101: How HR leaders are leading on purpose and inclusion: Seetha Rani KP, Head of Human Resources at Philips Innovation Campus

I can never say this enough - hosting my own podcast means I have had the privilege to meet so many wonderful people, some of whom have gone on to become friends and trusted advisors. My first meeting with Seetha Rani KP was last year when running a workshop for NASSCOM senior industry leaders in Bengaluru, we connected over our lived experiences (and we were both wearing green). She shared a story about her name - her name Seetha has a religious and cultural resonance. So, people have expectations about what Seetha should look like, how she should dress, behave, speak🤔🤔🧐🧐🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️ Seetha of course does not conform to any of the stereotypes, in fact she is intentional about smashing them. So, when we caught up a couple of weeks back it was a pleasure to speak to hear about her role at Philips Innovation Campus. We also spoke about 👇🏾👇🏾👉🏾 Traits of a good leader, her leadership style as it has evolved over the years👉🏾 The role of HR in driving purpose and culture in an organisation and defining the employee value proposition👉🏾 Skills for HR to be able to step up to its expanding role and managing change👉🏾 Advise for future practitioners👉🏾 Role models - the people around her who inspire and motivate her👉🏾 Her immense belief and faith in people and their abilitiesIf you would like to know more, head to the podcast. Link in the comments👇🏾👇🏾Episode TranscriptSudha: Good afternoon, Seetha. It's wonderful to finally have you on the Elephant in the Room podcast today. Seetha: Lovely to be here with you.Sudha: Brilliant. Let's get started. Can you give a quick introduction to who you are and please share a couple of experiences that have defined who you are today.Seetha: Thanks for that, Sudha. I am a people's person, and I believe in making a difference to people and being joyful and bring joy to people, that's the core of who I am. And what has shaped this is my foundational years. I was born and brought up in Bangalore, in a place where I had people from different parts of India. We had people from Andra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and even Maharashtra, Gujarat. I grew up with different sets of people, and it also had different, classes of people. And also, we had people with disability who were thriving in that environment, we had people with polio. So I got a lot of exposure being with different kinds of people and probably that has helped me have a very diverse mindset. That is number one. And number two, I think, from my family, I draw a lot of strength, particularly I want to draw attention to what my dad was like. My dad was someone who really brought a lot of joy. As a child when I was growing up along with my siblings, every single day he would come home from work no matter how his day was, whether he was going through his own hardships.Seetha: But when he would come home, he always got something for us; it could be chocolates or it could be like poppins or biscuits, et cetera. But it used to bring a lot of joy to us, he would take time to tell us stories, make up some his own stories and entertain us, and all of them brought a lot of joy and kind of made me believe that it's the moment, we have to seize the moment and make it count. I still remember my Dads, one of the incidents that, where he was old and ailing and frail, still wrote on my birthday, he wrote a handwritten note about me, a couple of lines, and which I framed and