Riham Satti | Stripped back and personal

Speaker A: Welcome.

Speaker B: I'm Ruth Ferenga, founder of Conscious Leaders. This podcast aims to change the world of work one honest discussion at a time. And I hope you enjoy these conversations. They're with proven people, leaders running highly successful businesses. Now this month I'm interviewing co founder and CEO of Mavate, Reem Sati. She takes a really strict back and personal approach to her leadership, which is quite refreshing. And I started by asking her about just that.

Speaker A: It's fundamental, right? Um, I think having authenticity really allows people to kind of know the true person and the true self really. And I think that comes down probably to my upbringing more than anything else. Right. I was born in North Sudan, uh, in a place called Omdurman, just ah, about an hour drive away from the capital. And I came to the UK and about 1 years old and we're a very kind of tight knit family, right. Um, I've got my sister, my mom, my dad and we've always been very, very close, tight knitted family and we've always been known for a very early age of kind of how to communicate, how to share, how to talk and be authentic and ask the questions and not be afraid to, to ask the questions and kind of fight for what's right. And I think you take that with you wherever you go. And so I remember now when I kind of jump on meetings, when people ask me questions, I try and kind of show that strict back. This is me, this is all of me, this is everything. And I think it shows a sense of transparency, which I think is also very, very important from a leadership perspective, but also allows people to drop their guards and actually build trust and build a relationship. It feels more genuine, it feels more trustworthy and you can form a bond with individuals. And I think that's really fundamental when you're working with a team and growing with a team. Because I feel like, I know it sounds cheesy, right, when people say their teams are like families. But in my eyes that's what it does feel like because you know, you can question things, you can ask, you can be as transparent, you've got that sense of community and that purpose and that allows to kind of shape who you are and how you act and how you behave. But you can also be very, very genuine about it. I think that's also really, really important. Especially post or kind of post Covid or during COVID when everyone went completely remote, right? And we were always kind of a remote first organization and there was a big blur between work, life, um, and it's very hard to separate those things out. Right. Because your office was your living room. Uh, in my case. Or your, you know, you go do the washing up, and then you go jump into meetings and calls, and there's a big blur between career and then also home life, especially during COVID And so I think most people brought or tried to bring themselves into work, and

Speaker C: it was kind of forced into it. That authenticity was kind of like. Especially when you saw those with the grand pianos in the background.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker C: Working on their bed sort of thing.

Speaker A: 100%. You could not. It was very hard to partition it. Right. Uh, it's not that you go to the office, you do your work, and then you come back. And I don't think in my eyes, and I've said this, there's probably more my values than anything. It's, you know, if you're happy at home, you're happy at work. Right. And if you're happy at work, then you're happy at home. It's. They're interconnected and they. They kind of looped and together in this kind of combination. And so if people. And this is what I kind of do every morning in the teams, like, how are you?

Speaker C: Just.

Speaker A: How are you doing? Forget about the work. Forget about everything else. Just tell me as an individual, you're doing okay. Anything you need, how can I help? And that's kind of just shows that you care, and that kind of gives you that compassion, that empathy piece.

Speaker C: I think a lot of people can understand this in, like, theory. Um, there's a few things that come up is like, what do I share? How much do I share? Would I become too friendly with my employees? Is that. Is there a risk of, like, going too far with this? And.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And also, just what specifically you might say at the beginning of a meeting and how you do that kind of check in?

Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's a good, good question. I don't have the magic answer to all of this. And I'm. It's definitely the magic answer. I don't answer. I didn't tell you how. I think it's a really personal experience for everyone. Um, how your style, your behavior, your approach is very unique and individualistic. Um, and I can share what. What m. My. My style is. And I kind of hinted at it. Right. You know, just the usual kind of check in. How are you doing? I remember the first time, uh, we had someone who joined our organization the first time I asked him, how are you? Gave me a list of all the things he was going to work on today. And I Was like, that's not my question, mate. Um, that's great. That sounds fantastic. But my only question is just how are uh, you? Um, and in the most basic form, you know, how are you doing? Are you stressed? Are you happy? Is there anything I can do to help? And a lot of my kind of. And that just kind of builds that relationship at the very beginning. And I tend to kind of like to know how people are doing and what they're up to outside of work. You know, we've got some people do jiu jitsu, some people who do kind of role playing exercises. We've got people who do music and everyone's got their own style. And I think it's actually just caring about what people do outside of work. Uh, right. And making sure that you feel invested in that. Uh, but also in our organization we have these things called the um, Thursday Hangout. So every, um, 12pm every Thursday we have like it used to be a drop in session, we would just talk. But now we've all decided we're all going to learn Spanish together as a team. I know. So I can uh, I can converse just about the basics. Um, and so everyone feels like they're in the journey together of just learning together.

Speaker C: There's something really interesting here about not being overly goal orientated with growing the business. It doesn't mean that that isn't in the background and isn't in the purpose and the deep seated belief of what

Speaker A: you're, where you're going.

Speaker C: I was talking to someone else about a retreat thing. He's uh, organizing to Morocco to take leaders up and they become more like isolated as the retreat goes on. So it kind of starts more comfy and then becomes like more of a kind of solitude in it as well. And you know, he said, I'm not into peak bagging. We're not about like, let's get as many like you know this. It's something about like the journey. And I feel there's something about this here. Like if we get too like, right, what, what are you doing this week and can you focus on your goals and give me all of that that we sort of miss the like wider reason about why people come to work and why they're motivated.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I completely agree with that. And it's the, it's a bit like the golden circle that Simon Sinek refers to. Right. It's not just the why of a company, but it's also the why of the individual. Right. It's why you doing what you're doing. Uh, it's not just. It's not the how or the what, it's. But your own individual why. And everyone's got their own story of why they're doing what they're doing or what they believe in, and making sure people remember that and also being able to not be afraid to share that is really important. Um, and, you know, we do team retreats. The last one was in Cyprus. Uh, we used to just do the uk and our ops manager flew us out to Cyprus together as a team. And if, you know, you can spend a week together in a team in a remote location and still have fun and still feel connected at the end of it and recharged, I think in my eyes, that's a good team. And I think it comes down to. And that goal piece you're referring to, I think in my eyes, that's culture, right? It's the company culture. And you can't put a number on a company culture. It's. It's near impossible because it's not a metric that you can kind of score or rate. And yes, we're doing kind of engagement surveys and stuff like that. But that feeling is not easy to kind of score. But that culture, in my eyes, I think, is what shapes an organization. And the tighten it, you can make a culture, the tighter, uh, people feel that they're working towards that goal, that mission, that purpose together.

Speaker C: So it sounds like. So we've got. So there's your own style. There's the retreats that you do, um, kind of work retreats. Get an Airbnb. I do remember when we were talking before the interview, you said that in the downtime, you might want to do different things. So you might want to read a book.

Speaker A: You might want to. These things can be really intense, can't they? Yeah, 100%. Right. Because if you're spending a week, um, with people, right, from morning to night, right, and you've got different personalities. Some people are introverted, some are extroverted. I'd say I'm an ambivert. I kind of fluctuate between the two. Everyone's got their own. Same as you. I. Everyone's got their own styles, right? And you've got to be very aware of that. And so for us, yes, our retreats are kind of like work retreat, but we all hang out together. But everyone needs to be able to have the power to kind of do what they want. If they want to go read a book, go read a book. We had one of our, um, team members just go off for Walks and climb rocks and then I think, okay, fair enough, I'm not doing that, but I support you for it. Um, and so you've got to allow people. I think that's the whole point of diversity and inclusion. Right. And belonging. It's the sense of everyone collectively as a team, feel like they belong in that culture, but individually they've got their own diverse attributes. Uh, and also you want to be able to treat them all equally and fairly. Which is that inclusion piece.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker C: We want to shift conversation a little bit now because I'd really like to talk about um, the Trump executive orders because I know you work in the space of fairness and inclusion, uh, with the kind of work you do with organizations. So maybe you could briefly talk about that. Uh, and then um. Yeah, I'm curious as to your approach of how you support organizations who may be navigating this DEI mindset or that they might be either committing further, pulling back. There's a whole range. So yeah. Would it be worth starting with your bit about your organization and then how that applies?

Speaker A: How much time have we got, Ruth? Because we might be here for a while if I'm going to be talking about this topic. Um, yeah, let me tell you about an organization and kind of link it all up to together really. So name of the company is called Me Vitae. Uh, I hinted on the mission and the vision which is to create fairness in the workplace. Uh, the way we do that is we plug into existing HR systems to aggregate a lot of workforce data and identify where potential HR compliance, legal, uh, risks organizations may have so completely data driven approaches to being able to understand those. And then our solution then identifies those challenges and comes up with recommendations of how to tackle them. And they're very individual to the organization and style and measure the impact of the efficacy of those approaches. It's a very kind of neat feedback mechanism and when it identifies a challenge it kind of recommends either some of our solutions, some of our partner solutions to tackle that. And these can be anything from uh, kind of HR strategy risks. It could be uh, financial risks, it could be legal, could be, you know, the whole range really. And it's kind of playing a, ah, diagnostic kind of check. Um, the way I like to think about it is like a virus and it's always scanning and checking and seeing if there's a challenge and then kind of identifying a threat and then telling you how to kind of fix it really so that you're building a more effective workforce. Um, for us, fairness has always been the foundations to what we do, um, and for us it also means not just from a kind of recruitment aesthetic, but also an ethical perspective. Right. Using ethical technology that we've developed to try and make sure that the decisions that our systems are making are as fair as they physically can be. And we've done a lot of auditing. We've been audited by the ICO before the Information Commissioner's Office. We make sure that our data is kind of representative as much as possible. We're transparent in how our system makes decisions. And that to us is very, very ingrained in kind of who we are and what we do and that kind of mission purpose that I was referring to earlier. Now, over the past year, there has been a lot of shifts around the world of dei, right. Or edi, or can call it different things. Um, and I think there's lots of threads, the directions I can go on when it comes down to this. Now, the word DEI has kind of been given a bit of a bad rep, right? The definition of the word itself is now associated.

Speaker C: It's almost like wasted money on precisely tokenistic diversity initiatives or something. That's the.

Speaker A: And I think it comes down to the fact that we haven't done a good job of measuring the efficacy of our approaches. I think a lot of the time it felt like a tick box exercise. You know, we must do unconscious bias training. We must make sure that our, um, job specs are written in inclusive words. We must make sure we've got policies in quotas. And it becomes a lot of kind of we must do these. But actually, how many organizations have been able to track how effective those approaches were? And were those approaches put in because we were just ticking a box, or were they put in because actually when you analyzed your data, you realize that this is where the challenge is and this is what we need to do to fix it. And so a lot of it felt like approaches was tried first and then kind of reversed engineered. But in fact, I think that organizations now should look at their data. Let's see, how does it look from not just, uh, a DNI perspective, but also acquisition perspective, retention, pay, performance, engagement, connect the dots to understand the fundamental questions of actually where do we need to spend our effort in? And then let's put the approaches to tackle that. And I don't think we did that for a long, long time. Um, and that would have shifted a lot of the conversations. And at the moment I feel like a lot of organizations are being very kind of either very reactive to what's happening in the Space around DEI or kind of waiting to see. And then there's the category, the category of organization going we're going to keep in our lane, we're going to continue what we're doing. And for I think regardless of which approach it is data driven decisions are fundamental to that. Um, because you're then making sure that you target, using a targeted approach, you're measuring your KPIs so that when you're referring and talking to your C suite, you've got these evidence, you've got the antidotes, you've got the stories and that will shape a lot of the conversations around this space. But I think it's also important to say that you don't just put numbers and metrics for the sake of putting numbers in metrics because it becomes a very dangerous game. Um, and I think the last thing I'll say on the back of this is with all of these kind of executive orders, the basis of them is being impartial, being merit based. And that's kind of the fundamental. And everyone wants that. Everyone wants fair, impartial, merit based decisions. And that to me still means that you're building uh, a workforce that is productive, that is doing the right thing, that is inclusive, that has a sense of belonging and those things still are the backbone to the workforce in essence. So I think that's my 2 cents for now and I'll stop that.

Speaker C: I will look forward to like the full talk as well. I um, can see you on a panel and stuff because I think if know what I came with my pre chat with was that you were really great advisor. Uh, that means that the actions that people take can be quite grounded because I think there's quite a lot of reactive behavior going on. People you know, dumping initiatives or um, not really having like a clear storyline for employees about exact all the employees not buying it, they're just like this is just like rocket shit.

Speaker A: Why are you doing this?

Speaker C: Yeah, what are we doing in the first place? If you're suddenly, you know, if it's suddenly not important anymore. So and I, I wonder if there's something about what I find except a few occasional organizations, I think more few and far between that the uh, diversity was often delegated to another department where they got a limited budget. But they were like oh, this is kind of too complicated for me as CEO or for a scene, but have some budget, go and do some nice initiatives. I don't really want to get that involved. Tell me some nice stories so I can show up for some things. And cut some ribbons or whatever. And then so when it came to like, oh, this isn't really important to US government anymore, it's like it's easy to chop, like it wasn't really about driving the bottom line of the business

Speaker A: in the first place.

Speaker C: Which, you know, and about I think fairness, which I think is ultimately what we're.

Speaker A: And I've seen a lot of organizations now, they're not as they're reframing as opposed or redefining how they're doing things. Um, and I'll give you some examples. So you're right before you'd have a DNA team and they didn't have as much budget like you said, to be able to kind of go full fledged on a lot of initiatives and then also making sure that you can track your metrics. But now I've seen a lot of kind of initiatives moving into kind of the role of the head of hr, the chro. Right. Um, and kind of embedding that into their entire recruitment process or their kind of um, human capital or workforce processes. So it's still kind of part of it and it follows a thread across the line. So I've seen that happen more and more. But I think regardless of whichever approach it is you need to be able to diagnose so you can build the effective strategies. And I think before you kind of do anything, because otherwise you'll waste a lot of money being able to kind of just, let's try this, let's try this, let's try that. And you see a lot more evidence of being able to kind of drive costs down, you know, being able to have increased financial returns, increased productivity, making sure that your KPIs and your organizations are uh, scaling. And we've seen that time and time again, especially with the organizations that we work with, where we believe that they're doing it the right way, where they've analyzed that data, they've been able to put the approach based on that. And when you ask them why are you doing this? They'll show you the answers of like we've looked at it, this is where the challenge is. And you go exactly. And you then see, okay, when they've tracked the metrics, the growth on the back of that, and I think for being able to do that, that's irrespective of what's happening in the market from a DEI perspective, that foundation still applies, that merit based impartial fairness still remains.

Speaker C: It feels like the kind of, um, the very sort of lefty individuals have really driven the Right hand of politics to push back. So for many years it's been like, you can't say this. You can't say this or cancel culture. And now, and now we've got to the point where some. Someone like trops come forward and go, I'll say whatever the F I like, you know, and. And I always feel like with a pendulum is swung the other way. And then so a lot, you get a lot of like this bro culture and kind of interesting kind of dialogue coming out, which is all the unsaid stuff which got covered up and there was no helpful dialogue about it because it was like, you can't say that. So there was no kind of, oh, let's talk about meritocracy and what does that mean? And da, da, da. And let's talk about bias. And it was, it was the diversity crowd hanging out by themselves and then everybody else like, well, I kind of think I missed out on a promotion because of, uh, you know, a woman or whoever it may be. And yet there was no, like, there's no conversation and no space for conversation because it was too, like, what's the word? I guess too political, too aggravated. And. And now we've got like the other. The other way being championed.

Speaker A: And I think it's important that all organizations, it's that culture piece that I'm going to refer to, tie it down to. I think every organization should have their kind of cultural competencies, what they stand in, what they believe in, and making sure that all their employees believe in that and stand for that. Right. Because that determines the kind of individuals that you bring in your organization and grow in your organization. And I think those are the ones that kind of become. Are going to be your future leaders, in essence, if done right, if you can retain the talent and done all the right things. I think that's really fundamental when you're trying to get people in that journey, in that story. And people need to feel like they can be themselves, kind of that authentic self, be able to kind of ask the questions, question things. Right? Uh, and speak up. Because if you've got that piece, then again, you're going to have more of a productive workforce and people aren't going to be afraid to kind of speak up or question things. And I think that's fundamental to that culture of the organization and that sense, again, that sense of belonging to that we were referring to, because then people can feel like they can speak up, they can understand why things have been. But I think it's also a sense of transparency, of when you're putting things in place, why are you doing them? And then also, what was the impact of doing them? Because I've seen time and time again, a lot of organizations put things in place, but then they don't follow up and say, okay, what, what did it do? What did it drive? Right. Um, say, for instance, an example could be, oh, we're going to do some self identification questions in our organization because we want to know the diverse makeup of our employees. But why? What's the reason? Um, and so team members, employees will feel more attached to that if they know the reasoning behind it, know that they're not going to be judged for it. But then actually when you tell them the why and you say we're going to do this because we want to make sure that everyone feels represented in our organization. Fine, fair enough. And if you've done them, done the analysis. Okay, tell me what you've learned from that and what changes are you going to put now? Now you've learned that because if you can follow up on the actions, people fall. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: It's kind of lazy otherwise. And it's lazy initiatives, which could be good.

Speaker B: No doubt.

Speaker C: They do have some impact. It's not that it's waste of space or something. It's just that it's not the follow through, it's the more like, oh, we need to get something done about, you know, this minority group in our company or something.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And it shouldn't be that case. Right. It's, you know, we're going to track our metrics because we want to be more efficient of an organization. We want to make sure we've got better representation or we want to make sure that we're, um, you know, being more productive, whatever it is, or if everyone's more engaged. Okay, so we've done the analysis, this is what we found. And um, as a result of this, we're going to put this in place.

Speaker C: Well, I think we could talk about

Speaker B: this for a long time.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I guess I'm curious just to kind of close really to bring this back to you and how, you know, you've, I mean, you've had a pretty full on week so far. You got a bit of neck pain and board meeting on Tuesday. You know, how do you support yourself? This is, you know, you're, you got a challenging role still. You've got a lot of people maybe sharing their stuff with you. I don't know if it ever burdens you at all.

Speaker A: I don't think it ever burdens me Because I. I think I just care about people, and I'm a very people person. So for me, I feel like I'm more of a giver, So I like to give. And I think that for me, about kind of reward mechanism in my head is how I think about it. But your question's still very valid. And I'll tell you this. I. 24 7, like, I would just get some sleep and just get back to work like a workaholic, to be honest. And, um, I remember a couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine. She's like. She called me on, like, a Sunday evening. She's like, really? What are you doing? I was like, working. Of course I'm working. What else am I doing? And she was like, rihanna, um, you gotta burn yourself out if you keep doing that. And I was like, now I'll be fine. I'll be absolutely fine. Just keep going. And then I think it was a couple of weeks later, I was like, oh, I feel exhausted. M. I'm definitely burning out there. And I can sense it. And I could feel it because I was just kind of, like, always thinking. Always thinking. Um, and so she's like, rehab, okay. Rather than working seven days a week, take one day a week to yourself. Just one day to just do what you want to do. And I was like, oh, that's a revelation. Didn't even realize there was an extra day in the week I could do that. Um, but I continued that habit where I've actually just been very, very forceful of actually a Sunday. Me and my time, and I do what I want. But I think the most important thing that I learned that actually made the big, big difference is this. Evening Times. It takes me a long time to unwind. I don't know if everyone feels like that as well. Where. Yep. Are you? Oh, uh, you've done everything you want to do, had dinner, you've sat on the tv, but your brain is still thinking, and it just won't stop. You get to bed, and you're still trying to unwind it, because you can't until you're literally. You burn yourself out and you're so tired and you just doze off. Uh, or your brain starts working in the middle of the night, uh, and you end up waking up because of it. And so what I've started doing, because that was. That was probably a real challenge that I had, is I just started reading books. I'm not talking nonfiction, really educational books where I should be doing, but just fictional books that allowed me to escape, I would just read historical fiction, fantasy books, uh, thrillers, you name it, any of those things. Because I automatically my brain had to switch from thinking about the day to being in a new world, in essence. And I could completely immerse myself in that experience. Um, and I would. Now I've been doing this for about a year and a bit now and I used to hate reading, absolutely hated reading. It was just such a pain in the backside for me. Uh, but now every evening like 9 o', clock, you see me with a book, just unwinding, different world, escaping. And it kind of like, it's kind of like a pendulum. Your brain swings from like the work into that kind of escape world and you end up just reading to get. You've kind of tired yourself out and you know your brain is not running at a thousand miles an hour and I can really just relax and everyone needs to find what that is for them.

Speaker B: Thank you Reem M so much to appreciate from that conversation and I really loved your authority and clearness around fairness and dei. I think every company leader needs a ream in their life to keep them on track. Well, you've been listening to the Conscious Leaders podcast and I'm Ruth Ferenga. For free practical advice on how to move from good to great as a leader as well as info on our leadership development programs and my number one best selling book, Next Level Leadership, visit consciousleaders.org.uk.