Michelle Sisto of QTEM: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Uncertain & Turbulent Times
Make time to celebrate the little successes and for fun — I would say, whether you’re in in a crisis mode or all’s going well, making specific time to celebrate success and have some fun is really important, and that’s where you keep people motivated and build relationships. Sometimes it seems incongruous with a certain situation, but you’ve got to just make it explicit and then create those moments of celebration and recognition.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle Sisto, board member of QTEM (Quantitative Techniques for Economics & Management) Masters Network.
QTEM is an international network which brings together students, academic partners and international corporations, supporting the development of skills in analytical and quantitative techniques. Still serving on the QTEM board, Sisto was previously Vice Chair for QTEM and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs at EDHEC Business School. Sisto is currently on a year-long academic sabbatical investigating AI and generative AI and considers common threads in her story to be her desire for continuous learning and her interest in shifting focus every six to eight years to learn and take on new challenges.
Thank you so much for your time! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I grew up just outside Washington DC. and went to Georgetown University to study math and computer science. I’ve always been very interested in quantitative subjects. My third year at Georgetown, I studied abroad at the University of Nice, and that’s how I ended up in Europe. It was fantastic as a fully immersive experience. I became fluent in French and in Italian because I met my husband while I was there. I went back to Nice after graduating to do my Master’s and have stayed in Europe ever since.
That young exposure to international life has played a big role in my life and contributes to my engagement with QTEM. I am a strong believer in the capacity of exchanges and living abroad to transform individuals and enhance international understanding. I continued studying math and computer science for my masters, and after many years of teaching these to business school students, in 2008, I decided to shift a little bit and did a PhD in finance at EDHEC.
I found finance to be and an interesting field to which I could apply math and computer science and have remained working at business schools since then. I directed the MBA at EDHEC Business School for a few years, and then for six years I was the Associate Dean of our graduate programs, which involves three campuses and about 5000 students.
QTEM is an option for our master’s programs and this is how I first got involved with QTEM. QTEMs mission is naturally aligned with my interests — intercultural and multicultural experience around quantitative subjects involving statistics, analytics and data science.
This year, I’m on sabbatical because I am ready to shift again. I have the good fortune of spending the year looking into AI and generative AI, getting back to my first love of computer science and focusing on how we can and should further integrate this technology into the strategy of EDHEC and, of course, working with QTEM along those lines as well. I have learnt a lot and it is quite fun to be a student again.
Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
I love problem solving, so I look at challenging times as an opportunity to try something different or to pivot a bit and change perspectives. I’m also very much a people person, so I would say my motivation is to work together with whatever teams I’m working with at the time and keep all the members on board and motivated to get through the challenges together.
All of my career has been oriented toward academia and teaching and learning, so I always look at the challenges as something we need to get through for the good of our students. If you’re really focused on what is good and the right thing for the students, that tends to bring the tension down and to grow solution building opportunities.
Books have the power to change lives. Do you have a book in your life that impacted you and inspired you to be an effective leader? Can you share a story?
That’s a really hard one because I am an avid reader. At any time, I’ll have on my nightstand a variety of books and depending on my humour, I’ll choose one.
From the non-fiction books that have really had a strong influence, there’s a few that tend to be about cognitive science; Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely or Freakonomics or Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I find this style of books really helps me look at problems from diverse perspectives and helps me understand, when I’m working with other people; what biases we may all be bringing to the table and to address them. If we can shift our mindsets to look at a problem from a slightly different angle, that often opens possible other solutions. I find that understanding of how people think and reason really fascinating.
I also read a lot of fiction which, for me, really gets to our humanity and allows us to get outside ourselves and see things from another’s perspective. I tend to really enjoy fiction books that are based within cultures I don’t know as well.
Kite Runner I absolutely loved. I just read A Passage North, and Life of Pi is one of my all-time favourites. It’s an incredibly clever book and the protagonist often steps back and sees himself and his problems as pretty finite and small in the big scheme of nature and the world, and then focuses instead on gratitude. I also enjoyed how it leaves you at the end with that question of what is real and what isn’t which, I think, is very pertinent to trying to understand humanity. We all experience different realities and that’s getting worse now with AI. But even before that, we could leave the same conversation and come away with two very different perspectives on that reality.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Uncertainty has always been here and will always be here. Perhaps teaching statistics leaves me with a certain comfort level is accepting uncertainty. There are times where it might be more acute or times where it might be more global. The pandemic was a time that was absolutely global and acute. The growth of AI in our daily lives and work is becoming global, although not evenly across the world.
I would say the same things that you use in times of difficulty are those you use when things are going well, which is being authentic, listening to your teams, and trying to put yourself in the shoes of your stakeholders to really understand their needs and concerns. Give ample opportunity to learn about their perspectives so that your vision becomes wider.
When you’re communicating on what the next step forward is going to be, ensure the different stakeholders know they’ve been heard. Even if you’re not going to go with the direction that some would prefer, acknowledge their perspective while giving voice to the reasons for the chosen direction.
Keep optimistic and reiterate, “Okay, it’s a challenging time but we’ll get through this and this will generate opportunities that we might not even see right now.” Regular check-in and optimism, even in the face of adversity, really helps to keep myself and others motivated.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
It used to be standard to have a 5, 10 or 15-year strategic plan. Everybody now is much more aware of the fact that they’re going to need to be agile and be able to shift and adapt to changing circumstances. However, you have to have a plan from which to adapt.
Part of human psychology is a need to have a vision of where we are going. That vision may change over time, but if you don’t make a decision and don’t set a vision going forward, people feel lost and lose motivation very quickly.
You need to have regular plans and say, “What do we want to accomplish over the next five years? What do we want to accomplish over the next year? What do we want to accomplish over the next month?” And how does that translate to, “What are you going to do this week or even this day?”
Having that vision and guidance moving forward really helps motivate people. When things need to pivot, they pivot, but everybody knows where they’re pivoting from. That gives a lot more psychological safety and potential for people to gather around a particular direction.
Something we’re doing in QTEM right now is working on our vision and strategy for the next five years. We are bringing in all the different stakeholders — students, academic partners and corporate partners — to build this vision.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Directly. Honestly. Don’t try to wrap it up; you show respect to your team by saying things honestly and directly. Keep it factual; it’s never about the person, it’s about the situation or the behavior or the facts behind the case. You lose all your authenticity, and people feel it, if you’re trying to couch it in fake softness.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Keep your stakeholders in mind constantly. And when you’re making a decision, ask yourself, “How am I going to view this decision in a month, a year, five years.” If you take that step back, that longer-term perspective, it will help to avoid knee-jerk decisions. Consider what is the right thing for stakeholders in that situation.
The challenge is of course that what’s right for some stakeholders, isn’t right for others. You have to make hard decisions and articulate them.
When you look at what’s happening on US and international campuses right now, we have very polarized stakeholders and university presidents are in an extremely difficult situation so they have to balance all of this together.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Listen — It’s about creating safe spaces where people can express how they are living their current experience and share their ideas and vision. During COVID, we created several different groups online; fireside chats with administrative teams, with faculty, amongst international students. Low stakes get togethers to hang out and talk about what’s going on, and it was a fantastic way to connect with people and to understand how our different stakeholders were living this experience and how might we help improve it.
- Communicate — We touched on this previously, but do so with clarity, authenticity, and empathy.
- Lean on your network and ask for help — Asking for help is important. During COVID, every number of the Master’s team I work with had difficult moments and we could say to each other, “I really need help.” Creating that trust is a real investment that pays off. We share this with our QTEM Academic Partners — be it COVID or AI, we have a strong network with whom to share challenges and advice.
- Step back and zoom out — In terms of stepping back, it’s that ‘zooming out.’ Look at the big picture, the long-term scheme and vision. Identify the key elements that we have to make sure that we get right or that we try to get right, and gain perspective. It’s very easy for stress to take over, but if you consciously zoom out, take in the larger picture, that really helps the leader and teams to recalibrate.
- Make time to celebrate the little successes and for fun — I would say, whether you’re in in a crisis mode or all’s going well, making specific time to celebrate success and have some fun is really important, and that’s where you keep people motivated and build relationships. Sometimes it seems incongruous with a certain situation, but you’ve got to just make it explicit and then create those moments of celebration and recognition.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Be a source of inspiration and provide a feeling of safety for people. People need to feel that there’s somebody leading the ship and that they are safe if they take a risk to try to solve this problem. Also, to keep people inspired through your behavior, through your actions, through your words. Mostly your behavior, because if your words don’t match your behavior, you’re not inspiring anyone.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
For years, I’ve had one in my office attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Supreme Court Justice from the early 1900s. But online there appears to be some discussion of whether it’s actually him or Ralph Waldo Emerson. So, I can’t be 100% sure from whom this originates, but the quote is:
A mind, once stretched, never regains its original dimensions
For me, that is a guiding principle of how I lead and how I live, which is constantly going out to learn new things, learning is an entirely expansive experience. The more you learn about yourself, about others, about how to lead, about a subject, the more you grow and the more the people that you’re leading grow.
In terms of leadership, I ask everybody on my team to set an aim for growth each year. It doesn’t even have to be professional and they don’t have to tell me what their aim is. At the end of the year, I ask them, “Did you grow this year?” and many share interesting stories of what they focused on and how it impacts them. In all cases, the sense of growth and personal advancement brings satisfaction and pride. Many team members have put that into practice in management of their own teams.
For me, it’s all about growth and as an educator that is a rather natural disposition to have.
How can our readers further follow your work?
This year, I have consciously tried to be quite quiet online, to focus on learning. When my sabbatical ends, my LinkedIn will be more active, talking about new things, heading up AI at our institution, and partnerships with some companies. Look forward to connecting with your readers on these topics.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellesisto/?originalSubdomain=fr
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
