GA 533 | Mastering Your Life with Malti Bhojwani

Similarly, I think when you build a mindfulness practice in your life, you practice going to that quiet space within. It becomes easier to find. Easier to find the calm in the chaos, especially when you're stressed.

Today, I am very excited to welcome Malti Baljwani to the show. Now, Malti actually joined us from Singapore, and it was very late in the evening when we did the interview. So I really appreciate her for staying up late to talk with me. But, boy, we had a really good conversation on a really powerful, important topic for, well, really just for all human beings. Definitely applies to us, you know, continuous improvement practitioners, but this topic obviously transcends continuous improvement. And one of the things that I have to sort of prepare for the podcast is we have this little form that I ask people to. To fill out with, hey, what's the topic of the interview? And what are a few things that you'd like to explore? And so here's. I thought maybe to give you an idea of what we talked about, I was going to read what Malte had put into this form because it was very powerful, and I'm going to steal the quote that she actually shares here in a little bit, but I'll go ahead and read it. So she wrote, between stimulus and response, there is a space, and that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And this is from Viktor Frankl and his the Book Man's Search for Meaning. So then she goes on to say that our deepest fears is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were meant to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. So really, what we talk about today is really the relationship between sort of personal growth, personal transformation, and how that can be a catalyst for organizational change. And so really, that's what we explore. So lots of conversation on just the whole idea of controlling what you could control. I worked in the whole idea of key performance actions versus key performance indicators and how as leaders we really need to be focused on those KPAs as much as, if not more than those KPIs. So really, really fun conversation. I think you're going to to enjoy this one. Please be sure to scroll down and, and connect with Malte and thank her for coming onto the show. You know, again, this is not your probably your typical continuous improvement podcast that we've had, but all the things that that Malte shares are, are so, so applicable. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Malte, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm very well, Ron, thank you for having me.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. Where are you calling in from?

I'm in Singapore. So yeah, it's 10:00pm here right now.

Yeah, it's 9:00am here in Texas, so 10:00pm wow. Thank you for staying up so late.

No, it's fine. Tomorrow's a public holiday here, so all good.

Okay. Wonderful, wonderful. All right. Well, hey, I'm really excited for today's episode. I think this is going to be a really good complementary topic to what what, what we and our what we call lean and continuous improvement community are all about. So I'm really excited. So multi as you know, we like to get things going with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yes, it's one that I think I stumbled upon in one of my first personal development kind of courses that I did about 20 plus years ago and it's well, it's been attribute to Victor Frankl from Man's Search for Meaning and it's this one. Between a stimulus and response there is a space. And in that space is our freedom to choose. And in our choice lies our freedom and growth.

What does that mean to you?

To me it's the essence of transformation. It's the essence of maturity. And it's when we take life into mastery and we stop being a victim of life circumstances and instead we realize that we can stop, take a breath, pause and be considered in how we want to respond to everything that life throws at us.

So easy to say, so hard to do, right? Oh my word. Yeah, I, I, I love this. His book. You know, Victor man, Search for Meaning. What a powerful book. If you have not read that book, people, you must read it. It's really more of a, it's kind of like a life changing book really. When you think about what this amazing man experienced and withstood and prevailed really through is such a beautiful, powerful story. Yeah, I see a Lot of like even that quote between stimulus and response, there's a space and in that space is our power to choose our response. I really love also the stoics, you know, like Marcus Aurelius and these guys. And, and it's really similar to, you know, choose to be, choose to feel harmed and you have been. Choose not to feel harmed and you haven't been. It's, it's really up to you. Right. Like, and, and, and even in our world of not just continuous improvement, just like business and just life, you know, I mean, people are going to wrong you, people are going to hurt you, you know, and business deals are going to go sideways. Experiments that we plan as continuous improvement practitioners are going to be disastrous at times. Like, do you, how do you approach that? Right. And is it going to wreck you or are you going to learn from it and adopt and adapt to it? So yeah, it's really, it's so applicable really to not just continuous improvement, but to life. I would say.

Yeah, and, yeah, and run to that. I also learned that nobody wrongs us deliberately. I don't think, you know, people are out to hurt us or to upset us. And I think generally people are always doing, choosing the best option available to them at that time at their level of consciousness, and they're choosing what's right for them. And if it happens to not be right for us, you know, it's not like it was wrong or right, it's just that our experience of it made it so.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, hey Malte, tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us about how you got into the type of work that you're doing and what is that work today?

Thanks. Yeah, I started when I was quite young. I'm 53 now. I started in my early 30s. I would say it was just going through my own personal challenges. I was a young, a young mother, divorced when I was quite young. I found myself penniless, overweight, lonely, and feeling like a real victim of life. You know, why has this happened to me? And I remember those days and I remember looking for help, searching for just, you know, something I could hold on to. So I became a self help junkie. Read any book I could get my hands on, attended a lot of workshops. Tony Robbins inspired me back then as well. I was living in Australia at the time and I went for. I forget what it's called now because it was a long time ago, but breakthrough, I think, where you walk on fire. Yeah. And it was, you know, after that I. Yeah, I started to Do a lot of these. I was very attracted to anything that could help me get in the driver's seat of my life again and stop thinking that life was happening to me and start choosing the life that I wanted to create. So that started about 20 years ago. @ that time, life coaching as a profession was popular. There were a lot of life coaching courses out there. The ICF was just founded. And so I went down that road and I started to practice, though I was very young, so I was learning as I went along. A few years later, somehow I decided to write a book. By then I was living in India for a while. I found myself some publishers. So I wrote about three books back then. And then that got me kind of noticed, I guess, through social media, my LinkedIn profile. So consultancy firms started to approach me, organizations approached me to come in and talk about the books and to run workshops. So that's kind of how my work evolved from one on one coaching to executive coaching and now to running team alignment workshops, retreats, leadership development courses and stuff.

Yeah, okay. And so I know in sort of talking before the interview and learning a little bit about your background that that as you mentioned, you, you work with organizations around the world and different consultancies and things like that. And, and I know that personal transformation is one of your, you know, passions to help people personally transform. But I'm curious if we could maybe get into a little bit about how does personal transformation serve as a catalyst for change within an organization? And I also understand that, that you practice what, what some people call mindfulness. So maybe you could explore all these things and this personal transformation.

Sure, yeah, yeah. I think another great quote that I like is by Richard Barrett and he said that organizations don't transform, people do. And I deeply resonate with that one as well. I feel like, you know, an organization is only as strong as its leaders. The consciousness of the leaders will determine where the organization goes. So leaders who are self aware, so then, you know, we come back to the personal transformation side of it. People who are aware, who are conscious, who choose to respond to life, who can be more expansive in their thinking, who are more heart centric. I think they're the kinds of leaders that are able to mobilize, to inspire, to motivate an organization to really do great things in the world for the employees as well as customers and consumers. So I feel like, yeah, self development is where it starts, where people are, they pause, they stop. You know, instead of just running and doing based on KPIs and what they expected to do they actually stop, reflect on how this work gives their lives meaning, how they can be authentic, how it means something. Because people spend so much time at work, so how can they actually be more of who they are at work? And I think that's how they can transform their organizations.

Yeah, Like, I'm really drawn to, like the work of Daniel Pink and some other behavioral psychologists in the, you know, his book Drive. What motivates people when he sort of contrasts extrinsic motivation from intrinsic motivation. Whereas not that extrinsic motivation is bad, there can be some value in it. But to your point, like a leader of a company, the bonus that they're chasing at the end of the year, sure, they'll happily take it, but it's not. It's not getting them excited to go to work, you know, Monday morning kind of thing. Whereas intrinsic motivation, mastery, autonomy, purpose, these are the things that are really driving passion. Right. So I'm wondering, like, what are your thoughts on sort of the difference between intrinsic motivation, again, mastery, autonomy, purpose, and an extrinsic motivation? Dangling the carrot, so to speak.

Yeah, carrot and stick. Like running away from something or running towards something. You know, you have the promised land or you have the burning platform. So you've got that external extrinsic motivation, which to your point is, is good. It's powerful. It can. It can pull us in that direction. But I think we are human beings, we're going to get tired, we're going to lose steam sometimes, and if we don't have something else, like the fire within, the purpose within, then we're going to lose sight and the extrinsic motivation is not going to pull as hard anymore. So I think we need both. And I think your earlier question around purpose and how it links, how I feel it links to mindfulness practices or meditation, I find that when we meditate, it comes back to this quote. By Viktor Frankl. Again, it's that pause. So it's like giving yourself practicing and instilling a practice in your life where you can find that pause more easily. It's like driving a car. When I first learned to drive, I had to look at the gears to see where neutral was. You know, you don't really. You don't know where it is. You're struggling, right? You're trying to do so many things at the same time. But once you practice and you know where neutral is, you can go there easily. Similarly, I think when you build a mindfulness practice in your life and you practice going to that quiet Space within, it becomes easier to find, Easier to find the calm in the chaos. Especially when you're stressed.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'm a person of faith and so every. I have this sort of routine. My morning routine begins really early in the morning. A cup of coffee and then I read scripture and then I. Sometimes I'll pray, but many times I just sit there and I just close my eyes with my, my, my airpods in with just blocking the sound. No, no music, no nothing. Just sitting there and. Oh my gosh, I couldn't imagine my life without that, that time, you know, it just. I literally sit in a dark living room, like just no stimulus at all. And it's, it's my, I would say the most important time of my life, really of my day. And if I ever miss that, if we're out late, I try to go to bed early, right? Because otherwise I don't get enough sleep and then it's all messed up. But if I ever miss that morning period, I'm telling you my day is different. Not always bad, but it's just radically different.

So.

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, totally. I, yeah, agree, absolutely. I have another quote that you might like because you said that you pray. This one was thought worrying is like praying for what you don't want. And this one really hit home for me because I realized that I was worrying all the time. A lot of the leaders that I coach are always worried, always anxious people, always thinking about the things that could go wrong at work, with their colleagues, with their business, with their children. Always thinking about, you know, the worst case scenario and worrying. And I realized that, you know, in neuroscience, if you can just, if we can harness the power of our thoughts and realize that what you think can actually, you're actually giving energy to it, you're giving focus to it. So the more you think about something, the possibility of it happening goes up. So I like to reframe it. It's like, you know, worrying is like praying for what you don't want. So why not just. Just flip it and instead of worrying, start thinking, fantasizing, even daydreaming, even about what you do want, what you want to create and become more intentional.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, it's so true. You know, especially I have, you know, I have young adult children, I have teens, I have, you know, seven year old. And it's a constant battle, right? To many times I think about it almost surrendering a little bit, right? And just it is what it is. And Cooperate best you can. And here's what we have, and how are we going to deal with it? Right. And, and what can, what can we control from a, from a business perspective? What's interesting, you mentioned KPIs earlier. And obviously every company has a KPI. You have to have KPIs or you're going to be a terrible company. But my friend Billy Taylor would say he used to work a Goodyear and he's got a really strong leadership background. He's passionate about KPAs key performance actions. So, like, what are the things? Like, so the KPI is I want to lose weight. Okay, so you stand on the scale every day. Well, I could just go stand on the scale every day. If I don't change any actions in my life, the scale is not going to change. It might even get worse. Right. So how about we start measuring our steps and the calories that we take in and how much sleep we're getting? Those are, those are the things we can control. And so maybe worrying is like obsessing about the KPI and it's like, okay, that's out there. But what are your, what actions are you doing? What can you control today? Like right now? What can you control? And if we orient our energy and our attention to those things, well, really, the KPIs should hopefully take care of themselves.

Absolutely. Love it. Yeah.

So I'm wondering if you have any examples. I know you've worked with a lot of leaders over the, over the years where someone, where you've seen personal growth within a leader, an individual, lead to organizational impact. Have you, do you have any examples? You don't have to share specific names.

Or anything, but, you know, yeah, sure, yeah. So many. I think some of the most powerful ones are when they realize that building trust is deliberate. And back to your point about action, you know, you can go around and say, oh, obviously every leader knows that they need to build trust with their teams and with their colleagues and with their stakeholders. But trust is a big word. But, you know, when we break it down and you break it down into actions, like you said, like, what am I doing every single day in every interaction that I have with people? Am I building more and more trust through my actions? Or am I eroding from this trust that I could potentially have with this person? So an example would be leaders who realize, like, one of the elements of trust. You know, there's so many, so many trust models out there, but one of them is, say, intimacy or even acceptance. So when they, when, you know, the Penny dropped and they realized that people may not be trusting me because I'm just so closed about who I am, my personal life I don't share. They only see me as this role. And no one really knows what's behind this role, why I behave the way I do. And they start to realize that actually by being a little more open and sharing who I am and even risking that vulnerability and showing some weakness that they actually start to build trust. So that's been really powerful. The other one around the same, same kind of theme around acceptance where people start to realize again in business where results, you know, people are pressured to achieve results, there's a little tolerance for things that go wrong, mistakes and there's a lot of judgment. You know, you did this badly or you shouldn't have done this. Whereas when they start to realize that acceptance is also an element of trust. We need to be able to accept people for who they are. And obviously we can give feedback or we can talk about their performance, but we don't negate the human being so we accept others. So that's another big example. Especially in Southeast Asia. I find it's tough because you know, our education system in Singapore, you know, people go to the army, so withholding judgment is so hard for people to do. They think they're doing the right thing by, by pointing out when someone has done something wrong. So they judge versus learning that acceptance is, is key in building trust in their work relationships and, and in their relationships with their children and their spouses and their partners. And that's been, yeah. Quite profound for me to see that, that realization.

How do you like on the flip side. On an extreme. And I agree with you. I guess my question though would be when you see, okay, let's use children. My, if my 17 year old son goes out with his friends and drinks alcohol and then drives like I can't accept that. Right. Like that's dangerous, horrible behavior that could kill him and other people. Right. Like so when you're nose extreme difficult situations, how do you, how do you handle that? Because you can't accept that behavior, right. Because that, that could lead to ruin. Like what are your thoughts on those extreme cases?

Yeah, thanks for the tough questions, Ron. Yeah, my. I feel that if you don't allow the conversations to ever happen, you're not even going to know that your child is drink driving. So how do you start to cultivate that deep trust that they know they can come to you even if they know they've done something that is wrong and if they come to you with the smaller things and you don't shut them down, then they will start to come to you with the bigger things. And then you will have that opportunity to hopefully guide them with your values and with what's right and wrong and share with them consequences of their actions versus them hiding it from you out of fear of reprimand.

Kind of like the whole analogy of little rocks and big rocks. Right. Like you fill up your jar with the big rocks, you know, then you can put the little rocks around it. But if you start with all the little rocks, you know, it's a similar maybe mindset. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, good, good, good. So I'm wondering, I want, I'm curious, like with, with the various work that you've done with, with, with all, again, some of these consultancies that you've worked with, are there any other insights that you've, that you've sort of taken that might be able to add value related to this whole topic?

Yeah, I think a big one is that leaders are role modeling whether they are aware or not. So as they are leading, people are watching them, they're gleaning from them. So to realize and be sensitive that whatever you do is being seen. And if you're doing things or you are condoning behavior that you actually don't want in your organization, that's what you're role modeling. So I think that's another big one that people think role modeling is when they go out and try to role model the behavior that they want people to adopt. But you're role modeling all the time. So I think just having that in mind and knowing that you are being watched all the time, your email threads are being read by everyone. So how you behave, how you treat people way down in the organization, your role modeling, and if you stand for some values like empathy, compassion, you're trying to be non hierarchical, but your communication and your behaviors is not congruent to your values, then that's also going to be seen. So I think that's been a strong one where people always talk about, okay, you know, we're working with our team and we're working on these values and we've got this. But how do we, how do we get the whole organization to behave in this new way that we want them to? I think one of the key things is that you really need to role model the behavior that you, you want.

Yeah. And all the people, many of the people listening, can we practice called lean. And one that there's a tool called 5S which is sort of like organizational. It's more than just organizational tidying up, but, but it's part of it, like having a neat and organized work area. And so there's been times, you know, you'll go into a company and they say, oh, we're practicing this organizational, you know, organization tidiness and whatnot. And then you go to the leader's office and it's just a big disaster. And you're like, really? You know, like, how are you modeling that for your, your team members? Right.

So yeah, I have an anecdote for this one. There was an organization, I won't mention names, but they wanted to eradicate hierarchy, as in at least the negative or the limiting side of hierarchy. And, and so the, the leader, he did something really bold and he basically, you know, they redesigned the office so he gave up the front corner, you know, awesome room. And he just, he just said, I don't need an office and I'm just going to work anywhere, you know, I'm going to just sit, you know, out in the. They had like a co working type space with the cafe. There were customer service counters and he made a joke of it. He's like, well, you can find me at customer service counter 11. But that was bold. And I've also seen organizations that got rid of say, the special VIP parking lots for their leaders because they're like, why are we parking there? Shouldn't those spots be for our customers? So these acts, I think are bold and they really send strong messages and it really shows the organization that you're serious about what you're trying to, to impart and what you're trying to lead.

Yeah, it's like almost another example of what we would call servant leadership. Right. Like serve. Right. Don't intend to be served. You should serve. Right. And if everybody has that mindset, then it's probably a far healthier organization. So what about another, another tough one. Sorry for all the tough questions, but what about another those times where you inherit, inherit a team and maybe things aren't great. Right. With the team that you're inheriting, what do you do like and how do you navigate, you know, those, those complexities? Because you, the hand that you're dealt is, is what it's dealt. Like what do you do?

That's very common because I think, you know, when someone becomes a leader, either of a new organization or they promoted or they moved around, that's what you're going to have. You're going to have an existing organization and you're going to inherit a team. And I think some of the best, the most inspiring leaders I've seen, they basically give it time to truly get to know the teams that they've inherited. And I think the worst thing that you can do is come in and say, I'm going to make all these changes and ignore how things were being done before, because surely something's working. So don't throw the one, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. So really take that time to pause, to listen, to deeply understand, and to see every individual in your team as a valued member who earned his or her right to be in this room with you. And only then, you know, after you start to see what value they bring, only then can you start to think about making some changes. And that, that too, you know, you probably need to share your expectations because maybe you have a different mandate, Maybe you've been hired to do something different than what this organization was doing before, and then you would share that, I think that vulnerability again, and that the truth as to why you took this job and what your hope, your aspiration, your purpose around leading this team now is and see who wants to come along with you. And of course, you're going to have people who don't, do not resonate with your leadership style and don't want to stick around, and that's their choice. But I think making it clear, building trust up front, getting to know people first before making drastic changes, I think that's very valuable.

Yeah, totally agree. So, last question. What is your, your thoughts on the potential importance? I don't want to ask a leading question, but the potential importance of having a healthy work life, sort of balance, balancing your personal life, your work life. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think maybe. Let me answer this. So I believe that leaders become leaders because they're experts, they're very good at what they do, but once they get into the leadership role, they are no longer the doers of that thing that they were the expert of. A great analogy, again, is, say, the conductor at an orchestra where perhaps that conductor had played one of these instruments in their lifetime before, and they did it very well. But now, as a conductor, they can't go down there and, you know, start playing the violin themselves. What they really need to do is be able to stand back and again, listen and orchestrate and lead from the balcony. I've noticed that leaders who do that well are extremely resilient. And in fact, I've been actually pleasantly surprised that a lot of the workshops that I've been facilitating lately. I'm the one who don't. I'm the one who, you know, I can't seem to find the time to go to the gym and to do my daily practices because I'm facilitating and I'm so busy right while I'm doing that. But then I'll see the CEO on the treadmill every day. So I've noticed that it's people who have been, been able to treat leadership as a marathon and not a sprint. And that means that they have found a way to ensure that their family lives are fulfilled and rich, that their health is, is they've prioritized their health because usually, you know, people are around their 50s or early, early, you know, late 50s, early 60s at this point where health is more important.

Yeah.

And you know, they prioritize it. They prioritize some kind of a mindfulness practice, whether it's prayer or it's sports. You know, I'm not going to dictate what, what type they do, but all of that I think it's so important so that they can be considered. They can find the time to spend with their team members, find time for the lunch and the coffee and the one on ones instead of just being so busy that they're unavailable, unreachable or exhausted or have, you know, spread too thin and they're no longer able to lead from purpose and they become highly reactive. Again, coming to the first point around that choice, you know, I think only people who have that resilience, that centeredness are able to not react to life circumstances or to situations and they're able to take that pause and, and choose. But it comes back to that self care that, what you mentioned, the sleep and the mindfulness and the breathing. Yep, all of it.

Yeah. Yeah. I have a good friend who has a family member with, with some health challenges and, and my friend talks about how they're really working on ensure that they take care of themselves because they know that, you know, in order to care for their loved one, you know, they've got to be, you know, put your oxygen mask on first right. Before you help the others. And so many times that doesn't happen and then both are going to lose. Right. You can't care for, for those if you, you, you, you physically can't do it yourself. So. Yeah, totally, totally agree. So. Wow, this has been a really fun conversation multi. I really appreciate the, the time and again it's, it's 10345 for you now. PM so, so if, maybe if you have any final words of. Of wisdom or some parting thoughts, and then I would you to share. If folks wanted to connect with you personally, how can they best do that?

I think my parting thought is something that's very special to me because I think I only stumbled on it recently. I'd say in the last three or four years that people go around feeling like they're not good enough, feeling like they need to prove themselves, they need to do more. There's this whole sense of unworthiness and needing to earn that worthiness. And my parting thought is that we were all born worthy. It is our birthright. And all we need to do is to step into it, to own it. Because if we have that self worth, it's. It's that oxygen. Then we can help others and, and lead others and. And be. Be that reliable force that can support the people in our lives. Yeah. So don't doubt that we were born worthy.

Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you for that. And how can folks connect with you? LinkedIn or is there other mechanisms?

Yeah, I'm all. Yeah, I am on LinkedIn. Malti Bojwani. Instagram as well. My website is multiphojwani.com. my latest book is called mastering your life by me, Malti Pojwani. Yeah, I also have a YouTube channel, so.

Nice. Yeah. Okay, well, we're gonna get everything linked up in the show notes, so everybody just scroll down on your app, whatever you're listening on, and then go connect with. With Malti on, on all of her platforms and thank her for coming on today. Gemba Academy podcast. So thank you for coming on. This has been a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.

Thank you, Ron. I really enjoyed chatting with you too, and I'd like to. Yeah. Offline, find out how many kids you have.

I have seven. Seven kids.

Seven. Oh, wow.

My oldest is 21 and she just got married and. Yeah, youngest is seven. So. Yeah.

Congratulations. Wow. I just had have one. She's 32 and. Yeah, just one.

Well, that's fine too. That's beautiful. All right, well, thank you. Take care.

Thank you.

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