This is a transcript of a podcast episode. You can listen to the episode here. There have been minor changes made to the transcript for clarity.
Welcome to the Empathetic Workplace podcast. I’m Katharine Manning, author of the book, The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job. I’m also an attorney with more than 25 years’ experience on issues of trauma and victimization.
Last week was a horrible week in our country. Those images of rioters storming into the Capitol and desecrating that hollowed building will stay with me forever. It’s hard to know what to do in this time. How are we supposed to work? How do we even talk about what happened? That’s why I wanted at this time to share with you this interview with Anjali Chaturvedi. Anjali is a lawyer and a manager and a yoga instructor, and she provides such an incredible model of how to lead with empathy and grace, especially in challenging times.
I hope you find some inspiration here.
Katharine: Hello and welcome. Today I’m talking with Anjali Chaturvedi. Anjali is the assistant general counsel for investigations for Northrop Grumman Corporation, where she leads Northrop Grumman’s global investigations team.
Prior to joining Northrop Grumman, Anjali was the assistant general counsel at BP, where she was the lead in-house lawyer for the criminal and sec investigations related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident. Anjali served as an Assistant United States Attorney for 12 years, 10 years in the DC office and two years in the Northern District of California. Anjali is also a certified yoga instructor. She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with her husband and their ten-year-old son. Hello, Anjali.
Anjali: Hello, Kate.
Katharine: Good to have you here. I have just a few opening questions for you to help people get to know you a little bit better. Where did you grow up?
Anjali: I was born and raised in a small, rural town in central New York, where the two biggest industries were dairy farming and a small local college where my dad taught for many years.
Katharine: Excellent. What did he teach?
Anjali: Nuclear physics. So when you say, it’s not rocket science, yeah. With my dad, it was often rocket science.
Katharine: What was your very first job?
Anjali: Well, you know, I think I was a babysitter, probably first for my little sister and then for neighborhood kids, but aside from that, I think my first job was at my college. I worked in the rare book part of one of the libraries and I rebound old books, which meant taking off the cover in the back and then gluing them into new binding, and I only lasted about three weeks because there was almost no ventilation in this room. And the fumes of the glue were too much for me to bear. But I think that was my first job.
Katharine: Fascinating and horrifying.
Anjali: [00:02:00] Yes. Yes. It was both. If I can recall.
Katharine: Okay. I want you to describe your, your current job, but we’ve heard your title and everything, so what I want you to do is describe it with three verbs.
Anjali: My work challenges me, motivates me and, you know, with some regularity, I’d say inspires me.
Katharine: Okay. And then just for fun, what’s something that you’ve enjoyed lately? Something that has made you happy. It could be like a TV show or a book or some new hobby or activity.
Anjali: Well, I feel like I’ve gotten a little old school in making playlists for friends. You know, not the old school, old school way of like playing a 45 with a tape recorder nearby, you remember doing that and you have to stop and rewind and yeah, it was a lot of work back in the day. Now it’s just Spotify, but I’ve been trying to do that and send them to different friends that just remind me of a time together. So that’s been a good distraction.
Katharine: Well, that’s excellent. You and President Obama.
Anjali: Yes, I have his, I saved his, yes, it’s a good one. We have some common interests, which is kinda nice.
Katharine: I love it. Excellent. Okay. So, just to get into some of the substance a little bit, you have guided corporations through some pretty incredibly difficult times. I mean, most notably the Deepwater Horizon, but others as well, I’m sure. So I would love to hear from you, what are the values that you bring in when you are helping an organization through something that is a challenge?
Anjali: I think the values have always stayed the same, which is to bring integrity and courage. And I also think the ways to lead in those situations is often the same as well, which is creating an environment where you are comfortable that you have made the best decisions with the information that you have. The challenge is, of course, creating that environment so that you do feel like you’ve gotten the best information from the people that are part of the team and that’s where the real work is, in my opinion. How do you do that in the midst of a crisis where emotions can be high and stress can be high and worry can be high.
Katharine: [00:04:43] Yeah, I can imagine that there is probably a lot of fear and anger and, you know, you’re coming in as a lawyer, which for a lot of people already is kind of scary that you have to meet with the company lawyer. So what do you do to get to a place where people feel like they can be open and share with you?
Anjali: I don’t know precisely what I do. I can tell you what I try to do. I mean, some of it, I think I inherited from my parents. Like I think that my parents really valued connecting with others. It just was who they were, whether in their community or at the college, with their friends, real genuine connection.
I think I just was around it growing up. And so it is something that I value and respect and enjoy. So I think that comes to me sort of naturally, I don’t really think about it, but what I’ve come to realize is when I am more intentional about it, the safe environment gets created more quickly and people do feel like they can both express opinions about what they think is the right thing to do, and people can express their fear and anger and worry and get it out in the open. And so even though I do show up as a lawyer, I try in my initial engagements with people to just first show up as a person. The lawyering comes, but I think I’ve been most successful when I’ve showed up first as a person.
Katharine: [00:06:31] And how do you do that? So just if you wouldn’t mind kind of giving us practical, like you walk in the room and you see somebody who you can just feel the anger, the fear, the frustration coming off of him. So imagine that. How do you walk in that room and how do you approach that person?
Anjali: Well, I have to say, you know, my first legal job, being a prosecutor in Washington, DC, primarily doing violent crime work, that’s where I learned how to do it, both because I had to do it myself, over and over again, but also I got to watch incredibly compassionate people, do the same thing and that description, of walking into a room meeting somebody with anger or fear or frustration, it happened all the time. So imagine right, the parents of a child who’s been murdered, and they don’t have the person that did it in custody, and that family member is really frustrated with the system.
So really just acknowledging what the person has gone through. I mean, empathy, really trying to stand in their shoes, and asking a lot of questions being humble in that moment and recognizing that they’re in a tough place. You know, sometimes we would have, let’s say a half an hour with a witness because you had to be in court or something like that. I mean, we would take 20 of those 30 minutes just building rapport, because that is what would allow for the relationship. That is what would allow for the connection. That was the only way to get the person to believe you, to trust you, is taking that time. You can’t rush it.
You can’t say to somebody, trust me, I’m here to help, right? Like the stereotypical lawyer I’m here to help. Or you could say it, but it’s not going to work in that environment very often if at all. So, yeah. So I was very lucky to witness, how many people showed up authentically in very difficult situations and I’ve sort of picked that up, I think, and tried to use that and share that with people I work with.
Katharine: [00:09:10] And then how do you maintain that trust? Because there will come times, for sure as an AUSA, but probably, in your corporate work as well, where you have, initial meetings you have some rapport built up and then there comes a time where you have to deliver bad news. Things are not going the way that we hoped or, I mean, maybe you’ve discovered that there is some new piece of information that calls into question what somebody told you or something like that. How do you approach the difficult conversations while still maintaining the trust, the openness and the integrity?
Anjali: Yeah. I mean, those are hard, hard conversations to have, when you are going to share something with someone that you are pretty sure they don’t want to hear. You know, that’s where integrity I think comes in, and compassion. I don’t apologize for the fact of whatever it is that’s happened, the fact is the fact, but I certainly can continue to be empathetic about the impact that might have. You know, “This may be hard for you to hear, but I need to tell you…,” and “I’m sure this isn’t what you expected, but I need to tell you….” You can convey that in words, you can convey that in body language, in tone, and I think when you are as honest as you can be with another person, that is a way to maintain trust, because they can believe what you are saying to them, even when it’s not what they want to hear.
Katharine: [00:10:45] Yeah, there’s a quote that I love, by Martha Beck, “As difficult as it may be, nothing feels as good to the soul as the truth.” I firmly believe that you can tell people anything as long as they know that you respect them and are doing it from a place of compassion.
Anjali: I think that’s right.
Katharine: Have you had experiences where you thought, “Ooh, this is not going well”?
Anjali: I have lost count of the times that has happened. What do you do when that happens, right? There’s lots of different ways, and there’s so many good quotes for that, right? It’s not how many times you fall down, it’s how many times you pick yourself back up that matters. I have literally said to somebody, “Can I start again? Can I just start this conversation again?” I did it when I was teaching once. I taught a class of law students. And I just taught it horribly. I just did not convey what I wanted to convey and I felt really bad because they deserved better and you know, I struggled until the next class and then I just realized I needed to just do it again, and I asked their permission and they let me do it again. But everything from pausing in that moment, when you feel like things are going South, just to take a breath and try to catch yourself, to articulating to the person, “This is not going well for either of us right now. What are you feeling? You know, what are you thinking? What do you need? Let me tell you what I need. I need to be able to share this with you, even though it’s not what you want to hear.” So putting some language around it, and ultimately I think just having some grace to know that things don’t always go the way we want them to go. And sometimes you have to let go of that.
Katharine: [00:12:36] I’d love to hear more about you as a manager. We’ve heard a little bit about how you approach witnesses and investigations with an attitude of openness and acknowledgement. I assume that those same values inform your management style. Can you talk a little bit about how you lead a team with an attitude of openness and how do you model that as well?
Anjali: This is the work that inspires me the most, which is working with a team, my teams. We’re all different people. We all have our own stories, and I am just really curious about people’s stories, what motivates them, how they look at things, how they approach problems, how they balance stressors, challenges in their own lives. What I hope to do is to create an environment where that adage, bring your whole self to work, where there’s truth behind it. So in a 30 minute catch up meeting, for example, I might take 20 of the 30 minutes to ask about how the person is doing and what’s happening with them.
Recognizing that the work needs to get done and the work needs to be done at an excellent level, but that time devoted to understanding the person and what’s happening with them, that is invaluable in creating the type of connection that creates the best work and the most highly motivated employee. And it truly, I think, helps all of us reach our highest potential. So I try to show up with curiosity. It can be challenging, you know, don’t get me wrong, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed—given the nature of the work that I do, there’s sometimes where I have to cut to the chase, right? Like just have to get the work done. But I think in also finding the time to commit to the person, it balances it out. So, right. So every meeting isn’t just started with, “How do we solve this problem?” But every so often a meeting does start with that. And my goal, my hope is that the person on the receiving end knows that I do care that I do want to hear from them because of the investment in them, the investment in the group. So we work as a team, and we all have good days on the team. We all have bad days on the team.
Katharine: [00:15:11] how did you learn that? Cause I got to say, I tend to be like, we got to get the work done. The work happens first, that is my instinct. And so the idea that as a manager, you’ve got a 30-minute check-in and you spend 20 minutes of it finding out what’s going on with the person outside of the work, does not feel intuitive to me. Was it always intuitive to you?
Anjali: I don’t know if it was always intuitive to me. I mean, like going back to the violent crime, because of the stress of the violence that was often associated with those cases, you could not get someone to tell you what they witnessed or what they suffered, unless they wanted to tell you. You could not get them to tell you, right? I did not have the authority of being their boss. So that’s maybe where the skill or the commitment to the other person got, you know, where I planted that stake because I couldn’t rush that. I couldn’t walk in and say, “I have a problem that needs to be solved. I have a murder that I need to solve. Tell me who did it.” That wasn’t going to work.
And I am a very goal-oriented person, so there is a tension that’s constantly going on in my mind, but one really important shift for me was when I was at BP. My boss at BP was the coordinator for the entire legal response to the Deepwater Horizon accident. As you can imagine, the legal risks that the company was facing were coming from all different directions. You know, everything from shareholder litigation to State AGs to civil litigation to criminal investigations, and he was the coordinator for all of it. We had leadership meetings with the boss every month, that we never, you know, he never canceled them. Very early on when I joined the company, he started with something that he called My Story, where he started it off actually by playing a YouTube video of a woman, a Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, who has this great TED Talk called The Danger of a Single Story.
The gist of it is that we sometimes see somebody and we make a decision about them. You know, you are a, a white person from New England. Therefore you must, dot, dot, dot, and we just kind of go on making that assumption, and the gist of this TED Talk was what do we miss when we just writethe story for the person and what do we gain when we show up with some curiosity. So he played the video for us, the TED Talk for us, and then he invited each of us once a month, someone would volunteer to tell their own story in whatever way they wanted to. And each person had about 20 or 30 minutes to do this.
Most of the people did it by photographs, but telling a story using photographs. And this was in the middle of a crisis, this was when there was a worry that the company would be indicted, when senior leaders were worried that they might be indicted, where employees were really in the grips of fear, where the share price of the company was terrible. He did this, didn’t check his phone, didn’t rush anyone. We all on the leadership team showed up. The things that people shared about their lives, about their families, about their challenges, was so inspirational. And it created such a bond with us to take that time for one another.
There was no way of denying the value of connection. There was just no way of denying it after that experience, because we did it throughout my entire time working on the response to the accident. So when I feel rushed and I feel like I have to solve the problem. And again, the problem does have to get solved, right? And my standards are high. I think anyone that that works with me would tell you that, you know, my standards are high for myself and for those around me, but taking the time to connect with another person, you can’t place a value on it.
Katharine: [00:19:50] Yeah, that just is astounding to me that he held that priority through that time, which I cannot imagine the pressure that he and that the company was under at that time, and he held this commitment. What do you think that he got from it and that your team got from it? What was the value of that?
Anjali: He walked the walk in that when leaders say they care, you have to show it. He showed it. It was not any more complicated than that. He wasn’t doing it to impress anyone. I don’t think his boss knew, the general counsel of the entire organization, I’m not even sure that he knew that we were doing that. So I think it just, it mattered to him. And in turn, what he got is an incredibly loyal team. We would do anything for him because he would show up for us.
I remember another time when, because I, this is a struggle still for me, right? So I would meet with him for a one-on-one and I would have a long list of things I needed to update him on, and so I did that and at the very end of the meeting, I said to him, “I need to be out at the end of the week for a day or two. My father’s in the hospital and I need to go up to visit him.”
And he had a pad and pen in his hand and he put it down and said, “You should have started with that.” You know, “What’s happening with your dad and you go, you take whatever time you need.” I ended up going and just because he had said that to me, with such conviction, I ended up staying with my parents for three weeks and my father passed away in that time. And I had no worries about work. I did have to do some work, which is fine, but I didn’t have worries about work. And that is a gift. That is a gift. When you are struggling, to know that your leader has your back. You are on a team where you are really pulling for each other, but you have to put in the work to create that environment.
Katharine: [00:22:15] That’s such a good point and one that I had never thought about. There is the stress of the work. There is the stress of what’s happening in your family, but there’s another piece of stress, which is, What is work going to say about me taking time for the family? And by removing that third stressor, he allowed you to focus on the first two. That gives you more mental energy, as well as building the loyalty that you mentioned earlier, that you know it is okay, that he does not only see you as a person who produces X result for him, but as a full person that he cares about. And that has informed your own management now.
Anjali: Yes. It’s hard to put that down when you picked it up, right? There’s no excuse for not trying. What you asked earlier, you know, “Has it gone wrong sometimes?” Of course. Have I not always shown up the way I would like, have I missed something? Have I, you know, whatever, those things happen, but making the effort–you have to make the effort. It’s kind of what I think it’s all about, this concept of leadership.
Katharine: I’d love to get your thoughts on. sometimes there are things that are happening out in the world, that affect our workforce. I’m thinking most specifically about this spring, when we saw the killing of George Floyd and a lot of people were angry, grieving, a lot of concerns about our institutions in general.
Do you have advice or, or maybe you could just share your own perspectives on how do you lead through that kind of crisis where it’s not a crisis that is the company’s fault or anything the company is involved in, but it’s still affecting your team.
Anjali: [00:24:05] Yeah, boy, I think this, this reckoning, that really got all of our attention after George Floyd’s murder is a tough one. And I don’t know, Kate, the best way or the one way to approach it. I think there’s lots of honorable, good, important ways to approach it, for me. The important thing is that we approach it.
Pretending that we have a work self and a personal self as two separate entities, I think that just doesn’t fly. We are one person. My values and my emotions maybe apply differently depending on the scenario, but they are the same values and worries. And so, the challenge as a leader is, I think that you worry—I worry—will I say the wrong thing? You know, will I trigger somebody? Will I offend somebody? Will my ignorance about some aspect of this issue be front and center? And those are real worries. The brave challenge is to step into that vulnerability and realize, yes, I might get this wrong. Yes. I might say the wrong thing, but finding something that I can say to me is important, acknowledging that something terrible has happened, something hard has happened. That I’m feeling an impact of it. I hope that it invites others to feel safe and to feel like they can share. And those conversations are hard, you know, they’re hard, but I think with the social unrest, with the added stress of the pandemic, we can’t run away from these things. They’re all happening, so as leaders, as humans, connecting with other humans about these issues, I think is important. So I do have a great deal of curiosity to learn how different people are trying to approach it.
Katharine: [00:26:29] You alluded to this, but one of the difficulties of this time is that we are all physically separated for the most part. Has that affected your management of your team? Are you having to make kind of special efforts to connect with people? And I don’t know to the extent that you’re doing investigations, but has it affected investigations as well?
Anjali: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s affected everything, right? I used to work down the hallway from most of my team and could poke my head in their office or they could walk into my office. So. I think there is, on my part, a greater effort to intentionally connect with people, and do that in a bunch of different ways.
I do that one-on-one, I do that in groups, sometimes with video, sometimes without video, to give all of us a little bit of a break. I sometimes invite my team to take a walk while we’re talking so they can get outside and get some fresh air. So yes, that’s definitely changed and it’ll be interesting, you know, whenever we get past the pandemic, how it will overall impact the way we work.
And with investigations, yes, of course, you know, we’re not meeting with witnesses in person as much as we were before. And, that means, investigators of all types, you know, I imagine everywhere in the government and companies and private practice, caused all of us to really hone our listening skills, to really search for nonverbal cues when you’re speaking with someone. It’s required us to create space in an interview to make sure that people are hearing you because you can’t watch the impact. I’ve been so fortunate my entire career to work with some of the best, most caring, brightest, investigators imaginable, and they are bringing all of their superpowers, I think, to bear in this environment and I’m really grateful for it, but it does stretch different muscles.
Katharine: [00:28:47] Yeah, absolutely. I heard one woman say that previously she would be able to walk into a team meeting and before anybody said a word, she would know like, something’s going on with Tim. You know, she could just feel the energy from him and we don’t get that now, so we have to do a little bit more to check in, I think. Okay. I also want to talk a little bit about self-care because you are a very busy lady. You know, you’ve got a very important job, a marriage, a wonderful little boy that you are raising. So what are some of the things that you do to keep yourself moving forward and strong so that you can keep showing up for everybody in your life?
Anjali: Yeah. It’s funny, right? I was talking with a friend the other day who was slightly disparaging about self-help books, like “Who needs self-help books?” And he threw the question out there and I responded, everybody needs self-help books. Like we all, we all need to take care of ourselves.
I know it’s like an overused image, but in an airplane whenever we’re flying again, when they do the security briefing, they tell us, all right, put your oxygen mask on first, before you take care of others. And it’s not always the easiest thing for people that are used to performing at a high level and have a lot of demands on them, but I think for me, I realized that I am only bearable if I take time out for myself. I exercise in some way almost every day. I do now have a pretty good meditation practice. I get up in the morning most mornings and meditate for a period of time and I, a few years ago, wanted to deepen my yoga practice and so became a certified yoga teacher and I’m getting another certification now, so I’m both studying and practicing a lot of yoga. And the last thing, which for me, again, all comes back to this idea of connection. The people that I care about, I have found a way safely, I hope, to remain connected to people, whether it’s in person at a distance or phone calls or, aside from the mixed tapes, I also have gone back to a little bit of old school letter writing and just trying to write notes to people. I mean, I think all of those things help. I’m lucky to have a supportive husband and a great kid and a two-year-old puppy that brings a lot of joy, and just taking time to appreciate those things also has been really helpful.
Katharine: [00:31:44] Thank you. Anjali. Before I do the conclusion, I’d love to hear if there are any organizations or causes that you would like to give a shout out to during our time here, that you’d like to share with our audience.
Anjali: Thank you. Yeah, I guess there’s a couple. One is the yoga studio that I’ve been studying with, Circle Yoga in Northwest DC. I recently joined their board of directors, and it’s a lovely studio that has online classes and they also are connected with a mindfulness program. And so I think it’s a nice space even though it’s virtual, I think they’ve done a nice job of creating connection between students and teachers. And the other place, Kate, that I only learned about over the summer is the Boys and Girls Club in Fairfax County. And I know they’re in all of the counties, but I got connected with the one in Fairfax County.
They had this really great mentoring program this summer, where I got the great, good fortune to meet a young 13-year-old student in Fairfax County, who, you know, she’s studying online, and so the idea was having one-on-one connection with someone to talk to about school and other interests. They did this great fundraiser over the summer to support the Boys and Girls Club. I think that those clubs right now are a lifeline to a lot of kids and so for me having that connection with her, gave me a little bit of hope that these kids have the resilience. They have the ability to grow and change from this experience. And so if any of your listeners have time, I would commend that organization as a great way to connect to a young person.
Katharine: Thank you. Excellent.
Anjali: Thank you, Kate. I appreciate you so much.