Transcription
[music] This is a Global Skills Podcast. Conversations [music] that shape the future of work and learning. We're exploring how we close the skills gap and build a future where everyone has the chance to thrive. From education to business, connecting people, ideas, and opportunities [music] that drive change. It's about collaboration, curiosity, and creating real impact today. Because every skill learned brings us one step closer to a more inclusive world. The Global Skills Podcast, where learning [music] and opportunity come together.
Welcome to the Global Skills Podcast. Today's guest, Deepi Pali, brings nearly two decades of leadership across organizational development, talent management, and learning strategy. As Head of Learning and Organizational Development at the Commonwealth, she leads transformative initiatives that strengthen capability, culture, and performance across a global intergovernmental organization. A certified leadership coach, ACC, and DISC facilitator, she is known for designing evidence-based learning frameworks, driving impactful talent programs, and championing data-driven decision-making within L&D. Her work spans Amazon, Dell, and Cass Group Asia, where she has consistently delivered measurable improvements to capability, engagement, and organizational agility. Deepi, it is really wonderful to have you on the show.
>> Thank you, Vanessa. It's my pleasure to join you and have this conversation.
>> Well, I would love to start, like with many guests, I just really to try and understand how you ended up in L&D in the role that you are today. What we call as a crooked career. Uh, I did not start off as an HR or an L&D professional. Even my academics is a mixed bag. I have done graduation in electronics, masters in computer applications, and then worked in the world of insurance through the service industry or the call center industry. So, I think the passion that picked up was in terms of developing employees. When I became a people manager, one of the things I realized is there's not enough which gives exposure to the employees as they plan their growth, that guidance in terms of, you know, not saying just the nice things, but giving them the reality so they prepare themselves when they get into these roles. And that prompted me saying, if I'm on the other side of the table of L&D, maybe I'm more empowered to bring that change that I want to bring in when we talk from a learning and development perspective. Not just application, but the whole change in the thought process of how we think about where does learning come in, how does that apply, and what we could do with it to really genuinely impact the life of employees in the long term, and not just from the organization only development perspectives. That's what kind of kicked me off in there. It was a long journey, halfway through my career in business operations, I got the opportunity to get into the deep end, set up an L&D team, and then there's been no looking back from there on.
>> I mean, someone described to me yesterday, we're in a new work era. Like, it is changing dramatically. And L&D is naturally going to play a more important role because we have to upskill and reskill our our workforces. But there was a time where maybe L&D wasn't at the table, you know, and so you've seen this transition. What role is L&D playing now that maybe it didn't play a couple of years ago?
>> I think there's a huge shift in how organizations have started looking at talent in itself. I think previously, or when I first started my career, L&D teams were more like, okay, here's somebody wants to become a manager, you put them through a training program, hands off, my job is done, and you move on to the next cohort, next group of people, and you keep evolving. However, in the last few years, what has shifted is business leaders have realized that L&D is not just the corporate L&D or learning and development, it has a larger role to play, which is to shape the thinking of how talent development can play a role for the success of the organization. And the concepts of planning ahead, future of work, all of these have given L&D the seat at the table to say, when we write business strategy, we can't write it without L&D's involvement. We can't just write only from a business perspective. We have to take in the factor of human resource and their development from a long-term perspective because that's where the game change happens, where you are able to retain talent, develop talent, make sure that the talent you have is able to kind of provide what you need from the long-term futuristic perspective. So, I think that's a huge shift that I have seen versus in the previous space, it would be more of an afterthought to say, right, we need this delivered, let's go and tell L&D, we want them to do something for us. So, I think from a reactive to a proactive space, but there's a long way for L&D themselves to go because we've got the seat at the table, but how do we evolve to make sure that the work that we do connects to business results? And that's where the whole evidence-based learning and development approaches come in, because you're not talking evidence for yourself as L&D, you're talking evidence for the business. And that's a huge shift in the mindset of how L&D was thinking in itself in the last few years.
>> Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I actually think talent acquisition is probably on a similar journey. As you were talking, I was thinking about that because L&D, it's always been sort of measured maybe at a micro level on learning completion rates and, you know, happy scores at the end of the course and, but actually, it's really about closing the skills gap and productivity of the organization and future-proofing. One actual exercise we do with some companies we work with is a skills budget calculator, a skills cost calculator. And it's where for L&D, and I'd love your opinion on this, for heads of L&D, we talk to sometimes it can be very difficult to approach the C-suite to get the bigger budget because they can't, as you say, demonstrate the commercial impact necessarily. And one thing that we do with this calculator is try and understand, well, what is the the skills gap cost? And in some cases, in organizations say of 100 plus employees, they might be wasting over a million a year. Creating an L&D budget of 100,000, you're going 10x. So I'd love to know where you feel the industry is at in terms of C-suite really approving decent budgets and then the measuring of that ROI for the L&D impact.
>> I think it's it's a very interesting space and every organization or or C-suite leader comes with their own experiences, right? So there's no one-size-fits-all kind of a mindset or approach. But from my experience, I think specifically, think in one of the organizations I worked for, I was hired with a very clear mandate and which was to say that the employees need to feel that they have an opportunity for career development at this organization. And and it was obviously measured through your employee engagement surveys. And coming in and and having that kind of a mandate meant, how do we then show the value? And it was not just about a simple, how many folks got promoted within the organization, it was way more than that. And and as I worked on that agenda and mandate, I think what shifted for the C-suite was showing that proof of the change in the thought process and behavior of staff. Off. I had a very interesting question with that same organization and I think I was talking to the managing director and in one of the conversations they said, right, so we're doing all of these L&D initiatives, how would you say we've evolved as a learning organization? So I said, interesting question, and it was more like an elevator chat kind of a quick question that popped up. So I said, one of my simplest measures and and this is anecdotal, is to say, when I first joined this organization, the number of employees who would put their hand up voluntarily to learn something versus where we are today in terms of employees coming up and demanding something that they want to learn something and how that ties up to their career growth. I think it's a good dipstick indicator for me to say that there is a shift in the mindset on how somebody looks at learning in itself. And they were like, okay. So what I also realized is sometimes the C-suite is not asking for complicated maths and ROI or everything in terms of dollars or pounds that you want to call out. I think what they're asking for is, give us convincing data which they can understand in the language of the business, simplified for them to say, okay, here's what is shifting, here's where you're seeing the shift. And I think one of the other things that I wanted to call out in the skills gap and and for the budget approval was putting the ball back in their court. Because one of the things I constantly highlight in all my roles, and I think my leadership hates me for, is most of the time, it's I hold them accountable to say, I can teach concepts, I can provide concepts, but I cannot create the environment to learn and grow. You have to take accountability. So they were like, okay, we understand accountability, how does that work? And this is where I'm talking about simplifying something in a language they understand. So we built or designed what you call as an accountability matrix and said, if somebody's being sent for a learning training program, here's the matrix you need to follow. Black and white, a very simple matrix, but it made sense. And then it started figuring out where we would send out reports to the leadership and say, "Okay, here is where the matrix failed." And that started driving behavioral change. Now, that's also a way to provide ROI because your ROI is just not yours. And I think that has to shift in L&D. We take the whole burden of ROI, which I don't think is true because it's collaboration, it's co-creation. So the the leadership has to have a stake in it, but you also have to provide them a role. So I often say this, while I'm from L&D, I hate talking models and different frameworks because it makes sense for me as L&D, but what the leadership wants to see is how does that fit in into their everyday work? And it's my role and responsibility to say, can I change the vernacular, the language to fit into the organizational context so that they can make sense out of it and then understand the ROI that I'm providing? So I think it's slightly different in terms of how we want to approach. And probably that brings me to the element of saying, as L&D, how comfortable are we with our businesses or business units that we support? And not just broadly understanding, are we happy to be at par with somebody on the business side, get our hands dirty, understand their KPIs and metrics, understand how are these numbers coming through, what is their failure point, and then we really know where we want to support them. So, yeah, a complete slightly different shift towards how you think about L&D.
>> Really, really is. And I think, um, the two bits that I'll take away from what you've just said is that it's this sort of intrinsic learning value that's nearly unmeasurable that's probably the most impactful. And this idea that actually the Head of L&D plays a really important role in being able to translate between the different departments and up to C-suite. It ties in nicely with a question that I have around, again, it's work that we do with companies around, like this sort of common skills language. A lot of companies have been talking about in the last few years, let's build a taxonomy or an ontology. And it needs to be now live and consistent and interoperable because globally there's multiple taxonomies. But I'd love to know internally within an organization, how important do you think it is that L&D, talent management, talent acquisition are all leveraging a common skills language for hard, human, transversal skills that connects with learning?
>> I think it's extremely important. And specifically, thanks to the world of agentic and generative AI, a lot of talent acquisition, or at least the pre-screening, is now driven through AI-based algorithms. And if the entire flow is not in tandem, and they are not connected, and not using the same taxonomy language, and have the same understanding, you I think we're going to land up in a big mess. Um, and and I think that's where it becomes very difficult because specific to talent acquisition, I think we all understand there are job descriptions. Having said that, there is enough evidence to also say that despite having behavioral interviewing techniques, competency-based interviewing techniques and models and everything, there's a lot of hiring that still happens today which is based on gut feel. And that can't be translated. And that's why it becomes important that everybody understands the taxonomy. So if you say I need somebody who has attention to detail, is your understanding of that and my understanding of that the same? And if it is not, what you expect versus what you get is going to be very, very, very different. And calibration, I don't think there there is enough emphasis on calibrating the understanding across all these different departments with the business leaders. And and I mean, this is where I I think there was this case where which was in the media somewhere in the world where in the tech world, so they had created this job description with all the skill sets they needed. I mean, the hiring manager was not getting enough candidates to interview, and he was starting to get concerned, saying, what's happening? The recruitment, talent acquisition team came back saying, we're not getting enough good resumes. And he's like, something's not right. Now, what ended up happening, and this was absolutely, I mean, it's concerning, but hilarious at the same time, is because one of the referrals of the hiring manager put in their resume, and they actually had all the skills because that's why the hiring manager referred them, saying, there's this open position, why don't you apply through the system? And that resume got rejected. And this person came back and said, I put in and they they didn't shortlist my profile. And he's like, that's funny. And then he realized something's missing in that chain. And when he, he said, okay, let me try what's happening with the system. So he put in his own resume into it, and it got rejected. That's when they realized that somebody had created this AI process in the recruitment, and it was not taking the right parameters and the definitions that they were expecting. And that's why the resumes were getting rejected. So I think this is where I say, you all of the teams within the whole talent cycle need to understand what does the business mean when they say some of these phrases and and words, so that we can actually go and help them in the right way and address it in a systemic way. Systems are here, technology is going to be here. So we have to bring it together. So taxonomy becomes very, very, very important. And calibrating it again and again at regular intervals to make sure everybody's on the same page, and not the assumption that we are all on the same page, is very, very critical.
>> Yeah, because I'm I'm blown away how we, so we update our skills taxonomy once a month. 55,000 skills. And there's new skills going on every month. >> Because, okay, we give an example, vibe coding. We weren't using that term two years ago in mainstream. And that will continue to evolve. I was reading, and I don't know how advanced it is, but the the European Commission are looking at laws around banning AI from screening job applications, which I understand because if it hallucinates, or as you said, if you describe a skill and the taxonomy is not up to date, or the description is not interoperable with the company's taxonomy, people are being, it's not conscious bias, it's AI bias. They're not getting in because of it. So what can a company do? If you know, if we have managers listening in today, and maybe they're having that scenario where they're saying, I'm not getting the applications. What can you do proactively to resolve a shortage of candidates, for example, or even a shortage of advice around what L&D, the employees they do have?
>> I think there is no one solution for it. I mean, the way I look at it, when you talk from a skills and talent acquisition perspective, it's multifold, right? One is, I think when when strategies are designed, a lot of the time, they're not designed overnight, right? It's not like you start from a clean slate, you're building on what you have. So it's not going to be a surprise of what you need. So the question is, are we building for the future? Which is my existing employee base, that's my first step, right? And if we are doing it right, then at least you should have a decent 50/50 ratio where you're bringing in 50% new hires, 50% internal turn growth and promotions. Now, in some scenarios, in the technology world, probably there's something completely new that's come in. You want to experiment and try. And and that's where the collaboration with universities come in. I don't think organizations, some are doing, not everybody's doing enough to bridge that gap between academia and corporate, right? And this is just not about the skills in terms of the corporate work style, it's broadly around what you expect when you come into the work culture in terms of your skills and how you apply the skills, right? In a university environment, a lot is theoretical, it's conceptual, and I have room for error. But in the real-time world, you don't have that space. And that's where that that confusion begins because you're like, I have, I don't have time, but you're asking me to deliver so many things. And if organizations start thinking ahead and start connecting with universities to build development programs, internship programs, and start creating these pool of talent from a futuristic perspective, then that starts addressing the skills gap in a broad space. And I think it goes beyond just, for example, I think UK has an apprenticeship model, but it goes beyond that because I don't think it's just about being an apprentice, right? It's about conceptual plus the practical application. And the tech world evolves very quickly, like the coding, the language, the various tools that are coming out. I don't think any university can catch up that quickly because it needs a lot of funding, it needs a lot of money to invest in it. Organizations anyway need that. So they're going to invest in it. So why not bridge that and start building that talent pool, right? And it gives you more options. And at the same time, you are developing the society per se. So that also kind of supports the broader employee ecosystem in terms of talent and skills. Now, from an L&D standpoint, I think one of the places where, and because I'm also doing organizational development, where where I'm struggling is, I think it's time to rethink the whole ecosystem of talent in itself to say, how are we building that whole talent process in itself, right? Because there are lots of silos within the process. Talent acquisition is doing their own thing, learning and development is doing their own thing. There are bits and pieces of organizational development. But organizational design sits with somebody else, and they're talking, but then there is somebody who's deciding when to talk. And that's a failure point. It's not systemic. It's not thinking through saying, okay, I need to bring somebody through the process and tie everything together. In one of my organ, previous organizations, I mean, I had this opportunity where we were revamping all the job descriptions and everything, and I was doing a similar learning and organizational talent management mix role, but I was not part of talent acquisition. But this organization brought me early on to say, can you be a part of this whole exercise and project? Because this is going to feed into the needs of the talent management and the learning and development aspects internally, as well as for us to say, what are the niche skill sets which can be developed only within the organization? Because these are things we need, you will only have once you get exposed to the organization, you won't get those elements, you will get generic information, not the niche information. How do you start building that pool ahead of times? I mean, that's where some organizations do it brilliantly, some don't. And then if it's siloed, then we continuing to do the same thing expecting different results, which will not happen. Probably.
>> And I think as well, it's, um, in the West, we don't necessarily think five, 10 years ahead. We don't pause enough to say, "Okay, well, if the whole model is changing, let's start predicting. Let's really start predicting." I love the fact that you brought up universities. I was watching a show last night that I'd recorded. I don't know which UK channel it was, but, um, it was talking about the impact of AI. I know the results in Ireland for unemployment if you're under 25 are rapidly growing. There's already three times our national unemployment, but it's stated in this show that unemployment for skilled young people in the UK is now 30%. Like that's shocking that number. And we used to many years ago when I had a recruitment company, we used to do a program called an early talent program. We ran it with VMware and Semantic, and it was highly successful. And in that scenario, it was where, you know, you couldn't get, we used to say it was the unicorn candidate, someone who had had the Benelux languages, but had worked a bit in tech, had a degree in computers, it was like a very, so. But what we did was, it's like we created that bridge between academia and and industry. And you're sort of suggesting that actually companies should pay a more proactive role. It'll pay off in the long run. >> But invest now in young people, give them the skills now they need to catch up on industry.
>> I think Vanessa, one of the things, and and I mean, I was I was doing my advanced diploma in the last couple of years, and one of the papers I wrote as a part of my assessment was around the whole youth and employment and skills. And I think after I wrote that paper, it took me a while before I could actually go back to the books and continue my rest of the assessment papers because I was very disappointed. And as I was researching, one of the things that has stood out is obviously there's a huge societal change in the mindset, right? I'm part of the 80s generation, probably saw a lot of change. Like I grew up in a world where probably television was just starting off. You had black and white television, having a a landline phone in the house was like an achievement and a success measure. And from there, it's evolved to phones, mobile phones, to smartphones, right? So I mean, I've been part of that whole journey. And what I've realized is that change which was kind of thrown at you, and it taught you that either you choose to swim or you drown. There is no in between. Um, you know, somebody coming and and kind of wrapping you in a padded jacket version that would happen. Um, I might sound slightly stereotypical when I say this, but as I'm talking to the younger generation, they're struggling with the level of disruption that's hitting them. They're not mentally resilient to say, I am going to experience change, not just every other day, but probably every few hours in my daily life, things are going to change. And how do I prepare myself? And and I think that's where there is an opportunity for organizations and universities to come together and say, is there something missing? And we are all missing because somewhere both groups have failed to come together to build that youth who are able to take on that change, right? And that has to change in terms of whether you create a new curriculum which talks about, I'm going to put, I think it it reminds me of the assessment center days. I think that's now an old story. Nobody does assessment centers anymore, but assessment centers were that, right? You would be thrown into simulative problems and constantly juggle through them and solve, and then you're assessed on them. And universities, at least my education system was like that, where we were asked to do projects and try things. And yeah, we were not dinged down or failed the paper because we were not successful with it, but we were asked to do it. And that meant there were no easy answers. There was no AI to help us build something, right? And and how do we still simulate that mindset to say, you can build on skills? AI is a tool which will help you, but you you have to think. It's not going to think for you. Think of it as an aggregator of information which will make computing and analytics easier. It can predict, but you have to drive the prediction. You have to drive the thought process. I think folks are forgetting that the critical analytical things that we have as a brain has to be used. And AI is going to replicate what we have and build on that. But to build on that, first of all, let's lay a very strong, clean foundation, clean data to be added. And and I I constantly feel that probably there is a great opportunity for universities to be a little brave and say, right, I'm going to introduce a paper, probably in the last semester or the last year of the of the of the college curriculum to say, throw you into simulative situations, dealing with constant change, business problems, all the things that you are struggling with, so that when you go into the industry, you're mentally prepared. That's also a skill, right? It's just not the technology, technical skills that you need. Ability to withstand that constant wave of change. It is a skill and that has to be developed. And I don't think anybody's doing enough around it.
>> Couldn't agree more. And I think as well, probably it's unfair to expect the academics to necessarily deliver that part of the course. It's perfect to bring in industry leaders and say, "Help us with this." And then that ties the connection. And it also, I think, what's breaking my heart a little bit is this idea that, you know, if you're sub 27, 28 years old, well, AI can do that job. We need to be more efficient. So let's just get AI to do that. But you've hit the nail on the head. Young people coming through now, maybe those graduating, maybe they haven't got the AI skills in college. But if we can upskill them, they are going to be supercharged with AI skills because they're young. We can give them that critical thinking. We can give that ability to adapt to change, like you say. And the government, government with leaders from industry should proactively do something about that. Maybe my next guest needs to be someone from government.
>> I think even organizations can do that to the point that you made, Vanessa, because one of the organizations I worked on, and it's, I think, way ahead in the AI game, and not just generative AI, the actual whole AI space. And I was working at that time, I was into business operations, and we were hiring engineering graduates. And the work that the these engineering graduates did was not very highly technical. And and I think there was this conversation with recruitment, and they're like, normal graduates can do this job. Why do you need engineering graduates? And and I think this was like an eye-opener into the thought process and mindset. And I think I've held on to it because it's amazing. The the leader of the business unit said, the reason I'm hiring engineering graduates is I want them to innovate. I don't want them to come into this job role and say, okay, this is what I have to do, and it's going to be a few key tabs, a mindless activity that I'm doing. But because they come from an engineering background, I expect them to do this for a week and say, this doesn't need so much of time and effort. Is there a better way to do it? Which means there's going to be automation coming out of it, there's going to be innovation coming out of it. And that's why I want them. And I think this is the brilliant mindset that we need to build in universities to say, you're never going to have all the skills that you need in the job market. I'm sure I don't have everything after so many years of work experience. I'm still lacking something as the industry evolves, right? There's only so many certifications you could do within your lifetime. But if you are empowered with that mindset to say, I have the ability, I have a brain, I have the ability to critically analyze, and which means I can innovate, leverage technology to drive that innovation. That's where the shift will happen. So I mean, I think it's about saying, I can give you AI skills, but tomorrow there's another version that's going to come in, and there's going to be that brain drain exhaustion of constant upskilling. But if you build that mindset to say, I can take on anything new that comes in, because where I'm coming in from a perspective of saying, that's a tool, but the logic and the critical analytical ability lies with me, then it's a game changer. Then your your perspective of how you look at technology disruption is completely completely different. I think that's where academia and organizations can absolutely have a very, very strong handshake and build something. I'm looking forward to see if there's a university in the world that's brave enough to pick on this and say, let's design a curriculum. Let's experiment and see for a few cycles, cohorts, and look at what comes out of it. I think it would be worth the investment.
>> We're nearly out of time and I haven't asked you about the work that you do with the Commonwealth. So I would love you to kind of tie it all together, if you may, as to the work that you're doing around closing the skills gap and working with organizations to future-proof talent.
>> So my role at the Commonwealth is slightly unique. Obviously, it's a lot focused for the internal employees within the organization. And fortunately, I work for an organization where we have to hire for the skills because it's very niche skills, right? Like I have somebody who is supporting member countries in consensus driving for policies, they need to have expertise of policy drafting or being in those diplomatic roles, or somebody who has these niche skills of being, uh, in the climate sustainability space. What my role is to say, how do I help employees deliver what they need to deliver with their skills and help the member countries to kind of meet our strategic plan? And in that sense, so my role is like two parts. One is obviously the regular L&D work, which is upskilling the individual employees and providing trainings, so from learning pathways around manager development, personal development, skill sets, thinking process, thought process, all of those elements. There's also another part of it where I work with different directorates to kind of help them support with technical assistance to these member countries. So let's say there's somebody who wants to design a learning module for member countries or governments or employees of the government to say, how do you think about climate sustainability? So that's where I come in from. L&D expertise, the subject matter expertise is that particular group of people who were part of the organization. They already have those skill sets. So we bring them together and say, okay, what's the right approach? How do we make this happen? How do we make it more meaningful? And we do have an external learning management system, which is available for all Commonwealth members. They can just sign in with their login credentials. And there's a plethora of of content that has been created from aquamarine to something around the judicial space, to climate finance, something on education. And we work with folks from these countries where they kind of volunteer to support us and and we kind of build this content and and put it together. Um, so there's a lot of work in that space that happens. If somebody's delivering any kind of training, then I'm more in the back end to if they reach out and say, "Okay, we're doing this. Is this going fine? Is there something that you can help us with?" So then I step in and kind of guide. So it's more of behind the scenes kind of work, but a lot from an internal perspective where we are trying to guide and support them. We don't have that challenge of skills per se, if I may say, in a way, because we do hire for those skills. What we have to bring in is we have employees who come from different sectors. I mean, I work predominantly in the private sector. There are folks who come from academia, like college professors. There are somebody who's from the legal space. So everybody's coming from those different areas and from different countries because all of us are are are nationals of those one of those 56 member countries. So how do we make sure that there is this whole with our own diversity, our own experiences, cultural diversity, everything put together, we all come together that towards that one common cause of the Commonwealth and drive the message and build tools and and needs that that can be addressed and support. So I think it's been an amazing journey, a learning for me, uh, in terms of what I've been able to deliver and build on and and kind of support our employees with. Um, yeah, so it's there's lots of brilliant information that you can you can access and we'll include it in the episode at the at the bottom. Um, I have one final question that I love to ask all guests. I'll ask you two questions, but you only have to answer one. The first is, have you a skill that you used to use when you were younger that you don't anymore that you'd like to again? And if so, why? Or if you're one of the young people we talked about today, uh, who's not working, who's maybe feeling a bit disillusioned and thinking, okay, well, I'll upskill and reskill. What do you think are fundamentally the most important skill or skills they should try and acquire or develop?
>> Very interesting questions, and both are close to my heart per se, but I'll I'll try and answer the second one because I think that's more of a priority. I think what I would tell somebody who is probably struggling with with the whole disruption and probably struggling with employment in itself is to take a step back and sit down and sometimes writing helps because it gives you clarity. And probably in the social media world, technology world, we don't do enough writing. Put the pen to the paper and ask yourself, what what do I want to do? What do I want? Or how do I define success for myself? And as that builds on, you start identifying what you have and what you're missing. That's when the research phase comes in, when you start researching saying, what skills do I need? Are these skills that I will get through employment and experience, or is this something that needs educational experience? Is this something where I need to find a mentor for myself? And then you start building on it. And I think from a skills perspective, I constantly keep saying, and probably I sound like a broken record, but it's about constantly self-reflecting and evaluating saying, what are the skills that I have? And sometimes we don't probably even know our own strengths. Psychometrics help really here. There are lots of tools, psychometric tools that have been designed now which focus on behaviors, which focus on strengths. You have the SDI, which is more of a strength inventory. You have the Clifton StrengthFinder tool from Gallup. So those are, I mean, they are positive tools because they tell you you have these strengths and how can you use them, kind of aptitude, but a little beyond that because they also pull you out of that, you know, black hole that you're pushing yourself into saying, I've become redundant. I don't have enough skills. I don't fit anywhere. You will be able to motivate yourself. And irrespective of how long you've been in your career or where you are, having a mentor is the most critical element because that's the skill that's going to to kind of build on. And and whatever you learn is never going to be dead. You just have to evolve to say, is there a better way to use it than what I learned previously? So you use the same skills, but probably you polish them a bit, or you use and apply them in a slightly different way. But that's where your human creativity starts coming in and probably make you feel much successful and and good about your own skill sets. So that's probably the message I would give to anybody who's struggling.
>> Thank you, Deepi. That, I think, is really inspiring to hone in on the strengths. And I think what I'm going to take from from your interview is that for organizational leaders, it's kind of, I was thinking they all begin with S. It's this skills, really understanding the skills in the organization, that common language, the symbiotic relationships within the leadership teams that leads to being able to do the strategy, and that brings you the success. You have a 4S framework there, Deepi.
>> There, we've designed a new framework.
>> Really enjoyed this interview. Just thank you so much for coming on the on the show. You're very good.
>> Thank you, Vanessa. It was lovely uh chatting with you. And I I'm hoping that there will be some change and somebody would really pick up the the mantle and and push forward to say, let's bridge that gap to make the skills available to everybody in a systemic, scalable way.
>> Couldn't agree more. Thank you, Deepi.
>> Thank you. Thank you so much.
Whether you're leading a business, shaping education, planning your next career move, or just starting out, you're part of a global conversation about how we learn, work, and grow. If you've enjoyed this episode, tap subscribe so you never miss the latest insights. [music] And if you have a moment, leaving a quick rating really helps people find the show. For early access to new [music] episodes, event invitations, and the chance to connect with others driving real change, join the community at globalskillspodcast.com. The future of skills belongs to all of us. Proudly sponsored by Abodu, empowering organizations and educators with world-class skills technology to build a better future for everyone.