Meet Ash Diba, Global Engineering Futures Human Resources Lead
Meet Ash Diba, Global Engineering Future’s Director of Human Resources.
As Global Engineering Futures is projected to reach volunteers from 50 countries by the end of 2021, the Human Resources Lead, Ash Diba, sat down for an interview to discuss his attraction to the organization, his challenging past, and what goals he hopes to enforce at Global Engineering Futures.
Ash Diba was first attracted to Global Engineering Futures through the motivation and passion of its people. Keen to help anyone that wants to take on a project of this ambition, Ash sought to work with people who are attracted to the element of wanting to create a community. A community whereby everyone works together to create something they can call their own.
To Ash, to be interested in sustainability is to be interested in wanting to understand how both material and people can be treated in a way that maximizes their longevity. His interest in sustainability grew when he was studying leadership and management. Specifically, what type of leader it takes to inspire people to care about sustainability.
Ash claims within a business, sustainability can act as an overarching value to aspire to. The pursuit of which requires and challenges businesses to successfully achieve many other prerequisite and correlated values such as authenticity, excellence, and humility. Ash’s previous research into Human Resources Management, focuses on leadership development. The research included spiritual and philosophical perspectives within leadership study.
The research centered around a Zen Buddhist Priest, Kazuo Inamori, one of Japan’s first millionaires. A leader with no educational background in business, but one who grew his successful venture purely through his unique approach in the way he treated his employees. The key to Inamori’s success was in his nature to lead in order to serve others. Some characteristics of servant-leadership include; a commitment to the growth of people, awareness, community building, and empathy. Ash uses this notion of servanthood to describe the differences between Eastern management versus Western management styles. In Eastern management, leaders do good for their employees with the intention to serve their interests. They do not expect the honor to be returned but welcome it when it is. In Western management, leadership is more akin to an exchange-based relationship. Employees are treated well so long as a benefit is returned.
Looking at his personal life, Ash observed that there was a lot of struggle in the world. Ash pledged to always meet and leave people better off than when he first met them, hoping in some way to add value to their lives. When deciding what to study, his reasoning for pursuing HR management lies in the opportunity to have a positive impact on people’s lives. Ash argues since work is the area that the majority of people will spend their lives doing, it is the area where if improved will produce the most impact on people. He decided to go into HR with the hope of moving to the forefront of producing the change needed within people management.
“It might seem insignificant, but you don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life. Having that network to go to whether its within Global Engineering Futures or other work places, it goes beyond making connections, it is having the purpose to do something.”
To Ash, Global Engineering Futures provides that outlet. If work is strenuous, Global Engineering Futures is that outlet to do more independent and exciting work. A project that is shared and owned by every member. Ash uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and provides a psychological perspective as to why people should get involved in a project focusing on sustainability.
“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pertains to a series of five human needs one needs to achieve to reach a level of self-actualisation. This is the stage where you come to understand the importance of becoming the most one can be. In order to reach this stage, the theory states that one has to have their basic needs met first. Needs such as shelter, employment, love and belonging, and esteem. When these needs are met, and one reaches the self-actualisation stage, it is more likely that they can begin to think outwardly and focus on others and the planet. However, the mind is not as simple as this where it follows a linear development. You can start with self-actualisation, and work backwards. Focus on sustainability and you can attain those feelings of love and belonging, and the feelings of stength and esteem. That being said, the model is a good way to understand how addressing other social issues such as equality and homelessness will be pivotal in increasing societies capacity to start thinking about sustainability. This understanding can help volunteers tackling different causes understand how they are benefiting each other.”
Ash expresses that businesses have to make sure their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy aligns with their people strategy. Otherwise, employees will see their company’s CSR strategy as a ploy and not engage with the sustainability practices the business aims to promote.
“In order for people to care about the world, you need to care about them.”
To have a sustainable future, companies need to include everyone. When asked how Global Engineering Futures could meet the challenges of inclusivity, collaboration, and essentially how to bring all of these vastly different cultures together, Ash proposes a diversity of thought. Ash suggests that more businesses can do better by expanding on their diversity statements by additionally highlighting how it is the diversity of thought that matters. He states how there needs to be an understanding that when collaborating on ideas, it should not always be about prioritizing who knows the most, or who has the most correct answers, but rather it is within the interactions and the melded ecosystems of diverse thought, good or bad, whereby the solution emerges.
Ash’s journey has been a challenging one. For several years, Ash was living by himself. After this, he decided to turn his life around and focused on learning as much as he could. That learning shifted to one of self-development and self-reflection. Along that journey, he learned about himself and believes that self-awareness is one thing that is going to help you the most in life. Ash credits himself as his greatest success. It is in the character that he has created for himself and the strengths and skills that he has attained.
“At sixteen, my mind was a blank slate, I knew I can make it think anything I wanted to, not influenced by my family, a blank slate that I can work with. To anybody who has experienced a similar thing, where you’ve not had much interaction with your birth family during upbringing there is an opportunity to create a mind that you want.”
Ash’s advice to those who are just starting out or looking to pursuing a career in HR is to gain technical skills. He argues that a common mistake that people make when pursuing HR is the assumption that HR only pertains to soft skills. Soft skills are an important part of the job, such as people management, however, when going into industry, being knowledgeable and having those hard skills sets you apart from the crowd.
In the future, Ash hopes to start off as an executive leadership coach and eventually a life coach. His goals for Global Engineering Future are to provide space where opinions and thoughts are heard and shared. Ash aims to ensure that people can speak freely and continue to create an open environment where all opinions are heard. Within the HR department, Ash will be focusing on developing the Volunteer Programme, helping to grow the Global Engineering Network, and ensuring volunteers are recognized for their efforts.