Meet the Experts - Imran Rehman

?Social media is a special place, a virtual jungle to get lost, browse into unknown territories, and learn about cultures, creatures and customs that had been unheard of just a few clicks ago. I remember laughing off the details of Ambergris until I searched that on Netscape in the late 1990s to know the properties and value of this rare commodity. The search continues through the years jettisoning between philosophy, history, science, anthropology, and technology. Social is indeed a great hangout, I keep hearing myself repeating this mantra every time I meet someone inspiring. I have interviewed individuals from all walks of life as I consider myself a generalist rather than an expert on any subject matter. Every time I spoke to someone new, I have felt the minuteness and limit of my understanding of this world and the knowledge that’s spread across us. I met Imran online while speaking to Yehuda Hofri, who lives in Amsterdam, and happens to be an expert on startups and Tech. One thing led to another and voila a conversation blossomed spanning a period of almost three weeks. We shuffled between Technology, history and God knows how many books and I still feel that there’s so much that has been left unsaid. Imran is one of those nomads who were able to find the direction of their lives early on; someone who loves conversing with individuals and teams and created a solution to enable happy and dynamic environments.

Here’s Imran Rehman

Najib:???About yourself, family, education, early jobs.

Imran: Thanks for the chat, Najib and the intro. I like the word nomad that you have used above as my family also comes from across the regions. My maternal grandfather is from Kashmir with descendants from Mongolia while my paternal grandparents are from Ghazni in Afghanistan and Kenya, a varied mix for a family line. As you know yourself, in our families there are expectations. As a teenager, I wanted to pursue design and fashion but that was a big no no in the family. For me, there was an expectation to become an attorney. I studied Law at the University of Wolverhampton in the Midlands (UK) but never went to Law School or sat for the bar. Law wasn’t for me! People asked me why. I think today it was because I could not defend or work for someone who I thought was guilty. Anyway, Law was a great way into anything I did. It provided the creativity and playfulness you needed with words and logic to envisage how rules, principles and laws can play out in any environment. My journey has been accompanied by many mentors and individuals in sports and work and this is where I was able to find my strengths. That is part and the other is growing up as an Asian in the UK, which has had its own set of challenges and prepared me well to face the challenges that lay ahead.

Najib: What brought you to do the field of team excellence?

Imran: I have had several opportunities to work in communities and groups and understood why some teams worked and others failed. Even working at a bar (pub) taught me a lot, especially listening to the opinions of team members on the shift and then acting on them. It made for an enjoyable team experience and more happy customers. I’ve had an opportunity to work both in family businesses as well as the corporate world and this is what got me into teams. Working for PWC exposed me to a fast-paced corporate in the business world, and while working for Siemens AG, in the Power Generation Division, taught the virtues of patience and the dynamics of a long-term turn-key project. In both situations, I experienced great teamwork and the friction, confusion, and underperformance that teams need to stay on top of. The learning continued - in addition to Urdu and English that is my mother tongue - I also learnt German and Spanish which provided me more insights into new team cultures, thinking models and attitudes. This all led to a question – are there two or three elements, no matter the language or culture, that would be a prerequisite for any environment before a team could become excellent. And there were. We found three.

Najib: ?Do we have a leadership crisis today? would you think that the definition of today's leadership is flawed and requires a new face?

Imran: Absolutely, while many leaders today think that there is no problem, there is! There is a perceptual divide between what leaders feel is the quality of leadership they deliver and how teams and frontline employees experience it. For business, I feel it is our education system that hasn’t evolved to provide graduates with the necessary soft skills like holding space, reading a room, and creating inclusive environments. All I see is MBA graduates being churned out and then hired as the best talent based on the global rating of MBA programs – very often confidence trumps talent in the recruitment process. I think it is a valid question to ask whether today’s leadership is serving themselves, their people and teams with care, their customers with the right experience or our world and in the most sustainable way.

Najib:?With the absence of crucial leadership and a crisis today, how in your opinion are teams coping?

Imran: It depends. Teams that work autonomously with leaders supporting this autonomy are most likely very happy and effective. Teams who feel controlled are very unlikely to be happy navigating any crisis when leadership knows better and decide over them. It has to do with the leadership culture and the environment this leadership nurtures. Today we have made leadership into something where people must fit into. We create values, behaviours, and competence-models, and get leaders to align to them through performance reviews and benchmarking them against each other. Yearly, we spend $600 Billion on leadership training out of which $280 Billion is spent in the US alone – all of it with questionable ROI. Sadly, we promote leaders based on performance and set competencies and not on talent and the experiences and moments they deliver for our teams and customers. If we want our teams to experience the best leadership, then we need to understand that every human is unique, and they cannot fit into a box. Leadership today is about finding how to use your strengths effectively, to be inclusive as well as do the small things well – and that consistently. If that is the case, then no team will have to worry about facing a challenge or a crisis as the leadership will not only have their backs but also be in the best position to serve them.

Najib: What data is good for team performances??

Imran: You don’t need so much data but rather the right data. I am a big fan of formative data, data that helps to shape the future. Or generative data, data that helps create new or new ideas. Data should help you learn so performance can improve. Or in other words, allow individuals and teams to compare themselves to where they were a week, a month, 6 months ago so they can keep reflecting, improving, and moving. So, what is bad data? That’s any data that creates social comparison. In other words, it’s any data we have that evaluates people against external benchmarks. This data changes people’s behaviour for the worse, it literally destroys intrinsic motivation and only has people worried or performing through fear. This is what is currently killing human potential in organisations today.

-??????We digressed for a moment and spoke about the challenges of toxic organizations. ?Here’s what Imran had to say:

Imran: I have encountered many forms of toxic cultures. There are companies that have a great purpose, and their culture is toxic in parts. I have encountered organisations where individuals were recruited to fulfil a quota and set up to fail, only to discredit the quota. Or others where leaders are motivated not by collaborating and supporting but by demanding teams to give them solutions fast and provide no space to explore problems. I think we are able to recognise toxic cultures. If you can observe the behaviours and feel the difference between good and bad pressure in an environment, then you’ll know what type of culture it is.

-??????What is the role of the coach and how do you tell leaders or leadership that they are the problem?

Imran: As a leadership coach, you are trained to keep your distance and that is what gives you the ability to ask the right questions. It is also key to position yourself right and ensures leaders understand I am the mirror or sounding board. I don’t make the decisions, they do. If you set it upright, there is respect, openness, and trust in the coach and coachee relationship. Only then can the coach be the best catalyst of change. At this moment, leaders do not feel threatened but are able to learn. With some leaders, you need to build clout first as they expect some subject matter understanding and expertise. That can very often depend on the industry, organisation, or regional culture you are working in.

Najib: Do you think that stress levels are increasing with passing times, even with high automation coming in place?

Imran: There is a lot of stress. An enormous amount of stress. I find in the last 12 months, the keyword I have heard most is – I feel overwhelmed. We are living in a 100-year-old model of control and command environments. Typical mindsets that reinforce it are 1. The engineering mindset – there is only one right way, 2. The experienced business mindset – I have been there and done this before, so let me show you, and finally, 3. The creative director mindset – I am the quality benchmark for creativity so let me control your creative work to see if you have reached my standard. A leader’s job today is not to create repeatable recipes but to guide people, it’s not about you knowing and controlling but your ability, as a leader, to read the room, hold space and ensure others collaborate and can perform, learn, keep innovating and delivering.

Najib: How can organizational mental health be addressed through psychological safety??

Imran: Psychological safety is critical. I refer to it as group trust. It is how groups create environments where one can ask for help, raise tough issues and say I do not know in front of anyone at any time. Basically, the higher the consequence of our actions, the more critical psychological safety is at work. This means when people are scared of speaking up, someone gets hurt, shut down and in extreme cases, death can be the result, if the relevant issue or tension isn’t raised and addressed. ?And if you want to experience healthy high performance in your organisation then it begins by building a sense of belonging and psychological safety simultaneously. Only in these sorts of environments can you make work-life balance and recovery a topic so individuals and teams can manage their energy levels and overall impact.

So, coming back to mental health. If the above is true and well-being is integrated into the performance, then mental health will be easier to talk about from the team up to the organisational level. This will help us move on from the failed work-life balance approach of the last 25+ years.

Najib: I understand that you have a passion for dogs, how far back does it go and what breed of dogs have you kept.

Imran: I have had friends and family with dogs, and I experienced the close companionship they developed with these beautiful animals. Dogs are family members, and they bring joy and happiness into all our lives. I think I have met no less than two hundred and fifty people while walking my dog and going to the dog zones in Vienna over the last four and half years. I have only had one dog so far. Today, I have a Saluki – a Persian sighthound.

Najib: Are there any lessons we can learn from animals?

Imran: Animals are true to their purpose. I personally think that we are no better or worse than animals. Animals like dogs can sense how you are feeling, and they ultimately want to please you. What makes a dog special is when you build trust with them, and the dog begins to follow you and decides that you are good for them. At that moment, you will change as a human and become more empathetic and compassionate to the people around you. If you don’t and dominate a dog, and they do what you want through fear, then you’ll have an owner and a dog who aren’t able to adapt to any other context other than the one that works for them both. For me, one of the biggest lessons is the structure in which you nurture your relationship with your dog. It matters. We either nurture a dog who is socialised and able to mix with other dogs and humans or a dog who is always on edge, scared and might bite out of fear.

Najib: You regularly speak of high-performance teams; how do you position shared leadership in this context?

Imran: Interesting question, shared leadership is a unique concept. There is an underlying element within high-performance teams, and it’s called resilience. I mentioned grit earlier. This is a part of resilience but does not make it up in its totality. To foster resilience in a culture, leader’s need to strengthen belonging. They need to model inclusive behaviours so others can embrace them. It is nobody else’s job but leadership. I say this because resilience is a group thing. It is not the collective strength of individuals that make an organisation or team resilient. Individual resilience is built through being and belonging to a group and knowing whom to turn to if help is needed. When we are in crisis, grit will only get us so far. To build resilience we begin by acceptance first. Once leaders have understood and accepted that there is a crisis, the next step is not to ask what do we do or how do we deal with it, but to ask whom do we need to speak to? By doing this, we find out who are the people that can help us analyse the crisis and move forward with the right actions. This is where leadership becomes a shared thing. They collectively work out what is safe to try next. Only like this can you build resilience into a team, a group, a system, or an organisation. Sadly, leaders at the top don’t seem to understand this, the company’s health is the joint responsibility of everyone. You cannot build a resilient and fair environment without shared and inclusive leadership.

Najib: Flow and Languishing / Please define Flow.

Imran: Flow has a lot of science behind it. In life, Flow is a highly enjoyable state of being, absorbing us entirely in the present, and helping us be more creative, productive, and happy. ?I started getting into the Flow States when I worked with HRV (heart rate variability) with leaders. It provided an honest picture of a leader’s behaviours than any personality diagnostic. We used HRV and a Flow model to support behavioural change and it helped leaders and teams immensely. If you can work out when you or your team are in the zone, you will perform better, and even though energy levels might fluctuate, performance will be sustained. In Covid times, we are all languishing in one way or another. What I mean is we are all feeling a sense of restlessness to a point of lacking interest in life and work. If I am languishing (and that is ok), then I cannot think my way out of this status quo. I can only try to do something to have more Flow experiences. If the first thing does not work, learn, and then try a new iteration until you find your Flow. So, leaders, today need to stop first, find their Flow, and then set up the environmental conditions for teams and individuals to find theirs. I think Flow and team experience is going to be the biggest topic for leaders, HR, and organisations in the years to come and how they get to healthy high-performance without losing their talent. ??

Najib: Are your ideas of team dynamics universal or do you think that it must be in the context of individual cultures in different parts of the world?

Imran: One should remember that every person or team has their own reality. Every reality is unique and has been constructed by the individual or team. Never cancel or deny someone’s reality. If you get that – then the universal part comes in through the environment. No one is free of their environment. ?If the environment creates bad pressure, then individuals and teams will be fearful and make more mistakes. If the environment provides good pressure, then individuals and teams will perform at their best.

If you want to do something then help your leaders build the best environments for their teams and the dynamics will follow. Very often leaders, don’t focus on the environment but put teams through team-building processes when, in reality, the environment needs fixing. ?I have never been a great fan of team building and most people hate it anyway. Build a developmental organisation: work on improving the quality of interactions, nurture the right environment so your customers get the best experience, and your culture will evolve and emerge.

Najib: How have teams evolved over time? Have you observed any new trends forming? Which organizations have you observed leading the way in innovations in this realm?

Imran: There is a lot that’s been happening in this realm, I really have enjoyed the work of Christina Wodtke (The Team That Managed Itself). She gets it. And has built many teams since her time at Yahoo as a leader until today. ?

Sadly, I feel she is not as visible as many male team Gurus. She should be right there at the front. She builds amazing teams because she understands her role as a Leader. The data is clear. Leaders are not good at building great teams. They don’t want to make time for the team as they are not measured on it. They are measured on results and reaching their targets. I find there are many ways of setting up a group of people. Some teams are together for years, some for a short period and others are just a working group. They are all good and the key is how to create an environment of accountability. This is the part of team dynamics where the team learns. The team makes it comfortable to talk about hard issues. In the best teams we see them taking care of each other too. They stop you if you are going overboard and getting sick in the process. I have not found one organisation that has done it best. I keep working with parts of organisations that are doing an amazing job with their teams. The issue is, once you have worked it out with one unit or part of the business, how best can you scale it through the organisation. For that, we lack the data and the tools to do it bottom-up and top-down collaboratively.?

Najib: Are business schools teaching the latest team methodologies and dynamics?

Imran: Business schools are teaching but their output is providing great middle managers, not leaders. We won’t be needing middle managers, as teams become more autonomous and organisations more distributed in their authority. I will be provocative now. MBA’s do not help anyone beyond excellent business skills and alumni networks. They do not take in the systemic lens and their tools are myopic and focused on only one part – the business. Educational institutions will need to broaden their view and tie it in with other STEM topics, philosophy, sustainability, medicine, tech and underpin it with the performance of creativity. That is the only glue that will help all these topics converge and give us the ability to tackle the big global issues and do business in the coming years.

I will be provocative now. MBA’s do not help anyone beyond excellent business skills and alumni networks

Najib: For the kids getting ready to join the workforce; what would you advise them in terms of "Team Dynamics" as we have a truly individualistic culture now.

Imran: How can we advise kids when we, the adults, are not evolving or moving. I don’t have an answer here. It begins with my struggle with the education system across the world. I think we need to stop providing “success” recipes to young people. If we would like our children to become a productive part of society then we must be a guide, a coach and a role model for the best collaboration possible. We don’t currently! Kids will make the right decision if we create the spaces for them to unfold their potential. It is us adults who need to become better as adults. For me, there has never been the concept of bringing up a kid correctly or wrongly. Kids are going to copy you anyway, whomever you are. So, depending on how integral, ethical, sustainable, selfish, egotistical, caring, open or compassionate you are, that is going to be the most influential factor in what a young person becomes deals. What counts are your actions and not the worldly experience that got you here.

I guess my advice to kids would behold the mirror to us adults and ask us to be more responsible adults, so young people have a better environment today than what their parents/adults grew up in.

Najib: You can’t manage what you can’t measure. How do you manage team dynamics and performance?

Imran: You need to look at the type of data you capture, and how you turn it into insights and actions. Goodhart’s Law (1975) comes to mind. If a measure becomes a target, then it is not a measure anymore. And to take it a step further, Charles Goodhart wrote - any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. And this is where we are stuck today. And not until we move on from this mindset of control, will we ever be able to create the best environments for measuring team dynamics and performance.?

Our research has shown that to tap the real potential of any individual or team, we need to measure the following experiences in the right way:

1.???Psychological Safety = Group trust

2.???Belonging = Feeling appreciated and part of something bigger

3.???Flow Experiences = focused deep work and healthy performance

Not until these dimensions are measured with a regular cadence, and the data created given straight back to the teams, will we have an approach where individuals and teams can get to their full potential. ?

Najib: Science evolves and we continuously learn. Animals can’t research new methodologies but adapt in a changing environment. What has been your observation in this regard?

Imran: It is simple. It is not the survival of the fittest. It is the survival of the most adaptable. Animals evolve and adapt as they learn through their environment. Take an example of a unicellular organism like a Stentor. They kill for food by touch. So, anything they touch is killed and eaten to survive. Interestingly though, that is not the case when one Stentor touches another Stentor. The only possible explanation for this is that Stentors learned how best to adapt to their environment to ensure the survival of their kind. Dogs are no different; they learn too by observing their environment. They sense their owner’s moods and emotions and respond accordingly. This adaptability helped them connect to humans, adapt, and survive. Adaptability is continuous learning and I think animals do not have our problem of thinking they know better. We, as humans, can unlearn, build a new narrative, even if it harms us. Today I observe our leader’s tendency to steer towards building environments of stability over environments that allow adaptability to flourish.

Najib: What’s KOKORO and how does it work?

Imran: What we’re trying to do is to measure what really matters. We combine pulse surveys, ongoing team development and the team experience into one tool. It is built for the most important unit of performance in an organisation – the teams. HR has no time currently; top leaders are busy navigating the global markets and our teams are delivering to our customers. So KOKORO focus is on automating the data collections on the 3 dimensions I talked about earlier, so they can stay on top of being great teams.

And our research has shown again and again that the best team experience has to be curated in an environment that needs continuous adjustment and work.??

We focus on providing data and giving it back to the team in real-time, so they can move and improve on the go. The whole premise is to create Flow that eventually creates healthy high performing teams.

In a nutshell, At KOKORO, we serve the team where the actual work happens.

The name KOKORO means heart in Japanese but it’s not the biological heart. It means the integration of three things that make us complete, i.e., the heart, mind, and spirit.

Najib: Do you think that "Team Data" would be a threat to leaders and rather than creating flow it would create a hostile environment for the ones being measured? A lot of leaders aren’t the kindest beings as you would have observed.

Imran: We visualise data that doesn’t create hostile environments. The only data that does do that, is evaluation data. Evaluation data in the long run leads to creating competitive environments that ignore unfair treatment and/or allow micro-aggressions. As I mentioned, when you start comparing humans to humans (social comparison), all sorts of things appear, like imposter syndrome and lack of self-worth. What we visualise supports the ongoing conversations and decisions happening in the teams. It is a collaboration focused and all about learning and growing together. That is why we collect formative, learning and generative data. This collaborating mode usher in and strengthens a sense of belonging that eventually results in the most effective leadership culture.

Najib: What is an ideal learning organization?

Imran: In general, every organization has an element of learning in it. How much it learns depends on how the organisation is set up. At KOKORO, we have a principle that runs through the heart of who we are. We don’t fix people, we fix environments! The best learning organizations are developmental organisations. They are instinctively learning, asking questions about how they need to adapt as markets and consumer needs change.

Najib: Where does KOKORO stand today in terms of going mass market?

Imran: We have proof-of-concept and initial product-market fit and are working with our customers to build the best tool for team experience and performance. Whether it is a leader of teams, a transformation lead or a cross country collaboration through teams, we are supporting these communities of teams to have the best conversations, decisions, and impact. We are looking forward to working with more progressive organisations that have or are moving toward team structures and know teams are the future of any distributed way of doing business. The SAAS product should be ready in the next 12-15 months.

I hope you enjoyed this chat, I will be Vlogging a session with Imran in the next days so stay tuned.

?

?

?

?