D&I Sharing - Accidental Exclusions: Habits that (Unrealizingly) harm inclusion

How can we create a more inclusive environment? 

In a recent Leaders meeting, I gave a sharing about inclusion: how we, as leaders, can nurture a more inclusive environment in our teams and organization. 

I decided to take a different approach to the subject: by highlighting some of our subconscious behaviors that might indirectly have a negative impact to inclusion. 

To me, forming an inclusive environment is not about big campaigns, posters and marketing slogans. The key lies in the habits that we do every day: the moment-to-moment interactions we have with others, and how we respond in different contexts.

Inclusion boils down to two factors: belonging and uniqueness. 

As leaders, we need to ask: How can we make our team feel a sense of belonging, that they are "part of the team", while at the same time recognising and acknowledging their uniqueness and how they can contribute and add value to the team?

The tricky thing is, inclusion is often PERCEPTION through the individuals' human experience - not necessarily objective reality. 

And whether we realize it or not, some of our habits might inadvertently create a feeling of exclusion in others. 

Here are some examples of those habits: 

1. Sticking to our Social comfort zone - as they say, "birds of a feather flock together". We tend to stick to our cliques, and speaking with language we are comfortable with. The side effect, though, is that when we only stick to our clique, it subconsciously creates a divide ("geng2 bosses"), isolation and alienation to the rest. 

2. Overlooking team members and achievements - sometimes we are so focused on our tasks and results, we forget the human beings driving them. Take the time to get to know & appreciate others. 

3. Hierarchical bias / selective respect - I.e. When we are subconsciously "nice" to the bosses, but mean to the people who we consider "lower" - creating a sense of discrimination

4. Avoiding difficult conversations - this only creates negative suspicion & resentment. Procrastinating & ignoring only makes it worse!  

 

5. Separation language - language like "you guys" or "Korang" make people feel like they're separate from us. Try to use more inclusive "we" language. 

When I conducted this sharing with quorums of GM, SGM and VP, I was very careful to say things like "we leaders" instead of just "leaders need to XYZ", so I don't create a sense of divide or blame, and that we are in this together with a collective responsibility. 

There are many others - e.g. Dismissing opinions, failing to cascade info (am I not worthy?), talking trash/backbiting about others (making those around us feel unsafe and a constant sense of suspicion that "are they saying that about me?") - At the end of the day, we should endeavour to be more mindful of our physical and verbal habits, and be more deliberate in creating a more inclusive environment to those around us. 

Petronita Orchid Run 2024 🌸🏃 - 21km ✅

 

Alhamdulillah, completed my First Half Marathon since 2019.. With some improvement too 😊.
💦 Gotta admit, felt really nervous in the beginning as we kicked off to a really wet start, flagging off at 6:12pm in the really heavy rain. But the rain subsided over time and Alhamdulillah for me it was a great touristy  experience exploring KL foot, too.


Was nice to bump into my colleagues from DFE as well as a nice surprise to catch up with Ex-SKA colleagues too! Great work guys!

Alumni sharing for new leaders: GP Managers Forum . Petronas leadership center (PLC), Bangi - Thursday 10th October 2024

 

Congratulations to our new managers! Alhamdulillah it was an honor and privilege to attend the session address the new managers in GP, where PLC opened up an opportunity for several of us - alumni from the past Dynamic Leadership training, together with my fellow alumni Yoganathan and Sofia Shereen - to reach out and share some thoughts, perspective and ideas for our journey as managers to help prepare them for the exciting (and no doubt, challenging) times up ahead in their career journey, and our journey together as fellow leaders! 

It was a very enlightening learning session, with excellent facilitation from Pak Tam @Nizam, kicking off with participants being assigned to complete a series of self-assessment questions that enlightened them about the concept of "accidental diminishers": how several of our characteristics can unrealizingly have a negative effect to the people around us. 

As expected, the most common Accidental Diminisher was the Rescuer and Protector: where our tendency is to "help" and "shield" our subordinates in times of difficulty. While it seems noble, these tendencies might have a damaging side effect that diminishes them, by robbing and depriving them of the ability to develop their own independent capacity to solve problems, take away that sense of responsibility and accountability, and ultimately make them more and more dependent upon us. In more extreme cases, if we "rescue" them too often, they might subconsciously produce low quality work, expecting their bosses to pick up the slack! Other common accidental Diminishers were Perfectionist and Rapid Responder. 

The alumni forum session kicked off with some excellent sharing from my alumni buddy Yoga, who shared about the necessity of adjusting our communication styles with different stakeholders, learning from our mistakes and being flexible to adapt, in order to make the best of the people around us for us to be effective Multipliers. Sofia then shared about some of the "mistakes" she made in her early time as a manager, and how she learned to acknowledge them and learn from them. 

I first started by congratulating the attendees for their new appointment. The organization has deemed them worth of handling their most valuable resources: the people. We have the potential to make a huge difference and shape the future of our organization: let's make it count! 

I then emphasized that those accidental Diminishers aren't necessarily "bad", in fact a lot of them come from a place of sincerity. Use this as a means of self-awareness: how our behavior affects others, how we can leverage those strengths, while at the same time knowing how we can do better. 

Alhamdulillah it was also nice to bump into my Sydney buddy Iskandar, as well as my good friend chief @Asrif. 

Thanks to Bella, Pak Tam & team for having us. All the best to our new leaders

Breakout Session with Mentors: IIUM Summit of Future Leaders, 2nd October 2024

 

After the leadership talk, students were split into 6 different groups, with each group being assigned with a mentor to open up a conversation with them to clarify any curiosity, tips and how we can better prepare them to enter and thrive as professionals in the real world out there, to share practical advice, as well as opening up their perspective based on our collective experience. 

In my group, I had the pleasure of engaging with Bashir, Rabiatul, Farhan, and Aqif - 3 of them engineering students, and 1 studying architecture. 

Here are some of the questions and discussion points that were brought up:

 1. Are there any projects that actually end up as failures? What happens when projects "fail"? 

 2. (After hearing one of our Technical Professionals, fellow mentor speak out about how she's currently handling ten projects) how on Earth do you handle so many projects at once? That sounds impossible! How?! 

 3. I have a problem: I'm a bit of a people pleaser - I just don't know how to say "no" because I'm always concerned about other people. How do I overcome that so I can become more assertive? 

 4. Do you really implement what you study in university? 

 5. A lot of good advice revolves on finding good company and productive friends, but some of us struggle with making friends. What should we do? 

 6. What should you do when you want to do the right thing but everybody is against you? 

 7. Tips for getting a job, finding opportunities and being noticed by employers 

 8. How do you handle work-life balance  when you have such high workloads and demanding jobs?  

 9. What do you do with staff who aren't performing or aren't fitting in with the work culture? 

10. How do you handle problematic staff and conflicts at the workplace? Especially those of us who prefer avoiding conflict

11. How important is co-curricular activities in our employability, and why do employers seek this out? Is 

12. How do we stay steadfast when we feel like giving up?  

I found this hour-long session to be very beneficial and immensely satisfying, for both the mentors and mentees. 

 1. Because many of them are still young (majority are in 1st or 2nd year of their degree), the professional world seems like such an unfamiliar, alien world. It was a real privilege to help shed some light to demistify this foreign world, and help inspire them to believe in themselves to tackle these challenges when their time comes. 

 2. Having to listen - and make us think through these thought provoking questions - keeps us sharp. Especially thinking about how many of us are still struggling with these challenges, seeking solutions, and haven't quite figured it out. 

I left the session giving a lot of thought to these questions. 

Success isn't a destination.. It's a process. A journey. 

 

Awesome session! Looking forward for similar engagements in the future! 

Summit of Future Leaders: Empowering Excellence - a collaboration with International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM @ UIA) with CHESS-PETRONAS: 2nd October 2024, KLCC Tower 1

 

Alhamdulillah, it was an honor to participate in this leadership program with IIUM students, organized by the Collaboration with Higher Education Strategic Initiatives (CHESS), a platform where PETRONAS reaches out to universities to bridge  and helping to prepare students as professionals entering the industry. 

I've always been passionate about developing youth, and am particularly interested in reaching out to university students, who go through an important transitional phase in their lives: as they start moving away from dependent youth shaping themselves into young adults with huge potential to achieve greatness, how can we help them provide some "real world" perspective and help to inspire them to capitalize this potential. 

The program was co-organized by IIUM's Huffaz sejahtera Leadership Program (HSLP), a program initiated by lecturers from IIUM engineering faculty to create a platform for holistic personal development for students, as an additional avenue for students to earn credit points. Their 3-year program centers on Qur'an memorization, coupled with leadership competency building such such as 3-day leadership camp, their third day culminating in a visit and engagement with industry professionals - in this case, PETRONAS. excellent program and great practice educational institutions can emulate. 

For the session, I delivered a talk title "Let's be the Change our future needs". 

The key message I wanted to share with them is that the main ingredient to achieving success in life is your character: your values, beliefs, morals, attitude and outlook in life. 

There's a saying that goes, "money and success don't change people. They merely amplify what is already there". If your character is sound - your heart is sincere, your attitude thrives to succeed, you have the integrity to stick to your principles - then anything that comes your way only amplifies the good for yourself and the impact towards people around you. The longer you live, the more wealth you have, the higher you rise in position and rank, the more followers and influence you have, then the greater the goodness amplified. 

And if you have poor character, any wealth, position, or even the longer you live - will only cause more and more damage to society!

List down all the traits of what you consider are "great leadership". Whether it's approachable, inspiring, good listener, supportive, visionary, they all have one thing in common: this is all about character.

So, if great leadership is about character, it has nothing to do with rank or a leadership position. You can start being a great leader right here, right now. 

We cannot "wait" for the future leaders to just magically appear out of nowhere, or fall from the sky. If we want a better future, we need to BE a part of what shapes that better future!

Was nice to bring them for their first experience to KLCC towers and the famous sky bridge.

Thanks to the organizers for opening up a chance for us to contribute. Allahumma barik. Here's hoping for more collaboration opportunities in the future!

A conversation with the Legends: insights from past PETRONAS leaders

 

In commemoration of PETRONAS 50 years, our Facilities Development department reached out to several past leaders to share their leadership wisdoms to share with the team. 

Alhamdulillah we were honored to have the opportunity and privilege to interview 3 legendary leaders: Johari Dasri (ex MD-CEO, Carigali), Azhar Noordin (ex SGM of Development Division, Carigali) and Kamarshah Harun (ex project manager, GM Petroleum). 

Here is a sneak peak of insights and takeaways I got:

The key to effective negotiation: the human touch of Listening & Understanding. 

After experience in Negotiation with all sorts of stakeholders, locally and internationally, one leader shared that the key to success is the human touch. If both parties stubbornly impose their demands, when an unstoppable force moves and immovable object, nothing moves. Sometimes, simply listening and understanding is enough to resolve misunderstanding and remove the bottleneck! 

Diversifying your skillsets - all 3 of them repeated this same message: don't just stay in silo and stubbornly stick to your individual skill groups. Be proactive and passionate about learning of others work, what they do and how that ties in and from your scope. This makes you a better all-rounded decision maker and gives you courage to make tough decisions and take calculated risks to blaze a trail into unchartered territory. 

An unexpected lesson: how family plays an important role to productivity - a leader shared that during an emergency crisis in one of the international operations, the company instructed all staff to evacuate their family members (spouse and children) back to their home country, in the interest of safety. Naturally, they weren't happy about it but eventually complied. The unexpected result? 

Staff performance had a significant drop in performance. Leadership wisdom: we only see our colleagues during the 8 hours they are with us. What happens in those remaining hours? It's there that they find the inspiration and motivation to deliver their best. And Without their families, they lose a big part of what makes them whole. Leaders need to understand this. 

As leaders, you will constantly face situations where you need the Courage to Act - All 3 of them had to blaze the trail in areas which had no precedent. Many things can go wrong. You will feel intimidated, and suffer impostor syndrome, and sometimes go against odds of people who doubt you and don't believe in you or look down on you. But at the same time, remember: you are in the driver's seat in this chapter of history! Always learn, improve yourself, instill confidence in your own and your team's abilities, and seize the day! 

Make mistakes? Own up to it, be honest and transparent, apologize if you caused some damage, move on. 

Takeaway for leaders: Provide the space for your team members to make mistakes! 

As Muslims, we always have to remember about the concept of "rezeki" /rizq. Allah has already determined, so Don't envy others or compromise your integrity by taking what doesn't belong to you. Big problems happen when you have envy & PHD (perasaan hasad dengki)!

Be intentional and mindful. Always ask yourself, "why am I here?" what is your purpose? Your goals? What legacy would you want to leave behind after you're gone?

No matter how far you go, always remember your SHARED VALUES; this is Who you are!