IAM1427 – Consultant Creates Bridges to Conflict and Build a Common Ground

Suman is a Professional Development Consultant, dedicated to supporting individuals and organizations through conflict management and culture change initiatives with a distinct focus on the values of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB). She approaches her work with attention toward self-care, compassion, empathy, collaboration, and awareness, all of which she recognizes as essential for transformation to a more just and inclusive society.

• CEO Story: Suman called herself an accidental entrepreneur. She never planned to be a business owner. The dream that she had was to take time with her children which is why she left her job to purposely be with her children. Got an offer for admin, and from there started Well Balanced Solutions as a Virtual Assistant and grew it for 6 years. She missed her job as a mediator which is why she moved to her expertise as a professional development consultant as a catalyst for conflict management and culture change.
• Business Service: Customised educational workshops. Facilitate conversations on calls to action. Surveys, data analysis, and creating a path.
• Secret Sauce: Understand the people at hand and create the same goal. Bring people together, have them see the bigger picture, and guide them to the ultimate goal.
• CEO Hack: Be conscious. Set aside a number of appointments a week that you can handle. Stick to it.
• CEO Nugget: Know your worth or value. Just be grateful. Be patient.
• CEO Defined: Women can be leaders and be successful in business. Make a positive impact on workplace culture.

Website: SumanKapur

Facebook: WellBalancedSolutions

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:47 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Suman Kapoor of Well Balanced Solutions. Suman, super excited to have you on the show here.

00:58 – Suman Kapur

Thank you so much for the space and I'm so excited for this conversation.

01:02- Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm excited as well too, just to get the opportunity to hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. Sumin has been super helpful in so many different ways, so she's definitely a giver and I love the opportunity to get to interview her so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. But of course, before we do that, I wanted to read a little bit more about Sumin so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

Sumin is a professional development consultant dedicated to supporting individuals and organizations through conflict management and culture change initiatives with a distinct focus on the values of diversity, equity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. She approaches her work with an intention towards self-care, compassion, empathy, collaboration, and awareness, all of which she recognizes as essential for transformation to a more just and inclusive society. Suman, excited again to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:49 – Suman Kapur

I am so excited. Let's get this going and let's make it happen then.

01:53 – Gresham Harkless

So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:00 – Suman Kapur

Yeah, thank you for that question. So, you know, I've started calling myself an accidental entrepreneur. I never planned to be a business owner. It was not in my vision, was never a dream of mine. But one of the dreams that I did have was to purposefully take time off to raise my children. So I Left my job as a mediator purposefully to raise my children with the hopes of going back to work. We know this area in Northern Virginia outside the D.C. area is super expensive, and yet I wanted that perfect space where I could put my son on the bus at 9 in the morning, get him off in the afternoon, and make the salary I was making before. Well, that was not real in this area.

And so I had a friend who was starting a boutique law firm and she asked if I would help with some admin work. It was great. Helped while he was in preschool, earned a little bit of money, and I stumbled upon this thing called a virtual assistant. And so I started well Balanced Solutions as a virtual assistant business. I grew that for about six years. That morphed into more of an online business management work. But then I really missed the mediation work I was doing. But I wasn't ready to go back into the workforce and I started dabbling with what this consultancy work would look like.

And then Covid hit. George Floyd was murdered. The world shut down. All these just awful things happened. All around the same time I was trying to figure out what my next step in this business was. In conversations that I was having, I realized that I was going back to my days of college when I was a social activist and I was talking about racial injustices the importance and benefits of diversity in the workplace, and how we can show up as our full selves and give space for the awfulness that's happening in the world. From there, this professional development around DEI work and conflict management, it just happened. Literally just happened from a conversation.

04:08 – Gresham Harkless

That makes so much sense and I appreciate you sharing that journey. And obviously, everything that happened with George Floyd was the lightest way to say is transformational. But it, I think so many people, obviously his life, so many people that were, you know, closely connected with him, but even people that didn't necessarily know him directly because it became more of a maybe a martyr or symbol of some of the things that needed to be changed. And I appreciate you kind of taking the mantle, as so many others, to say that we're going to be the change that we want to see in the world rather than just, you know, you know, see what's going to happen. We're actually going to make that change happen.

04:42 – Suman Kapur

Absolutely. And you know, we've had so many atrocities when it comes to racial discrimination and things in the world. Many, many, many. My children are half black, so we've had these awful conversations with my children, especially with my son, very early on, of course, all age-appropriate conversations. But I feel like the George Floyd murder was a turning point. You know, it's still, we're still talking about it two years later. Change is still happening, work is still happening. What I call courageous conversations, these difficult conversations around race are still happening. Right.

And that wasn't, that's not historically true for all the other atrocities that have happened. And so I do think that there's, there was maybe it was the visual of seeing what happened to him that you can't turn a blind eye to that. You can't brush that under the carpet anymore. And it is sticking here. And while people are tired of these conversations, even the work that I do can be tiring and overwhelming, we have to keep doing it. And so while the start of my business was awful, I'm hoping I'm making a positive impact with organizations and even communities in opening up and having these conversations.

06:05 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you really hit the nail on the head and just being able to kind of see and re. See and see again that visual and just how for lack of a better term humane that situation was. But I think as you said so well, it obviously opened up the opportunity to have conversations, to make changes, and to have people, you know, awesome people like yourself that are able to kind of be stewards to those courageous conversations, as you said so well. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know we touched on a little bit. How are you working with your clients? How do you serve them? How exactly are you working with a well-balanced solution?

06:40- Suman Kapur

Yeah. Thank you. So, you know, it's really interesting. It took me a little bit of time to find my niche and to find the people who were ready to do this work. Right. George Floyd was murdered. We saw every company out there putting out these statements. Right, left and right, left and right. These statements were out there. But what was happening behind the scenes didn't match those statements that were coming out. It took me some time to find those organizations who are genuinely ready to put in the hard work, to put the budget behind that hard work, to take the time out, allow it giving their staff and their employees that space to do this work. What I do is I work with these organizations, whether it's creating workshops. And so everything that I do is customized.

I co-create with my clients. If they're looking for educational workshops, I will do that. I've done things on allyship, on courageous conversations, on calls to action. You know, a lot of times you don't know what to do with this stuff. You're here, you're hearing it, you've done some reading, but now what? So I facilitate conversations around calls to action. At the same time, I also strategically help organizations create a DEIB path and what that looks like. So I do surveys. I'll survey staff to understand what they're feeling about personally, and what DEIB means to them, but what are they feeling and seeing in the organization?

Are the words that leadership is putting out there matching the action that's happening, and if not, what does the staff want to see? So I do these surveys, I do some data analysis, I present it to leadership, and then I help them strategically create a path that works for them as well as the staff so that turnover doesn't happen. Right now, we're seeing this great resignation that's out there. People want to belong. People want a sense of purpose. And until leadership recognizes that and puts that effort in, people are going to be leaving to find those organizations that are doing the hard work who are really putting that time and energy into creating a more diverse, equitable, inclusive workspace, as well as creating a sense of belonging for staff.

09:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And you feel like that's part of your secret sauce, the ability to understand each of the, I guess, the people at hand and be able to make sure that you are creating something that really resonates with a lot of people.

09:19 – Suman Kapur

Absolutely spot on, because that's exactly what it is. Especially with the mediation background, I always start with, what do we have in common? What is our ultimate goal here? The goal is going to be the same. How we get to that goal is a different story. But let's make sure we understand that we're creating the same goal. And if we have the same goal, well, then let's work towards that. It's a little bit of give, a little bit of take. It's kind of meeting each other on the same path to get to that same goal. And so I do find that you know, I'm able to get from my clients what they want, where they're trying to go, what are they willing to.

When I use the word give up, I mean more like what they're willing to give in order to receive. Right. That's what life is all about. You give and you take. You can't just be the. You can't only give and you can't only take because then you'll just be miserable. But life is all about giving and taking. And that goes in the workplace. That goes with leadership. And so I do believe that I have the ability to bring people together, have Them see the bigger picture, and then help guide them towards that ultimate goal.

10:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So that's why I love that you take that baton and kind of run with it and help so many people in organizations be able to kind of see the change and be the change within themselves. So absolutely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:53 – Suman Kapur

Yeah. So as you can tell, I love chatting, I love talking, I love being around people. I just don't draw energy from that. So I have realized that I am an outgoing introvert. And so when I first started my business, I was meeting everybody one on one and oh, schedule this and schedule that. I would have like 15 to 21 on-one scheduled for a week. And it was exhausting for me. So now what I've started to do and it's really hard for me to do, but I have consciously set aside five slots on my calendar a week and it allows me to be more present with the person I'm speaking to. It allows me to build a stronger connection and relationships because I'm not overbooked, I'm not pulled in so many directions.

So I take my time. I have the opportunity to chat with them, I take my notes, and it allows me time also then in a month or so to follow up with that person so I can build relationships so I'm at the forefront of their thinking as they're having other conversations. I have been very intentional about how many on-ones I take to connect with the right people so that they can then do the work and recommend me to other people. So it took me about four or five months of being exhausted and just never having time to actually build a website to post on LinkedIn because I was meeting all these people. So yes, be conscious. Set aside X number of blocks a week and stick to it.

12:34 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. I love it. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:49 – Suman Kapur

Absolutely. My biggest nugget would be to know your worth, know your value. So for me, especially as a woman, I've always been told, to be grateful for what you get, whether it's my job, the salary, or the Cost of living. Just be grateful. When I started my business, always second-guessed my rates. I eventually found out that those who were going to push back on my rates were not the clients I wanted. So know your value. Be patient. Those who are who view you as valuable, they'll come around and just know your value.

13:27 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Suman, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:38 – Suman Kapur

Oh, yes. So it's multifold. So be patient, please. So as a mom, it's important for my son to see that women can be successful, that we can own our own businesses, that we can be leaders, that we can bring people together and create a business, and that we can achieve really high goals. For my daughter, it's important for her to see mommy at the helm. It's important for her to know that mommy can lead, that mommy can be financially successful and be happy at the job that she's at the work that she's doing. And as a child of immigrant parents, I want other South Asian women, first-generation South Asian girls to see that there is more available out there for us. Right?

We don't have to just go to school forever and become whatever it is, lawyers, doctors, you can own a business, that it is a very successful and viable way of earning a living. And then as a woman of color, it's important for other young people to see that I can make a positive impact in workplace culture, that I can. That my voice is important to change toxicity levels in the workplace. So it's multifold that. I loved that question. So thank you for asking. I took time to think about that one. I really liked that question. Thank you. That's a great question.

15:14- Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, Suman, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get hold of you to find about all the awesome things you're working on.

15:29 – Suman Kapur

If anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm on LinkedIn just under Suman Kapoor. I'm here. I'm willing to have conversations, I'm willing to hear different perspectives. So I'd love to have a conversation with anyone who's open-minded and who's trying to figure out where they go on this diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging journey. Thank you again, Gresham for this time. I really appreciate it.

15:54- Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. I appreciate you for obviously taking time out and all the awesome work that you're doing. Of course, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with Suman and find out about all the awesome things that you know you're working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:08 – Suman Kapur

Thanks. You too. Take care.

16:09 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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