In this Q&A, Wingspan Consulting founder Cristina Castaneda looks back at her career and shares useful advice about resilience, adaptability, and walking the talk.
What skills or habits did you build in your earlier roles that still work for you now as a leader?
When you’re young, you come across different kinds of people who make the workplace a bit difficult, and it’s easy to be daunted especially when you have little experience. I learned to be courageous and stick it out in many difficult situations, initially because I needed the money, but later on I learned to be resilient and thought nobody could knock me down. Maybe that was a bit naïve of me, but it paid off because later on, the senior leaders in the company saw that I was hardworking and dependable, and that was how I got my first big break.
What would be your career advice to your younger self, knowing what you know now?
When you’re young, you tend to think that things will stay the same, but the truth is, things are always changing. Humans are innovative individuals, and there’s always a new thing being discovered or improved every minute.
So I’d remind my younger self to learn as much as I can while being aware of external threats that will make my role obsolete. Being aware prepares you for new opportunities that arise, and you need to be quick enough to seize these opportunities. Having this adaptive mindset prepares you for what’s coming. Looking back, I must have had this mindset, although I wasn’t quite aware of it, because I was able to make the shift from the logistics industry to healthcare consulting.
Many of your decisions as a leader are informed by sustainability and social responsibility. How did you get here and who were your mentors?
As Filipinos, growing up in a third-world country, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is innate in us. We’re aware that we’re in a place of privilege, and we know we should use that position to respond to people’s needs. My parents also did a good job in raising me not be wasteful.
In terms of sustainability, Paul Polman (Unilever CEO, who led the company’s Sustainability Living Plan, and is now the co-founder of the sustainability foundation IMAGINE) is someone I look up to. According to him, impactful leaders are the ones who put the common interest above the staff. His leadership is quite inspiring, and I try to incorporate this in my own brand of leadership.
For many of us, it’s so easy to be this “awareness” state where we keep preaching about sustainability, but as leaders, we should also walk the talk and that means applying what we preach, at the very least. So part of what I’m doing as a leader is applying real changes to my company, for example, introducing new processes to cut down on carbon emission. To make change happen, you need to go beyond building awareness—like talking to people and explaining why we make these decisions (I consider this my personal mission)—you also need to do.
What has been the biggest challenge in business operations during the pandemic?
Part of building and maintaining client relationships is the client review. Before the pandemic, it was so easy to visit the client’s office and check on them. But the pandemic made that impossible.
Of course, we have frequent Zoom calls, but nothing can replace face-to-face meetings with clients. There’s a lot that you learn and that’s shared in these in-person instances. You get a pulse of the client—their business concerns, new developments, what’s keeping them up at night—through casual dialogues. You don’t always get to capture these over a conference call.
Have you ever turned down a client because the work didn’t align with your values?
When you’re just starting out in business, it’s hard to be selective of the clients you work with, but as you go along, you meet many clients and you ask yourself, Am I promoting the good, or am I an enabler of something that I don’t approve of?
There have been instances where a potential client and I didn’t see eye to eye in terms of how to get things done, or in the course of doing work for them, we realize that we have different values. In those instances, we do walk away from a client. It feels good actually to do that because we believe that something better will come along. Living your values, I believe, makes you an authentic leader.