organization, but all of the leaders seemed to kind of have this entrepreneurial spirit within them.
That moved on to another role, which was the global talent director role, which I took on in November 2019.
Had these visions of travelling the world, finding, finding out about new cultures, you know all of the these amazing jet set ideas I had.
8:50
I managed to get to Madrid and Rome.
Rome, Italy.
Oh God.
So I’ve just taken on this really high pressure global role and I’m doing it from the kind of tiny little box room in my house.
And quite a lot of things changed in my perspective at that time.
9:10
And that was the real turning point.
That was the point when I asked myself, is this really making me happy?
Is this really what I want to be doing?
And and from that, I started to a sequence of events, one of them being my sister Katie, who I’ve mentioned already, but she’s the year of a charity.
9:27
And when, you know, we’re having our Zoom calls because obviously we couldn’t get together face to face having our Zoom calls and like kind of comparing notes.
And she’s making these decisions as to whether or not people might die as a result of decisions she’s making for her organization or whether or not they can continue to run the the services they run for, for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
9:47
And I’m kind of like in these four walls thinking, does my PowerPoint look good enough?
And felt because I was in this global role, felt so far removed from the the kind of frontline of being able to help people.
So it was a little disconnecting moment for me.
And I started to ask myself what would reconnect me and what would really re energize me within my career.
10:06
Start to get a bit more involved in pro bono work with charities, doing a few different things myself, where an EY was amazing because they actively support and encourage us to do that.
And that’s where I found something that I was really passionate about, helping these leaders of charities or social purpose businesses.
10:26
They’re trying to do good stuff.
They’re operating in really complex environments.
And all of that experience I’d had at EY seemed to really help those people to think differently and to be able to kind of move past some of that complexity.
So that was where the idea of setting up my own business this really came from.
10:43
Fast forward a few years, I’ve now been going for about two years as the leadership coach and people person.
And I’ve really tried to target those smaller businesses that wouldn’t have access to resources like me within their own companies or within their own organizations.
10:59
But I’ll come in really for as long as they need me to come in and help either work 1:00 to 1:00 with the leader or help work with the whole leadership team and harness that power of that purpose.
It’s already there, but help them to use their strengths, use the impact that they’re trying to have, and really align as a leadership team to accelerate and to grow their business.
11:22
That’s a great segue to one of my questions because I love this conversation around purpose one.
It’s interesting because you look at it from both sides, right?
So you look at it from the point of view of the business and the business’s purpose and then the individuals and their purpose and how that kind of matches up.
11:40
And within our conversation, understand if you sort of help from both sides, if it’s sort of a bit of a dance, which I’m sure it is, and also it’s somewhat overly used word purpose, but it’s just so important.
There’s lots of different ways that you can understand it as well.
11:55
And so I’m really interested to understand where you’re focusing, but from the point of view of these 40 purposeful leaders that you spoke to across sectors and geographies and different pressures that they were facing.
I’m just really curious, you know, what did you learn about how these leaders build purpose practically in the face of chaos and deadlines and doubt?
12:20
What do these people have in common?
It’s so interesting because when I set out with the research, I kind of targeted people who were in my network and it was very early in my business journey.
So it wasn’t like I could just broadcast and, you know, people would come flooding to want to be interviewed by me.
12:36
So I, I deliberately used people in my network, which meant I had a real wide variety of some of those were commercial businesses, some of those were big businesses, some of those were charities or not-for-profit organisations.
And really the kind of main condition for being interviewed by me was would you describe yourself as a purposeful or a purpose LED leader?
12:55
So I wasn’t sure I expected to find that there was huge amounts that they all had in common, given that they were operating in very different business environments, but they really did.
So I think the first thing that nearly everyone said to me was something along the lines of it’s not a like bulb moment.
13:12
You’re not sort of on this treasure hunt to go and find a purpose that you just, something happened.
You wake up 1 morning and you’re like, ah, that’s it.
I’ve got my purpose clear now.
And they all talked really beautifully around this sense of finding connection to something that matters, finding this sense of what can I do?
13:33
What difference can I make?
They all talked around clarity, clarity around the impact that only I can make.
Because I I understand my strengths.
I understand what lifts me.
I understand what drives me.
And I also understand all of those amazing experiences that I’ve had that bring me to this point.
13:54
And it’s those that are going to really shape what my purpose could be.
It’s so interesting, serene.
I’m just going to capture that because it’s something and when we talk about it, we do these leadership programs and but part of it is, is we really try and get people to just think about what type of leadership do you bring to the table?
14:13
So are you an analyst?
Are you more of a problem solver in getting things done?
Are you more of a dreamer and a visionary?
Are you more of a healer?
And it’s interesting because a lot of this is just stopping and reflecting and many people don’t have the opportunity or even know what to ask or what that is.
14:31
And that’s why this is so, so, so, so important because many times people are just sort of floundering and they’re by default in a role that they’re in because either they got into that through the education system or family pressures, you must be an accountant, whatever it is that they went into.
And then they’re there.
14:47
And then they’re just sort of blindly almost going through the working hierarchy and they find themselves in roles.
And they haven’t really stopped to think about what am I really good at and what do I like?
And they’re kind of easy questions.
But isn’t it interesting that once you actually define those, then comes purpose, then comes what your thing is?
15:07
Because I think it feels really overwhelming for people who haven’t found it right.
Yeah.
And I, I think like certainly my experience of coming from an environment like EY where people are really smart, they have to be able to be smart to kind of be able to do what’s expected of them.
So they know what they’re good at in sort of technical sense.
15:25
They don’t necessarily know what they’re good at.
And to build on that, they don’t know which bits they’re good at that really energize them.
And so they kind of almost don’t give themselves permission to say it’s OK to want to be energized by some of these aspects that I do on a day-to-day basis.
15:41
And I completely agree with you that it can feel really overwhelming.
And I sort of sometimes say to my clients, like, we don’t even have to call it purpose if you don’t want to.
It doesn’t need that title.
It’s absolutely fine to just what drives you, what energizes you, what missions you want to, you know, whatever language they use, I tend to use back with them.
15:59
And when people tell me that they don’t know what it is, I often try to help them see they probably do know what it is.
And one of the things I do when I work 1:00 to 1:00 with clients is we just go back through their history and I try to spot for them times where I’m noticing that kind of real sense of energy and that they, the animated body language and where there’s those dips and we explore kind of, OK, well, those high points, what was going on for you?
16:23
Those low points, what was missing, what wasn’t happening?
And.
It’s so powerful.
It’s so.
Yeah, it people know it.
They’re already stepping towards it.
They just don’t necessarily do that in a conscious or an intentional way.
Exactly.
And intention is the word, and you’ve just said it, and I’m going to grab that as as well because I think I don’t know if enough people are living life with intention.
16:47
And unfortunately, the education system and culture and family pressures, people think of success in terms that isn’t fulfillment.
Success doesn’t equal happiness.
Success doesn’t equal living my life with intention.
17:02
But actually, that’s kind of the question as well, right?
It is then what is success?
Because success is being able to live your life with intention and getting to a place where you’re fulfilled, in my view.
And I think that the more that people can see that, then you get to purpose.
And so it’s flipping it.
17:18
But again, it’s finding new language for business.
Looking back now, I can actually see that I fell into that same trap myself.
The thing that came crashing down around me when when COVID hit and I found myself not doing a global role with all the jet set travel that I’d imagined.
17:35
I think it was a, oh, is this as good as it gets?
Is, you know, and I’d been chasing the title to I had been chasing the, the incredible learning experiences that I thought would come with working with people from all over the world.
And I will give myself that credit, but I, I, I’d also been chasing the the title and that kind of status that would come with getting to global talent director at EY.
17:56
It didn’t make me feel fulfilled.
And I see that in a lot of the people I work with like the more they can be close to their purpose, the more that sense of fulfillment.
It’s just sitting within them.
They’re not chasing it.
It’s just there.
One of the things that also came up, this concept we’ve come up with called the elasticity of purpose that you kind of can stretch towards and stretch away from from purpose at times.
18:20
And you know, to go back to my personal example, I think that’s what happened when I was in the global talent director.
I just got too far away from.
I know when I’m at my best, I know when I’m energized is when I’m round the table with, with a team who I can make a real difference with.
18:37
And they can walk up that room and they can apply some of those things that we’ve talked about.
It doesn’t need a whole new strategy document, document to be written or it doesn’t need six months, 10-9 months, 10 months, wherever of planning.
They can walk up that room and they can make some changes straight away.
And I think that’s the bit that really drifted me away from my purpose.
18:56
Whereas other times and this this concept of elasticity is that then you can intentionally go back towards your purpose and and as you say, back towards fulfillment.
It’s so interesting.
And I, I also just to the point of view of elasticity and I’m curious if you agree with this, but I work with a number of different professionals and we take people out of their comfort zones and into different environments and bridging worlds and sort of broadening perspectives to try and shake people up to see the world outside of the silos that they’re they’re in.
19:27
And you can see people who have got into roles, probably for reasons, you know, they could be strategists or account people or planners, or, you know, they, they’re in that role.
And, and it was considered many people in the creative world, they sort of go into, you know, I love being a creative, you know, but then it’s really interesting how that purpose can evolve as well.
19:45
And I think, you know, it might be that you really loved a certain area and it really speaks to you, But then actually, you start to realize, Oh, you know what?
I, you know, I realized that I like being the one to make the decisions.
I like seeing a process from beginning to end.
I’m feeling that that’s missing.
20:01
And I think it’s really important to just continue those conversations and to have those reflections because like companies as well, you know, you can have a company that focuses on mining, but then over time they realize actually this is for a number of reasons, not completely what we should be doing or it’s not really what we want to be focusing on.
20:20
And actually we can use a lot of our knowledge or, you know, we can evolve what we do and our purpose and our meaning.
In this world can evolve and I think company purposes over time probably do evolve.
It’s slower, of course.
And it’s something you know, it needs to be clear as to what you’re doing and what you’re in business for and what value you add and what you’re, you know, why you do what you do.
20:39
But also as individuals, we have that elasticity as well and giving ourselves permission to evolve.
So I like that you said that.
And for me that that comes back to that word intentional again, like those intentional steps towards what lifts you, you know, what impact you want to have.
20:55
Like you’re learning all the time and that learning is growth.
And that growth means that you can do even more.
You can have even, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you necessarily are having a bigger impact in terms of the society change or whatever you’re trying to have, but you can do more.
21:10
From a business perspective, I’ve really noticed through those interviews that I did and through the work I do, the purposeful businesses, that that’s quite a key accelerator for those businesses that that learning process and the alignment around what do we we really mean by about this purpose?
21:27
Is it the same as what we meant two years ago when we set this purpose?
It’s a real accelerator for the business.
It feels like it gives them much more clarity and that clarity drives the momentum.
And I think that applies for the business and for the individuals within it.
So you mentioned it earlier, but I just wanted to come back to it because I think it’s really important and it’s around how purpose gives that energy.
21:49
I don’t know you would call it flow.
I don’t know what, but it’s an energy and I I feel it in my work for sure.
And it’s not this draining kind of energy.
It’s, it’s this, it’s this energy where you feel alive and you just, your brain is working on so many different levels and, and you’re, you’re producing and you’re inspired.
22:06
I just wonder how the leaders that you speak to, how they sustain that energy over the long term, especially when many times, particularly when you’re working in a purpose LED business, it might be your own business or you’re really connected to whatever the company is doing.
22:23
But in these times particularly, it’s hard, it’s messy, it’s very uncertain, there’s a lot of challenges, and I just wonder what people do to kind of keep that level up.
So in the the latest paper that I’ve done, the DNA of a purposeful leader, we try to unpack that there was a few things that they definitely these leaders definitely had in common.
22:44
The first one was this, this self-awareness.
And I think some some it was a very natural gift that they had to be very self aware.
Others had learned how to do that and because they had that self-awareness, they were doing this kind of constant checking in with themselves and kind of recalibrating with themselves.
23:02
And I think that was one of the ways that they were noticing when the energy was dipping, noticing when the the energy was high.
So I think self-awareness is definitely one part of it.
The other bit that they all had in common that I thought was really powerful was comments like purpose isn’t a solo sport.
23:20
You need others around you.
You need to harness the strength and the the skills of those other people that you’re trying to achieve that purpose with.
And so those leaders, for me, felt like they were really resilient and really sustaining that energy in a very natural way.
23:35
They were the ones that had really got it sussed around, noticing what other people within their team were good at and being able to kind of harness those strengths.
There were some of the leaders that we interviewed that actually talked about not being able to always sustain that energy.
23:53
I kind of described it as like almost them losing a set because they were so passionate, because they were so motivated and driven to, to have that, to do those good things for the world.
It was like they lost a sense for a time of where the off switch was.
Well, that’s interesting.
24:09
And the thing that all of those leaders who had had that experience came back to was like the power of other people.
The the almost like the the moment they realised they didn’t have to carry it all on their shoulders was the the moment they worked out how to have that sustainable energy as opposed to that draining and exhausting use of energy.
24:29
It’s so interesting and I, I just want to capture that as well, because I think again, it comes down to living your life with intention and it can’t just all be about work.
And I think boundaries are just so, so, so important for all of us.
And having very clear things you will and you won’t do and, and looking after yourself and having that self-care because it’s, it’s like on an aeroplane, you put the mask on yourself first before you put it on someone else.
24:56
And I think before you can help anyone else, you have to be in a good place yourself.
And the only way that that’s possible is if you are looking after yourself.
So it’s, I think that that’s really interesting.
We do need to watch our energy levels and we really do need to watch how much we’re giving out and ensuring that we’re filling our cup too.
25:16
And.
One of the things I think has become a slightly overused word, umm, in business at the moment is this kind of concept of setting boundaries.
My observation would be that like if it’s got to the point where you need to set boundaries, you’ve probably let your energy start to get a bit too depleted already.
25:33
I try to think of them as creating terms for success.
What are those things that you need?
What are those things that you know are create the environment where you can thrive?
So you know, for example, for I mentioned to you earlier that I am a people person.
25:48
I love having people around me, but I know one of my terms is I need a loan time as well.
I need time for for reflection and I think helping leaders to get clear what are those terms?
And within terms you’ve got your obviously totally non negotiables and then you’ve got your nice to haves, but both of those feed and sustain the the energy too.
26:09
That is such good advice.
So what happens from your experience inside a leadership team when they’re not aligned on purpose?
And what does that misalignment show up as, and what can be done to reconnect it?
26:25
So quick answer to that, like what does it show up as?
It’s all the things that we know go wrong in teams.
So the finding it hard to make decisions, feeling like decisions get revisited or going round in circles and decisions, those things that feel like there’s just, there’s too much tension.
26:44
I mean, we, we know that a bit of challenge is really healthy.
But when leaders on a leadership team are all coming away sort of almost like feeling like I need to mop their brow every single meeting that they have, that’s another sort of symptom for me.
It’s all those things that that kind of cause things to feel clunky, things to feel difficult.
27:02
And what I think is often A cause of that is people talk about purpose in this like, you know, the 140 characters or the like kind of big lofty statement.
And they don’t take the time to like kind of really unpack what does that mean in terms of the impact we want to have?
27:21
What does that mean in terms of how we are going to show up as leaders?
What are the things that are going to be a consistent experience for for everyone who is being LED in this organization, all of our clients or customers who are experiencing this organization.
27:37
And that takes a bit of time, I think.
And I think often that that’s the thing, thing that gets in the way is leaders feel like they’re too busy to kind of go those few levels deeper.
And so they leave it at this kind of lofty statement that everyone takes away there.
They’re probably broadly pretty similar interpretations, but they’re not exactly the same interpretations.
27:58
The other thing, and this probably is more about the impact across the business as opposed to specifically within that team.
But the other thing I noticed is if leaders aren’t telling the story often enough, particularly if it’s a slightly evolving story, you know, in newer businesses or businesses that are having a bit of a rethink about what they are actually here for, they have to tell the story over and over again.
28:21
And, and kind of doing it once in the again, the big reveal moment probably isn’t enough.
And so I think by not telling that story frequently enough, everyone starts to take subtle different meanings away and starts to kind of almost that own personal purpose can start to kind of run interference a little bit on the the business purpose.
28:45
But by telling those stories, you can, you can actually recalibrate people and you can reconnect to them because there’s no reason why the personal purpose can’t be a truly lived experience, but it has to be harnessed behind that.
OK.
What?
How’s this business purpose really leading us forward?
29:01
So I’ve got a question around tension because I’m a big believer.
So much of what we do is around constraints and, you know, necessity being the mother of invention.
And I and I do think that tension plays a big part in growth and in leadership.
And the purpose papers highlight the tension that purposeful leaders hold.
29:20
And I’m just curious to know your thinking around this.
So resilience and vulnerability, bold vision, commercial reality.
So why is embracing this tension so important for leaders today?
Those tensions I think are they’re the opportunity to really learn in the purpose papers.
29:36
We’re not saying that anyone is born with with these as a kind of natural gift that they have.
First of all, balancing those two.
So something like resilience and vulnerability, they almost sound a little bit contradictory and embracing that, trying to hold both, trying to find where your balance authentically is, that is a learning space I think that that leaders can really operate.
30:00
The other thing I believe about holding those tensions is that’s the opportunity for other people come in.
So when you start to really notice what are those points that are causing you personal attention as a leader?
And what are those things where you’re, you know, you know, you’re strong on the commercial side, but you might not be so strong on the visionary side or you know, that you’re really good on the big picture.
30:22
But Oh my goodness, when you have to get into the detail, you feel like every single bit of energy zapping out of your body.
That’s the space where you can build a team that is totally complementary, different to you, but again aligned around the same same mission, or I aligned about the same purpose.
30:39
And it’s so amazing.
So I, we talk a lot about this as well.
I talked about in my book as well, because I mean, this is the diversity argument, right?
I mean, if you know what you’re good at, that’s fantastic because then you know who else you need to hire.
And then you can continue to be good at what you do and feel excited and in that flow and you can hire people who can do the things that you can’t do.
30:57
And we, we recently pitched for, for a piece of business.
And I mean, that’s why I have the most incredible team with me.
And so we all came together.
And I said just reminding you guys like this particular part of the story, I’m terrible.
This is where you shine.
You’re so amazing.
31:13
And we had this session and then everyone went off and Oh my God, what came back is just extraordinary because they come back with the most unbelievable ideas.
And then I can take that and run with it with the stuff that I can do.
And it’s just, it’s so gratifying when you have a team of people where it’s so clear where you eat shine and you know, know that that’s why you’re part of the team.
31:36
It’s so much fun.
Like I love this kind of stuff.
It’s so great.
And we all feel that.
And I can’t even begin to do what Juliana does and I can’t begin to do what Heather does.
And when you know and have to say, OK, you know, that’s great.
But I think we can’t forget that.
Oh my God, I would never have even seen that.
31:52
That’s amazing.
So it’s it’s extraordinary when you can get that.
But to get that, you have to know what you can’t do.
Yeah, that’s so interesting though.
I just felt your energy from like the other side of the world.
I felt your energy there when you’re just describing that to me.
And that’s, that’s exactly my point, that you tap into that and that’s when you feel really energized and you’re energizing other people because you’re giving them great opportunities as well.
32:15
Yeah, and that’s the thing.
And you sort of hear back and that’s also what just gets me super excited because obviously with our work and the programs we do, it gets me excited.
But when you can work with a team and they’re also doing things that they wouldn’t normally do in the other various things that they do, and to think, Oh my gosh, we we kind of created this together.
32:31
This is amazing.
You know, the world is our oyster.
It’s such a great feeling so back actually, just because so much of what you do compliments so much of what we do.
And of course, that’s why we’re also talking just because I think what I do inspired you and what you’re doing inspires me.
So at Thai Leadership, we expose leaders to new environments and get them, like I mentioned, sort of rewire the way that they see themselves and how they can lead.
32:55
And the way that we do that is taking people out of their silos and bridging these divides and getting them into environments that they would never normally find them themselves in order to inspire them to see themselves in the world differently.
And I’m just curious from your point of view, because obviously you’re such a specialist in this area of purpose.
33:13
I just wonder if you have an opinion about it from your point of view for leaders stepping out of their familiar spaces, Is that interesting to you?
Is that important?
Does it help them find their purpose?
Just I’m curious as to your thoughts around that.
It absolutely does it.
I mean, it’s, it’s one of the things that you’re right, absolutely inspires me about the work you do.
33:31
And I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I like to think was one of the first people that read your book and I read the book and I thought somebody’s talking my exact language.
So that taking them to other environments, taking them outside of the day-to-day.
33:47
I guess in the way that I work with clients, I think of it as like stretching outside a comfort zone.
So I probably do do it in a bit more of a day-to-day, like in the environment that they’re in.
So for example, I was running a leadership team workshop yesterday and I just started with it.
34:03
This is something that I, I want you to all keep asking yourself throughout the day today, what else could be true?
And I sort of just encouraged that team to, to stretch outside comfort zone to operate in a slightly different way.
And I guess the work that you do that is like that point times 100 * 1000 where it’s not just one kind of thing, but one point that’s going to stretch outside a comfort zone.
34:27
So do I believe in it?
Absolutely.
And I think it’s an incredible opportunity that that anyone who has to my personal experience actually came of doing that when I started working with the charities pro bono whilst I was still at EY.
And I, I’m a trustee for a, for a charity that actually facilitates those kind of experiences or called Pilot, like they facilitate those kind of experiences for leaders.
34:50
Because you’ve got this contrast where I’m like, does this work even matter?
Am I even going to make a difference?
And then I go and do my days pro bono work with this particular charity and we work out how to find them another 100 grand so that they can pay some wages the next month.
35:07
I love Pilot Light and I love Ed.
Ed’s actually he, he was really involved in the sort of production of my book and he’s written a review and yeah, he’s a great guy.
And I it’s.
Incredible.
Exactly.
So Pilot Light and TIE, we’re sort of like the international version of Pilot Light.
35:25
Yeah, yeah.
And any of those kind of experiences, I know I cannot like encourage people to do more.
And that point around, like, if you know what you’re good at but you don’t quite know what energizes you, go and have one of those experiences and I guarantee you’ll come back knowing exactly what lifts you.
35:43
Yeah.
Oh, that’s so interesting that you’re a trustee and that you’re working with them.
That’s so great.
So one question that I do have, I talk about this in my book as well, But during, you know, post COVID when, you know, the cost of living crisis and you know, there was a downturn in the market and people were talking about purpose.
36:02
But then there was talk of, OK, well, purpose is going to be shelved because we’re, you know, having a a difficult time in the economy.
And so I think in that kind of context, it’s seen as a marketing tag line.
But then when push comes to shove, purpose gets shelved.
You know, purpose can’t be this surface level statement.
36:20
It needs to be something that really drives performance.
And I just wonder, how do you help leaders, IE companies or even leaders in general, to sort of understand this isn’t just something for the good times and it can be shelved in the bad times.
What’s your thinking around that?
I think that the key thing around purpose is the whole time it’s seen as a nice to have.
36:39
You know, some people even think it’s the kind of fluffy, like the, the, the pretty thing around the edges.
It is going to be easy to cut the whole time that that is the business leaders thinking.
What I try to do is to help leaders.
It’s, it’s a brave conversation to to ask where does this sit in our priorities?
36:59
And by having that conversation around the priorities, like quite a, it’s always quite a ruthless conversation about whether or not the purpose is that the priority right now, it starts to expose where we need to work.
And if those business leaders aren’t fully behind that purpose, I challenge them.
37:18
Is this the purpose of your business?
The other thing I think that sometimes businesses lose sight of is purpose and commerciality, I think are two sides of the same coin.
The more that you can be super clear why you are doing something.
37:34
I mean, and that is to this like the big kind of what is the purpose of our organization?
What is the impact we’re trying to have?
What’s the mission we’re on right down to why are we having this meeting right now?
Begin clear on purpose In my view, when you think of it like that, as something that needs to transcend the whole organization, just this permission to ask why, this permission to be curious.
37:56
That is the accelerator for a business to grow, to get momentum, to have more results.
And that’s the feedback that quite a lot of my clients give that they say some things like we just hadn’t explored why we were doing this.
And when we start to think about is it going to help us step towards that impact that we’re trying to have, We could cut a whole load of stuff.
38:18
You know, we didn’t need to reinvest or stop investing in purpose because we could cut a load of stuff that we shouldn’t have been doing in the 1st place because it didn’t align with our purpose.
Yeah.
And I think, I think the main question I think with all of This is why are you in business?
If it’s not just to make money, which it shouldn’t be, There has to be an actual reason you’re in business, something that you are adding value, what’s your value add?
38:41
And that value add should be the purpose.
That’s what people have signed up to, That’s what they’re bought into.
And if businesses don’t know what that value add is, then you need to start thinking about it because otherwise people aren’t going to be engaged and they’re not going to want to work for you.
That’s so true.
38:57
Some of the time when I’ve spoken with leaders about like, Oh, I don’t know if I know what our purpose is, I would say the people who work for you, do you go ask them why they think this business exists and you will be so pleasantly surprised.
39:13
And I think certainly the younger generations, they’re demanding it, you know, almost, I wonder in five years time, those businesses that are starting to think, oh, maybe we could just move away from purpose.
It’s, you know, times are tough and we haven’t got enough money to do this.
39:28
Well, I, I think they will have retention problems because particularly the younger generations, but actually probably everyone, we’re expecting more from our jobs.
We we know what it feels like to do something that matters, and we’re probably going to demand it more and more.
39:44
Yeah.
Do you have a quote that sums up our conversation or that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Just the incredible untapped power that purpose has.
When you connect energy, when you connect to intentionality, then I think something special happens.
40:02
Yeah, definitely.
Well, listen, Nicola, I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation.
I mean, there’s so many Nuggets in it and takeaways for people that I just hopefully people sort of capture them and they can take them into their day-to-day and reflect on how they’re leading and the things that they’re thinking about and their companies.
40:20
So, so, so many good Nuggets there.
So thank you so much for your time and until next time.
It’s been an absolute pleasure.
I’ve absolutely loved that.
Thank you, Philippa.
Hey everyone, it’s Philippa again.
40:36
I hope you enjoyed listening.
Now if you’d like to dive a little deeper, why don’t you check out my book Return on Humanity Leadership Lessons from all Corners of the world.
It reveals how putting people first is actually the smartest, most competitive business strategy of our time.
40:53
And if you’re ready to breakthrough disengagement, spark innovation, and build agile, purpose driven teams, let’s talk.
Whether it’s workshops off sites, keynotes, or full scale leadership programs, we’ll shift paradigms and create the change you’re looking for.
41:09
Visit philippajwhite.com to learn more or get in touch.
A huge thanks to Benna Vieira for the music and to Pete Morgan for his help with the editing.
Until next time, and I hope we’ll meet again soon.
