Episode 227 / Saurabh Patel / IHH Healthcare / Group Chief Marketing Officer
How Servant Leadership Breeds Successful Teams
Saurabh Patel is the Group Chief Marketing Officer for IHH Healthcare, one of the world’s largest private healthcare networks. He looks after sales and marketing strategies, digital engagement, and key related digital transformation activities. In his career, he’s learnt the essential role of servant leadership to build successful teams - which is why this is his Shiny New Object.
The era of dictator-style management is over, especially when it comes to building successful teams with Gen Z employees. In marketing and any other environment alike, Saurabh believes that empathy and active listening lay the foundations for empowering and effective people development. In turn, this then leads to effective teams who are aligned with their organisation’s goals and deliver high performance.
Saurabh’s advice for marketing leaders is to ask themselves and their teams how they can remove barriers to their success. This puts the onus on each team member to clarify their thinking and come up with solutions themselves.
Servant leaderships drives confidence and commitment in the team. Especially in an era where employees are looking for a nurturing environment and a sense of community and purpose from their work, simply dictating orders will not just harm team cohesion, it’s also not likely to yield the best possible results.
On the podcast, Saurabh told us how to be more aware of your team’s needs and how to navigate leadership with empathy and openness. He also shares top tips for students and young marketers in the industry.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Saurabh Patel 0:00
It fundamentally involves empathy, active listening, and a coaching style where you ask questions in a way where you get your team members to clarify their thinking and come up with the solutions themselves. People are able to actually then follow through what they need to do.
Speaker 2 0:21
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Tom Ollerton 0:43
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. This is a weekly show where I have the pleasure and privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Saurabh Patel, who is group Head of Marketing at IHH healthcare. So Saurabh, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Could you give us a bit of background?
Saurabh Patel 1:11
Hi Tom, my pleasure to be here. Sure. So I'm the group head of marketing at IHH healthcare, which is actually one of the world's largest private healthcare networks. It's listed on the Singapore and Malaysia Stock Exchange comprises 80 Plus hospitals in 10 countries, including our key home markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Turkey, India, and iconic brands like Mount Elizabeth, Gleneagles, Pantai, Fortis. So I'm responsible for sales and marketing strategies, digital engagement, and key related digital transformation activities. I've been with HGH for around four years. And prior to that I spent 19 years I know it's a long time at Johnson and Johnson consumer doing various roles in sales and marketing across India, the USA and Singapore.
Tom Ollerton 2:01
So in that time, you must have worked with a lot of juniors a lot of graduates, I'm curious to know, what advice would you give a smart driven student who's trying to make it in the industry and follow your footsteps?
Saurabh Patel 2:14
Okay, I find it to be an amusing question. Because I fundamentally out of my 23 years, I spent 19 years in one company, which a lot of people don't really do today. But jokes aside, one of the reasons I stayed in the same company for 19 years, is because I got to do so many different things in terms of the function which is marketing, sales, product development, supply chain, markets, India, USA, Southeast Asia, and categories, you know, baby care, personal care skincare. So I have actually two pieces of advice to somebody who's new and wants to excel in the marketing industry. So for someone starting out, my first piece of advice would be that while you do want to obviously establish yourself in the marketing function, do not over specialize within that. I mean, a career is finally a marathon, not a sprint. So make sure you expand your experiences and change maybe one or two vectors. So say for example, if you want to stay in the same product category, which you love, then maybe change your area of work within marketing for that. So you might be doing social, but maybe change over to search in the same product category. Conversely, if you've spent if you love your, your area within marketing, then change your product category or industry, or geography. In my case, I stayed within India the first nine years, but changed product categories often. I also did sales as an additional function. And I got to change geography after that. The second point, or the second piece of advice I would strongly give is that make sure you do sales. And you basically get experience working in a function where the transaction happens in your company, or your industry and where your company makes money. In my case, in consumer goods in India, right, I mean, marketing and brand management, and comms is one thing, but where a brand really lives or dies is in the retail environment, which in India consists of you know, 1000s of traditional mom and pop stores, which are serviced through business partners like distributors. And this could look a little bit different by industry, right? So say, for example, if you're in b2b marketing, then you impact business, but you're still a little bit far removed from account management where the money actually gets made, which is sales. And again, you don't need to become a specialist here and spend years together doing sales. But a stint in sales is important. I would say it could be Field Sales, it could be ecommerce, it could be account management. I actually had the privilege of working in consumer goods in India, where you're never seen just as a marketing person or a salesperson you're seen as both. The other reason to do sales is that it gives you the experience pretty early in your career to actually manage people or work around people, which are again, you know, life skills and career skills which will take you far. So those are the two pieces of advice I'd have.
Tom Ollerton 5:01
Excellent advice. Thank you for sharing that. So moving across into marketing advice, do you have a tip, a marketing tip that you share most often with your team or people that ask?
Saurabh Patel 5:12
Yeah, sure. So I love to talk about obsessing about the consumer. I know this sounds like a cliche in marketing. But I do think that this is not easy to do. It's easy to say and easy to pay lip service to. So in my context, at my organization, there are many more traditional organizations that do have experiential knowledge about consumers and patients. But the challenge is that it lies in silos. And it's not democratized given that no single function truly owns consumer or patient understanding, right. So for example, in the case of a hospital, patient experience, there's parts of the journey owned by marketing, especially the early stage, then you know, the customer service or the front office team, and then finally, the clinicians. So this is really where consumer or patient journey mapping can be very helpful. And marketing can and should champion this cause across functions. And this is about mapping out the journey, which consists of key stages, moments that matter, key decision points, stakeholders, jobs to be done, and also very importantly, feelings at each stage, not only functional, but also emotional. And honestly, this becomes a great foundation for cross functional collaboration and bringing everyone together. And yeah, sure, there would likely be formal research, you know, somewhere, somewhere in the mix, but the very act of actually a cross functional team coming together to put down their understanding of the patient, or deciding what to do about it to improve it is very, very powerful. And it's not always easy, you know, an exercise like this can lead to someone saying, oh, you know, we've already we've always been aware of this. So what's the big deal? Or, you know, something like, we we've been there done that. But the way I typically try and counter it is, you know that, okay, if we were aware of this, then why haven't we really done anything about it. The other piece that comes up is that many people tend to use their own experiences a patient or consumer and use it as gospel truth in terms of what we should do. But I think the key thing to keep in mind is that one's experience, it's important, but finally, it's a sample of one. So you should definitely consider your own experiences or consumer or patient, but don't treat it as the be all and end all use it as a starting point or a hypothesis, which should be validated. If I were to just quickly share an example on this, we actually had this for one of our core businesses, which is oncology where we brought key functions together, to you know, put together the patient journey with key moments that matter, and decision points. And it led to a lot of value, we got actually enough deep understanding to number one, write better briefs to our marketing agencies, and understanding of the early stage journey made us realize that we weren't thinking enough about diagnosis and prevention. And we ended up introducing more cancers, even more specific cancer screening tests, we also realize that consumers find the entire process of interacting with the provider if they have cancer, very, very complex and confusing. And they are also not in a great emotional state. So then we you know, we actually had some great ideas around how can we address this through maybe a front facing staff playing a better or clearer role in terms of, you know, personalized care for patients.
Tom Ollerton 8:22
So I want to get on to your shiny new object, which is a first for this podcast. So I'm really pleased you brought this up, and your shiny new object is servant leadership. So this is a term I came across relatively recently a bit embarrassed to say, but I'm really keen to know what servant leadership is to you, and why you've chosen that as your shiny new object.
Saurabh Patel 8:43
Yeah, I've always felt that this is, you know, one of the very understated pieces when it comes to working with teams or leading teams. And I know there's a lot of definitions out there. But the way I see it is that it's fundamentally a philosophy or a mindset. When you ask yourself and your team, how can I help you succeed? You know, what barriers can I remove to make sure you're successful? And these could be barriers, which could be political could be skill based, could be resource based. It fundamentally involves empathy, active listening, and a coaching style where you ask questions in a way where you get your team members to clarify their thinking and come up with the solutions themselves. And I've, I've strongly experienced that this drives clarity of thought, but it also drives a lot of confidence and commitment in the team. You know, and people are able to actually then follow through what they need to do.
Tom Ollerton 9:48
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So how do you make sure that you are a servant leader? You know, you talk about coaching, active listening, removing barriers, do you have a system to make sure that you are a servant leader? Or do you do it by feel?
Saurabh Patel 10:38
Okay, so the thing is, it's something I kind of, you know, narrowed down on after working with a lot of different teams, especially, you know, younger people, what we call Gen Z. And I think it was really about my current circumstances with my business and my team that led me to servant leadership. So I think a couple of key reasons why this is important to me and my team is, one is, of course, the point I made earlier about, you know, when you work with young team members and workers, especially Gen Z, they want something more meaningful than just transactional work relationships. They want to feel a sense of community, a higher purpose, and a work environment more conducive to their specific development needs. I've seen this work better for, you know, the engagement, retention and motivation of my team, I see this at work. And I, as a father of an 18 year old, I've also seen it at home. The other reason why I kind of came down to this is that eventually, managing change in a traditional industry is very, very hard. And I think it requires a particular type of support system. So for example, one of my key responsibilities is to run a COE for digital marketing platforms and engagement. It's basically around using digital platforms in new ways to drive better patient retention and engagement and experiences to complement our offline experiences. And most of my team are specialists in specific areas of digital. And they've done this in varied industries, like E commerce, consumer goods, hospitality. And now they are tasked with driving change new ways of doing things in healthcare services, which is very hard, it requires a lot of alignment with leadership and the teams in the markets. And we are trying to speak to leadership and market teams about things they have not done before, in a language which they don't really understand. I mean, I'm sure you'll agree, but there is so much jargon and complexity in marketing today, that makes the task of selling these in traditional industries much harder. So using coaching, you know, which I think is a key component of servant leadership. You know, this really helped to get my team to a place where we're really able to distill what we're trying to do into impacting the job to be done, or the problem, the patient is trying to solve the patient experience, and the impact on results, rather than focus on how cool the technology is. So I think this approach of you know, don't obsess with the technology, but make sure you're able to really drive home, the impact you're making to the, to the patient or the consumer, is I think one of the key one of the key impacts that was able to drive the team, you know, using coaching, which is a key element of servant leadership to take it forward.
Tom Ollerton 13:20
So do you find yourself coaching people how to be servant leaders from within your organization? Your reports?
Saurabh Patel 13:27
I would say I do. I mean, at the end of the day, one of the principles I've always, you know, thought about and asked my team to think about is that, you know, you should always work with your team, the way you would like your boss to work with you. So. So I do see my team members who also have teams under them, you know, starting to use this. But I've also realized, and this is something my teams have told me, and, you know, this is something we debate as well, that while it's, it's something which my team loves to take forward as well, I've also realized over a period of time, that there are certain caveats in terms of how this works. And I've realized that, you know, one needs to actually be flexible, also at the same time about your own leadership styles. And the wisdom is really on when to use it and when not to. For example, it may not always be the right approach when it comes to crisis situations, you know, when a more top down approach is better, and it's required, and there are also some prerequisites to making it work, without which me or even my teams with their direct reports would not be able to make this work. So one is you need to have broad alignment on organizational values. You know, what, what, what values are really, really important to us as a team and in our company. A lot of it is around building trust, collaboration, teamwork. And then of course, there needs to be alignment on the core goals and this is kind of more operational in terms of the goals we have as a marketing team, and even the individual goals, you know somebody might have. So I think these prerequisites are really important because I've also realized that not all companies have an equally strong mechanism on, you know, planning, KPIs, performance, etc. The other piece, which again, a lot of my colleagues have kind of told me, and which is probably a bit of a misnomer when it comes to servant leadership, is that, you know, finally, it's about being alive to your team's needs, but not necessarily their feelings. And I think there is a difference here. It basically means that, you know, for example, corrective feedback still needs to be given. I mean, you know, it doesn't mean that hard messages are not delivered, that needs to be done, if needed in a respectful manner. But it's not, you know, about not having the tough conversations. In fact, I would say if, if this is adapted the right way, the tough conversations become easier, because your team realizes that you're coming from a place of serving them or helping them do better versus necessarily coming from, you know, a place where you're reprimanding them.
Tom Ollerton 16:08
Curious to know how servant leadership marries up or not, with the traditional view of CEO or CMO or C level person that I grew up with, right? There weren't that many examples of servant leadership that I could see, it was quite the opposite. It was a dictatorial leadership where you do this because I'm the boss, and I'm telling you to do it. So I mean, we could list off a whole group of people who fill out that persona, the sort of, I guess, the sort of Steve Jobs type character, whereas servant leadership seems to be a much more gentle approach. So do you think that this is going to be the future of leadership apart from in those times of crisis? Or when hard conversations need to be had? Or is this just another type of leader to sit alongside the the more dictator style approach?
Saurabh Patel 17:02
So yes, the way I see it, I think there will always be a lot of different approaches to leadership. But I do think that servant leadership will be used more and more. And the reason I feel so is that after having worked for, you know, more than 20 years, I think, if I take marketing, right, the pace of change in marketing, especially given technology has been tremendously quick, the last, you know, 1010 years or so, I mean, when I started off, you know, being, say, a brand manager, a lot of what I used to do was print advertising and TV advertising. And, you know, you work with agencies to kind of build these 30-second TV series. And obviously, now, brand managers of today, yeah, they probably still may work on that. But a lot of what they're doing is linked to, you know, social and search, and CRM, and there's basically a lot of technology which has come in, and the pace of change is only going to get faster. And I think after having worked for 20 plus years and being more senior, it is actually very, very difficult to keep pace with all the changes that are happening in technology. And I think where leaders can complement the team members, as your team members obviously know the technology. But many times where they struggle, is being able to call out what the outcome is what the result is, and you know, the core thinking on strategy objectives, what we're trying to do, what difference we're trying to make, I think that becomes important. So I see that relationship being even more symbiotic. Where honestly, where I can add value to my team member is more on the larger big picture strategic thinking pieces, the technology and the details is something I would never really be able to challenge beyond a point because, you know, I have not been able to roll up my sleeves and really get into it. So I think with that in mind and the pace of change coming. I do believe this is going to be more and more important above a more often used approach. Because it's very difficult to as a boss be an expert on everything. I mean, they say that, you know, you should surround yourself with smarter people and people who have deeper knowledge than you. I think that's not a cliche, that's really important. And then the way you kind of hone a team like that is through using more servant leadership, in my view.
Tom Ollerton 19:14
So unfortunately, we are at the end of the podcast. So if someone wanted to get in touch with you about servant leadership, or any of the other things we've covered today, where is a good place to do that? And what makes a great outreach message to you?
Saurabh Patel 19:28
I think LinkedIn would be perfect. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. And yes, I absolutely would love to read to engage with folks who want to connect with me on servant leadership on digital transformation, and even you know, some of the softer aspects of change management, which I think are really important. So yes, LinkedIn would be best.
Tom Ollerton 19:47
Fantastic. So thank you so much for your time.
Saurabh Patel 19:50
Thanks, Tom. That was a great conversation. Thank you.
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