Apr 17, 2026
When a new business leader walked in and told Malvika they were going to restructure the entire segment — 60% of company revenue — in a room with just the two of them, no leaks, no one else in the room, she didn't say no. She said: "I hear you. And here's how we get to the same outcome with the right people involved." Six months after implementation, he came back and told her it was the right call.
That's the ABC method — Acknowledge, Build, Challenge — and it's the framework Malvika has built her career on. As VP HR, Learning & Development at Newell Brands, she's spent years figuring out how to challenge senior leaders without triggering defensiveness, manage rooms full of type A executives without losing the thread, and find genuine joy in the conversations most people dread.
In this episode, she gets specific about all of it.
You'll learn:
- The ABC method for challenging leaders without coming across as aggressive, and the Project Panther restructure story that proves it works
- How she handled a client in Oman at 24 who kept making inappropriate comments — alone, in a foreign country, with a relationship and additional business on the line, and still won the next assignment
- The "be brief, be bright, be gone" framework for capturing and keeping the attention of type A executives in high-stakes meetings
- How she gamified a full-day leadership talent review to keep a competitive senior team engaged, and still got all the work done
- Why leading with facts instead of emotion is the only way to challenge the status quo without losing credibility
- Her personal technique for staying calm when everything is tense: painting, choosing to laugh, and the line about "not my circus, not my monkeys, but I do know some of the clowns"
If you work with strong-willed leaders, navigate difficult conversations across cultures, or just want to bring more effectiveness, and more joy, into the hardest parts of your job, this episode delivers.
About Malvika: Vice President HR, Learning & Development at Newell Brands, Malvika has led organizational transformation, talent strategy, and cross-cultural teams across global markets. Originally from India, she has built her career navigating high-stakes leadership conversations across cultures, industries, and executive levels.
She Was 24, Alone With a Difficult Client in Oman. What She Figured Out Built Her Entire Leadership Playbook.