Journeying through work identity transitions with Karen Loon | S2 Ep6

In our sixth episode of season 2, we speak with Karen Loon, Non-Executive Director and Author.

Karen is a thought leader and speaker on workplace diversity and inclusion. She had a successful corporate career for 29 years, and then transitioned into board roles. She was formerly PwC’s Singapore and Asia Pacific Diversity Leader and a member of its Global Diversity Leadership Team and Global Financial Services Diversity Steering Committee. 

She recently wrote a book called Fostering Culturally Diverse Leadership in Organizations: Lessons from Those Who Smashed the Bamboo Ceiling. The book was a finalist in the 2023 Business Book Awards, International Book section.

Karen shares her views about what it takes to transition through different career identities. She also speaks of her research on the need for organisations to foster greater cultural diversity to enable greater representation at the top.

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

· Vanessa Iloste (Host)

· Vanessa Teo (Host)

· Aaron Wu (Producer)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Vanessa T: Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of Career Transitions. This week, we speak with Karen Loon. Karen is a non executive director and former Big Four partner. She has worked with the world's leading banks and championed diversity initiatives over the years. 

[00:00:22] Vanessa I: Karen has an inspiring journey of career transition, moving from a partner to being an author and now a PhD candidate.

[00:00:29] We will continue to explore the concept of changing identity through transition, as well as the impact of family dynamics on your perspective and behavior at work. Karen will also share the role of organization in fostering greater cultural diversity in leadership and teams. 

[00:00:47] Vanessa T: That's right, Vanessa. It was a fascinating conversation with Karen, and we hope you will enjoy listening to this episode.

[00:01:04] Vanessa I: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our new episode of Career Transition. We are your hosts, Vanessa Iloste and Vanessa Teo. 

[00:01:12] Vanessa T: And today we are excited and privileged to introduce our guest for today, Karen Loon. 

[00:01:17] Vanessa I: Welcome, Karen. It's great to have you here with us today. Let me introduce you to our audience. Karen is passionate about ensuring that both women and those from culturally diverse backgrounds are given the right opportunities to thrive within their organization.

[00:01:33] Vanessa T: Combining her business and governance experience as non executive director, her 29 years of working with the world's leading financial institutions as a senior relationship and assurance partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers, her knowledge gained from leading change initiatives in diversity, her academic research in system psychodynamic, Karen really delivers research based and yet practical advice to the organizations she works with.

[00:02:00] Vanessa I: Karen is a recognized thought leader and speaker on workplace diversity and inclusion. She was formerly Price Waterhouse Singapore and Asia Pacific diversity leader and a member of its global diversity leadership team and global financial services diversity steering committee. 

[00:02:17] Vanessa T: Welcome to our show, Karen.

[00:02:19] Karen L: Thank you very much for having me. 

[00:02:21] Vanessa T: Well, Karen, you've had a very successful corporate career for over 29 years and transitioned into board roles. You've also now become the author of a book, which we will touch on in a little bit, and you're also now a PhD candidate. These have all been really significant career transitions.

[00:02:39] Can you share more with us some key insights and highlights into this journey and how you went about pivoting in each one of these transitions? 

[00:02:47] Karen L: Yeah, so thanks very much, Vanessas, for speaking to me today and inviting me to share a bit about my own story. And so it's very fascinating to think back at all the things that I've done and some of the changes.

[00:03:01] Maybe I'll touch a little bit about my initial career. It's a pretty conventional career for a chartered accountant. I started my career in Sydney. I actually joined my firm at the age of 20, so it was pretty young. But actually, one of the things, even though I was with my firm for nearly 30 years was, I had a lot of opportunities to try new things out and that's really because of the promotion system in the firm.

[00:03:24] Every audit assignment because I was an auditor involved often a different group of people, different clients and new work. And so even though I was with the same organization for many years, there were always all these opportunities to learn and try new things out. And so that was a really fascinating part of my career.

[00:03:42] I was allowed to come to Singapore for a secondment. I got a great opportunity to work on different assignments, whether it was deals or audit. But I guess, uh, I got to a stage as well where I wanted to try some different things. I did a big client role, so I actually left PwC in 2018, probably a little bit of a brave role because I think when you've been with an organization for so long, you actually realize that your identity is so linked with that organization.

[00:04:11] And so I found it quite challenging actually, because I'd always been known as someone from my organization. And when you're a partner, it's quite nice, you just say I'm from PwC and I'm a partner and people know who you are. After that, I couldn't call myself a partner and I wasn't with PwC, so I actually found it quite challenging, but I did go back to school.

[00:04:31] That was one of the things I wanted to do. I went back to INSEAD. I did a director's program. I did another program, uh, the EMC program, the executive master in change, and I tried to pivot my career into becoming a director and doing other things. So it's just a little bit about me and I'm happy to chat a bit further as we continue along.

[00:04:53] Vanessa I: Karen, when you were talking about the change of identity, uh, it resonates a lot with me. I've been working and I'm still with the same company for 23 years. I was just wondering if you could share with us from a personal experience, you know, when you're saying it's not easy for you to introduce yourself as Karen, actually, what exactly it meant from a personal feelings perspective, and what are the strategies maybe you created in order for you to overcome these feelings and to find your identity?

[00:05:23] Karen L: Actually, I think one of the things that I've realized is that whenever you change your role, there's always this like period of loss and mourning. You feel like you've lost something. And so in my case, this whole idea that I didn't really have to introduce myself when I met new people was something that was quite challenging.

[00:05:41] So I've written about this in a blog. I started because I was looking for board roles to go to the various networking events and I decided I better need a business card because in Singapore you do need business cards. I couldn't put a title because I hadn't actually got a director's role. I just had my name and I had my professional qualification.

[00:06:01] And it was a very weird experience because when you try and give your business card out to someone, they would look at it and they would turn it over and then they didn't know what to do. And it was quite challenging. You can just say, well. How do I introduce myself? And then I say, I was at PwC and then they say, no, you're retired, aren't you?

[00:06:16] And you go, no, I'm not retired. And so that takes a while until you've actually found your rhythm of what to say, or you've got a role, and I think I've realized that identity and learning how to act in a different way, learning to try new things is just really part of that process of trying out new identities.

[00:06:36] Vanessa I: And would you say today it's easier because now you have successfully transitioned so you have, uh, you know, all these, uh, board of directors, a role that you're playing, and you have a book that you have written. So would you say now, five or six years down the road, do you feel easier with the change and you have more comfort around, you know, introducing yourself, for instance?

[00:06:54] Karen L: Definitely. And I think, uh, even moving on to becoming a director, which I got forewarned would take at least a year and it probably did. Even though people said to me, Oh, look, you've been a partner with PwC, you know, you're technically qualified. We need women directors. It is uncomfortable until you actually find something you can call yourself or different things you can call yourself because people feel comfortable putting a label against you.

[00:07:20] They feel very uncomfortable when they don't know how to label you. And that then therefore makes you uncomfortable. And so I've learned I need to try different things out and see if it works, whether I like it or not. This whole cycle of trying different things out and being open to learn, I think is really important for everyone, no matter what you're doing and particularly if you're trying to transition your career.

[00:07:42] Vanessa I: Thank you so much for sharing. So one of the things that we have been very impressed with is the article you wrote in 2021 called the lessons I've learned from my work identity transition. And we will post this article on the notes of the podcast. I think we have covered some of the examples you give in this article, but is there anything else?

[00:08:03] That is very important in this article that you want to share with the audience, Karen. 

[00:08:08] Karen L: One of the things that I've realized is you need time. Transition takes time and you need time also to think for most of us, particularly, uh, if you're based in Singapore or Asia, we have so much work on, you don't have time to think about different things.

[00:08:24] You don't have time to sense make of whether you like things or not. I've actually found that in my case, I need to find time to think and reflect and try things out. Because my natural tendency often is that when I become very task oriented, I become quite anxious. That's one of the things I try to do these days is not to actually fill my schedule up too much, because if you need to try things out, you have to recognize that you need the space to try and think through it and do these things.

[00:08:53] So that's probably the one piece. The other one, of course, is to find people who can help you out or I guess I call them secure bases sometimes. You know, friends, family, others who can actually be there and provide that support to you as you transition. 

[00:09:08] Vanessa T: I think it's such an important point about taking time, Karen, and so oftentimes we don't always make space and time to reflect.

[00:09:18] So if you had one advice for people, like how do you make sure that you consciously make time to think, to reflect, what would you say to our listeners about that part about making sense? 

[00:09:32] Karen L: The pieces of advice that someone gave me when I left PwC was really, really useful to me. He actually is someone who called himself a portfolio careerist.

[00:09:43] And so I was very intrigued. I went, had coffee with him and said, what is a portfolio careerist and what do you do? Unfortunately, most people don't know what it is. It can be confusing because they go back to labels. They like labels. But he said, look, one of the things he's done very deliberately as he has this opportunity to now craft out what he does.

[00:10:04] Is to think about how much time he wants to spend on different things and what's important to him. And so in this particular person's case, it was one third of his time was on board roles. One third of his time was giving back and one third of his time was family. We all are used to juggling time and that was a very sensible way to start thinking about in his case, how he wanted to divide his life up and focus on different things.

[00:10:29] And so he had the time to do the things that were important. And I thought that was very useful advice for me because I do want to spend time with family. I also want to spend time with work things and I also want to be able to give back. And so I try as far as I can to think through these things to hopefully do all of the things better.

[00:10:47] Vanessa T: It does take a lot of intentional thinking and planning and I, I've noticed and we've noticed that one of the very intentional things that you've done with your time and with your expertise is to put that into writing a book. And one of your identities, therefore, is one of an author. You are author of the book, Fostering Culturally Diverse Leadership in Organizations, Lessons from Those Who Smash the Bamboo Ceiling.

[00:11:12] We thought that was such a fascinating read. This book was also a finalist in the 2023 Business Book Awards International Book Section. So congratulations to you. We were wondering if you could just share with our listeners some of the top insights from this book. 

[00:11:28] Karen L: It's funny that I guess it wasn't intentional I would become an author, but I gave it a go and I guess maybe it's an example of give it a go and see how it goes because you'll never know.

[00:11:37] But it was basically written off the back of my EMC or executive master and change thesis at INSEAD. And during COVID, I had the opportunity and the time to turn that into a book. So for me, I've been very, very passionate about giving back in diversity and particularly what I call cultural diversity. So helping people with culturally diverse backgrounds into leadership roles.

[00:12:01] And so I explored as part of my underlying research how In this case, Asian Australians become partners in big four firms in Australia. So the topic very close to my heart. And, and through that, I came up with a number of findings and recommendations, both for individuals who are aspiring for leadership roles and for organizational leaders who are hoping to increase the proportion of culturally diverse leaders.

[00:12:26] And so there are a number of different, really interesting findings. One of the things that I did notice for anyone who wants to get into leadership roles, you do need to learn how to experiment and try things out. And that's not unexpected. I think, you know, a lot of the academic research points to that.

[00:12:44] And you will experience tensions and anxieties as you learn, because any time you try things that are different, you will actually feel very, very uncomfortable. And so I know, uh, Vanessa T., we were speaking about Herminia Ibarra's book, Working Identity. 

[00:12:58] Vanessa T: Yeah. 

[00:12:59] Karen L: So a lot of the findings are actually pretty similar to that.

[00:13:02] But what I found interesting as well, really understanding the stories of these people was that a couple of things also could make a difference. One of them was family upbringing and really how much of us is actually learned and developed from our early family experiences. And the other one is how we manage ourselves in stressful situations.

[00:13:22] So there's a concept called attachment styles. There's a lot more to understanding how people make it into leadership roles than just, Oh, I worked hard. I think there's a lot more inside us that we can learn to help us become better leaders. 

[00:13:36] Vanessa I: Karen, I was quite familiar with the concept of having been, uh, influenced by your parents, for instance, in the choice of what you do, but I found in your research something very, very unique that I really enjoyed very much, which is looking into a couple of generations behind and on your blog and on your website, we will refer that in the podcast.

[00:13:57] You are mentioning about your own, uh, four generation of Australians and starting in Tasmania, actually. And I was very touched by your sharing. And I thought that was fantastic, you know, to have a great grandfather, like having a mine in Tasmania and celebrating with your family members, 175 years, uh, of him being in Australia.

[00:14:20] Can you tell us a little bit more about this concept? I mean, some people talk about family trauma, but in your case. When I read your article, and you tell me if I'm wrong, I felt a sense of pride and a sense of, you know, acknowledgement of something extraordinary that he did at that time. And that helped you also maybe to feel confidence in yourself for the, you know, the new chapters of your life.

[00:14:42] So what is exactly this impact of many, many families, many, many generations before on you today? And maybe if you can share about your ancestor, that would be fantastic as well. 

[00:14:52] Karen L: Yeah. So I actually am a fourth generation Asian Australian, which means all my grandparents were born in Australia, despite the fact that I'm ethnically Chinese.

[00:15:01] So that is very, very unique. But that in itself is also part of the reason I'm personally quite actively involved with trying to support greater diversity as well, because I feel that there should be opportunities for everyone. But what I found fascinating is when I was researching my book and also doing my interviews, When I was looking into identity, there were all these different theories about identity and this really related to me because in many cases they talked about how people in different environments adopt a new culture.

[00:15:33] And so in my case, my great great grandfather ended up in Tasmania and what was so fascinating about his story, because he is a survivor in Tasmania, was how he built relationships up with people he was not majority with. So in a big family reunion, I learned more about how he actually learned English.

[00:15:55] He first went there, he had pigtails, there was racism in Australia, but he built up relationships with people. Someone asked him to join a church and he eventually became a preacher. That person became his business partner and eventually they managed to do business together. And I think to me, it was a great story of how for anyone, you do need to try new things out in a new environment and you need relationships and friends to help you.

[00:16:21] And it needs both the majority and the minority to help. But for my case, bringing it back to myself. I can see a lot of the family values that I have in my own family have come from those experiences of how we were brought up. And a lot of how we act at work and how we behave, including under stress, are because of the patterns that we learn as kids.

[00:16:44] And those get passed through because we learned how to act maybe around the dining room table with our parents. And those values do get passed through even if you're ethnically of a different country. And so I do see that in some of my research. I could see how some of the leaders family values were actually inspired by the experiences maybe that their migrant parents or migrant grandparents had had when they were growing up and passed through because of discussions at home and how they were brought up.

[00:17:13] It impacts them as leaders. 

[00:17:14] Vanessa I: That's very interesting. One of my hobbies, I'm sharing a little bit about myself in Singapore, is, uh, to talk to taxi drivers about their generations of Chinese ancestry. And I usually allow myself, if they feel comfortable to chat, to talk about, you know, how many generations, have you been in Singapore? Do you know where your grandparents were coming from? Because I'm interested in history, so this is one of my hobbies, but I've noticed that the moment they chat with me, Karen, they get a very strong sense of self esteem. 

[00:17:44] And also, I think it's a very good leveler because we are talking to each other as, you know, having generations of grandparents and I have grandparents and they have grandparents. So we become closer to each other. And it's something very happy actually to talk about this grand grandparents and I've realized that this is a way for people also to find their strengths, to find their resilience. 

[00:18:08] So I was curious, what is the main message you got from this great grandfather? What kind of message did he give you through time and what did you get from him?

[00:18:17] Karen L: I think in terms of values, one of the things I picked up on was the importance of relationships and having people you can work with of different backgrounds. The other one is I guess of resilience as well. You know, they did survive and you know, there were financial troubles on the way and things like that.

[00:18:35] The final one, which I see in some of the way my family interact is also giving back to society. And so they were quite civil minded and I'd see that also in how my grandmother was. She was extremely generous and my father also, you know, even though he's now 82, he still goes and helps out at the church with maintenance and stuff like that.

[00:18:53] And so there are elements in what we all do, which we learned from our ancestors. Just maybe bringing it back to work. I think often when we have discussions at work about who we are, we just ignore the bit about who we are as people and our family. Um, because we think we need to talk about work, but actually to really understand someone and what motivates them and what influences how they behave and how they think, it's often useful to build up those really, really personal relationships.

[00:19:20] And so that's why for the aspiring leaders, it's useful for you to understand your own history and how that has actually shaped how you perform at work and for your colleagues and peers also to understand that as well.

[00:19:31] Vanessa T: I love how you talked about family and then now transitioning into the workplace.

[00:19:37] And so Karen, I'm very curious to learn from you. How can organizations really foster a greater level of cultural diversity to enable greater representation at the top? And I know you covered some of this in your book and I would love if you could just share some of that with our listeners.

[00:19:53] Karen L: I mean, I've been a diversity leader at PwC.

[00:19:57] I've been involved with trying to roll programs out. A lot of the focus of many programs is around KPIs or key performance indicators because there's a sense that we need to put numbers there and try and hit the numbers. And I think that's useful, obviously KPIs are great to monitor progress, but at the end of the day, it's also about making sure that the culture fosters allowing everyone to thrive.

[00:20:20] And that shouldn't necessarily always involve us having to try and get a KPI about promotions and processes. It should be something that where we all are able to work together and this happens more naturally. And so part of that is really understanding how we all act at work, what motivates us and also what's below the surface.

[00:20:39] You know, how do people feel about things? Often diversity programs are change programs. People will always naturally resist change. And so how do we try to understand what could be inhibiting greater diversity? And often that may need us to dig in to understand people more deeply. And so to me, a lot of it is understanding some of those barriers.

[00:21:01] Vanessa I: You talk about psychological safety. I like a lot what you are sharing about psychological safety because I think it's a very important component of this cultural aspect you are talking about. What are the things from a psychological safety you have seen that have been effective that you could share with us?

[00:21:18] Karen L: Psychological safety is really creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable to say what they feel. One of the fascinating things about any group activity or being companies is that often you don't feel comfortable to say things to the group or the culture actually makes us worried about saying things.

[00:21:37] And so that often means that anxieties build up and things don't happen because people are too scared to say it. So it's therefore important to try to find time with teams, with people you know, to build up that environment where you feel you can say things. Talking about reflection, we spoke about before being a lot more comfortable to raise things requires us to be less stressed, I'd say.

[00:22:01] And it's trying to find those environments and situations is really, really important. So whether it's one on one coffees that might work with you or other activities, I think sometimes we're a bit superficial when we do team building. We go through the motion of doing a team building a bit. Do we really actually understand each other as a team?

[00:22:17] And I think we really need to think about trying to get everyone on a level playing field. 

[00:22:21] Vanessa T: So, Karen, after 29 years at PwC, of which 16 of which was being a partner, you then transitioned into board roles. Tell us a little bit more about this transition. 

[00:22:33] Karen L: The transition isn't as straightforward as everyone thinks.

[00:22:37] I think I mentioned earlier that a lot of people said, Oh, look, you've been a partner at a big four firm and a technical expert, you know, you've done audits, you can talk about risk. You should be able to get board roles very, very quickly. And I realized that it wasn't necessarily going to be the case.

[00:22:53] Some of the people, very experienced female directors in Singapore, all said to me, you need to have a lot of coffee and you need to actually wait. It will take you time, at least a year. And that's actually true because an effective board director is a new career. It's not necessarily about what you do as a senior leader and how you execute.

[00:23:13] Because being a board director is really about being a team player. You are one person and you may have different points of view and different experience, but the process that you are operating in is really as a team member. And you all work together to come up with the best decision for an organization.

[00:23:31] So I did a lot of coffees. I did some technical training, but the other thing that was very useful is earlier on in my career, as well as after I left PwC, I continued to volunteer and try things out with various organizations, whether it was Insead Directors Network or the Singapore Institute of Directors, where I got to know people and I got more used to operating in that space.

[00:23:54] So really trying to experiment and building connections with people. 

[00:23:58] Vanessa T: And what I found very interesting, Karen, was you speaking about building new networks as well, networks of individuals who you otherwise may not have gotten to know as part of your everyday job. So I was also quite fascinated that one of your articles that you wrote in your blog on LinkedIn was about your discussion about mentors and networks.

[00:24:20] What are your transition and progression as a director and for our listeners, we will also be posting this in our show notes as well, but building these networks may not come as easily or as naturally to some. What advice would you give and offer to our listeners about how they can go about building these purposeful networks?

[00:24:38] Karen L: I think you need to be a little bit intentional in building these networks. I think it's often easy to go and speak to your really good personal friends. But actually, you in a way are building a new identity. You need to find new people to get to know and speak to. One of the good things now, I think there's a lot more discussion about how to get more diverse candidates onto boards in Singapore.

[00:25:02] Try to join organizations that are trying to also build the pipeline of board ready board members. So I'm going to give a plug for Board Agenda, which is an organization I used to support as well as SID, as well as others. They do have activities to support aspiring directors. And connect with people in person, ask them for coffee and for advice.

[00:25:23] I've asked people for advice and done, uh, Zoom calls. I've had some very nice people introduce me to others. And similarly, some people do approach me, and if I've got the time, I will also try and see how I can help them as well. Because we all need different advice and networks, and building those new networks is useful because unfortunately, as much as we try, getting on to boards often means that you need to be known by others and trusted by them before they recommend you, rather than a more traditional headhunter role.

[00:25:53] Vanessa I: Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing all this advice. That's very good, Karen. So one of the questions we traditionally ask on this show is around the tips and the advice you can give in terms of career transition. So you have shared a lot with us today on many, many aspects. Was there any more tips or advice you have not shared yet you would like to share with us?

[00:26:14] Karen L: The main thing I would say is any career transition does involve a little bit of anxiety. It's very, very uncomfortable. And sometimes you feel like you're stuck in the middle of somewhere and you don't know who you are. I think that to some extent is normal. It's actually part of that process that you're going through moving your identities.

[00:26:33] So that's probably the one that I would suggest people don't give up. Sometimes people think that a career transition can use something that can be done straight away and you can go from A to B. It's not easy. You have to think about trying to try things out and learning and taking some risks. 

[00:26:51] Vanessa I: Thank you so much, Karen, for joining us today on the Career Transition Podcast.

[00:26:55] We are grateful for sharing with us your inspiring journey of career transition. We also thank you for the work that you are doing to advance research and advocacy in fostering culturally diverse leadership in organization. 

[00:27:09] Vanessa T: And for those of you who are inspired to pick up a copy of Karen's book, Fostering Culturally Diverse Leadership in Organizations, or any of her thought leadership articles, we will be placing the links to all of those in our show notes. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you very much to Karen for taking time out to speak with us today. Have a wonderful day, everyone.