Speaking and Communicating Podcast

The managing director of KPMG, he told all the senior leaders, "If you don't groom the juniors, you're not getting your bonuses, you're not getting your promotions, you're not getting your profit sharing. If I hear someone saying, you're not giving them the time so that you mentor them, coach them to grow professionally, you're not getting any of that." Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast, I'm your host Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please look on to Apple and Spotify and live a serene interview. Now let's get communicating with our guests today, joining us from Bahrain. Mohammed Isa is a former CFO, now turned leadership coach, global speaker, mountaineer and adventurer. He has authored amazing books that share his adventures and is showing us how to help leaders with the lessons that he's learned both in corporate and in life. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show, Hi Mohammed. Hello Robert, thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for being here. Welcome a mountaineer. I cannot imagine fully those two worlds merging, the leadership coach, your dress in suits and you have this whole executive presence speech. And the next thing you're climbing Mount Everest. Yeah, I think I'm lucky when it comes to that situation or structure of life because I believe in reinventing ourselves every now and then, we are not meant to be the same professional all our lives. We should change because the world is changing and if you're not changing, you are left behind. And this is all started in May 2022 when I trek to Everest Base Camp. And that trip for of two weeks changed my life. So it took two weeks for the entire expedition? Yes, so we trek to Everest Base Camp and meters is 5364 meters. I don't know if you are familiar with Burj Khalifa in Dubai. I heard a little bit. The tallest skyscraper in the world. And the level where we were at is 6.5 times that height. And what was your inspiration behind just deciding this is something that you want to add into your adventures? I have done my fair share of traveling and I did hikes in Europe in North Africa. In January 2022, I was just flipping with my phone and there was a sponsored ad on Instagram and it said Everest Base Camp expedition and I exchanged messages with the organizers and that was it. It was nothing planned. So ads do work I see. So now I'm curious about one thing. What made you decide because I can imagine not that you have to give us exact figures, but I can imagine that somebody who's a CEO of O, they get paid a lot like the perks are really good. What did you decide to live that behind? As I said, we need to evolve. We need to remember ourselves and in my CEO role, at that time I had achieved many things in that 11 plus years in my role and there wasn't much growth available to me in terms of career growth or intellectually growth. So I've done so much that other CFOs would be doing in 20, 25, 30 years and I was very lucky to join a startup, lead their initial public offering, cross listing in a different country and then another round of capital raise, detraising, restructuring, going through the boom, going through the busts I've done everything. So if I had stayed, I would be all doing all the routine things, CFOs doing and that would not add to my CV. That was one of the main reasons to leave that job and believe it or not, I just finished writing another book, it's called "No Title, No Limits", it's in the design process, hopefully I'll print it this month and I document 10 years of professional adventures. That's what I'm doing. That book is basically a gift to my kids, Dana Abdullah-Nali and hopefully it would show them that they don't have to have the typical lives they see in others. You can design, structure your life the way you want. If you are smart enough and if you work hard enough, I believe in that. That is very true, it's funny even when mentioning career as something as formal as that, you put the word "aventure" in it. Now that you help leaders from your CFO experiences, you are the now the blind spot because you know on the outside, what do you help leaders with? I think one of the aspects that leaders are blindsided is that they are not self-aware of what's happening in their lives and their professional lives, I was speaking to someone last week and I told them about someone a leader in a multinational organization, it's a Fortune 500 company, he shocked me when he said one time, his daughter was 12 and he knows nothing about her because he's always at work. And this is one of the biggest traps of leaders. Just focus on work, work, work, work and forget everything else, forget their health, forget their relationships, forget their family. So in my book, no title, no limit, I talk about this concept by Dr. Susan Jiffas. She has a very nice book, it's a book that has been out for decades, it's called "Feel the Fear and Do it anyway." Yes. And she has a very profound question inside the book which says, "How whole is your whole life?" So if your whole life is just work and you are a leader enjoying all the perks you spoke about, all the bonuses, all the stock options and you forget about everything else, I don't call this life. So leaders, they need to wake up. We are supposed to work to live, not to, yeah. Because it's just the thing, more or a minute, and I hear you, but I find that a lot of the time we just close over these topics and so he works too hard, so his relationships are falling apart. What is the root cause? When you work with your leadership clients, what is the root cause that they work so much and everything else is neglected? Are they not able to delegate? Do they feel like nobody else can do the job better that they can do or somebody expects them to know everything? What is the root cause and the mindset behind them working this way? What you said is totally true, all of the factors you mentioned, but I'll tell you what's happening over there, it's comparison, you're comparing yourself to your peers within the company. They are working longer hours, you say I want to join them, so that when the CEO looks who's around, he will see me. Working longer hours will not really have an incremental value in terms of productivity, in terms of other outcomes. I worked as a consultant for a company for six months and here is what I found. They had a culture, their office hours will finish at four, but everyone will be staying until six, seven, eight, so it was very normal to get an meeting invitation at six, although the working hours they would end at four, and I was talking to the senior finance manager and I told him, let me ask you this simple question, if everyone is working so hard and everyone is working longer hours and you are having all these meetings beyond the working hours, why haven't been profitable company for the last six years? So there must be something wrong, so it's not about working longer hours, it's about having the right priority and working on the items, the activities, the projects will drive value to the company. So mostly, as they get this wrong, it's not about working longer hours, it's about having the right systems, the right team members. In our region, we have this perplexing situation where people are afraid to hire people who are smarter than them, because they think that is such a flaw. You know, everybody knows Richard Branson, and since day one, when he became a billionaire back, and how many decades ago he used to say, I'm a billionaire because I have people who are smarter than me, like everybody knows that's the formula. Exactly, and I'll tell you something, although I was a CEO for four or eleven years, I had one of the smartest employees as my right hand man, his name is Karsten from India, and he was much smarter than me, and I was very good with that. Yeah, I was very happy working with him. He was happy working with me. It's about building a team that will carry you. I'll remind the leaders of something important. When you have someone who can fill in your position, ultimately, you can move up. They don't see it that way. That's where you were seeing talk about self awareness earlier. That's where that insecurity as well comes in that I don't wanna be replaced. And yet you have leadership coaches saying, Mohammed, we will measure how successful you are as a leader. If you grow a team that will replace you. And I know. - And I know. - And I don't have that perspective. - Yeah, and I know someone from Bahrain, the managing director of KPMG, and he told all the senior leaders, if you don't groom the juniors, you're not getting your bonuses, you're not getting your promotions, you're not getting your profit sharing. If I hear someone saying, you're not giving them the time and you're not giving the attention to them so that you mentor them, coach them to grow professionally. You're not getting any of that. - Hmm. - So it takes a leader who understands. - Right. And when you were a CFO, did you have those experiences? Did you notice some of those dynamics incorporate and say, ha, this is the sky's downfall. Or if he doesn't have a paradigm shift on this, this is not gonna work out well. Or did you notice those things or you started to notice them after you left your corporate. - I have seen them all during my time, after my time. Unfortunately, very common in companies across the world, not just in our region, across the world. But I'll tell you what I was doing. I'll tell you because I think the listeners, they need to see an example of how this is done. I really wanted to invest in my team. So that's why when we were preparing the budgets every year, each employee in my team had a budget of two salaries to go on training courses. So if your salary is $3,000, you have $6,000 of a training budget. If your salary is $5,000, you have $10,000. I have maintained a very friendly relationship with my team members and I treated them as a friend. Doesn't mean I was lenient. No, we were getting results. But the way you treat your team members will decide how much they will exert effort in helping you achieve your objectives, your projects. And that's very important. I had one too many sessions where I tell them about what's happening and what's going to happen. Sometimes I would have one-on-one sessions and believe it or not, you know, when we had the financial crisis in 2008, I had many discussions with them. Very frank, very blunt. To help them, to help them navigate what was happening. As I said, I've seen the boom on the bust. So when the bust happened, I told them, look, guys, I tell you what's going to happen now. One, training budgets are gone. IT budgets are gone. Entertainment budgets are gone. Your promotions are gone. Your increments are gone. Your bonuses are gone. So now this is the situation. Now it's up to you as an individual professional to decide your future. If you're not happy with what I've said, work harder, improve yourself, improve your skills, and apply somewhere else, because I cannot give you all of these things. Most of them was stayed with me because they enjoyed working with me. Some of them, they left. So I think leaders, they need to be more transparent with their team members. Babaj, as the ones that stayed, do you think it was also a matter of the fact that you communicated upfront on this is what's happening and this is how we're going to handle it. Would this work for you? Because those who left as well, they thought, okay, he's being transparent with me. This is not going to work for me. So I'm okay. I'm leaving. But those who stayed, is there also an element of, I appreciate the fact that my leader was very transparent and communicated clearly with me? Of course. Of course. It was that more of loyalty as well. They were loyal to it. Yeah? Because they know how much I took care of them during all these years. And some of them, they got very decent bonuses. They were getting bonuses that changed their lives. And they know I'm pushing for them. I'm rooting for them. When I said down what the managing director will be pushing for more increments, more promotions and more bonuses for them. So they know I was a fighter for them. Because there are some leaders. They were not fight for their team members. So you had built that loyalty over the years. Because that's the other thing we always ask is as a leader, how do you create that relationship with your team members, where there's trust, where there's psychological safety, and it's not something you do overnight. And it's not performative. If it is that genuine, people know, people know that you really root for them and you fight for them. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And one more thing if I want to share with you over here. Because I recruited them during the initial stages of the company. Right. They saw the evolution of the company from a startup to a publicly listed company, a two cross listed company. They've seen all of this. And we were working long hours together and the building up of our finance, IT, and HR functions. Because when they hired me, they fooled me. They said you will be the finance director, but they gave me seven functions, seven functions but one salary. That's what I always say. So, seven salaries. Yeah, exactly. So it wasn't like that. Okay, guys, you need to stay very late. You need to finish this. No, I was staying late with them. So it's not that it's okay. I'm the boss. You do everything. No, you should lead by example as well. Right. Which brings us to emotional intelligence. What have you found are some of the struggles of leaders when it comes to emotional intelligence, especially if like you just said, if there's uncertainty, if there's conflict, where do they struggle the most when it comes to EQ? I'll tell you a story. I never shared this in a podcast before. I shared it when I give leadership talks or workshops. But I'm sharing this for the first time on a podcast. We appreciate that. We love stories. Thank you, Robert. You're most welcome. As I told you, I like to tell stories and this is for the benefit of all emotional intelligence. Is something you get as you grow up in your family, in your career. And sometimes you need to complement it with your reading. So one time we had a board meeting and there was a big debate, very contentious. The board members were shouting. And what was next on the agenda? Review on our pay scale structure. So when I saw the fight between the members, I took all the packs that had the salary benchmarking I have done with the industry. I took the packs and I went to my office, put them in the drawer and I came back. So the CEO, he said, okay, now distribute the packs on the proposed salary structure. I told him, no, tell them this will be discussed next time because we are already late. And then he was very few years. How can you decide on your own to remove an item from the agenda? I'm the CEO, you're not the CEO. I said, look, after all this fighting before this agenda item, do you think if we have proposed this, the board of directors would have agreed on it? No way. No way they would have agreed. So guess what happened next time we had the board meeting. It was a very smooth, very pleasant board meeting and they were passing through the agenda items very smoothly in a very quick fashion way. We arrived at the salary adjustment or the salary pay scale structure revision. I was about to distribute the packs, the same packs I had hidden in my drawers. Someone from the board said, Mr. Chairman, can I propose something? He said, yes, please. He said, with your permission and the permission of the other board members of this respected company, I would propose that we don't discuss this agenda item. We trust the management. So we authorize you as the chairman to approve it and issue it. Mission accomplished. So that's emotional intelligence. Mission accomplished indeed. Because I think that sometimes in the urgency of trying to do too much or trying to make sure that we have this deadline to me to the board must do this and the expectors to do this. There's a lot of things that get brushed under rug. We just got to rush this the way you handle that. How is it that you didn't give into the pressure? Sometimes you need to be bold. You need to be bold with a CEO. You need to be bold with the chairman. We want another story that I never shared on a board. Oh yeah, we love stories. Yes, please. All right, this is the story when I was serving as the chairman of the nomination in RC, nomination, remuneration and compensation, committees, so chairman of an RC. And one of my duties was when the election season is approaching, I would be soliciting CVs from the markets so that I can nominate them to the board of directors. And once they are vetted by the board of directors, they will be basically screened by a us and then ultimately the shareholders will vote on who to elect for the board or not. So I had a very funny chairman, the chairman of the board. He wanted to interfere in my job and basically what he wanted to achieve is to hijack the board of directors. So if I bring people who know me, people who will never say no to me, I will have a board that is so smooth, that will approve everything that I recommend without any debate, without any discussion, without any confrontations and that would be heaven. No blind spots though, no one's saying, hey, maybe we should rethink this. Exactly. So what I did, I never give enter and I've never given to him and I was very furious with him. But you know, I was just acting as a professional chairman of the in RC. And I was giving a speech in a conference and someone from the company called me and he said, did you hear the news? I said, what news? I just gave a speech. I don't know. I have been speaking for two hours. He said, the committee is dissolved. You are no longer the chairman of the committee. They appointed different members in the committee. I said, this is very interesting. I said, you know what? I was holding myself from this call for a few weeks now. Because I wanted to call one of the major shareholders and tell him what was happening, happening behind the scene. The chairman wanting to hijack the board of directors and that will not be in the favor of the shareholders. So that evening I called one of the shareholders and we had a very long call and he said, look, Muhammad, I'll tell you something. If he were confident in his performance as a chairman, he wouldn't have done any of this. Even if you brought 40 CVs. Don't worry. Thank you for your call. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for caring for our company. Don't worry. Let's wait for the shareholders meeting and we will see what happened. You know what happened? He got zero, zero votes. Natural. The chairman of the board wanted to ask me. He was asked it himself. And also he wasn't moving with integrity and in the best interest of the company. I think he was more so serving. He wanted to hear people around him and that's even I don't want to hear people around me. Even when you choose your friends, you're like, I really like my friend who tells me even when I think of sideways because that helps me to rethink some things. But you don't want to be surrounded by yes people. Indeed. You need to hear a no because a no could open up a new horizon for you. That's how it was. I was reviewing a book that's called Ever since Paris and I was delivering a longer program and Kuwait. So I saw someone reading a book in a coffee shop and I asked him, do you like reading? He said, yes, I like reading. I said, do you mind if you review this draft of my book? And I was very deliberate because he doesn't know me. He'll be objective. Yes. Exactly. So you need people around you who will open up your eyes. Open up your horizons. If everyone is saying yes, what's the point of having a team? It actually helps you to have people who might wake you up to some things. And what is your peak leadership philosophy? My peak leadership model or philosophy is something that I developed last year. I was in Oman, Muscat. I delivered my signature keynote speech called Everest Leadership. And I had an Indian gentleman come to me in the lobby. And he said, you had an excellent speech, but and I thought, oh my God, you know, after the but you usually come something not so good or not so present. They say the butt negates every compliment you just received. Exactly. Exactly. So he said, but you don't have a model. All the big shots speakers, they have models. I said, look, I'm a storyteller. I tell you the story. You get the point. And then you remember how to implement the point in your life. He said, no, no, no, no, you should have a model. I said, look, I will never discount an idea that I get. So I'll keep this in my mind. Usually when I go to Oman, the Omanis are one of the kindest people on earth. If they hear that I'm an Oman, they will compete for hosting me, for dinners, for lunches, for everything. So usually I don't tell them when I'm in the conference because otherwise they will snatch me out from the conference. I love that. That day, very surprisingly, I started having messages and calls to some of my friends on Oman and I couldn't meet any of them. So I thought, okay, now I have this time until the evening, until my flight. Let me go and look for a book that I can buy and read. So I went to two book stores. I went back and forth between them and then I bought a book called Real Estate Millionaire Agent. A book that was printed in 2000. So it doesn't have all the social media, the website, the content marketing concepts and you know, the world has changed. So I thought, you know what, let me buy this book. And I wanted to just look at the diagrams in the book. I was too tired to read. On page 42, they were a triangle and it was the triangle of success for Real Estate agents and it had three elements. Okay. So the triangle I thought, it looks like a mountain. Maybe this is my calling to create a model now. I was the only one in the coffee shop. I looked at the cashier on the counter, I said, excuse me, do you have an A4 sheet? So he brought it to me. He brought me a blueprint. So I had a roller and I sketched the triangle. When you climb Mount Everest, you have to go through the ages. You need to trek to the base camp and need to be there for a few weeks to acclimatize. There is a lower oxygen levels over there. And then you go to camp one, camp two, camp three, camp four and the summit. So six levels. So I divided the model into six levels. So my peak leadership model was born of an idea in Muscat, Oman and it was sketched on an A4 sheet borrowed from a cafe. So that's the model. And it started with the base camp and we already talked about what's on the base camp. Self-awareness. Before we lead others, we need to know ourselves. And the summit represents legacy. What legacy do you leave as a leader? So this is my model in a nutshell. From the base camp to legacy. Thank you so much, Mohammed. Any last words of wisdom for leaders, anything you feel I should have asked you that you wanted to share with them today. I want to emphasize, if you allow me, the idea of self-reinvention. Remember, you can reinvent yourself. You should not be the same person five years from now, seven years from now. Reinvent yourself. The world is changing and if you don't change with it, you'll get left behind. That's not the situation to be. Absolutely. Leaders take charge of their careers. So you need to take charge. Right. Reinventing yourself doesn't always mean leaving where you are or changing completely. Because even where you are, you can still reinvent. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And doesn't have to be a 360 or 180 degrees self-reinvention. It could be incremental, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%. Just be different. I could have stayed in my CFO position. It would have been now 21 years, but I chose not. So it is added to reinvent, yes. Yeah. Exactly. Words of wisdom from Mohammed Isa, the author, global speaker, leadership coach and the former CFO mountaineer. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. That's my pleasure, Roberta. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you. And hopefully the followers, the listeners will get value out of this. They certainly will. And before you go, please give us your websites and where to find your books. It's everisaspiche.com. You'll find everything there. Okay. EverisSpeech.com. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe, live a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.