The Interview: Shivana Laughlin, CEO International Shipping Limited

[Music] Welcome to the Power and Excellence Podcast. [Music] You're listening to the interview. Part of the Power and Excellence Podcast series with Dr. John. [Music] Hello and welcome to the interview. Let me start with a question. What happens when power isn't just something that you earn, but something that you inherit, where legacy, expectation and scrutiny all arrive at the same time. Because stepping into leadership is one thing. The stepping into a leadership role shaped by your family, built by your parents, carrying history, reputation, and unspoken expectation. Well, that's a different kind of pressure. Now add another layer. You're leading from a small Caribbean nation, but operating in a global industry, where perception matters, where assumptions are made before you even enter the room. Now add yet another layer. You're a young female CEO, and that means that whether you like it or not, you're not just leading a business. You're also navigating other people's biases constantly. So what does leadership look like in that environment? How do you establish credibility? How do you lead with authority? How do you carry the weight of legacy? That's exactly what we explore in today's conversation. The Shavana Loughlin, CEO of International Shipping Limited in the Twin Island Nation of Trinidad and Tobago. This is a conversation about power. But before we get into all of that, I ask Shavana to take us right back to the very beginning where it all began. International shipping room it said was started by my parents, um, 29 years ago, in 1997. I think their motivation for opening the company was that they had both worked for private companies, multinational themselves, and experienced a lot of pressure. And they felt as though they did not want their children to have that experience and their work life. So they decided let's open a company. Of course, I know they would have wanted to make their lives better financially, and that would have been, you know, the main motivation, but I think they also really wanted the kids to have lifetime employment. Um, so the business started then. There was at that time a gap in the market for freight forwarders because there were many carriers, shipping lines, uh, that were providing the best service. So freight forwarding was a good place to enter. And they did and they were quite successful with that. And then they got very heavily involved in the project side of the business, which was to serve a lot of oil and gas sector companies and larger companies that were working on bigger projects. And that did very well for them and they became, I guess, specialists in that part or that little niche. And that did very well. They eventually opened a customs brokerage of the company as well so that they could offer the full service. They opened the company in the US in 2015 in an effort to control who was applying. My father actually passed and it was myself, my mom and my brother who remained in the business. Eventually we saw an opportunity in Ghana because Ghana had discovered oil and gas and we opened there in 2020. And then similar, we saw that Suriname was going to be probably the next Ghana, so we opened there in 2022. So those are the four markets that the business operates in now. You said just now that your parents can have saw this as lifetime employment for their, for their kids. What additional pressure does that put on you as a CEO? Because CEO is a high-pressured role anyway to start with. Does that add another layer? Yes, definitely. Because it's not just about the company doing well. It's also to deal with all the family dynamics that goes with that. And there is pressure to continue that legacy regardless of, I'm going to see how you feel, but not just how you feel like regardless of how it performs or what happens between the family members is just always kind of hanging over your head that you need to make this thing work regardless of what happens. And that's in addition to the regular CEO pressures that exist. When did you become CEO? In 2023, so three years ago. And had you been with the business before then? Yes, I had been with the business for I think it was about 18 years. I had taken a break from the business for about two years in between because we actually had an outside CEO for a while. So if I spoke to Shivana from 10 years ago, what would she misunderstand about leadership today? I think she may have underestimated how difficult it is to be in a senior leadership position. I think she may have undervalued how important having the right people and the right places is having not had the experience in a senior position or in that senior position. She may have thought that, you know, HR was less valuable than I have since discovered that it actually is in a CEO role. So just talking about that power, where does power sit in your organization? Is it in the title? Is it in the expertise or is it in client relationships or internal relationships? I think power lies mostly in the internal relationships because influence is more important than title. I think people listen to the people that they respect, the people that they see, the doers, the carriers, you know, yes, they have the client relationships, but they also have the ability to influence others to do what needs to be done. So I think that power really lies mostly in the leader's ability to influence others. In a family business where you mom, your brother are still involved in a business and a business that was started by your dad. That power dynamic is very different because by definition you're employing people who are not family members. How do you ensure that that power, the power of the family dynamics, doesn't silence the people around you from bringing forward ideas and pushing back? Well, I would like to think that my leadership style is very democratic. So I don't really make decisions unilaterally. I always are very, I'm very consultative in my approach. So I would meet with my senior leadership team and bounce around ideas and we would kind of go with what's the consensus in the room. So I would never make a decision completely on my own unless, you know, time doesn't permit you to consult, but for the most part, big decisions are made collectively. So I think because of that, you know, put in the family aside, the employees feel that they can't come forward with their input because their input is taken seriously and it actually has an influence on what is the final decision being made. Have you ever created an environment that you think is maybe too agreeable? Yes, I think that that's one of the mistakes that I have made in my early days in a senior leadership position where, you know, you become so consultative or so democratic that everyone wants to pitch in and then you end up with like a whole soup of a whole bunch of different ideas that it becomes like overly complicated to make a decision. So I think now I've kind of developed a bit more balance where you do take the points that make sense that the offerer can actually back up with data and you can respect those opinions and take that on where, you know, sometimes when people come up with something and just doesn't make sense, you can kind of shoot it down really. So you take what's meaningful to that decision and kind of leave behind the extra stuff that doesn't make any sense. Continuing that theme and questioning of decision making, I want to talk about decision making under pressure because shipping is notoriously unforgiving. We always hear about delays, we hear about costs, global interdependencies. How do you make decisions in that environment where sometimes there's no good option? Well, it's true that sometimes you just have to do the best you can with the information that you do have at the time. A lot of it also is gut because when you're in a high-pressure situation where if you make the decision too late, their resultant costs like rent and damage that mount on the daily, you have no choice but make a decision quickly and you don't have the time necessarily to go out a bunch of people together opinions or even to gather the right data to make the best decision. So sometimes you've got to go with gut and And the consideration of what information do I have at this particular time and just go with the best you can because it really is north choice. Unfortunately. At Peronations we talk often about how communication and the response that you get to communication reflects or is a reflection of the meaning that the other person has taken. Have you ever had to make a call that you knew would be wholly unpopular but very necessary and how did you communicate that to make it land? Yes, I think being part of senior leadership you do have to sometimes make unpopular decisions. I think that's just like a given. Yes, I made unpopular decisions and I would take the approach of communicating that in a way where I justify my decision. So I would explain why this decision has to be made and I would put out set out my points as so I believe this decision has to be made and this is why. I think it works sometimes but it also doesn't because sometimes I think when a leader tries to justify or explain or over explain too much. It doesn't always land well like you know the recipients of the message are like she needs to explain it so she needs to justify it so when really I guess you don't. But that would be my approach still because I still feel that people's buy-in in decision making is very important because instead of you making a decision on your own and then you know people wanting to when close up your face say I told you so. I think if they all feel like okay we were parts of it or we agreed with it then they're more likely to support your decision being successful. Yeah, there's a huge amount of research that backs that up that people buy-in to decisions in which they've been a part of even if their own particular approach wasn't the one that was there was finally taken their decision wasn't one that was taken people still buy into that. So how do you build that trust in the organization to let them know that hey you know what we're going to make a decision we're going to take your ideas but we're not necessarily going to run with your idea. How do you build that trust? I think that's built over time so over time of you know consulting and then taking their ideas sometimes and even you know forgoing what I think the best decision is in favor of what the group agrees the consensus is. That builds trust because they realize that I value their opinions and I value what they believe the right decision is and then there'll be other times when I make the decision and I say okay I consider your a's feedback, B's feedback, C's feedback but I still think the best decision is is X. And perhaps them see any success of that decision or that decision having a good outcome and them supporting it because we've made it as a group even if they didn't necessarily agree with it. That has power so then you know the next time around they may trust my opinion more and they also know that I consider their input as well so over time that dynamic builds within the group and it has a positive outcome for everyone everyone starts to feel okay I'm going to do it. I just want to feel okay I'm valued and the decisions that we make consider my input but even if they don't I back it up anyway. That transparency of sharing information isn't always available to you you can't tell everybody everything all the time so how do you balance that transparency would they need to protect commercial realities. So to consider what can I share versus what can't I because they're definitely going to be some decisions some some data that you cannot share and usually it's not that it can't be shared at all but it can't be shared at the time. So I would say my approaches I'm trying to be as transparent as possible with as many things as I can be transparent with and then the few things or that I can't you know I have no alternative to keep to myself but I know that any medium to long to at some point what has to be revealed will be so I'm as transparent as I possibly can be but of course yeah it has to be some balance with things that must be kept confidential. I talk a lot about victim virus and ownership we discussed earlier on that in in your business is very easy to blame external factors is a very volatile global industry. How do you stop a culture of excuse making and victim virus from creeping in. Well I think the main thing that helps that to not become a habit within the company is me setting an example so I would like to think that when I have made a boo boo. So I would say you know what I was wrong my bad let's do blah blah blah to mitigate whatever it is that went wrong and I think people seeing that a leader takes that kind of responsibility for the decisions that they've made even if it hasn't had a positive outcome is powerful because they think that themselves okay well if she can do that then you know I should do that too. It's leading by example so I think that's one way that helps people to not be you know always blaming external factors always blaming one another because that's also another a big one when I first came out to the company I do think there was a lot of interdepartmental conflict and there was a bit of a volume culture. Which is easy to develop because like you said I mean this industry is a lot about external factors which and it's a reality there are a lot of external factors that will affect your ability to provide a good shipping service right. But at the same time you do you do have to balance out because not everything is the external parties faults sometimes yeah of course you know you make a mistake you do something wrong or you you're not proactively enough but I think the example helps and trying to build that culture internally that is a good thing. It's a good thing to do is really that we take responsibility so holding departments or individuals accountable for when they do things not right that helps too but I would say the main one is that senior leadership and I don't just mean me as you see or I mean other senior executives owning their mistakes is the most powerful way to build that culture of we don't blame outsiders or blame each other. You see other people other leaders unintentionally encouraging a victim mindset. Well obviously they don't set that example you know if they always blame external parties or blame other people for things going wrong that's going to go so fast. And then also I think if they encourage that sort of interdepartmental blaming that's not going to help either because I tend to correct that. If we're in a meeting for example and something's gone wrong and we're doing like a post mortem it wouldn't be well this department didn't do so so so that's why it went wrong I I would nip that anybody like okay here what it's not about the departments at the end of the day in the eyes of the customer regardless of which individual or which department did something wrong they have had the customer has had a bad experience and ultimately they're not going to say it's this one's fault or that one's fault it's ISL it's international shipping. So we need to come up with a solution we need to improve our processes in the future so that something like that doesn't recur. Let's talk about doing business in the Caribbean. What's unique do you think about leading a business like this in Trinidad and Tobago that maybe somebody in the US or Europe would completely underestimate or misunderstand people underestimate people from the Caribbean you know they think like oh it's a tiny speck on them up you know then they're not going to be worldly they don't really understand you know bigger countries bigger situations bigger companies I've had people underestimate me because of that so I do think that those preconceived notions make people not have the right impression so I think that's what happens people underestimate people from the Caribbean or businesses even from the Caribbean. Just because they have their own biases which is ironic really because when you think about it as an island nation you by definition imports pretty much everything so you may even have more experience in shipping than people from elsewhere. Yes and I think to our environment is even more challenging than a lot of the more developed countries because of nuances with customs for example I think our customs and exercises far more difficult to deal with because of the amount of bureaucracy we have to deal with the amount of I guess I shouldn't say this but corruption that we have to deal with as well which you know places like North America won't have you know they would have a very well organized system that's all automated and you know minimal human interaction it's going to work well it's going to it's going to happen in one day we just don't have that we have to deal with a lot more complicated manual systems so actually our process is even more complicated and and and could go even more wrong so and we have to deal with and manage that uncertainty in terms of management style and leadership do Caribbean organizations approach power and hierarchy differently well I think it depends some companies would be very different and unique but I think it depends on what you think I don't know if you can generalize and paint them all with a broad brush, you know. I do think that we're a bit more traditional. So there is a bit more respect perhaps for hierarchy and job title and that kind of thing, just because some degree some of the companies would be a bit I guess, they would be all fashioned. But I definitely don't think that that would be everyone. I definitely think that some businesses would be very forward thinking, you know, have very flat structures, whereas others would be very hierarchical. But of course, if we're talking about governments, that would be a totally different ballgame altogether. Does that create any kind of a tension between global standards and local culture? Yes, because obviously in this business you're working with lots of different companies, right? Because you can't do the shipping or even the brokerage by yourself. You are using a subcontracting some of the work. You are depending on carriers to do some of the work. So it's not just you, you know, it's not just your company alone that has influence on the finished product. So definitely there's a lot of nuance because of that. As a CEO, you're very used to having to communicate with people at all different levels, probably in government and so on and so forth. So communication is quite key. Have you ever said something that was technically correct but landed really badly? Yes, of course. I think that's just perfectly good. You know, yeah, I've said things that, you know, from a shipping perspective, maybe accurate. But then when you say it could sound like what you said earlier, so you're blaming the environment or you're blaming external circumstances outside of your own company and it could come across as you're not taking full responsibility for something. So yeah, that's definitely happened. And I don't think it's entirely avoidable either. I think that could happen again, unfortunately. How do you adapt your communication to meet whoever is in the room or whoever holds power in the room? Well, I think it's really important to be self aware as a leader because I like to pride myself on thinking that I can deal with the Queen and I can deal with a bag on the streets and speak to them in a language that I think is respectful and they understand what I'm trying to say. So I think I do adjust my communication according to who's in the room. Unlike you say, not just who has the power but more what do I want to achieve in this room today? If it is that I am trying to influence or I'm trying to bleed and it's my people, my communication style would be different. It'll be more informal, like I said, more consults to whereas if I'm in a room with a client and I'm trying to have a particular outcome, I'd perhaps be a bit more assertive and professional in my communications. So you definitely do have to adjust according to I would say what are you trying to achieve and who's in the room with you? Coming back to the notion of a family business. How do you go about identifying high potential talent in a family business and recognising that you're ultimately going to be promoting people who are not in the family? That's easy. I think talent, or at least for me, I don't know if that's for everyone, but talent is easy to spot. I mean, it's people who have the right ideas and they don't just have ideas, they actually execute. It's people who are interested in their jobs. It's people who they're knowledgeable, they want to know more. You can assess those people out easily from the beginning or at least I feel I can. So it doesn't matter to me that they're not family, of course. I mean, in fact, if they're not perhaps even better. Have you ever backed the wrong person? Yes. Yes. What did you learn from that? I think sometimes spotting talent is great, but the real key is knowing when that talent is ready to move up and take on more responsibility. So sometimes people can be really good in their role, the excellent, they're doing everything right, they're meeting all their deadlines, meeting all their KPIs, but then you move them up when it's a disaster. I mean, and I think there's the Peter principle, right? So there's where people do really well in one role, but then you ask them to take on more responsibility and they just all come scrumbling down. So I think it's not just being able to spot the talent, but being able to tell when that talent is actually ready for more. So we're talking about being CEO of a family business, we've talked about running business in the Caribbean. Do you think power is experienced differently as a female CEO? Unfortunately, yes. I came back recently from a trip where we were visiting a principal there and you can tell that people underestimate you when there are certain things there like being a female is unfortunately one of those that they underestimate. Being from the Caribbean, which is a tiny market on a global scale, is also something that they underestimate your skill. Also, even being young is perceived as a weakness or a disadvantage because it implies a lack of experience. So I think all those things in combination do, does make someone have an impression of you that's less than what you might actually be. I walked into the room and it was the president of this global carrier and I could tell just from the tone of the conversation, which was a lot more about the weather and how I was feeling, that he didn't believe that I had any value to add to a serious conversation. I think in those situations, really you have to assert yourself and make your power be known whether that is from data, being forthcoming with data, bringing up, being brave enough to bring up the hard topics instead of just going with the flow, the audit tool that is set that is, we're just going to have an informal chit chat. So I think you have to take control in a situation like that, but it is a reality. It's something actually that when I was much younger, I didn't believe in. I did think that women were just being fussy or playing the victim card. I'm female, nobody takes me seriously, but having been through it myself and also not just in a local context and an international context, experiencing it myself, I realise that sadly it is a reality. It's interesting that even now, whenever you read about CEOs, the newspapers, the business journals never preface male CEO, but they always make a point of saying, and female CEO. Yes, because it's a seriality that it's still mostly males, right? So being female is odd or you're in a minority. So because of that, they still stress that. It's like when they bring up race too, or it's a business is black owned or female owned, they stress that as well. Why? Because it's a minority thing. It's not normal or it's not common, so therefore it's something to tell. So thinking back then, you said just now, but when you were younger, you thought other female leaders were just making this out, they were being overly sensitive, etc. What advice do you wish you'd had then? And to a certain extent, what advice would you give to women stepping into leadership roles today in traditionally male dominated industries? I would say you have to be brave and you do have to be mindful of that preconceived notion that people have of young women, of young women from the Caribbean. I think you have to be mindful of it so that you are aware that, okay, the likelihood is it's not going to happen every time because not everybody has the same mindset, but you have to be mindful and aware when it does happen to not allow it to persist, to nip that anybody, to be brave enough to speak up and be assertive. We, unfortunately, as a man would, you know, so that you are not stuck in that little box or that label of being a girl or being young or being from a small place. You know, you have to step out and make people see that, you know, just a young girl from a small place, you have an opinion and you are knowledgeable, you know your industry and you have value to add. Have a few rapid fire questions for you. Power or influence? Influence. Got instinct or data? Data. Control or adaptability? Adaptability. This one leadership trait that you admire most. Bravely. I love to see when people are in a room full of a thousand people and they have the ability to get up and see something that perhaps will not be well accepted by everyone, but they are brave enough to get up and make their point anyway. I admire that deeply because admittedly I don't know that I always have that bravery myself. What's one leadership behavior that you have zero tolerance for? Depression. I don't like to see when, and I've seen it, so that's why I know I don't like it. You know when leaders, you're ban on the table or use foreign language or shout. I just think that if you have to do all of that, you're probably just not a good leader because people shouldn't need that type of non-vehicle communication to listen to you. Okay. A couple of philosophical questions just to. close out. What's the legacy that you want to live? Not necessarily or not just as a CEO, but also as a leader of people? I would say that I would like to be remembered as someone who's fair. Fair to my staff, but also fair to vendors, fair to customers that whenever I did make a decision, it was fair to whoever was affected by that decision. Not that I was always looking to make money or safeguard myself or defend the decision that I made, but rather that I made the decision that was best for all concerned. And finally, what's the one thing about Shivana that you wish people understood better? That I don't have all the answers that being in a position of leadership is tough. And it doesn't mean that you have all the answers at all. That actually you're not much different from anyone else. You're still working things out. So and it's it's tough. Shivana Loughlin CEO of International Shipping Limited. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. Remember to like and subscribe to the Power in Excellence Podcast and please share it with your friends and colleagues.