50. Why I do what I do! By Prina Shah

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I know what to do. I love what I do. I'm a clever leadership coach. A custom a trainer. A keynote speaker. A podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders, your teams, and I help you to optimize your organizational coaches. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. Why? Because we spend more time in our waking day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Get ready. Hello and welcome to episode 50 of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with me, Prina Shah. I promised myself this year that I would produce an episode a week, and I have, so I am so proud of me. And me, though, who am I? You might want to know. So you're not the only one. I am a private person, and I have never shared what I am about to share. A coachy recently asked me why I do what I do, and I gave her the most vanilla response. I'm sorry. Truth is, I have a very strong internal driver, and I know why I do what I do. I just haven't articulated my story until now. All of our lives are rich and vast, and my life certainly has been colourful since childhood. To tell my story about why I do what I do, I will focus on the life-changing moment I had in my twenties. I'm now in my 40 somethings. So before I begin, I want to give you a trigger warning. If you have been affected by alcoholism or domestic violence, please be aware that I will be talking about that. If you don't want to listen about that, then please switch off and listen to another episode because they're f brilliant. Okay, if you're still listening. At the age of 20, I found my papa, my dad's dead body. He had choked on his own vomit after a drunken bout. What does ha that have to do with me being the founder of the Ways to Change Your Workplace Movement and the CEO of Princeha Consulting, you ask? So damn much. You see, I was brought up in a dysfunctional household. My papa was an alcoholic, and my mum maintained the household amidst the chaos, the violence, and the dramas. I have seen a lot from a young age. My papa was a functioning alcoholic when I was born. I've never known him to be completely sober. What I did see was a man with a debilitating illness, one which he was trying to battle daily. He often had the best of intention to give up drinking, but that never happened. And in the UK in those days, there was very little mental health or recovery support for people in my papa situation. At a young age, or from a young age, I had to grow up very fast. I was the protector of my sister, primarily. While my sister and I never got beaten, my mum did. She has taken many beatings to protect us from it. She is fucking fierce. She has been through some awful, awful times. She's an amazing woman. It got so bad that once my mum packed our bags and one day, just before my GCSEs, we walked out. We stayed with my aunt, my massy, for a while, and then we went to stay in a women's shelter. That was something else. At the shelter my mum, sister and I shared a room. We were there for months. At the shelter there were other women. One was there with her toddler son. She had been stabbed in the back by her husband. And there were two sisters, aged seventeen and nineteen, who were there, they lived with us. They had fled their family home because their dad wanted to marry them off. So early on I saw the shitness of the world and how women were treated by men. The thing is though, my papa, when he had small moments of soberness, he was a gentle giant. He loved me and I had the deepest connection with him. So I learned early on not to take his drunken bouts personally. They were a result of his trauma. I learned early on how to deal with all sorts of personalities. I became very good at being able to read and truly connect with people. Because I felt like I was the protector, I developed amazing social skills. I guess it all came organically because it had to be done. I also knew that I had to do well academically because good grades will result in a good job and good money and good future, etc etc. You know the story. My mum and papa divorced a year before I finished my A levels. It was a really strange time. I really missed my papa. But I knew the divorce was for the best. Talk about mixed emotions. Then came the time for me to go to university. To leave home and to go and live on campus, as is the done thing in the UK. I studied a degree, a Bachelor of Science of Sociology and Social Psychology at Loughborough University. I loved everything I studied. However, it broke my heart to leave my mum and my sister behind. These were days before mobile phones and regular communication. I was on my own now. I also knew that at university I'd have to get a job to pay my way. There was no other way around it. The wonderful thing that happened is that all of my mum's brothers and sisters chipped in and they would drive me to uni or they would pick me up between semesters and take me home come holiday time. I couldn't have done that without them. My uncles and aunts must have gathered and agreed on giving me a sum of money each semester. That enabled That enabled me to focus on my studies and not to get a job. Thank you so much. Mamas, mummies, massas, masses, you have made such an impact on me. I don't think my uncles and aunts realize the impact they have had on me and I can't thank them enough. And then in the Christmas of 1999, I was home for the holidays. It was the year of my finals in 2000. By now my parents had divorced and they were getting on. They had a routine where Papa he loved mum's food. Everyone loves mum's food. So weekly he'd pop over to say hi and she'd give him his meals on wheels as we jokingly called it. He hadn't come over that week. It was a bitterly cold winter. We thought he'd come over the next day. He didn't. So mum and I went over to his apartment. We knocked on the door. There was no answer. And then I saw a gap in the curtains, so I peeped in. At the age of 20, I found my papa's body. He was there on the ground. He had choked on his own vomit after a drunken bout. He was dead. We caught the emergency services and the rest was a blur. I missed my finals and I had to resit them at university. I nailed my degree and I was ready for the work world. I was still grieving. So crushed by my loss, I knew I had to keep it together. I now had to contribute to the household. So at the age of 21, I secured an amazing job, life-changing graduate opportunity with one of the best employees in the UK, British Telecom. I was there at an assessment centre for around four days, competing against three or four hundred other graduates, and I was one of five who got chosen for the British Telecom Human Resources Graduate Program. It was amazing. It gave me the foundations of how workplaces operate from a people perspective. And you know what? I learned early on in my career that many workplaces are not built to be conducive to the worker, especially to the migrant or the ethnic worker. And in my papa's case, he was an operational manager in Kenya. He used to be the lead in the executive. His story was remarkably different when we moved to the UK. His experience wasn't regarded as relevant, and therefore he had to take a job as a shift worker in a factory. This exacerbated his alcoholism. He didn't last long as a functioning alcoholic, and things spiraled, and you know how that story ended. So from an early age I have questioned the way of the workplace, seeing what it did to my papa and the ripple effect that all of that had on my family. There were many elements when it came to play when it comes to his alcoholism, there's loads involved. One element was certainly my papa's new job, which created discontent in him. It created a sense of self loathing and self disgrace within him. He was never satisfied at work. He felt lesser, he felt he could give more, he could do more, but the opportunities just weren't there. He spiraled, and you know how it ended. I have had years of therapy and years of self-work to get me to where I am today. I'm still a work in progress, but aren't we all? I have had amazing career success as a people and culture manager within the corporate world. I have gained expertise to focus on the employee experience. You see, generalist HR didn't suit me. It was too reactive, and constantly I had to deal with people issues. I have dealt with plenty of people issues in my earlier life, and I didn't want it for my career as well. That was just too taxing. So I decided to specialise in the proactive arm of human resources, and this is where my sociology and social psychology degree marry with my interest in the human condition. Everything combined. This was my thing. I found it. I specialized in organizational development in the end. At the apex of my career in HR, I still then hit a wall. A wall of mediocrity and memos. All I was doing at the apex of my career was dealing with internal work politives, which I didn't give a shit about really. I wasn't there, that's not what my life is about. And I was writing memos. No, I am meant for more, said my internal Prino voice. I knew I had to do something. So I spoke with my then manager, Beck, and I told her that I wasn't feeling it anymore. Brave, hey? She responded in asking me what I wanted to do. So I told her I wanted to do something proactive. Long story short, that's where I began studying for a coaching diploma. I got a scholarship for that, thank you, Beck. And then from that I began my consulting business. So while I love executive and leadership coaching, and I've had the pleasure to support some of the world's best, wonderful people who are making such a great difference in the world, I knew I had to expand my reach beyond coaching. That's why, for my business, Prunasha Consulting, I have added the consulting and training arm to my business. Gosh, I loved how my business evolved. I was impacting even more people positively. Remember earlier I told you how my papa's work issues impacted us as a family, and I wanted to positively address that for other people. So the ripple effect of a good work culture to the individual's partners, to the individual's children, to the individual's sibling, to the individual's network, to the individual's community, and to our society are immense. A good work culture not only affects the individual, a good work culture affects their partners. A good work culture affects their children. A good work culture affects their siblings. A good work culture affects that individual's network. A good work culture affects our community. And a good work culture affects our society. I was learning so so so much through consulting and training that I still felt that I wanted to give back. I wanted to contribute so much more. And I know that not everyone can afford my services, which is why I created this podcast to share whatever I can with you so that you can learn and so that you can pass it on. So that we collectively can make someone's life better. So we can have a positive impact on their partners, on their children, on their siblings, on their network, on their community, and on their society. You and I, we can do it. I have a strong sense of justice, if you hadn't gathered by now. I guess because I've seen the other side of life, the side that not many other people see. I want to change the world, but I know I can't. I fell in love with a podcast called Ways to Change the World by Krishnan Guru Mercy. He is a stellar journalist from the UK. I grew up watching Krishnan Guru Mercy. Another brown person on TV when I was young. There weren't any. He represented people like me. And I want to be a woman that represents my people. I am a strong Kenyan British Indian woman. I'm also Australian. I am lucky. I am you and you are me. We can make the changes that we want to in life. It takes balls, big balls, humour. Without fun in my life, I'm miserable. You'll see when we get to work together, we will have fun together. And making change takes a lot of hard work. We can do it together. I'm a realist. I cannot change the world, but with my amazing experience in developing workplaces to optimize their organizational cultures and their people, I know I can have an impact on changing the workplace. Everything up until now has led me to turn my grief into my vision, to find positive ways to change the workplace. I now work with executives, leaders, and teams to develop themselves and to optimize their work cultures globally. The impact that my work has had not only on the employees of the organizations that I serve, but the flow on impact to their loved ones, their families resulting in content mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends or lovers are unmeasurable. I am focused on using my expertise in finding constructive ways to change the workplace for all of these reasons. So let's make the world a better place and let's make the workplace less shitty. Michelle, I don't think this one's a vanilla response. If you like this episode, check out the show notes and sign up for my newsletter. That will help your workplace to be less shitty. It's full of novel ideas, good food for thought. And if you like this episode, pass it on to at least two people who will benefit. That's your good deed done for the day. Also, remember to subscribe to the Ways to Change Your Workplace Podcast via your podcast provider. And I will see you in the next episode.