An evening with Mr Leo Fernandez

On Friday, Nov 5, 2021, we had the 29 th webinar in the ICFAI Wise Views series. The speaker was Mr. Leo Fernandez, the CEO and founder of Talent Ease. His purpose in life is creating tomorrow’s leaders today. The topic of the webinar was: Finding purpose: The journey from campus through career.

About Mr Fernandez

Before setting up Talent Ease, Mr. Fernandez was Managing Director and Partner with Accenture, Singapore, responsible for the company’s Outsourcing business in APAC. Mr. Fernandez has also worked with other reputed organizations like Hewitt, HP, India Life and the Tata Group. Over his 20 year corporate career, Mr. Fernandez built a solid reputation for creating and building high performance teams and for turning around business operations.

After spending 8 years in Singapore, Mr. Fernandez decided to return to India and work closely with children and young adults to groom them into better leaders. When Mr. Fernandez looked around, he could sense that most of the problems in Indian society were due to lack of leadership at home, in the classroom, office. (He calls this everyday leadership.) He realized the importance of doing a “prepare” job at school rather than a “repair” job in the office. He thought of teaching children how to collaborate, develop self-confidence and making them pledge to respect women.

His company, TalentEase has introduced yearlong leadership development programs that are integrated into school/college curriculum. The organization has conducted more than 1,000,000 sessions for 10,000 children.

Mr Fernandez is a regular columnist for Business Line on Campus. He is also a jury member for India Fund Fest, one of India’s most prestigious funding competitions. Mr Fernandez is married to Teresa and has two children, Marcus and Marcela. He enjoys travelling, writing and watching movies.

Finding purpose

Mr. Fernandez began by stating that the topic of Purpose resonates with him. Some of us find our purpose in the college days. Others take more time. The journey of discovering our purpose is very important.

Mr. Fernandez started off by referring to Jim Collins’ 3 circles framework. Ideally there should be an overlap among the three circles of Purpose, Proficiency and Passion. If there is no overlap, it is a bad situation to be in. If two circles overlap, it is a good situation.

Mr. Fernandez narrated a personal experience involving his son, Marcus whom he had taken to a pediatrician for giving an injection. The pediatrician was neither interested in nor good at her profession and made a complete mess of the injection. She wielded the syringe like a murder weapon with no skill or empathy. She had been forced into the medical field because of parental pressures and was just going through the motions.

If we have purpose and passion, it is not difficult to build proficiency. This was exactly the situation for Mr. Fernandez when he set up TalentEase.

Mr. Fernandez mentioned that while proficiency can create a 3X impact, passion can result in a 5X impact and purpose can have a 10X impact.

Steps to discovering purpose

We can discover our purpose through Values, Relationships or Impact.

Values

Values separate the nomads (who wander around aimlessly) from the pilgrims (who move with a sense of purpose). Values determine choices and help us to define our priorities and dictate how we spend our time. Values determine our purpose. (Skills determine proficiency and interests our passion.)

The great management guru, Peter Drucker once mentioned: ” I did not see myself making a contribution as an asset manager. People, I realized were what I valued, and I saw no point in being the richest man in the cemetery.”

As we go through life, we realize the importance of values. The day after his son Marcus was born, Mr. Fernandez went on tour for an important business deal. He was not there with his wife when she returned home. She had to be carried by her brothers to her room. (The building had no lift.) Mr Fernandez regretted his decision.

Once when his daughter was admitted to hospital because of pneumonia, Mr Fernandez again went on an important tour. The takeoff was turbulent, and many passengers thought the plane was going to crash. At that moment, Mr Fernandez asked himself what he would regret more, if the plane crashed: not winning the multimillion-dollar deal or not being with his daughter. As we recognize our values, we understand what we need to do. We also decide what to say no to.

When it comes to values, we must be consistent. We cannot uphold them on some occasions and violate them on other occasions. As the famous Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen wrote: It is easier to stick to our principles 100% of the time rather than 98% of the time.

Values create the power of “and”. We should not fall prey to the tyranny of ‘Or”. Thus, Dr G Venkataswamy the founder of Arvind Eye Hospital aspired simultaneously to do his work, be a better human being and create a better world. This is what design thinking expert and CEO of IDEO, Tim Brown had to say: “Dr. V brought in his own set of constraints when he insisted on a particular mode of delivering care. He said it had to be high-quality, compassionate care AND that it also had to be affordable AND sustainable.”

For we Indians, making many things happen simultaneously comes naturally. So we should be able to create the power of “and”. A purposeful life involves commitment to growth. We must stretch ourselves and handle difficult responsibilities rather than doing things which are easy. Mr Fernandez has noticed that many people start off their career with a fire in the belly. But as they become successful, they settle down and become comfortable with their lifestyle. They enjoy the frills but there is a sense of emptiness in their life. They stop listening to their inner voice.

We should not get into auto pilot mode as our career progresses. Commitment to growth is important. Mr Fernandez recalled an employee who was not promoted while his teammate was. When he wanted an explanation, his manager explained that while he had 10 years of the same experience, his teammate had done different things in each of the 10 years. It is important that we remain committed to growth by trying out new things and learning along the way.

At the start of his career, Mr. Fernandez preferred a lower paying but growth-oriented job to a higher paying job with little learning. He has never regretted that decision. Mr. Fernandez recalled that in his career, there were many occasions when people were staying away from an assignment because it was difficult. Mr. Fernandez would often jump in and this has helped him in the long run. The small choices (sacrifices) we make in favour of growth in the short run help us to make big decisions later on in life.

Relationships

Mr. Fernandez stressed the importance of relationships. We must build relationships with the right people and nurture these relationships carefully. We must get married to the right person, i.e. someone who shares our values. To lead a life of purpose, we must choose a purposeful partner and surround ourselves with purposeful people. Indeed, being in the company of purposeful people helps us to discover our purpose. Mr Fernandez’s family played an important role in shaping his values.

We should carefully nurture our relationships and spend quality time with the people who matter. All of us are juggling with different balls in life: Work, family, health and relationships. Work is like a rubber ball and even if something goes wrong, we can bounce back. But the other balls are fragile and can get damaged badly if we are not careful.

Mohammed El Erian, the famous bond trader decided to quit PIMCO when his daughter presented a long list of events for which he had been absent. For Mr El Arian, this was a wakeup call as he realized that he had not spent enough time nurturing important relationships.

Impact

A purposeful life leads to impact. We should be looking at things through a microscope and a telescope. We should have a distanced view of close things as the famous samurai Musashi once mentioned. We should make short term sacrifices to be impactful in the long run.

We should draw a distinction between activities and impact. In the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the teams which had possession of the ball for a large portion of the time, ended up losers to other teams.

There is a difference between being fruitful and being successful. We often chase labels other people have set up. But are we really being fruitful?

Is what we are doing having any sign value? Is it making people behave differently, change their beliefs and make more impact?

How will we know we are living our purpose?

This question became important for Mr Fernandez after his uncle’s death. After the cremation, Mr Fernandez was carrying the urn containing the ashes for immersion in the ocean. Here was a very successful man reduced to a small urn.

We must attach more importance to what we give rather than what we get. Cricketer Hardik Pandya was recently seen on Instagram flaunting his Rs 5 crore watch. In contrast, Gandhiji threw away his slipper out of the train, after his other slipper fell off the train. He felt that he had no use for one slipper. Whoever got the pair of slippers would benefit.

To move fast, we have to move slowly, ie reflectively. In South Africa, there is a famous saying on mountaineering expeditions: Polle Polle. We must slow down and get off the treadmill. We must keep asking what we should start, stop and continue.

When we are living a life of purpose we will be driven more by intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation.

When we are driven by purpose, even when we are working very hard, we will not feel tired. As cricketer Richard Hadlee once mentioned, we will only be pleasantly weary.

Our life should not be an infinite elongation of a straight line. We should learn to live our life differently. As Tom Cruise once mentioned, “Some day is Code for Never.” We should not postpone. We must start finding our purpose.

Mr. Fernandez has the firm conviction that all of us are destined to do something unique. And that is our purpose. As Cardinal Henry Newman once mentioned: “God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place”

Q&A session

On making the shift

We should not make the shift to a purposeful life when we are being pushed. A bad boss or a work pressure should not be the trigger. It should be a pull. We should make the decision to switch when we are being called towards something, not when we are running away. Our decision to shift should be proactive rather than reactive. In other words, we should make the right choice for the right reason.

Curiosity and wonder are very useful for avoiding an auto pilot journey. Indeed, curiosity is the pathway to purpose. We must listen to others and observe what is going on.

As we search for our purpose, we need not feel intimidated. Purpose need not be something grandiose. It can be as simple as being a great father or spouse or son. There is no need to leave our job and start an NGO to lead a purposeful life. More than any external activities, what matters is being driven by our inner compass.

While making the shift, we must weigh different factors. We are juggling different responsibilities in life. We cannot neglect our responsibilities at home. We should take our family along. Purpose without discharging our duties is not possible. But sometimes, we present ourselves with false choices. We might argue for example that we cannot make the shift without building a huge corpus, even when we are quite well off. Or a lack of courage might be masquerading as family pressures, even when the family is behind us.

On making career choices

We tend to gravitate towards better brands and companies offering higher pay. We must be clear about our values and check whether the organization is aligned with these values. We should not be doing something merely for money or social status. We should also not be doing what everybody is doing. While making our career choice, we must see growth opportunities for ourselves and be confident about contributing to the growth of the organization. We should ask ourselves whether we will be happy 10 years from now.

On the most important employability skills

Self-confidence/self-worth: Many young people have a wrong notion of self-confidence. We must also have a healthy sense of self-worth, with the intention to give rather than to fill holes.

Empathy/emotional intelligence: The ability to connect with people has become important across industries especially during the pandemic times

Strong sense of values:In a VUCA world, we need a north star to guide us. Values such as integrity, honesty, patience, gratitude, and respect can be of great help.

On dealing with burnouts

The starting point is to recognize that we are having a burnout. This will be easier if we start listening to our body and mind. Burnout is a symptom, not the cause. We must find out the root cause. Sometimes, it could be due to lack of proficiency e.g. poor time management. This can be easily fixed. If it is due to lack of purpose, then we need to introspect and think through about what we should be doing. Whatever be the case, we should not ignore burnouts. We must do something about it.

Lack of skills is not the main cause of career failures. It is usually character flaws which pull people down. For example, they may not be able to get along with people or be able to take criticism in the right spirt.

On revamping college education

We do not need to do anything big. We can continue with the same curriculum but deliver it in a more meaningful way. Instead of the traditional lecture mode, we could create pods of students who actively deliberate and think about the lesson being covered. It is really more of a design issue rather than making heavy investments. Mr Fernandez mentioned that in one case, simply changing the layout of the classroom did wonders for the school.

In Indian education, we think of everybody except the student. All other stakeholders get priority. We must put the student at the center of education.

On helping employees find their purpose

A vast majority of people in the workplace are disengaged. One way to address this problem is to hire for purpose, not for proficiency. Proficiency without an inner compass means people may shift to autopilot (and in extreme cases, even toxic) mode.

During recruitments, we should check whether the purpose of the candidate is aligned with that of the organization. The most important question which Mr Fernandez asks people wanting to join TalentEase is: Do you have a heart for young people?

Within the organization, people should understand the importance of purpose. The job of leaders is to clarify the purpose of the organization to employees. Companies must walk the talk and translate their purpose into credible actions that can be seen by everyone.

On dealing with failure

The key to dealing with failure is to understand that we may be carrying in our minds wrong definitions of success and failure. Instead of defining success in terms of what others think, we must do so on our own terms. Failure is not a bug. We should see failure as a stepping stone to success. We should build the emotional resilience of young people and make them understand the difference between “ I have failed in something.” and “I am a failure.” One of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, Jack Ma of Alibaba fame, was rejected in many interviews. In one interview, 24 candidates appeared, and he was the only one rejected. But Ma did not give up.

We thank Dr. Vedpuriswar for bringing out the highlights in the form of this note