Spriha Srivastava is a rarity in the world of journalism— overflowing with experience yet devoid of cynicism. Join us on this week’s Perspectives from the Top as we hear Srivastava’s unique (and uniquely optimistic) view on leadership and more.
Leadership Lessons from a Global Journey (ft. Spriha Srivastava)
Spriha Srivastava on journalism, justice, and kindness
OPENING QUOTE:
“At the end of the day, we are all humans, we all have our personal lives and we bring along those personal lives to work every day. So, for me, it's very important to be respectful and kind towards each other.”
- Spriha Srivastava
GUEST BIO:
Spriha Srivastava is the London bureau chief and the international executive editor for Insider, overseeing 100 journalists across the UK and Singapore in the pursuit of delivering a leading news service covering business, politics, and lifestyle. Prior to joining Insider, Spriha was the deputy digital news editor for CNBC International in London. She’s won a number of awards for her work, including the Iconic Women Creating a Better Tomorrow award from the Women Economic Forum and runner-up for Newcomer of the Year in the Santander Media Awards.
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[7:50] - Melding Cultural Backgrounds
What Spriha’s Indian upbringing has taught her
In India, there are 28 states and over 100 spoken languages as well as practitioners of every major faith. There, diversity and inclusion aren’t just ideals to strive toward— they’re realities of everyday existence. Spriha brought that close connection to diversity with her to the UK, and it has helped inform her entire career. In that respect, she was ahead of the curve in terms of making those principles central to how companies hire, engage with employees, and more.
[14:34] - Employers and Personal Financial Health
A vital role to play
In her interactions with the Financial Times magazine Money Management, Spriha saw firsthand how little many people understand about personal finance. Today, she feels that employers should take a more active interest in the financial wellbeing of their people. After all, people who are financially secure are better equipped to manage their careers, and have more mental space to think creatively about solutions to business problems. It’s a win-win for employers and employees alike.
[20:07] - Lightning-Fast Leadership
Leading in the rapid paced world of journalism
In her first few journalism leadership roles, Spriha learned that you have to encourage your team members to step up and inspire confidence. Advocate for your team and lean into the best of them to help them step up to the next level. You also must advocate for yourself. In fast-paced fields like the world of news and journalism, there’s no time for imposter syndrome. You have to step up and lead.
[29:10] - Coach the Person, Not the Problem
Leading humans with no human interaction
When the pandemic hit, Spriha was reminded of the essential nature of listening to human beings and their needs— not just seeing them as business resources to be applied to problems. She became acutely aware of issues like no childcare, mental health struggles, and isolation. She learned that people can’t be their best when they are in an environment that doesn’t acknowledge and support their unique needs.
[37:07] - Out for a Swim
An important lesson on leading by example
A recent CEO interview revealed a powerful insight to Spriha. A CEO concerned with burnout and long hours from his employee led him to look in the mirror, where he discovered he was setting the tone for long days with his actions— even if he wasn’t encouraging it with his words. He decided to be an example by attending fewer meetings in person and publicly stating when he was out of the office for personal reasons. His example had a powerful positive impact on his people.
[56:05] - Empathy: The Underrated Core of Leadership
On bringing our full selves to work each day
Even if it doesn’t feel directly relevant to our work, we all bring our personalities, the things we love, the things we hate, our fears, our aspirations, and our habits into the office (or Zoom call) every day. On days when those things can feel like a heavy burden, the value of having empathetic people around you at work— both in supervisors and peers— is incalculable. We should all strive to find those people, and be that person for those around us.
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CREDITS:
Spriha Srivastava:
... but, at the end of the day, we are all humans, we all have our personal lives and we bring along those personal lives to work every day. So, for me, it's very important to be respectful and kind towards each other.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to Perspectives from the Top. I am Chris Roebuck, global keynote speaker with unique leadership experience from military, business and government, bestselling author and your guide to greater success. Together, we'll discover powerful insights from the world's leading thinkers, doers and trailblazers, the must-know trends, thought-provoking revelations and practical actions you can use immediately. This is your exclusive and personal shop of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to you and all of our Perspectives of the Top community around the world. It's great to share the insights of such successful people with you to help you get to where you want to be. Our guest today is Spriha Srivastava, the London bureau chief and the international executive editor for Insider, overseeing 100 journalists across the UK and Singapore newsrooms delivering a leading news service covering business, politics and life in general. Prior to joining Insider, Spriha was the deputy digital news editor for CNBC International in London. She helped manage a team of reporters for CNBC.com and regularly wrote and edited market-moving, fast-paced business news stories. Previously, Spriha had worked at the Financial Times, Money Management magazine, covering personal finance, where she won an award for her work, and at Thomson Reuters, where she was one of the moderators for the Global Markets Forum, a 24/7 live forum for traders and market professionals.
Chris Roebuck:
Spriha has won a number of awards for her work. In 2015, she was runner-up in the newcomer of the year category in the Santander Media Awards. In July '20, Spriha won Women Economic Forum's Iconic Women Creating a Better Tomorrow award. In September '20, she was also shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement award in the media category. She's also recently included as one of the top 50 leaders in the UK recognized for kindness in leadership. She has a BA and MA in politics, an MA in journalism and studied business journalism at Wharton.
Chris Roebuck:
Spriha, thank you so much for joining us on Perspectives from the Top to give us your insights. One of the things that our guests love to hear is how you started on this amazing journey where you've achieved so much, and who is it in our guest's past who started this? Who was the catalyst for this? So maybe it's a teacher, a family member, a mentor, a boss. Was there somebody in your distant past who put this gem of an idea in your head as to where you've ended up now?
Spriha Srivastava:
Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me on this podcast. Yeah, that's a great question, and when I sit here and think about it, I feel like there have been not one, but a number of people who have influenced me in life and at various stages of my life. So, to start with, my father noticed my creative skills quite early on. I used to love writing and writing poems and stories, and my dad has a major in history, my mother has a PhD in physics, and I remember how they would often debate whether I would go into sciences or humanities. I'm glad they encouraged me to go into languages and social sciences.
Spriha Srivastava:
So that's how it started on, but then I'm also thinking about a number of women in my family, and now around me, who pushed boundaries and broke these stereotypes relating to women's roles just being limited to house duties, and they had a perfectly well-established rocking career. So, growing up, I would often see them and get inspired to do the same. So they still continue to inspire me and have, unknowingly, played a very, very huge role in my journey, but there's one more person that I want to talk about, and that's my maternal grandfather who is no more now, so God bless his soul, but whenever he would call me ... he was a PhD in physics as well. That's how my mom was a PhD in physics as well. I think physics was what they loved, but whenever my grandfather would call me, he would often ask me to list out my achievements.
Spriha Srivastava:
So he would call me and his first question would be what's your latest achievement? That became an incentive for me. So I would always sort of come up with things to tell him, but a very funny anecdote. I remember when I was getting married, everyone was coming to me to tell me how lucky I was to get married to my husband, who's a true rockstar, by definition, but my grandfather quietly went to my husband and he told him that, while everybody was congratulating me that I was very lucky, it was actually him who was very lucky to find somebody like me. For me, that was the biggest win of all.
Chris Roebuck:
That's a great story. Little bit by little bit, just somebody boosts your confidence step by step, and I think that's a really good lesson for everybody listening that you can do that for anybody that you want to help grow the confidence of, not just within a family, but also at work, just step by step building their confidence in themselves, because we all see people who perhaps have less confidence in themselves than they should have. That's absolutely great.
Chris Roebuck:
So you were born in India and you studied politics, moved into journalism, and one of the things we find really interesting with it, Perspectives from the Top, is that it gives people the opportunity to perhaps understand cultures and other parts of the world that they haven't experienced themselves to broaden their perspectives. From my experience, the cultural life of India in terms of the interaction between people and work, between large businesses and entrepreneurial small businesses and how families tend to stick together more is an interesting cultural difference to, perhaps, Western countries. Now, you've been, obviously, in both, so can you give us a little bit of an insight into that Indian way of thinking and working and how life runs that is different, perhaps, to what we see in Western countries?
Spriha Srivastava:
I'll do my best to answer that question for you, but the cultures are so different and yet very similar in many respects, but there was some differences that were pretty stark to me initially, and then I slowly realized that there are some areas where I could lean on my Indian upbringing, especially as I took on a more senior leadership role. So, to start with, when I came to City University, I felt I was thrown in the deep end. The general expectation from students was that you work towards getting hired. So you go for networking events, you go for coffees, it's on you to get hired, and as someone rightly said to me at City, that you are the CEO of your career. I still have that posted somewhere on my desk.
Spriha Srivastava:
In India, the education institutions have a concept of placements. So, towards the end of your course, the big companies will come knocking at your door to interview you and select the best candidates. I was never taught to network. So I did not know how ... What do you do when you enter a room full of absolute strangers? How do you strike a conversation? What if you don't drink? Can you still go to a pub? So it took me a little while to settle in and get used to it, and this is an example I often use when I mentor a lot of young men and women who come to the UK from South Asian countries, because we are not really sort of ... our default is not to network as much. So it is sort of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
Spriha Srivastava:
But one thing where I feel my Indian upbringing has really helped me is, when taking into account the principles of diversity and inclusion, India is a huge country and there are about 28 states and over 100 languages across the country, and almost every major faith is practiced in India. So, growing up, I was very familiar with the principles of diversity and inclusion, and so I realized it came very naturally to me when I moved to the UK and I took on a more leadership role and I was involved in hiring, training and mentoring.
Spriha Srivastava:
I've realized that how diversity and inclusion is an extremely part of businesses today, and more and more companies are making an effort to really embrace and embed those principles into their culture in how they hire, how they engage with their employees, and also, you'll see, that those companies that are led by leaders with similar backgrounds and experiences, such as what I just mentioned, it will be very visible across the company.
Chris Roebuck:
That's really interesting because the whole concept of diversity of thought and how important that is for business success is often dramatically underestimated. So you mentioned that you came to London and you came to work at Thomson Reuters, and you were moderating their Global Markets Forum, which, for our listeners, is a 24-hour live forum for traders and professionals in financial services. Now, having been in financial services and investment banking and global banking, I know that that's a pretty demanding audience, and that was probably a significant move away from what you were doing, both in terms of the technicality of the subject you were dealing with and also the intensity.
Chris Roebuck:
So tell our listeners how you managed that substantial change and what were the sort of lessons you learnt about the global markets' world and the people in that world and how they worked and thinked. They sort of think differently to other people.
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, that was a fun job and a bit daunting, initially. So, just to give you some context, I landed in the UK just a couple of days before the financial crisis. So I landed in the UK on the 12th of September 2008. I had no idea what was going on when news about Lehman Brothers hit the news wire. I always wanted to be a political journalist and I had sort of no training in finance or economics. My job at Reuters was a real first introduction to the world of finance. I had studied political and international affairs, and this was very different. Finance was so different. I also realized how quickly markets were moving and how quick you had to be if you wanted to be a markets reporter.
Spriha Srivastava:
So, initially, I understood nothing, and it was tough to make connections between, let's say, how a central bank rate decision would make a stock market move, but then I had some really good colleagues around me who would break things down and explain that markets move like levers. To me, that was the best sort of explanation ever that's been given to me, but I also learnt a lot by speaking to the audience. Investors, economists, traders, who would always have a very different perspective on things, and they ranged from short-term to long-term, depending on who you were speaking to. So I often found economists to be a lot more long-term and especially calm during a day of stock market route, for instance, but then traders are a bit more spontaneous.
Spriha Srivastava:
It's an extremely interesting industry and very fast-paced, and it is here that I realized how much I loved that fast-pace environment. The thrill of reporting something like U.S. jobs numbers, and then very quickly jumping to report about the market impact, especially if the number wasn't in line with expectations. So this job really pushed me out of my comfort zone, especially when I had to pick up the phone and talk to a trader who was very busy, but I wanted to get a comment from them. I wasn't particularly good at numbers, and this job pushed me to understand those numbers, understand the world of politics, really look at it through the lens of finance, and it's been so relevant all along.
Chris Roebuck:
What's an interesting reflection you had there was, was the fact that you learnt a lot from talking to the people that you were providing the service to around what they did, what they wanted and those sort of things, and I think that's a very valuable lesson for any of our leaders who are listening, that ... or, in fact, anyone who's listening in an organization, in that if you want to make what you do work well, it's actually about talking to the people you deliver the service to, and whether you happen to be dealing with external customers or whether you happen to be in a support function dealing with internal clients, it's the same principle. You need to talk to the people you are delivering that service to so you understand them better so you can deliver better. I think that there's too many people that don't do that.
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely, absolutely. I think one of the things that helped me quite a lot at my job at Reuters was just listening to the audience, and the audience comprised of investors and traders and market makers, and just understanding from them what exactly they wanted to hear, what exactly a big news event meant for them. Also, many times, just accepting that, "I'm really sorry, but I don't understand what this means. What do you think this means for you?" and being very upfront about it. I thought that helped me really understand the market a lot better.
Chris Roebuck:
So then, what's interesting is, your next move was to the Financial Times in another completely different area. So there are you in the intense world of global markets, 24/7 live forum and, next thing, Financial Times and personal finance. Now, personal finance isn't about global markets, it's intensely personal, as we all now know from the cost of living crisis, and it's important to everybody's survival to get that right. So that must have been, again, such a massive change, but also it must have been, I suppose, you must have had a sort of mission when you took that job because it's so important to people.
Chris Roebuck:
Give us an insight, give our listeners an insight into why you went for that job and what you feel you achieved for people through doing that, and one other thing that's come in recently is, do you think that people's employers need to show a greater interest in the financial wellbeing of their people?
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, that's a great question. So in terms of why I took this job, so I was at Reuters and then I was made redundant at Reuters, so I was looking for a job. I'd applied to a number of places, and Financial Times had a magazine called Money Management, which covered personal finance. They got in touch with me. I did not know a lot about personal finance at that point of time. I had just been introduced and I just started liking this world of global financial markets where everything was very fast paced, but I, during the interview process, I remember talking to the editor, I also realized that whatever's happening outside in the world, the macro environment, makes its way into your personal finance. Where you invest and how you invest and what you invest are decisions that impact your personal finance, but those are driven by macro environment.
Spriha Srivastava:
So I was in this job only for a year, but, personally, this was one of the most impactful experiences for me. One of the things that struck me in the job was how little people understood the importance of managing their finances well, and I reported heavily on retirement freedoms, for instance, at that matter, and why retirees should stay away from spending their entire retirement port. I remember there were stories about how retirees wanted to take their retirement port and buy a sports car or go on a cruise holiday, and we would write a lot about how it is important to engage a financial advisor to help make this decision right, to invest right.
Spriha Srivastava:
I also learned that women don't seem to play a very active role in financial planning and it is often men that take the lead. Then I realized that, actually, this was true for me as well. I wasn't taking a lot of interest in financial planning. So I did a lot of self-reflection, stepped up to ensure I was actively managing and planning finances, but there's still a big gap when it comes to education around the need for financial planning. People tend to leave these decisions for much later in life, so they start thinking, "Why do I want to put money in my pension when I can actually use that to go for a holiday somewhere?" and we should start thinking about these things quite early on, and a lot of employees are making effort.
Spriha Srivastava:
So, ever since auto enrollment, more and more people are saving for retirement, but what is important is to guide them on how to manage these investments better, especially as we see now, there's a lot of alternatives. You sometimes have very volatile investment opportunities like cryptos pop up. So until and unless there is a proper sort of education around how to manage your finances, people will feel a little bit lost. So I really think that there is a lot that needs to be done in of education on that front.
Chris Roebuck:
And, to your point, there are organizations and there are schools in different countries that are actually starting the education around personal finance at school, which makes perfect sense, but, to your point, that's interesting. So you have found that actually women take a more of a backseat role within the financial planning within families and that sort of thing, which, to some degree, is a reflection of the need for women to be able to move forward in jobs as well. So perhaps the message is, to all our female listeners out there, that you need to start taking control of the finance ...
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
... as well, and finding out what's going on. So ...
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
... that's ... No, I think it's a great point that's never been raised, and you, my female listeners out there, think. Are you getting involved enough in thinking about personal finance, because, to some degree, it's often the female members of the family who are the ones that actually have to do the daily budgeting.
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, and also, I think, eventually, what happens is you ... I mean, and my personal example, I took a step back because I thought, "Okay, you know what? I'll deal with other things." It's not because I can't do it. I'm very well equipped to do my finances, but I just took a step back to focus on some of the other things, but when I was writing, I wrote a story about it in Money Management as well and I interviewed a number of financial advisors, and we looked at data to see how many men and how many women reach out to financial advisors. Financial advisors gave me data to show that the number of men reaching out to financial advisor was much higher than women.
Spriha Srivastava:
So we started sort of looking into a lot more into why is that happening, and there are a number of financial advisors that are ... they work with women specifically to make sure that they are comfortable with their financial planning as well. So there's a lot more education that's needed, but, taking my example, I used that sort of self-reflection period to really step up and manage my own finances. So I would highly recommend everyone do that.
Chris Roebuck:
That's brilliant advice. Thanks very much, and then you did another massive career change straight into digital news editor, or deputy digital news editor, for CNBC International, where this was, I suppose, perhaps your first leadership role, managing a team of reporters. Again, you aren't on a quiet local newspaper here, you're in a fast-moving, focused newsroom, perhaps very distant from perhaps journalism in different parts of India for the local newspaper.
Chris Roebuck:
So how did you find taking on that first leadership role in such an intense environment, especially given it's news, therefore it's fast-moving, it's specific story. As you said earlier, you do one story and then, bang, you're onto the next story that a newsroom requires. So how did you settle into it? What did you find that the challenges were and what did you learn about what you had to do to be an effective leader?
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, my role at CNBC was very different from anything I've done in my previous jobs, and my role at CNBC evolved a bit as well. So CNBC was a super fast-paced newsroom. I had early morning starts. I would start at 6:00 AM. I would finish at 2:00 PM. I had a cab waiting outside my house at 5:30 every morning on the dot, and I had to be in the office at 6:00 AM. I would walk into a-
Chris Roebuck:
Spriha, Spriha.
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah.
Chris Roebuck:
Listen, don't ... I appreciate that. I have done interviews on CNBC ...
Spriha Srivastava:
[inaudible 00:21:08].
Chris Roebuck:
... and I know that you have to get up at a stupidly awful time in the morning to get to the studio by about 6:00 AM.
Spriha Srivastava:
Yes.
Chris Roebuck:
So I'm with you on that. I get it.
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely. So I would walk into a buzzing newsroom, waiting for markets to open, assigning stories to reporters, editing them, and then reacting very quickly to breaking news events. All of this was happening simultaneously. There was something super exciting about that, about being in the hot seat, as they say, and directing news coverage at 6:00 AM in the morning. I loved it and I realized how much I was thriving in that environment. I think that was my first sort of step towards a leadership role where I was able to sort of take control of a big news event and then decide how I would assign coverage, how I would sort of go about assigning stories, editing them and making sure we are fast and accurate at the same time.
Spriha Srivastava:
A few months later, there was a role for deputy editor in the bureau. I was four months pregnant at that time and I wasn't sure if I should apply. My editor then, and a huge shout-out to him, encouraged me to apply because he thought I was already doing the job really well, and I got that role. I still remember, I was at my babymoon in Ibiza where I got the call from CNBC telling me that I got that job, and I felt I fit right into it. So two big learnings for me there. One was that my editor, he encouraged me, and I think I learned from him that you had to encourage your team members to step up and inspire confidence, advocate for your team, lean into the best of your team and help them step up. Second, I have long suffered imposter syndrome and I have barely put my hand up for things. So it's okay to advocate for yourself.
Spriha Srivastava:
I think my biggest challenge early on in a leadership role was to advocate for myself and feel unhappy later that why did I not do that? I could've actually got it. I think it is also a cultural thing. I've read lots of books on how women of color often feel uncomfortable advocating for themselves and asking for raises when they should. So, I think I felt like, after that CNBC job, I got a lot better at really stepping up and asking for ... ask whether it's for a raise or advocating for myself much, much better. So those are the two big lessons for me out of the CNBC role, for sure.
Chris Roebuck:
So it's, for our listeners, just to recap, it's the importance of encouraging the people on your team to grow, develop, and enabling them to then step up to the next level. Just as an aside, from my perspective, that isn't about giving them a better job or necessarily giving them a significant promotion within the team, I believe it's also about just the simple day to day of what you delegate to them, because if you are prepared as a leader to delegate more responsibility to them on a day-to-day basis, that is a step up. It might be a small step up, but it's still a step up that, one, develops their capability, two, shows that you trust them, which enhances your relationship.
Chris Roebuck:
So I think the message to listeners is don't just think about this encouragement to step up as being a new job, a new responsibility, it's something that you can do every day by giving people more and more responsibility as time goes on. Is that a fair reflection?
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes you, as a leader, will be able to see sort of opportunities that you can possibly delegate to your team, and it'll be a great opportunity for them to step up, and your team would love that sort of responsibility or that advice coming from you. So that's absolutely correct.
Chris Roebuck:
And I think if we flip it round, it's also important, because one of the things I've seen over the years and I know, is that leaders are not delegating enough to their people because they don't want to let go, they don't know whether their people can do it. So, for everybody listening, and all the listeners will know, I've talked about this before, example, the evidence is that 70% of leaders haven't been taught how to delegate effectively. So, therefore, please, leaders listening, delegate, because it gives you more time. That time you use to inspire and engage people. It makes your people happy because you trust them. It makes them grow and develop. So this delegation and stepping-up stuff is a no-brainer for everybody.
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
Then we get to where you are now, which is London bureau chief and international executive editor for Insider. So, not only has your little team at CNBC has now expanded to 100 journalists, not only in UK, but you're also dealing across time zones, which I know from personal experience can be entertaining. So you've got what? Yeah, you've got some of your team eight hours ahead of you in Singapore, which means they are working away before you even get in the office, which is always fun. So you also cover a much wider brief, so it's not just about markets, it's about business, it's about politics, it's about life in general. So how do you make your leadership go up a gear to a world where you're dealing with a broader set of subjects, you're dealing with significantly more people and you have that time zone issue as well?
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, so my current role is pretty broad, and you rightly summed it up. So I'm the London bureau chief, which means I oversee the UK newsroom of close to 100 journalists, I also oversee the Singapore newsroom and I'm involved in identifying any areas of opportunities for more bureaus outside of the U.S. It's a very exciting job. I love what I do. For me, leadership is about having a very clear vision or strategy of what you want to achieve.
Chris Roebuck:
Maybe give our listeners a little bit of an insight into what Insider is and does.
Spriha Srivastava:
So, yeah, my current role is pretty broad. I am the London bureau chief and international executive editor for Insider. Insider is a digital only ... a news platform, and we cover everything from business news to politics to lifestyle. We've got over ... well, more than 600 journalists across the world now. Our headquarters are in New York, but we've got over 100 journalists in the London office. I'm the London bureau chief, so I oversee the UK newsroom, but I also oversee the Singapore newsroom, where we've got about, I think, a little over 10 reporters and editors now. I'm also involved in identifying areas of opportunities for more bureaus outside of the U.S. It's a very exciting job and I love what I do.
Spriha Srivastava:
I think I work across three time zones, which I'll talk about in a little bit, but, for me, leadership is about having this clear vision or strategy of what you want to achieve and then being very, very effective at communicating that to your team. So, as I said, I work across three time zones. I have a team in Singapore, a team here in the UK and then the U.S. is the headquarters where my manager is based, and it's because of really good communication, and sometimes over-communication, that we've been able to grow so much as a newsroom and focus really on high quality journalism.
Spriha Srivastava:
The other thing that I have personally felt that's really important as a leader, and I've had a lot of sort of people around me advise me on this as well, is just the power of listening. I feel like most of the time we are talking, we're not listening as much, and as a leader, you're in different conversations, you're in different meetings, you are in one-on-ones, and it is very important to listen to your team and not jump to offer solutions immediately. So, to give you an example, I feel like I've always been a problem solver all my life, and I have something called an advice monster inside of me. Every time somebody would come to me with a problem, my default would be to jump and give them advice, but that is not what leadership is. I want to be able to empower them to come up with solutions themselves.
Spriha Srivastava:
Somebody recently advised me that you should coach the person, not the problem, which is a little post-it note, again, I have on my desk. This was especially important during the pandemic, the power of listening when we were all working from home. There was little to no human interaction. People were going through a tough time. Parents managing work with no childcare, people battling mental health and so much more, and then I feel like your role as a leader becomes a lot more important in situations like this.
Chris Roebuck:
There's some really, really great advice in there that I would sort of summarize as there has to be a clear vision that gives people purpose about what they're doing. Obviously, there then needs to be a strategy to achieve that, but, above all, you're absolutely right. It is about communication, and one of the things that sometimes leaders forget is that communication is a two-way process. There are some leaders out there who seem to think that communication, from the leadership perspective, is a one-way process. I am the leader, therefore, I do the talking and everybody else does the listening. That is, for you listeners out there, a policy that will doom your career to failure because no one is going to want to work with you unless you are prepared to listen to them and ask them for their ideas as well.
Chris Roebuck:
Your comment about listen and empower. One of the things I do when I speak to audiences around the world is to say, "Your best boss ever, what were the things they did, day-to-day, that made them so special?" and one of the things that is always on that list is they listened. Another one that is always on that list is they empowered me. Another one that is always on that list, linking to what you are saying about vision, is they told me what the big picture was so I understood. The other one, you've captured as well, is they told me what was going on. They communicated clearly with me about what they expected, and then that beautiful comment of yours, it's about you coach the person, not the problem. So it sounds like that first role was ... Sorry, the role you are now in was really a significant step up for your growth as a leader.
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely, and also the power of feedback. I think one thing that I learnt when I joined Insider was ... I mean, in my previous jobs, we would sit down during our annual reviews and have feedback, where manager would give you feedback in terms of how you were doing, but we have a very open feedback culture here at Insider, which means that when I have my one-on-one with my team or with my reports, in the agenda item, I will have a point called feedback. Now, this feedback is not just me giving feedback to them, towards the end, I always say, "Do you have any feedback for me? Is there anything I could do better?"
Spriha Srivastava:
Because I, generally, have ... I'm in a role where I don't really get to know a lot of times what's going on in the team. "Is there anything I need to be aware of? Is there anything you think I can do better?" and I think we need more and more of that. I think the concept that feedback is a two-way process needs to be sort of talked about a bit more, and it helps so much to have people on the same page as you, your reports and your team.
Chris Roebuck:
The comment there that you made absolutely encapsulates the leader dilemma and which, from my experience of being a leader and developing leaders over 35 years, is the quite simply, in modern, complex organizations, the leader cannot know everything. It is not physically or mentally possible, and that's why you have members of your team, or some members of your team, who are more expert than you are at certain things. If you do not ask them for their views, if you do not listen to them, you are not going to be successful. Now, okay, I accept that, within the world of an entrepreneur or an SME, the owner of the organization is likely to know pretty much what everything is going on because they started the organization, but as you scale up, it gets more and more difficult.
Chris Roebuck:
Your point about feedback, I think, is so, so important. You mentioned your annual appraisal issue and the fact that you try and get feedback much more often than that. I've seen leaders that they save up all the feedback to the annual appraisal and then suddenly they download it all onto the poor employee, and say, "I vaguely recall, nine months back ago in April, you did this."
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
And the poor employee is going, "Hang on. I don't even remember that." So the listeners, please, what feedback means is it does not mean appraisal time. Feedback is day to day, when events are happening or have just happened, as Spriha said about her team meetings, and also, if you're a leader, one of our other interviewees, Jamie Price, who I worked with at UBS, who's now CEO of Advisor Group in the States. When he was at UBS, he would share his appraisal with his team and say, "Hey, look, this is my appraisal. Can you help me be better?"
Chris Roebuck:
Great advice, Spriha, thanks. So when you pull all this together, you've been covering business for so many years. You've met business and political leaders, and you've, obviously, drawn your own conclusions from your own experience and having seen those people about what you think great leaders do for their people. So, when you reflect on all that, and you are now getting more senior, what do you think are some of the key things that leaders need to think about as they start moving up towards the top of the organization from being, what I would call, just operational leaders, into being hybrid, operational/strategic leaders?
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, that's a very interesting question. I was at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, and there was a lot of conversation around leadership. So the entire definition of leadership has changed substantially since the pandemic. The pandemic brought out these challenges of leadership and how leaders perform in the face of this challenge. It almost threw everyone, from the biggest and the most powerful countries to the most powerful companies, into the deep end, and no one knew what to do. All of this while, they had to keep employ morale high, they had to ensure that things were running smoothly, especially in the face of this evolving economic crisis, and also keep their own mental health in check. It brought out two very interesting aspects of leadership, and we see more and more leaders practice this now.
Spriha Srivastava:
One, leaders have to be agile in reacting to situations. Sometimes a leader may not know what the next course of action is, but they shouldn't shy away from communicating it to the teams, and exactly as you said, tell people what's going on, tell them that you are aware of what's going on. Keep the communication going. Sometimes the most reassuring thing for people is to know that their leader is on top of things and a solution is on the way. Second, lean on your best people. Bring the best brains together and collaborate. The power of collaboration is so strong. The best solutions, I have personally felt, have come from brainstorming. So give your people a chance to step up and take control, and, again, it goes back to what we discussed earlier, but lean on them and show them that you're confident in them.
Spriha Srivastava:
I interviewed a number of CEOs at Davos, and something that one CEO told me that really stuck with me and I've really sort of made a note of that and I've been practicing that as well is about leading by example. He said he was seeing more and more instances of burnout in his company and he just couldn't figure out why. He said like, "I thought to myself that I've never mandated people to work 15 to 18 hours a day, but people were still working so much and we are seeing more and more instances of burnout." So he said, "I went and I asked my wife, that why is this happening?" and she said, "Have you ever considered how many hours you work?" and so he said, "I did an audit and I cut down on all the meetings that I did not need to be there and I, instead, asked my deputy to be in those meetings. I started going for a swim in the middle of the day. I had one hour in my calendar where I would say, 'I'm out for a swim', and I made it public. I communicated this across the company."
Spriha Srivastava:
He said he started seeing a change and people started following him and they would take breaks to either go to the gym or go for a swim or just go for a walk. I found this very inspiring and I've taken that on board, and this is something I've been doing a lot lately.
Chris Roebuck:
It's interesting that, as an ex-military officer, the one thing that is pumped into your brain all the time is that you have to lead by example, and even outside the military world, we know, from all the data, and everybody listening to this knows from their experience, that people copy the behavior of their boss. They think that if they do what their boss does, one, they'll be successful, because their boss is more successful than them, and, two, if they do what their boss does, their boss will be happy and they'll get promoted. Now, neither of those things automatically follow because just copying your boss does not mean that what your boss is doing is right. As we all know from our experiences, bosses can get it wrong. As Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his interview said, "Why we have this delusion that we never make mistakes? I don't understand because we're all human beings."
Chris Roebuck:
So, as a boss, you need to set an example that is positive, and what you do, certainly if you're in C-suite, what you do, people will copy, and to the point about that CEO, what is really interesting is that ... I've done a neuroscience course, and one of the things is that taking a break in the day to get you away from the pressure of all the thinking that you've been doing at work and just let your conscious and subconscious relax a bit, is really, really important to your mental productivity at work.
Chris Roebuck:
Strangely, people say, "Well, it's a waste of time," but when I say to everybody, "Well, hang on. Tell me, where do you get your best ideas? Is it in the office?" "No, no. I get my best ideas when I'm in the gym or when I'm cycling or when I'm walking or when I'm in the bath or when I suddenly wake up at three o'clock in the morning and say, 'Yes, that's the solution to employee engagement.' I have got it," and you're absolutely right. It's accepting that there are times when peace and quiet has much more value than actually just working flat out like a maniac.
Spriha Srivastava:
Yep, absolutely. Really well put.
Chris Roebuck:
It goes back to the point, we just have to ... We have to accept that, when we go to work, we don't cease to be human and become a machine. We're still human. It's blindingly obvious, but some people seem to ignore it. So one of the things that, interestingly, comes up that flips back to some of the stuff we've discussed, is that many of the interviews I've done with previous guests, we talk about the agility issue that you mentioned with how we respond to COVID. It's worth saying, from my perspective, the challenge that organizations, I believe, have with COVID and the great resignation is fundamentally that the quality of leadership that people expect in organizations now is higher than it was before COVID because the COVID experience changed people's perceptions in relation to the importance of work versus the importance of life.
Chris Roebuck:
Now people are saying, "I'm sorry. I'm not going to tolerate any of that poor leadership because I want to have a decent job, I want to have decent wellbeing and I want to have a decent life," and it's interesting, the three main reasons that seemed to have come out for departure, post COVID, were, one, I had a boss who didn't care, two, I had too much work and, three, there didn't seem to be a future in that role. That's what you, as leaders, all you leaders out there, need to focus on by doing the things that Spriha has said.
Chris Roebuck:
So that world that we are talking about where you need agility, you need to be caring, but caring in an accountable way, the challenge that organizations have, that as they grow and develop, not so much the organization where you are now, but many other large organizations, is that the ability to be agile, the ability to be entrepreneurial reduces as you scale. I'd be interested to hear your perspectives of examples where you've seen larger organizations, to some degree, keep that entrepreneurial ethos in them even though they have scaled. The reason I'm fascinated is we did this at UBS and that's part of why it's a Harvard case study, but it's really difficult to see where else it's happening.
Spriha Srivastava:
Yeah, and that's a great question. One of the things that I often heard during the pandemic was that startups offered more flexibility to their employees, which was not offered by big companies, and what happens when we came out of the pandemic, a number of companies, especially large companies, they've gone from going into the new normal for a couple of years to expecting things to go back to exactly what it was like pre-pandemic. Now, they may still succeed in doing that, but what's happening, and I heard a lot of this during my interactions with senior business leaders at Davos, is the challenge with talent retention.
Spriha Srivastava:
Now, I'll take my example. Before the pandemic, I was going to work every day, all five days, morning to evening. During the pandemic, we moved houses. I realized my commute was adding a bit more time to the day, and on the days that I was working from home, I could get started early in the morning, I could take my son to school. In other words, my productivity was higher, but I really like human interaction. I love being in a newsroom.
Spriha Srivastava:
So, like many others, I decided to go hybrid. Three days a week, I work from home, and two days, I work in the office, but the thing is, and the best part about this is, at Insider, we have a flexible working policy, which means if you want to come, you're welcome. If you prefer working from home, that's fine as well. I absolutely love and value that flexibility that I have, and we've hired so many people in my team who, in terms of employee benefits, rate this flexibility higher than any kind of free snacks or hand-roasted coffee or gym membership that they've got. I think this is where big companies are struggling. Because of their legacy models, they're losing their top talent to startups and more entrepreneurial setups.
Chris Roebuck:
But it's also because we're getting the demographic change in the, for example ... and, actually, let's talk about your case, the travel bit, because there were some figures that came out from King's College, London, and people were saying, "Do they want to remote work?" and the figure for remote work for London, 76% of Londoners said they wanted to remote work. I'm sure this applies to New York and Washington and other large cities, but on further questioning, they were asked, "Is this because you don't like being in the office?" and they said, "No, I'm cool with being in the office. It's just I hate the commute and I hate having to pay for my wasted time during the commute."
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely. I mean, I live in London. I live on the Northern line and it, frankly, doesn't take me too long to get to the office, but I realized that, when I'm working from home, I sometimes start quite earlier on. I don't have to worry about, "Oh, I need to dress up. I need to get out of the house. I need to get into the Tube, get to the office." I have those solid 45 minutes or so in front of the laptop and I can get started very early. Same for the evening. I don't have to rush back home to pick up my son at time. I can, potentially, work a bit longer and then leave home at five o'clock to go pick him up and bring him home. Otherwise, I feel like I'm running to get to work at 9:00, leaving at 4:00, just trying to make sure I'm there, or days when my husband is picking him up.
Spriha Srivastava:
So, I think, in those areas, I feel like the flexibility is so helpful. I feel like I'm a lot more productive on days like this, and you can see that across the company as well. You can see more and more people doing that. When you mandate people to come into work, then you are not ... that's not flexibility. You are not giving them the option to come or to do what works best for them, really.
Chris Roebuck:
But that goes to the heart of trust, to some degree. For all our listeners, the evidence is quite clear, from the remote working in the pandemic, that where people were working remotely on personal work that required a lot of individual concentration, that the performance on those sort of tasks, remote, was significantly better than it was in a busy office with lots of distractions. That's the simple fact, and you're absolutely right. I see organizations who are trying to go back to the world before COVID, "You need to come into the office," but that is not going to happen, listeners, because, everybody listening to this, our experiences of COVID have meant that we value life, we value flexibility more, we value wellness more, we value family more, and we won't tolerate that.
Chris Roebuck:
The danger signal for organizations is, that at the present moment, I think the figures are that 76% of people ... this figure is unheard of. 76% of people are prepared to leave a job that they do not think meets their personal needs, even if they don't have another job to go to. Now, before, you assumed, as an employer, that, "Oh, they had to have another job to go to before they'd leave." Not anymore, and the other thing is that, demographically, Gen Z is 20% of the workforce now. Nearly 80% of Gen Z will not take a job unless it's hybrid, and Gen Z will be 40% of the workforce by 2030. So, for any leader or organization out there who thinks you can possibly go back to the world before COVID, you're deluded.
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely. Absolutely, and that is very true, and I think that is where a lot of companies are still struggling to retain top talent, and I'm hoping that, and this is something that I heard quite a lot across the board at Davos as well, that a lot of companies said that hybrid working is not one-size-fits-all policy. It totally depends on the role, which is fine. It depends on role, but as a company, it is just, if you're expecting people to come into the office and mandating them to come on certain days, then it's not flexible working. You shouldn't be saying that you have flexible working, and that's where you start to lose your top talent as well.
Chris Roebuck:
Well, yes, and you and I know ... I know from all my experience that the first people to go are the top talent ...
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
... because they know their value, but it's interesting that ... Where was it? The Wall Street Journal ... Sorry, not Wall Street, Washington Post said that, from what they've seen, less than 30% of people who are on hybrid working ever go into the office on a Friday, which, I mean, let's be honest, that's not a surprise, but to your point about hybrid, what I have said to organizations is, "Yes, have an overarching figure. We think you should try and come into the office one day a week or three days a month," or something like that, because it's about what the person's ...
Chris Roebuck:
There are factors that I say. One, it's about what the individual needs and wants. Two, it's about what their job entails, team interaction versus personal work. It's about what the team ... it's what the team needs to have integrity, where the team needs to collaborate together and it's what the organization needs to ensure that its vision, values, purpose and culture are embedded, and that's not just about saying, "Come in two days a week," that's about line managers working with their teams to do exactly what you said, which is to tailor, tailor to individual needs.
Spriha Srivastava:
And have team days or anchor days, as a lot of places are doing now, which makes ... You come into the office, you go for a nice lunch together or you go bowling afterwards, but you're able to bring people in for not just work, but also for interaction, to get to know each other better. So that's always a win-win, really.
Chris Roebuck:
So then what next for you? Where is your journey going now?
Spriha Srivastava:
Oh, I wish I had a crystal ball in front of me. I love strategy. I love figuring out what we should be doing next as a newsroom, as journalists, what should we cover, where should we hire, and I love to see my strategy get translated into reality. In terms of what's next, I think the role of media has evolved a lot and for the better, and I think it is more important than ever now that journalists educate the readers to really break down what a big piece of news means and how does it impact your life? We do a lot of that at Insider and I would love to do more and more of that, and I think mentor and coach more young men and women, either in media, those who are taking their first step in leadership. It can be daunting, initially, but it's fast-paced, it's fulfilling.
Spriha Srivastava:
I'm also very passionate about diversity, as I mentioned early on. I'm very passionate about women's issues as well. One thing I realized and I felt I was so oblivious until the pandemic, was when I was hiring for senior level roles during the pandemic, I would often get CVs where ... and I did not see a lot of diversity, gender diversity in those CVs, and I realized that as you start hiring for more and more senior level, a lot of women fall out of workforce by then. Until and unless you make an effort to really reach out to a bigger pool of talent, you will not be able to sort of hire in a diverse fashion. So I've been doing a lot of that, really sort of connecting and meeting more talent, reaching out to as many talented journalists as possible across the country and building that pipeline, really, of journalists.
Spriha Srivastava:
So I think I would love to do more and more of that. I love networking now. It took me a little while, initially, when I came to this country to understand how to do that, but I feel like I can do that pretty well now. So, yeah, I'm going to be a journalist, I think, for the foreseeable future, for sure.
Chris Roebuck:
There's some great points that you mentioned there about if you want diversity, and we're not just talking about diversity in terms of men, women and minorities and all the other, we're talking about the power of diversity in creating diversity of thought, which, in an organization, then allows flexibility, agility, different perspectives, which enables an organization to grow and flourish, et cetera, et cetera. So for any C-suite listening, I would say, really think about how you are recruiting for diversity and are you reaching out so that you are getting people, perhaps, from sources where you're getting a diverse benchmark for talent rather than not one. So how, then, can people learn more about Insider and what Insider does?
Spriha Srivastava:
So we are very stalk-able. You can follow us on Twitter, on LinkedIn. You can follow Insider on all sorts of social media platform. You can go to insider.com, and one thing that you'll find is great journalism, and we don't assume that you know everything. I'm really proud of this, because I went to City University a couple of weeks ago for a chat, and one student came to me and she said that I ... She said she grew up in Abuja in Nigeria, and she said that she would often read the foreign media and she would think that there was this expectation that readers would know everything. So when she started reading Insider, she realized that the best thing was that there was just so much education in a story, that we generally write for readers with the expectation that you're coming to us and we will explain it to you. We don't assume that you know everything.
Spriha Srivastava:
So even if we are writing about inflation, we will tell you how that would impact, let's say, the cost of rising oil would impact a fish and chips shop in the UK, and how we'll use real life examples to dive into an economic concept. We are inside most of the big companies, we will bring you behind-the-scene stories. We'll hold the most important people accountable. We do it really well and we're getting better at it. So, yeah, and if you have any feedback, then please come reach out to me.
Chris Roebuck:
So, to all our listeners, dive in, have a look at Insider because I've looked at a lot of the stuff you do, and you're absolutely right, it's not only just telling people what the news is, it's helping them understand what it is and why it matters to them, which is different.
Spriha Srivastava:
Absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
Brilliant. So, finally, picking it all up, just if you were to say to developing leaders around the world, what is one thing that they should do to be a better leader for their people, and perhaps also people who aren't leaders, just team members, what should they do to be a better colleague?
Spriha Srivastava:
Empathy, I think, and I think you mentioned this earlier on, but we bring our full selves to work, and that means our personalities, things that make us happy, things that make us sad, our quirky habits, our aspirations, maybe our fears as well. We bring it all every morning, and even if it doesn't feel directly relevant to your work, you still bring it. So, for example, when my son was young, we went through this phase where he would wake up at 2:00 in the morning and he wanted to play Lego for three hours, and then he would go back to bed at 5:00 in the morning. I was at CNBC and my shift started at 6:00 AM. My husband had to be at work at 7:00 AM. So there were days when my husband and I would be up all night from 2:00 AM playing Lego with our son, and then would go to work.
Spriha Srivastava:
On days like this, it was just really good to have people around me who understood that I've had a rough night and I might just need more coffee than usual. Just small acts of kindness, like grabbing me a cup of coffee or asking me how I was doing through the day, that really helped, just made me feel very comfortable at the workplace. It's really important to be empathetic towards each other. As leaders, it is really ... if you're kind and empathetic towards your team, it starts to show across the organizations as well, and sometimes, as a leader, it can be quite stressful to strike the right balance, but, at the end of the day, we are all humans, we all have our personal lives and we bring along those personal lives to work every day. So, for me, it's very important to be respectful and kind towards each other.
Chris Roebuck:
Spriha, thank you so much for such an insightful ending to our interview, and, yes, to all our listeners, no matter who you are, whether you're C-suite, whether you're a leader, whether you're just a colleague, anybody out there, please just show empathy to the people around you, because if you do that, I promise you, they will show empathy back to you and that will just make everything run so much better. Spriha, thank you again for such a great input to our interview.
Spriha Srivastava:
Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Chris Roebuck:
Thank you. Thanks. Well, listeners, there's certainly a lot to reflect on there and a lot that you can actually do something about tomorrow. What I really liked about what Spriha said were the insight she gave on the significant differences between perspectives on life and business growing up and being educated in India, working there some of the time and then moving her career over to Europe and the U.S.A., but the key point for me was not the differences, but the commonalities she spoke about in respective of getting the best from people to build a successful team between those two vastly different environments. Now, that perfectly illustrates the point that no matter where we are in the world or what we do, at the very heart of it, we are human.
Chris Roebuck:
When I speak to groups of leaders, I often quote the phrase, pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work, and I ask audiences who might have made this insightful comment on employee engagement. When I reveal that this was Aristotle, 500 BCE, that tends to cause a stunned silence, followed by laughter, but the point is clear, listeners, we are all human and no matter what happens in terms of technology or other factors as time moves on, we will continue to be human with similar perspectives on what we want from life in general terms as previous generations have and as future generations will have. Those commonalities showed in Spriha's development from a young journalist into leading an international newsroom.
Chris Roebuck:
So summarizing it, it was about her early growth where she encouraged and helped to step up by others and to advocate for herself, which she now helps other people do, but then, as her capability grew, the importance of empowering the team, listening to the team and clearly communicating the strategy and overarching vision to create a clear purpose. In the end, it's about everybody collaborating, giving each other feedback and growing together. Now, all of these things, you and I will have heard repeatedly from other guests who are successful. Who tell us that if you put these things in place in your team, if you're a leader, you will then be more successful, but think about also those simple lessons if you're not a leader. The value of listening to your colleagues, clearly communicating with them, understanding your organization's big picture, collaborating proactively and giving feedback to others when they ask, and you asking for it yourself. That helps everyone grow together.
Chris Roebuck:
So, irrespective of whether you are a leader or a colleague, think about picking up this week on one of those things. Maybe proactively listen more to your colleagues and helping them develop, maybe asking them for feedback on your performance, maybe proactively trying to understand the big picture in your organization, but, certainly, if you're a team leader, you should be holding regular team meetings to get everybody to discuss how they can be better, how they can help each other and for you to be able to communicate the big picture and how the team fits into it. We know from the evidence that that alone, explaining that big picture alone, can encourage people to give over 30% extra effort. Why? Because they see the value of what they're doing. It builds the purpose.
Chris Roebuck:
Now, don't forget, in a week, I will be giving you more in-depth views and key takeaways from Spriha in my insights in Reflections on the Top, and if you've used any of the insights you've heard from previous Perspectives on the Top guests and they've helped you, send me some success stories. We've had some in and they have been really, really powerful. I'd definitely love to hear more, and also don't forget to sign up on the website so you don't miss any of the great guests as they come out.
Chris Roebuck:
Thanks for tuning in, check out the show notes from today's episodes at perspectivesfromthetop.com, where you can not only enjoy additional resources from today's show, but all previous ones. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your favorite podcasts so you don't miss any, and if you really enjoyed the show, please give us a five-star rating and review. Have a question or comment? Let's discuss it. Message me on LinkedIn. Perspectives from the Top is produced in collaboration with Detroit Podcast Studios. So, have a successful week, use today's new learnings and actions, and remember, it's onwards and upwards. See you next time on Perspectives from the Top.