Think ROI is all about data dashboards and quarterly metrics? Think again. In this episode, I sit down with Divya Agarwal, founder of Vivekam, to explore a radically different take on return on investment, one that doesn’t just center AI, but you.

Divya invites us into a world where advanced introspection, emotional discernment, and conscious leadership aren’t soft skills, they’re power skills. We dig into how naming discomfort, managing ourselves in high-stakes moments, and tapping into human potential are all part of her new ROI framework: Return on Intelligence.

This isn’t just another leadership model. It’s a blueprint for how AI can elevate us, not erase us. Divya’s vision? A future where inner work becomes measurable impact, and wisdom becomes your most scalable asset.

Tune in and learn how to stop managing the machine and start mastering yourself.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

The Return On AI – It’s Not What You Think With Vivekam Founder, Divya Agarwal

Our guest is Divya Agarwal and she’s the Founder of Vivekam. Vivekam translates into discernment, a key anchor to her practice of what she now refers to as ROI and the seven Is of the ROI. What are they? You’ll have to check it out. You’ll also enjoy her definition of AI.

 

 

We are so fortunate to get to be speaking with Divya Agarwal, who’s the Founder of Vivekam. Divya, we made this happen.

I have to say the good fortune is mine. This is my second conversation with you and I always enjoy our vibes. Thank you.

Finding Success Through Life’s Twists And Turns

Everyone is in for a real treat. I’m saying this, because Divya’s wisdom, experience, and also everything about her has a calming aspect to it but then there’s also so much energy. It’s a beautifully channeled flow. Enjoy and take lots of notes. Let’s start at the very beginning as the song says. We were talking a little bit about this when we were getting set up. Everybody seems to think that everyone’s path is a straight line. If it’s not a straight line, you are getting it wrong. You and I both know that is so rare. Share a little bit about your journey and how you found out came to where you are.

I’d be happy to. Can I be provocative and say, if it is a straight line, I don’t like to say that we are doing things wrong or right, but can I say you are doing it wrong If it is a straight line? If it’s linear, you are missing out on a lot. You are leaving a lot on the table. Maybe I will say it like that. Starting from the beginning, I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. I’m an immigrant kid, a first generation Indian-American. There’s probably a few things from my childhood. I want to say now looking back on these footsteps from behind that have shaped where I am now.

Being an immigrant kid, I feel like readers can assume that education and achievement are a big part of the ethos, the culture growing up. That was a big part of my mom. She is a physician at heart. She just retired. She’s a neonatologist, so she was a physician working with premature babies. My dad, academic and physics. There’s this theme of getting well educated and being on the path was pronounced for me growing up.

I would also say coupled with that was the spirit of provocation. Maybe that’s why I led with a bit of provocation. I give credit to my father for that. As an immigrant, you have to be able to challenge or have a voice well and stand your ground well in a country where you are trying to make it work for yourself and your family. The way provocation showed up in my life was, in school wondering if the teacher was teaching us something, I would ask a lot of questions.

I would wonder why we are learning things in a certain way. I always felt that students should have a little bit more agency over their learning, meaning there should be more of a culture of bilateral communication versus a unilateral teacher to student. That showed up. I did speech and debate in high school, which as any good immigrant kid would do. I had themes. Some of the titles of my speeches were things like Hegemony Cricket, which was exploring how I thought Disney was a bit biased in its manifestation across racism, sexism, and other isms within their films.

One of my speeches was called Poison Ivy League, which was my dissection and maybe experience of being in a school system that seemed very geared towards getting us to prestigious schools, which is a value. I get that. It just felt like we were learning specifically for that versus learning for the sake of learning and exploring ideas that are our birthright in a way of being a kid. I will leave that as one element that was very prevalent in my childhood.

A second was, and I can say this now looking back, it’s this idea of movement and finding play through movement. I had the good fortune of playing outside a lot as a kid. I didn’t have my tech tools with me when I was a kid. I was a competitive gymnast, which had its own dark sides to it, but I found a lot of play, space, and comfort in movement and dancing and just being in movement. I can’t say it better than that.

My grandfather is Indian, so I would spend mornings with him doing yoga. That was my first taste at the age of like 6 or 7 years old. It came more from a place of like, “I’m a gymnast. I can do all these fun things.” Now I come to appreciate not just that bonding that he and I had, but even some of the spirit and the things I got to touch into at that point. I have been a yogi for many years in my adulthood. Being in the body is a big part of who I am.

Finally, I will say the cliché being in the shoes of a variety of experiences is important. It was important for me growing up in a household that focused on education so much in interacting with a world that was very different from mine. I would say I grew up relatively upper middle class and very privileged. Not just economically, but for the fact that you had parents that were very invested in my development. I had a father that was checking in with my teachers every other week and making sure I had extra homework and doing math games at my birthday party.

That’s a little crazy you might say, and yet it signifies a parent. That is like all in on their kid being successful in a very unfair and potentially harsh world. In that vein, my parents never pressured me or encouraged me to find work outside of the house growing up. I had a calling and yearning to be involved in the outside world I would say. I took on a variety of jobs like high school or junior high jobs. I was a paper girl for a while for the Fargo Forum. I was a sandwich artist at Subway.

I worked in a call center doing debt collections and a hostess in a truck diner. I can’t conceptually understand things. I have to be in an experience even for a little bit of time to have a taste for it. That’s also part of being embodied or being in the body. It helps me move and understand the world more than simply through my mind. I know that we are similar in that.

Very much so, and I think you are right because it’s almost as, though, I have decided that when I’m kinesthetically engaged in experiencing something, it is imprinting. It’s like a tattoo inside.

In the world of energetics, there’s a world called Templating. Those of us who are more kinesthetic, we template well by observation, but it’s not that we are templating through here. Our bodies are mirroring and absorbing the experience that’s in front of us. It’s a helpful word, templating. I find it to be a helpful word.

It helps me right there. That explains a lot of things for me. I also have to ask your dad. It was fantastic that he took such an interest also as his daughter involved in these things and your grandfather, too.

My grandfather on my maternal side, my mom was first in her family. She was the oldest of five. She was born in the ‘50s in India, where women had a very prescribed path and even in some ways still do, but it’s changing in India. The fact that her father was highly endorsed and recommended that she go into medicine. She followed what her father encouraged and there was a lot of support for that.

It was huge what she did in her time and when she came to the states in her time. It was incredible. My family has started a foundation focused in rural India, specifically on educating an opportunity for young women, so childhood girls in rural India because of the cultural wiring around educating girls. I want to make a reference to a Sex in the City.

There’s an episode where one of the characters is dealing with a prenup and like any good investment decision, one should have a prenup but she’s looking at the terms. It’s a pretty low amount. One of the characters says, “You only get money if you have sons and not daughters.” She’s like, “That’s bad business.”

When I think about our family’s intention towards investing in young girls in India, and it’s not our foundation. There are many organizations doing incredible work in this vein. It’s a recognition. Not a moral and fairness argument. It’s a recognition that for countries to do well economically. Girls and women are one of the best investments, highest return stocks, if you want to say it like that you could make.

The portfolios are always outperforming and there are so many. I have done so much research on all of this. I talked about it until it was blue in the face and it just is.

You can’t deny it. We had a lot of sociological conversations around it, but the facts are what they are.

Exactly. We just had the Olympics and the gymnastics. What was your favorite? Were you a bar girl or uneven bar girl? Were you beam? Were you at the dance?

I could tell you that I wasn’t. I was not a bar girl. Floor and beam were my events.

That makes sense. The beam, you have to be so incredibly focused.

It’s a scary event but it’s a very enriching event.

I would think gratifying, too. Talk about going back to your provocation at the beginning, talking about the reasons why when one is linear. The reason why you lose out on so much is that it’s when you are going outside those lines, that edge. That’s where the growth and the strength comes from.

The bardot. The liminal space. I want to say maybe for many of us who are type A in our way or there’s a part of us that’s type A. We are multiple infinite parts. It is nice to have things that feed your linearity. You need to be able to nourish that part of yourself and not deny it. I would say the beam works for us who like clean lines and precision. The floor is where you get to have your play space.

How Early Experiences Shape Current Strengths

You get to color outside the lines. With all that in mind, what skills did you rely on in the early days? You did McKinsey and so many different things.

At the risk of these sounding cliché, I will go for it because they are skills that matter. One is being proactive. What did that look like? I will say being okay with it, if you want to use the word rejection or not hearing back. A big skill was if you find something that you want five people associated with that, reach out and try to have conversations.

You may not hear back from them or may hear back from them that they can’t make time for you or you may hear back from them that they can make time for you. That looked like going to events where companies were having presentations that I wanted to be a part of like going to office hours a lot with my professors. My friends would make fun of me that I go to office hours a lot. I was like, “I want to learn more, so why wouldn’t I just go?” That’s a big part of it. Productivity.

It’s embedded within that. I don’t know if it’s taking risks, but it’s this general theme probably shows up in being an entrepreneur, too. Once you are okay with whatever failure is for you or for me. For a lot of us, it might feel like not being seen or rejected, or not hearing back from someone. Once you are okay with that, I feel like the space for play opens up completely like it’s boundless.

Once you accept your definition of failure, the space for play opens up completely. Share on X

To me, it’s also a time saver because it means that person wasn’t like an energetic fit or it didn’t get you where you wanted to go. It leaves you more space for someone who you never would have thought of.

In a spiritual way, I will call it an energetically aligned or not aligned. In a more material frame, it’s energetically efficient. Why wouldn’t I just reach out? If it’s not going to go that way, it’s not going to go that way. I do think that it is like being initiative taking was a skill that still has a different quality to it now. When I was a kid, that helped.

Honestly, it’s like throwing hats in the ring. I remember at MIT, there was some research I wanted to do in the South Pacific. I saw different venues through which I could maybe apply for funding and I was like, “What’s the worst that happens?” They told me no. As long as you are not afraid of being told no or not hearing back or being rejected, anything is possible.

You said not to take it personally because it’s not. Which ones do you rely on now? Have they changed at all?

I’d say the initiative or being okay with risk is still there. I will say there’s more texture around it or maybe more maturity. One is reaching out to ask for help. Not reaching out to show your enthusiasm or to position yourself well, which was what I was doing when I was younger. Now it is being discerning of, what I am struggling with that I could share with someone else and get their help?

An example of this came up probably a few months ago when I’m in my early stages of being an entrepreneur. I’m coming up to my anniversary. I’d never felt this thing called burnout before even when I was an AP at McKinsey. I never felt my soul was tired, and I felt that. I was like, “This is probably what I heard.” It likely is what happens when you are leading your own thing and you are pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into it.

I reached out to a few friends who had been on this journey for a while and I named it. I was like, “I’m feeling this. Is this a natural part of the process? Help me process this.” It was very affirming simply to know they had experienced something similar. That gave me the energy to say, “Be there. Don’t stay there. Let me be with this. I know that it’s natural and trust that I will move on from this.” I also learned some things I need to manage now to be more mindful of the fact that burnout can creep in.

I’d say that’s one. I’m trying to do it more. It doesn’t come easy, but the fact that I’m aware of it and I encourage my younger clients to take advantage of it. Taken advantage. Not in a transactional way, but lean into this ability to ask for help because it is a true skill of professional maturity and overall maturity. The second is around my initiative taking, like having more space around that. An example might be if I get a question or I get a request in the interpersonal realm or in the professional realm. I’m okay saying, “Confirming receipt of your request. I’m going to take a moment and get back to you or let me come back to you on that.”

The ability to ask for help is a true skill of professional maturity. Share on X

Coming from a professional world, at least at the time, I know it’s changing but the pace or rhythm of big institutions, like private institutions, corporates in the 2000s and 2010s. Maybe it still exists. I’m not in that world, but there’s an immediate need for response and assuming that you are always supposed to respond right away. The rhythm is very reactive. It’s very fast and I can thrive in a fast environment and I find myself more effective when there is space within the pace. I can say it like that.

The other thing too, is when you do respond, either you can give an answer or it can be a thoughtful response, so it can be formed. That beauty of that pause.

It can be both. It can be like, “Here’s my initial. Here’s instinctually what comes up, but I want to give it some more thought.” I remember, I give my father credit for this again. He would coach me but not really coaching me. Any father or maybe Indian father more so, they like to give you advice. In my interviews in undergrad, he would say, “Remember, Divya, if you get a question that you don’t know the answer to, it’s okay to say, ‘I don’t know, but I will come back to you on that.’”

Which is great and it’s true.

That’s huge to hear that at a young age.

Also, frankly, to have the confidence to even state that, and then it shows follow up when you do it. You set yourself up.

You are doing all the things well.

Building Trust In A Multi-Generational And Culturally Diverse Workforce

It’s very adult. We are now starting to shift a little bit into all the many different generations in the land and everyone is under one roof. You and I have had some good conversations about building trust. How do we do that in this environment, both when there are multiple different types of generations? You’ve got now also multiple cultures and distributed workforce. We are not going to get political, but crazy politics, which impacts everything.

Can I answer a question with a question? What are you seeing that might indicate there’s less trust? There used to be just that trust isn’t as much as we want it to be.

I think what I’m seeing or what I have experienced, or even when I’m listening to my daughters sometimes, situations. The fact that people do not want to necessarily even go into the workplace because I feel like it’s because they are being monitored as opposed to the potential positive of it, where you’ll get interaction and interactivity. I also understand there are certain definite and organizations that do that. I’m not saying that’s true for everybody.

I also think from the older generation looking, if someone is getting the job done and are doing what they are doing, they are healthier, meaning not everybody is taking sick days. Not that it’s bad. There’s better mental wellbeing in your culture. That comes from people not being there all the time. What’s the problem? Why are you saying, “You have to be here. If you are not, we are going to fire you?” That’s odd. Don’t shoot your foot off, it seems to me.

What I know of experienced and then maybe have heard anecdotally, let me begin with an assumption to start. Let me assert a hypothesis. This isn’t even a hypothesis. All these generations. Factually, we have grown up in different eras. The way we think about the world and then maybe what we expect from work, ourselves, or others looks different. If that’s true, then maybe in the workplace, we are walking in with certain assumptions around what motivates this eighteen-year-old versus what motivates this 28-year-old, or 38-year-old, or 48-year-old. We are making assumptions.

At least I notice myself making assumptions for sure about what one’s motivations are. Maybe even what one’s intentions are in asking for things or requesting things or not doing certain things. At least I can speak from my experience. If that’s true, I will say what I have noticed can be an antidote to that. When you make assumptions and they will start getting layered on each other, you start making assumptions. Therefore, trust breaks down because maybe you assume someone’s intention is mal-intent and they weren’t thinking that at all.

There are layers to this, but the antidote at the above the waterline, if we are talking about the iceberg. The antidote above the behavior that I would say is an antidote is name what’s going on for you. Name the motivation. I’m not comfortable coming into the workplace two days a week. I don’t want to because frankly, it’s not a familiar experience for me.

I entered the workforce where we were hybrid and so I’m more used to practices of hybrid. I don’t quite know what to expect when I go in. People use the word vulnerability, authenticity, and these 10,000-foot words are thrown around. I feel like that’s one clear way of being authentic. It’s to name what’s going on for you. Be honest about it and be straightforward. That requires you knowing what’s going on for you.

It came to me when I was listening to you with that, too. There is so much more anxiety in the world. Sometimes what we are feeling isn’t even ours. It’s other people’s.

 

 

It’s the collective consciousness because we are all running under the global nervous system.

Part of me is also recognizing that for some, especially younger, it is too intense. Talk about burnout. You are on high wire and it’s like, “Perform and perform,” and then go home and you are wiped out.

Without making a generalization, they are used to interacting more digitally with the masses. Whereas, for people of my generation, I get burnt out with my phone. I’m more used to interacting with people energetically in person. We have developed a different skillset almost to our way of being by our circumstances. I’d love all generations to, instead of making assumptions, be so aware that we are all operating under different wiring. Name what’s going on for you or what your motivation is.

This is one of the things that I have talked about. There are two things. I have a whole workshop that’s based on power and communication of the different generations and what does what and how to get that done. The other thing too is, and this ties in with your education, learning, and your asking questions. Being curious for learning’s sake. Some generations who are older take offense when asked certain questions because they feel that, either their knowledge or their undermines because we do take things in. We do learn differently and we see things differently. They are simply trying to get a handle on, “How did you come up with that?”

This is something I work with clients a lot, the open-ended question. There are ways to ask questions that will put someone on the defensive versus inviting conversation. I’m not saying that people are asking direct closed-ended questions. I do think it’s all of our responsibility to also ask things in a way without being overly sensitive to the other person. That’s a whole other art here, but a way to ask questions in inviting and curious based topics.

Inspiration Behind Starting Vivekam

What was your inspiration for starting Vivekam?

When I was talking about this naming piece, I realized that’s a big part of it. I imagining any entrepreneur starts out with an idea, and as they are more in the market and working with clients, that idea gets refined and, hopefully, sharpened and more focused. I realize an inspiration not of the moment, but a deep inspiration for me has been how do we help humans express themselves in times of duress?

This is not Earth shattering. That’s when human expression gets compromised and can lead to a lot of conflict. In working with clients, this 10,000-foot word of discernment, which essentially means like knowing thyself better and then being able to express oneself from a place of greater knowing. My hypothesis is that you have greater discernment. You will be more effective in your work because you’ll know where you are going.

The greater your discernment, the more effective you will be in your work because you'll know where you are going. Share on X

When you encounter challenges along the way, you’ll be able to name those challenges and maybe find solutions within yourself or with others. That’s Vivekam. It means discernment. It’s a Sanskrit word for discernment. What I’m noticing is naming as a strategy. I do a lot of work in high stakes situations. One of the situations is interviews when people are trying to get the dream job they want. The interview process can be a bit tough or when they are having feedback conversations and they are very afraid of both giving feedback and receiving feedback.

I work with clients on naming the discomfort. I don’t want to say it needs to take a lot of courage, but I’m noticing it does take courage. It takes courage first to admit or accept or be with. “I feel uncomfortable. My heart is racing. I’m sweating. I notice that I don’t want to be having this conversation.” Allow for that. Name that at least to yourself if not to your counterpart. What it does is it reminds us all. It brings back the humanity in the conversation.

Not that humanity needed to have left, but I do find that we forget that we are all human reckoning with the same fears or discomforts. I can imagine if I’m giving you feedback, I’m not comfortable giving you feedback either. Let’s name the fact that this is not an ideal or uncomfortable situation. Now that we have acknowledged that, there’s space for us to be beyond that discomfort and be in a place of connection. The reason discernment is important, you have to be able to discern the place where you are. You have to be able to feel and then practice naming that feeling.

It also goes back to what we were talking about where when you are in that place. It takes courage, but then there’s a calm place.

You are in a place of space and you can speak more freely once you’ve almost removed that knot that was there. I realized Vivekam hasn’t evolved per se, but it’s gotten sharper to realize. Vivekam’s calling now. It’s to support humans in expressing themselves effectively in times of duress. Duress has a lot of different components to it, but typically, in high stakes situations. We have a big meeting coming up. I got a feedback conversation. I’m up for promotion and I have to sell my story. There’s a lot of anxiety or energy around these types of events. Vivekam’s mission is to support people and teams through that.

Understanding The New ROI And the Seven I’s

We couldn’t use you more than now. There are so many different levels. One of the things that is interesting about Vivekam is this notion of the new ROI and the seven Is. I think they are clever, smart, and are very helpful for everybody to sit with, listen, and anchor.

Thank you for giving me a bit of a platform here to talk about it. When you hear ROI, my hope is that most of you think of the phrase Return On Investment, which tends to be the golden metric by which we think about economic decisions. It’s a very efficient and productive one. I’m investing in something. Is there a return on the other side?

I’d like to suggest that beyond capital or money investment, there are skills we can invest in that will return greater effectiveness. In my world, I will use the word greater discernment. The seven skills, no surprise, all starting with the letter I are the following, and while there’s an order to them in the linear world, the order is not prescribed. There is an intentionality with why I would start with the word intention. That is the first skill.

Return on investment is not just about capital. It is also about investing in skills that will return greater effectiveness. Share on X

The second is introspection. The ability not to ruminate by looking from within, but the ability to look within. Third is a skill of Imagination. The skill of visualizing possibility and painting a picture, not only for yourself but to rally others around something that doesn’t yet exist like possibility. Fourth is the skill of interdependence. I will say this is a fancy way of saying the word teamwork, but it’s a bit deeper than that. It’s the deep recognition that I am only more successful in the interdependent play with others.

This is the idea that you can’t go alone. You are always interdependently connected. The more that you see that, can be with that, and leverage it for everyone’s success, the better. That’s interdependence. The fifth is implementation. This is another word for the ability to experiment. The ability to have weekly experiments, which is a big thing I do with my clients. “Let’s play with a skill this week and then notice what it does or doesn’t do for you.” That leads to the sixth skill of inquiry.

The ability to be doing stuff, but then always noticing and being curious about what its impact was. Even in a conversation with someone, the ability to be inquiring. “I wonder if I showed up like this when she said this. I wonder why that happened or what’s going on for me?” The 7th and 8th skills are the two that maybe I’m not most excited about, but feel so deeply and dearly about. The seventh skill is the inhale and the eighth skill is the interlude and they go together quite well.

The return on the inhale in its most obvious explicit form is the exhale. The deeper meaning of the skill of inhale is the skill of knowing how to bring your nervous system to a state of calm. Our hypothesis being, and this isn’t Vivekam’s hypothesis, this is now in the literature. The nervous system needs to be in a balance of what we’ll call parasympathetic or rest state and the sympathetic or active state. It needs to be in a balance for optimal, biological, or psychological performance.

Those who have the skill of nervous system regulation, which is an easy way to start is through breath. I do a bit of breathwork with my clients. That is that skill of the inhale, which is essentially the skill of bringing your nervous system to calm. The eighth, which supports that is interlude, rest, pause, space, and what I was mentioning earlier. Those who can recognize when space is required, whether it’s in micro moments as, “I have back-to-back meetings. I need a ten-minute break before I enter my next call.”

All the way to, it’s not about getting eight hours of sleep. It’s like looking at my sleep as a rest period for all the faculties I have to recharge and restore until the next day to naming on a phone call. “I notice I’m feeling a bit tired. If it’s okay, I’m going to take five minutes and I’m going to give you a call back.” Creating space. Being able to create space in your life is a skill. It’s a skill of those who are higher performing. Think about athletes. There’s a reason that recovery and rest are scheduled into their training program because they know what makes them better performers. That is for all of us. Not just for athletes.

Especially now with us being either online, there’s so much coming at us all the time that is so important to have.

Pause. You can make sense of the noise from a place of calm.

It’s so true. It’s also amazing what you can get done. Many people think, “It’s going to slow me down. I’m going to miss out.” Not at all. I just had this happened. I find that I was able to write so much better, more clearly, and concisely, and also get things done but very well. Not crossed off the little list, “Thank God I got that done.”

It’s not about being reactive and doing your life. It’s about getting to be intentional in each part of your life. That’s why it’s important to me that it’s called ROI because I want to suggest to and ideally, I’ll have a real quantitative proof points for this. I want to suggest the ROI is greater effectiveness. You will be more effective by doing less by being more.

It is not about being reactive and doing your life. It is about getting to be intentional in each part of your life. Share on X

Reframing Of AI As Advanced Introspection

With all the fear that’s going wrong by AI, can you unpack a little bit about your interpretation of AI? I love and I encourage everyone to embrace this.

My little kitschy reframe of AI, Advanced Introspection. Introspection is simply the ability to look in and know what’s going on for me. “My heart is racing. I don’t know why, but great. I am feeling hungry.” Even that’s a form of introspection like being able to check in. The advanced version of that is not necessarily making meaning of it. “My heart is racing. My hands are sweaty. I wonder what that means or why.” That can be a part of advanced introspection.

I would say the advanced version is knowing how to self-manage so that you get to a place of being from the center. If you can tell that, “My heart is racing. My palms are sweating. I’m feeling agitated,” I don’t need to dissect why I’m feeling agitated. Before I go into this meeting, I know I’m going to do some breathwork or find my feet on the ground, or take a walk around the block to self-manage before I go into the meeting. That, for me, is a version of advanced introspection. Knowing how to bring yourself back to center. When you are noticing that you are off center, that’s introspection. The advanced version is knowing how to bring yourself back.

 

 

It’s self-advocacy, honestly.

In a way, that’s practical and embodied. I use ChatGPT. In some ways, it’s an incredible conversation partner. I have learned a lot about framing a language with ChatGPT about some of my own inner neuroses. It has its own wisdom.

That’s why I turned to it more, as you said, a thought partner. It’s like, what do you think? I can either take it or not and go, “Okay.”

You can trust, for the most part. I call her Magnolia. She is quite the subjective because that’s what she’s been trained. That’s all it knows is what to do, being balanced and stoic in its way.

Advice To Younger Self: Lessons Learned And Wisdom Gained

A good opportunity to also not take it personally if she, Magnolia, says to you, “I think you might want to.” Another way of doing that. As we get ready to pause a little bit and wind down, what advice would you give your younger self knowing what you know now?

I wish I knew where I would ask for more help, but it would be comfortable. Be comfortable saying that you need help. It still is hard or you are scared of being comfortable saying like, “I’m nervous. I’m scared this won’t work out. I’m terrified.” I wish I’m able to do that now, and I own that. I wish I could have done that earlier. It’s like around big decisions professionally and personally and knowing that it’s okay not to have an answer now and taking space. Slowing it down has been the biggest shift I had experienced. I’d say people have experienced more about me since leaving more of the corporate.

The truth is not having an answer now is in itself an answer. It means not yet maybe.

It’s okay not to know.

Opportunities And Growth For Women In The Future

Especially when one is as in tuned, aligned, and anchored. My own experience of that is I will know. I will get that feeling. I will know like I know. There will be sometimes. There are times when I have a little hint of it, but it’s not completely there. I’m going, “Come on. We can make it work.” I have done that. It’s like, “I wasn’t there yet for a reason.” To take a step back. In closing, where do you see the greatest opportunity for women moving forward?

I noticed what I want to share, I don’t know if it’s going to be provocative or whatever. I’m going to make a couple of what you’d have to believe are just assertions. Assertion one is, in the realm of energy, there is something called the more masculine energy and a feminine energy. The assertion is we all have that mix within us. It’s not that women are more feminine and men are more masculine. We should have an imbalance within us.

If we believe that there are qualities associated with something called masculine energy and qualities such as assertiveness, initiative taking, competence, and communication, and this ability to lean in. If those are traits that tend to be affiliated with masculine energy, there’s a set of traits affiliated with something called feminine energy. Those traits are things like being more receptive, so receiving versus leaning in.

The ability to be okay with space because to receive, you have to let things settle and receive what’s coming versus being more leaning in and taking action. Gifts of feminine energy are more restful like they are restful. The ability to lean into not necessarily only rely on intuition, but trust those knots in the stomach or knots in the heart that you feel early on. When you ask the question about the greatest opportunity for women, I might reframe the statement to say, “I see a great opportunity for the gifts of feminine energy to come into the natural rhythm.”

It’s already present in actual nature in the rhythm of how organizations run themselves. That’s what I want to say. There is a massive opportunity for the gifts of feminine energy to come into organizations. This would, what it might manifest as in explicit ways are things like people being comfortable pausing and saying, “Let me come back to you. I don’t have an answer yet.” Slowing down the business for them, which at some point also might make companies more long-term oriented, given our extremely short-term oriented mindset around performance or anything regarding change.

Maybe I will say it will bring a greater reverence not for working out for the sake of looking good and staying thin. It might bring a greater reverence for movement, which is more affiliated with feminine energy. The fact that humans need to move to be well. It’s fully re-imagining the way that we even do our desk work. Standing desks are one evolution in that, but even more re-imagining what our workspaces look like. In gender movement, to implement or integrate nature more explicitly. All of that. There are already movements happening in this direction. I see that there’s a great opportunity for that.

One of the best things I ever discovered, and this is when I worked at the Tides Foundation and also George Lucas Education Foundation, which had these beautiful lands. It was walks, talks, bonded, and communicated. Everything was such a pleasant experience and got nourished from spending time outside.

Even starting meetings with a three-minute silence. Checking with yourself. I have clients that play with that. It’s non-negotiable to have an agenda and non-negotiable to start a meeting with three-minutes of silence or a moment of silence. Those are energetic feminine attributes.

I’m grouping and circling everyone.

Thank you for letting me share that.

The Future Of Vivekam: A Vision For The Next Year

Divya, I love that. One of the purposes of this show, honestly, is to put forth that thinking. It’s not even thinking. It’s practice and reality. It’s uncovering these hidden gems that are all available to so many of us. It’s exciting to see different people from different walks beginning to tap into it. The more that we talk about it, the more familiar it gets. Before you know it, we are doing it. We don’t even care why or how it came about, but we are. It’s important. Thank you for sharing it. The very last question. A year from now, Vivekam.

What do I want it to look like? Knowing that, I have no idea what tomorrow is going to look like for Vivekam, so I have no idea what a year is going to look like. The aspiration I would have at a very practical and tactical level. I’d like the new ROI to be embedded as a leadership development journey within the company or two, to have a real proof of concept, a real pilot here to speak about the outcomes that the new ROI is able to deliver in terms of effectiveness and performance.

I’d like to have real measurable data, both self-reported and maybe more rigorous. I’m still keeping that to be declared what those metrics might look like. Those are the two pieces I’d love to have for Vivekam. Pilot, proof of concept in one or two organizations, and quantitative measures for skills like the inhale, interlude, implementation, experimentation, or moving people in their performance. I appreciate this space and time to be able to have this conversation and to exchange these sorts of ideas.

I know you’ll be coming back.

I can’t wait.

Thank you.

Be well. We’ll speak soon.

 

Important Links

• Vivekam
• Divya Agarwal on LinkedIn
• Tides Foundation
• George Lucas Education Foundation

 

About Divya Agarwal

Founder & CEO

Movement artist | cultivating understanding within individuals, teams, and communities

Divya founded Vivekam out of a desire to activate the discerning, “knowing” self within us all and to support individuals and teams in skillful self-expression during high-stakes situations.

Vivekam is grounded on the principle that discernment, combined with curiosity, humility, and a little humor, is the differentiating edge to develop skills and to be effective. She is the architect of The New ROI.™️, Vivekam’s framework for individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.

Prior to Vivekam, Divya spent 15 years counseling Fortune 500 companies and executives, focusing on business transformation, organizational design and culture, and developing leaders and effective teams. She spent eight years with McKinsey & Company, most recently as an Associate Partner, and two years at Mobius Executive Leadership as a Strategist to the CEO and organizational consultant and coach for clients.

Beyond supporting her clients, she revels most in building and leading more conscious teams. Her early training as a gymnast and dancer, coupled with the last 20 years of yoga (RYT200 certified) and athletic development, has led her to use movement and embodiment practices to support individuals in accessing and processing thoughts, emotions, and energy.

She is an alum of Wharton, MIT, and Harvard’s Kennedy School, and she lives in NYC.