Play at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Play at Work with Brandon Wetzstein

At work, play means profit…

Ping-pong tables aren’t the point. Real play drives trust, energy, and bold thinking—and the companies that embrace it are winning big. Play isn’t a perk, it’s a strategy. In a world obsessed with productivity, could play be your team's secret weapon?

Brandon Wetzstein has helped transform teams at major organizations by tapping into the power of strategic play. In this episode, he breaks down why traditional "serious" approaches often lead to mediocre solutions, and how structured play can break through conventional thinking to unlock breakthrough ideas.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

And a lot of times we need more ideas to come up with better. If you ask people for ideas, the first like one to seven or eight ideas. Everyone just comes up with the same things. They're very similar because we have a very systematic mind. For the most part, it's when you start getting to idea nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. And yeah, sometimes we need to get a little bit weird to come up with that thing. That is the brilliant idea. And the more ideas, the more creativity we can have, the more imagination, the more we can get out of our own way.

Speaker 2: 0:36

What's going on, mel? Not much is going on. It's finally chilly here. Last week we had some 80-degree weather on November 1st, which was a little strange, but we went down to the beach to enjoy it, which was really nice. How about you? Very?

Speaker 3: 0:55

nice, very nice. I have a bone to pick with every single person that I grew up with. Tell me more, okay. So we're going back and re-watching these kid movies, mainly because I have a seven-year-old, and one of the movies we watched that I just saw for the first time was Karate Kid.

Speaker 2: 1:12

I can't get over that. You're just seeing Karate Kid. First of all, Listen. When I meet your parents, I need to ask why.

Speaker 3: 1:19

Because my dad felt that the Betamax was superior technology to the VHS and there was like one rental store that actually had Betamax no bloodluster for you. It was like we finally got it a VHS when it was too late.

Speaker 2: 1:34

DVDs are coming out, but you finally got the VHS.

Speaker 3: 1:37

Yes, 100% the switch. There was like three months. Like I just saw Goonies, I just saw most of the Star.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Wars. I mean, those are pretty big ones to miss in your childhood.

Speaker 3: 1:46

Going through high school and college with everybody quoting these movies etc. And the quotes from Karate Kid were always like wax on, wax off. Yeah, why is it that no one ever talked about the ending of that movie? Because, I swear to God, you go through two hours and then all of a sudden the movie just freaking ends. That is the most abrupt ending I've ever had in my life. You're like wait, what happened? What if that bit? I would like to know why no one talked about the dumb ending of that movie.

Speaker 2: 2:15

It's the 80s. Tell you, watching 80s movies is so funny.

Speaker 3: 2:19

The choices All right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:22

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Brandon Wettstein from AnyCreate. He's just so rad. He's talking to us about play in the workplace and you and I have talked about the importance of play at work, and we're not talking about forced team building events here at all. One of the things that really stands out to me is how the play part of being at work, having fun with what you do has been beaten out of org cultures. It seems we no longer relax and get to this point where you can shut off the noise and really connect as a team and get together and just think about what's possible. But there's so many stats that show how important play is for the success of teams and for organizations. It nurtures things like critical thinking, creativity, it powers innovation, it helps really make teams feel connected. Breakdown silos increases collaboration, communication. The list goes on and on. What do you think? The thing that I loved?

Speaker 3: 3:26

about our conversation with Brandon is, when you think about play at work, automatically a lot of people think ping pong tables, play-doh, etc. But there are many ways that we can play at work. For instance, organizing work, that could be an aspect of play. If you really get into that, like if you really love to plan events or organize events, that can be an aspect of play. And really understanding what play is to you is critical. So I loved this conversation because, to your point, I think we've lost play and we can get it back. You can choose to get it back and reincorporate it into your work, even if it's not coming from your organization 100%.

Speaker 2: 4:05

This is a goodie. We leave you guys with some really good pointers on how to start thinking about play within the org, especially if you're a leader, how to start nurturing that with your own teams and the work that you do. So with that, here's Brandon. All right, brandon, could you tell us about your journey and what inspired you to start in EatCreate?

Speaker 1: 4:38

Oh yes, it's one of those things where whenever you look backwards, it all makes sense Going forward. You're like what, how did this happen? I started my career in retail, working in stores selling electronics, actually when I was in college. When I date myself here, hgtv first came out as a giant, huge TVs and that led me moving into corporate environments, again in a very retail. Most of my career was in retail, both store side and corporate.

Speaker 1: 5:03

And then there was there's like that epiphany moment that happens and for me it was running a design thinking workshop within the operations group at Target, which is one of the companies that, and that moment crystallized my purpose. And what happened in that moment is there was a person who was on my team, a person who was a little bit shy, and this person came a lot in this design thinking workshop right. Their ideas came up. It's so much information, so much energy and I always hold that moment really close to my heart because I remember how great it felt to give that person an avenue, an arena to to share, whereas in the normal space of, especially in operations, teams like I was always in operations and operators make the fun zone right.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Yeah, it's the black and white right. There's no gray, and so SOP land yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:56

This was the challenging part is how do you get creative and innovative and have some fun, have some joy and get people to come up with some crazy ideas in operations when that's not like the way that they normally work and I shouldn't say they me too, that was an operator as well, and so I just I love that moment and that was really a crystallizing piece, and so I was introduced to Lego serious play not too far after that moment and my curiosity just got to me on this and I started pulling the thread and reading some books. I never could quite figure out how to do it on my own. I wanted to try it, but I just couldn't. So I finally got certified in 2019 and I fell in love. I was like this is amazing.

Speaker 1: 6:31

This is the secret to getting groups to communicate and understand and listen to each other in a fun and playful way, and so that's why I started at 8Create and again, it's been five years now, which is just amazing to me, and I still love it. Every session I do, every workshop, every team building, bringing these methods to various teams to help them connect, communicate and collaborate differently. It's just, it's so joyful because it's this unexpected. We're going to have fun and we're going to do work like that possible. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it is and it works and it's amazingly impactful and I can't wait to do it with more and more companies hopefully the rest of my days.

Speaker 2: 7:12

Yeah, pretty nice. I didn't even know you could get certified in play. That sounds like a really fun process to go through. How was that? What was that like?

Speaker 1: 7:21

I'm certified it's very specifically in a methodology that's called Lego serious play. I did not make this up. Lego back in the late nineties was really looking at who they were as a company. They stood for creativity and imagination they still do but that's not how they were developing their business internally. We have all this creativity and imagination that we're bringing to the world and to children everywhere, but how do we bring that into our boardroom? How can we bring creativity and imagination into strategy really was the question, and then they spent a few years building this, playing with it, tweaking with it, and then they sold it as a consulting service for better part of a decade. Now, as we know of Lego today, they're not a consulting company. This is not what they do, and they know that too, and they stepped away from it in about 2010. And they did release an open source document that anyone can go read. You can go on Lego's website I believe it's legocom slash serious play. There's all sorts of information on there. However, it's not enough to read and do on your own At least, for me, it wasn't and so part of the people that ran and developed this system at Lego were basically gifted some of the IP and they created more IP around it and they created these certifications.

Speaker 1: 8:29

There's about two or three different groups out there that are very well known for certifications and they all have different strengths and backgrounds histories, but it does help to understand and see how this comes to life from someone who knows what they're doing. And then, once you have that and the idea is it's like drinking from a fire hose Once you get done, you're like, oh my gosh, I could do anything with this. There's so many applications and ways that you can use it and people use it for a lot of different things. I use it for organizations and teams mostly, but there are some people that I was certified with that use it for play therapy. There's people that half the people that were in my certification class worked in schools, various high schools, colleges, trying to get students to think differently and get out of their own way. So it really is a communication methodology that allows you to get out of your own way and bring that creativity and imagination that Lego was striving to bring to really any type of situation.

Speaker 2: 9:18

I love that. I also love that your background is in operations, because when people think of play, they think of only the forced fun, team building activities that happen. We often hear like the I don't want forced fun, but that's not what you're saying, that's not what you're talking about here.

Speaker 1: 9:36

I was introduced to it when I was working at Target, but I know that companies like NASA, the Department of Defense, google, apple there's so many organizations that have used this because it's been scientifically proven. It's not even just the playful aspect of it, but there's so many other psychology like the communication pieces, the mentally offloading information and physical objects. All of these things have different types of benefits. When you combine them, they're just new and creative ways to get people out of their own way.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Yeah, can you explain how Innate Create helps organizations really embrace play and creativity in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 10:12

Absolutely, and so the most important part of at least the workshops and the team building sessions that we do is that it's not like you're going to do this and have fun. It's we're going to create, in essence, a sandbox. We're going to create the environment that allows you to figure out how you want to play in this space, if that makes sense. So with this Lego method, that is our primary methodology. There's a couple of keys to it. One people are building stories out of Lego bricks, and when I say building stories, we're basically using metaphor and generally don't introduce it that way, because a lot of people hold on metaphor. Let's back this up a little bit. No, we're just going to create stories and we start off with a very basic build just to get them back into playing with Legos, Because for a lot of people, they maybe haven't touched Lego in a long time or they put away their kids Legos. It's not necessarily a joyful thing for them at home.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Or they're like. I just stepped on a Lego last night.

Speaker 1: 11:09

I just bombed all out of my house Exactly, but one of the key aspects of this methodology is that the builder can't be wrong and I'm going to say that again because it's so impactful.

Speaker 1: 11:20

The builder can't be wrong. And so, when you think about this, we're not building airplanes, we're not building cars and trucks. We're not building things per se, because there's certain people that I'm sure are much more attuned to building things and coming up with creative Lego ideas. But when you build stories and you can't be wrong suddenly whatever you build is up to you, and so some people build these large, elaborate things. Some people do build cars and ships, and that's fine, but some people build really abstract things that you have no idea what they mean until they tell you. And so it gives this freedom to people to express themselves in whatever way they would like, and some people will just put two pieces together and that will be their answer to a question. And to give you an example of a question we might ask and one of my favorite ones is in our team building sessions. It's just, the main focus is getting people to know each other better. They ask people to build a model that tells a story about who they are outside of work. That's it. That's it. It's that simple and there's no. You can't be wrong and you can choose right. Okay, how do you build a model of oh my gosh, what a huge topic. Do I build my hobbies? Do I build my children, my family, the fact that I have a soup pot and the crock pot, whatever, right, there's no wrong answer. And what you get is this amazing amount of ideas and thoughts, of insights, and people share what they want. And so that's where I think it really is different from most other types of team buildings, because it gives people the freedom to express themselves and share whatever they might want to share.

Speaker 1: 12:46

And it's amazing, the things that come up in these sessions, too. You find out. I did a session in California once where we found out like half the group was growing citrus, like as a whole. You're like, oh, wow, we're all growing citrus, cool, okay. So they created a little group afterwards. Another group I did in DC. We had a group of five or six people that all had adopted a dog in the past like six months, and it was just this weird thing. We're like no one knew this. So it's amazing. There's so much depth and dimensions of who we are outside of work, but we don't necessarily show up and just talk about ourselves. It's not socially acceptable and this just gives us an avenue to share a little bit, but do so in a very psychologically safe way, do so in a very easy way and, again, each person decides how much and what they would like to share.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Yeah, I love that. What's one of the most rewarding projects you've worked on since you've been in this space? Because you came from OBS, so I always think of those being the most skeptical folks coming in on this stuff, right. So is there a skeptic whose mind you changed or someone you were really nervous about? That was really rewarding once you ran this year workshop.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Yeah, one of my favorites is a two and a half or three hour session with the senior leadership team of a very large nonprofit, and we were there to really dig into communication, which is shocking. It's one of the things I get brought in to talk about a lot because communication is one of those interesting things where it's very important to talk about, but it's very sharp right. It has a lot of edges, so you have to watch out how you're going to talk about it, and so I've got 12 participants in this group and it was amazing to watch A the variety. There's a little bit of skepticism in the room. There's a little bit of skepticism in the room. There's a little bit of excitement too, though there always is, because some people like to play with Legos. But then the question when you get that level of seniority is is this fluffy or is this a waste of time? Are we actually going to get something? And I think the reason why I love it so much is A. It was amazingly impactful.

Speaker 1: 14:39

We really looked at the communication journey from a standpoint of what does world-class communication look like in a senior leadership team, and we got to a point where everyone had a chance to express their thoughts and their ideas. Using the Lego models. We looked at the negative side of things. Think of the worst team you've ever worked for. Build a model that shows what horrible communication looks like. Let's take a look at a model of what amazing communication looks like. Let's take a look at what communication looks like from a psychological safety perspective or from a candor perspective. And we started putting a lot of these lenses to it and what ended up happening is, after about two and a half three hours, we were able to really pinpoint about three different, very important point of views on this leadership team, and that were there was a group of people that was extremely frustrated with the level of psychological safety. They wanted to feel like they were able to express their opinions and their thoughts in a safe way. There was another group of people that felt like there was a responsibility in everyone in the group, needed to have a certain level of candor with each other. And then there was another person in the group this was actually the CEO who really did not necessarily disagree with those, but felt like everyone had a responsibility to really put in the legwork and the effort before bringing up ideas, thoughts or opinions.

Speaker 1: 15:56

So you get these three aspects all rotating around one another right. We need to have candor and speak our mind and speak up. We need to be able to feel safe to speak up, but we also need to put in the due diligence If we're going to bring up an opinion or a thought or an idea that we've actually thought about it right, we're not just winging it and firing from the hip. And the thing is, when you look at all three of those, they're all doable. You just have to have these expectations with each other in that reflection point, and so to be able to get to that type of information in two and a half, three hours is amazing, and to do so in such a fun and playful way.

Speaker 1: 16:30

And that was that's why that was such a favorite for me because the play aspect. It really allows people to put aside some of the group dynamics that stops us from communicating effectively. You put eight, 10, 12 people in a room. You're going to have hierarchy differences, you're going to have ego differences, you're going to have extroversion, introversion, all of these things histories, backgrounds, all of this comes into play in every type of meeting and with this play aspect, especially with this Lego serious play method that gets reduced massively, if not even eliminated, because you're so people are so focused on the model that they're building. And how do I create the story around what? My thoughts are? That it allows for a much more open expression in a very safe way, but it also keeps the tangents very much out of the way. It keeps people very focused on the topic at hand. We're not allowing ourselves to go off in one direction or another, so we can get to the topic at hand, really understand where everyone's at.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah, it really cuts through some of the dynamics that might be happening right.

Speaker 2: 17:31

It removes all of the minutiae that shows up in team dynamics and it seems really powerful to come to this joint agreement in just under two hours on how you're going to operate as a team in terms of communication and idea sharing, which is really fantastic.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Francesca and I have facilitated, like you, a ton of learning and sometimes, when you're working with teams, those dynamics especially when you're talking about how are we going to operate, how do we prefer to work Like, how do we come together with different working styles and show up as a team together To your good point some of those dynamics can take the conversation off the rails and you start to go down these routes that are not productive and not getting to know. But what can we do together? So I love the concept of how this offers a level of focus and safety for everyone to share their ideas, and it's pretty impactful to come to a joint leadership agreement on this is how we're going to operate in just share their ideas, and it's pretty impactful to come to a joint leadership agreement on this is how we're going to operate in just under two hours, and everyone feels positive about that outcome because they all contributed in a way that is really beautiful.

Speaker 1: 18:35

It does From a psychological perspective. There's a couple of key things that's really fun to see. So one and this is part of the facilitation as well is when people build their model. So let's say I have my model. Of course I've got a visual of AIDS, I've got a little duck in front of me, but let's say this is my idea of like world-class communication is speaking your mind? I don't know right. I could say that that's what this, uh, sure, we'll go with that. But what happens is, as I'm talking and usually someone does build a duck they build something weird and something it looks like something a five year old might make.

Speaker 1: 19:04

People are generally looking at the model and not the person, and so what happens is that displaces the attention onto whatever the thing is and not directly at you, and so it makes it easier to talk. One because the attention is on the model itself, but also, too, because this idea is out here now, and so now I'm not talking about this thing or this opinion that's in my head, but I'm talking about this weird little toy thing. That's a pile of Legos, which is not threatening, which is easy to, it's playful. Usually there's some fun metaphors going on in there you can see some physicality, no-transcript, say in the middle of sessions wow, I didn't really need to go that deep or I didn't mean to say that much or I didn't mean to go that far, but because it's so safe to talk, right, it's usually not a regretful thing, but it's more of a reflection.

Speaker 1: 20:06

Oh, I can't believe I just said that in this group of people that I never would have said this if we were just having a verbal discussion. But it's really. I think it's empowering too, where people are like oh yeah, you know what? I'm glad I said that right, because it is what people truly think. They put time into building this model and their thoughts and their opinions. And, yeah, they get to take that psychological safety and feel a little bit better about sharing whatever it is they might be doing.

Speaker 3: 20:44

I'm wondering about how play shows up when it's not facilitated. How play shows up potentially at work, or should could show up at work, and just the dailiness of work. Why is play essential for someone at work? And just the dailiness of work. Why is play essential for someone at work in general?

Speaker 1: 21:02

Oh, there's so many. There's so many good answers to this that if you think about play, you go back to childhood. Right, and here's the fun part If you want to research, play and go read books on play, like 90% of the books on play, if not 98%, are all about kids. Because kids, that's what kids do, right, it's natural Watch children. No one needs to be taught how to play. They just go, they do it, they play pretend, they try things out, and so play gives us so many different tools. So one it allows us to try things right. And we think about everything that's been written about embracing failure. Do kids think about failure when they try stuff while playing?

Speaker 1: 21:38

No they just do, and if it doesn't work out, fine, I learned, I go on to the next thing, I go on to the next thing, I go great. I think one is trying things, you're able to try things on, You're able to play, and it gives you a way to experience something in a very low risk type of scenario. No-transcript, little bit goofy, being a little bit silly, allows you to take all of these borders that we have in our mind right, all of these boundaries, all of these walls, all of these rules, and get rid of them and start thinking about things in different ways than you might have done before. One of my favorite exercises is an improv exercise. I do this with my audience. I have people pair up and I use an animal of some kind of. One person gets to be a llama and the other person gets to be a lion. Everyone choose and I'll set a timer for 45 seconds and have one person say lions are great because X and they have to list as many things as they can and they have to say lions are great because every time so. Lions are great because they have big teeth. Lions are great because they have giant veins. Lions are great because they're king of the jungle, and after about 45 seconds, the other person's counting.

Speaker 1: 23:11

We asked the audience how many did you get? Seven, eight, nine, 10, 15, whatever the number is. But then we asked what did people say? And they all said things that were true about lions right, that they are kings of the jungle, that they have, that they eat meat, whatever that might be Like. Did anyone say that lions are great at their taxes? Did anyone say that lions are great because they wear polka dots on Halloween? Did anyone say that lions are great because they make an amazing vegetarian chili?

Speaker 1: 23:33

And everyone's, yeah, they start laughing. You're like what, wait a minute, hold on. They're like there's no rules to this, you can make up whatever you want. And so then we flip it around and we have the llamas go and we do the same exact thing, but this time take off those limitations that you put on yourself. Right, with this rule that it has to actually be true about lions, and then we watch everyone do 1.5 to 2. Times more ideas. Right, instead of going, I'm just coming out with as many ideas as possible. I'm really trying to think of what is actually true, about why it's, and so that is just an interesting framework to think of.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Okay, so now, when we're trying to be creative or innovative at work, what type of rules are we putting in our own way? And this is where that playful mindset right. How do we use play to have more fun, come up with better ideas? And a lot of times we need more ideas to come up with better. If you ask people for ideas, the first like one to seven or eight ideas. Everyone just comes up with the same things. They're very similar because we have a very systematic mind Not 100%, but for the most part it's when you start getting to idea nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. And yeah, sometimes we need to get a little bit weird to come up with that thing. That is the brilliant idea. And the more ideas, the more creativity we can have, the more imagination, the more we can get out of our own way.

Speaker 3: 24:46

You said the mindset of play. So many times when I think about mindsets it comes down to a trigger question you can ask yourself so you get into the mindset? Is there a question you can ask yourself to say how do I get into play?

Speaker 1: 24:59

Yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways to do this. One of the things that I do on my own not shockingly, I use Legos because I have them, but I will actually build out my thoughts and ideas out of like on a table. I'll build it physically, I'll say this is what I'm doing for my business plan or my marketing plan or whatever, and I'll build it out of Lego and have some fun with it. Right, and then you can come up with some ideas. So that's one aspect to you could ask a question of and this is another exercise from design thinking is to give yourself different prompts of how might I solve this If I was Walt Disney? How might I solve this If I had no money? How might I solve this If had a trillion dollars? Or if I was, pick a name, right, if I was Harvey T Firestone, how would I solve this? Or pick anyone, and just give yourself a different frame and try to get out of your own way. And I think that's the hardest part is right, we know what we know and we're in our own minds all the time. Right, we're here, we're not going anywhere, but we have to recognize when we get in our own rut. This question could be very different for different people and it could be using a physical medium, it could be framing someone else, it could be utilizing music there's so many different triggers. But having something and trying something and literally playing with it is step one. Each person is probably going to be a little bit different, but the fact that you're trying is probably that first step into figuring out how each person can make that true for themselves.

Speaker 1: 26:33

The cool other part of play is it's fun, right, it can be fun. The cool other part of play is it's fun, right, it can be fun. And I think one of the other aspects is we think about stress, and especially now we're getting much smarter about how the brain reacts to stress and what cortisol does to our creativity. And yet when we get people in a playful state, their ideas are better, they're more creative, they work better together. And one of the other aspects of play that works with especially with children and adults, is when we play with people we actually connect. Think of when you play.

Speaker 1: 27:02

There's a wonderful book out there titled Aptly Play by Dr Stuart Brown, and he outlines eight attributes of play, and one of those attributes is a diminished consciousness of self. So when we think about how we think about ourselves, we're in a stressful board meeting with eight people or 10, and how are we going to fix this thing? Everyone's stressed right, and so we're not going to come up with our best ideas when we're stressed and we're feeling under pressure. But if we can deflate that a little bit and get a little play and start building off of each other's ideas and getting that consciousness of self, instead of sitting there wondering how am I being viewed? How I speak up? Should I not speak up? Will I be judged for this? When we're playing, we're just bringing our full self forward, and so we connect better, work better together. Everything just gets better. We have that play aspect attached to it just freaking refreshing too.

Speaker 3: 27:50

like I, I have a six-year-old and it's always amazing to watch him play and to your very good point, that he doesn't give a shit about how he looks, if he's feeling, if he's dirty, if it's the right thing to do or not, and your idea around to around that diminished sense of self, or even the fact that people don't care what other people think they're just creating or in that mode. We lose that so quickly. I think about adolescence and everything else. We lose it really quickly. And then to be able to come back to yourself and your work and come back to play in your work in these little ways is just so refreshing.

Speaker 1: 28:27

There's an important thing there, right, some of us lose play, yeah, and it's in those teenage years, and I've been thinking a lot about this because I have a couple of nieces that are in that age.

Speaker 1: 28:39

We're there, you know, I think one's 12 and the other's 15 right now, and it's been really interesting because I visit them often and to watch this sort of transition, and especially from a play mindset, because, as you said before, kids are like I'm going to go play, I'm going to go do goofy things, we're going gonna go nuts. And yet I watched as the oldest started having this little bit of a divide and I think if in the I started to think about this and reflect on my own life and I'm actually curious if this was true to you too but there becomes this point where you start wanting to be an adult and for some reason, we decide that play is not part of that. And I remember going to being at the breakfast table or whatever with my parents or aunts and sitting there and yeah, so we are going to have this little more conversation. I am an adult and I'm going to not be silly and playful. And then 10 minutes later you're off playing and you're being silly.

Speaker 1: 29:32

So you create this interesting divergent path where you still want to play as a kid but you also want to be adult because you see all this cool responsibility like I can stay up later, eat what I want all these freedoms that come with adulthood, and somehow you just see this divergence happen and I think a lot of folks don't necessarily find their way back to play right, because you're also in those teenage and those adolescent years. You're trying to figure out how you fit in at school with your peers. You figure out who you are, how you dress a face full of acne or whatever's going on. You're also worried about what people think of you, that you're a little bit more protected with who you are and you're not as free as you were with that five or six year old.

Speaker 1: 30:09

this is how we're gonna play right, let's just have a fun time. I don't care what anyone thinks. Now you care what everyone thinks a lot. And so that transition we just have to find our way back to play Again. It's fun, it's joy, it's creativity, it's learning. It's learning, it's trying things, it's growing.

Speaker 1: 30:25

If you ever want to connect with people or make friends in a very quick way, go find a way to play with them. Go play on a sports team. Go play board games With adults too. One of the cool aspects of this book play is they outline different archetypes as adults, because we play different as we get older. Some people want to play sports and games and things that are still considered very play like, but to other people, things like collecting things becomes play, or collecting experiences becomes a version of play. One of my favorites is there's the planner, or the director is one of the terms that Dr Brown uses for one of the archetypes, and this is the person who loves to like plan parties or plan vacations, and they want to put all this stuff together. I'm like that's not play for me, but for some people apparently that's really fun. They can't wait to do that and that's play for them. So it's interesting as we get older too, we can recognize what play means for and and it's going to be different from person to person.

Speaker 3: 31:21

Uh, like, running is running play. It depends why you're running, how. No, I know, yeah, but to your point, some there's I have a lot of friends that that is absolutely play like they, they live for it, live for it and I would just be like shoot me in the face.

Speaker 2: 31:33

Yes, I am totally the planner for fun. It's so funny because I'm like the travel planner. I am the friend people call to find they want to go to Italy for 20 days on this type of budget. What can we make happen? And I figure it out and it's like a puzzle. I think it's fun to figure it out.

Speaker 1: 31:54

I love it. No way, some people love it.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Yeah, exactly, this is just where my joy is versus.

Speaker 1: 32:02

That's the fun. Right, as we have unique, different ways. One of the recommendations of Dr Brown, in the book too, is, as an adult, if you're not finding play, is to think about what you liked as a kid. What did you like to play? And go back to some of that stuff. Right, and maybe there's play archetypes that you've not tried. It could be. The explorer is one of the play archetypes, the collector, the artist, where just creation is fun. I think I have a lot of friends I like to cook. You know for a lot of other friends that experimentation and creating dishes, that's play. That could be fun because you're creating something, and so there's so many things that can be played that we can open our definition.

Speaker 2: 32:44

We can the play that we can open our definition. We could broaden it a little bit into just playing, pretend or goofing off or being silly. Yeah, I love that that, that you're providing this like larger framework of what play can look like and it's not just what we traditionally think of as play. For sure, absolutely was anyone else guilty of doing like weird plays with your cousins, or creating musicals and then making your family watch them. Anyone I think that's just me, just me I used to love to play like hotel or restaurant.

Speaker 3: 33:05

I used to love to organize things, puzzles like mel it's interesting to think about. There's windows to the soul throughout life and play early on window can absolutely show up in your adult life as well.

Speaker 1: 33:18

With the technology tools. Now, you know my nieces and nephews. They make movies, they record and get scripts and all of these things. One of the things that always amazes me most is they don't sit down and think about it. Let's talk about how this is going to work and make a big plan, which is what adults do. They're like no, we're just going to do it, we're just going to jump in and figure it out. It goes back to that like just no hesitation to do, and there's something empowering about that, there's something so fantastic about that. Are you guys familiar with the marshmallow spaghetti exercise? This is like a corporate thing that's been done for years.

Speaker 3: 33:51

No, tell us more.

Speaker 1: 33:53

It's an interesting exercise. You basically break up a team into groups and you have three or four people and you give them, like there's three, I would say three things. You give them like a box of spaghetti noodles, marshmallow and like some tape and that's it. And the challenge is to be like who can build the highest tower out of these spaghetti noodles and marshmallow and to spoil what basically happens.

Speaker 1: 34:14

They've done this with MBA students and like high-powered lawyers and all these different types of groups that you'd think would be really successful, and the ones who are the most successful it's five-year-olds and they come up with the tallest tower. Because what happens is the adults as they sit, they think, they talk, they debate, they go back and forth on what we should we do, what could we do, what should we do? You have a whole box of spaghetti noodles and kids just go, they just start trying stuff and they fail, they try, they fail, they try, they fail, they try, they fail, and they get so much learning done in such a short period of time that they finally get a much, much better ending, and yet we adults just talk ourselves but you're over thinkers yeah, just go do it, just try it, see what happens at the team level, day-to-day, outside of planned events.

Speaker 2: 35:14

How can leaders really set the tone for an environment where, let's be honest, there's some real boring shit we got to do, but it's a day to day or a deal with. But how can leaders foster this environment of fun or thinking without our egos or removing the over thing to everyday work problem? What can they be doing?

Speaker 1: 35:41

problem. What can they be doing? Part of that is recognizing like who who on your team might have a talent at doing this. There's a new psychometric personality exercise out there called principles this new ray, dalio, adam grant, and but there's actually a level of humor and humor is one of their traits and what's interesting is this humor trait not shocking very high end that people they're more lighthearted, they tend to want to create and make fun environments, and so I think a lot of it might be. If you're a leader, maybe that isn't your bag. Find someone whose it is and maybe give them that responsibility or ask them to help maybe create a more fun environment or create maybe it is a happy hour or a lunch or get some ideas out there. And I think work with the team too right. I think there's a general. Some communication should happen before and because there might be a team that maybe as a whole team doesn't have a lot of humor and maybe they don't want a ton of fun.

Speaker 1: 36:31

I do think that every team should have some fun. There's a level, but find that person and empower them to do that I was, I think. One of the reasons why play has been so central to what I have done in all of my jobs, no matter what role I've been in, is very early on in my career, as I work for and with a lot of people who did like to use play a lot when I worked in retail stores in in college. I consistently work with leaders. We find ways to to have fun, and so I just think there needs to be an intent and then finding the person or people with the skill set that would like to be able to do that and give it a try.

Speaker 2: 37:06

What do you recommend to the leader who wants to introduce this to their skeptical team on how they can use play to innovate or build it into the workplace? I know, obviously find the person on your team who's good at play, but what do you recommend if they've never done this before? It might not be part of the larger culture, but it's a microculture a leader would like to set up to make their team highly engaged and productive, more collaborative, more communicative. What would you recommend?

Speaker 1: 37:40

I've yet to come across this. A team of skeptics is tough, don't get me wrong. There's probably one or two skeptics in many groups, especially if I'm doing a lot of larger, like 25 to 50 person group sessions, and there's a couple in that group.

Speaker 2: 37:53

Always.

Speaker 1: 37:53

You can't avoid it. But the fun part is, especially with the Lego sessions, is it goes away almost immediately. It's amazing. So one trust that the Lego method itself, actually it'll just work on its own. Two, I think it's just asking people to be open. Come in, give it a try. There's no wrong answer. Right, you can't do wrong. You're just going to have legos. Just be yourself, right? Yeah, engage however you want to engage. I think letting people know that the expectation is just letting them be themselves is maybe it takes a little bit of pressure off. And what I've found is that the cynics usually come around about 20 minutes into the session because they're like they're not sure, but they don't want to like be the person who's just not participating. Right, and they're like, okay, fine, I'll build. My first build is always build a tower, whatever you want to build yeah hours.

Speaker 1: 38:44

but something happens when people open that bag of legos and they start playing, like little smiles come to mouth, they start getting into it and they're not competing, they're not building a thing, they're just. They can do whatever they want. And again their colleagues are smiling, people are having fun and there's something about that. We'll say on the good side of like group think right, where you get these people together and suddenly, if every, if nine out of 10 people are laughing and having a good time, that 10th is eventually right. Even if they want to resist it a little bit, they'll get into it.

Speaker 1: 39:14

And it always happens because I'm just building stuff with Legos and you got little like minig figures and at some point you just can't take yourself too seriously in that type of situation.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 39:25

Yeah, I like that. We just talked about leaders and then I think about employees, one of the things Mel and I talk about the future of work all the time. We know deeply human connections are going to be so key and things like innovation, creativity, empathy, capabilities that are truly differentiated from AI, especially around play, because play, to me, is one of those competencies that incorporate all of these other aspects like empathy, like creativity, like innovation, wrapped in one Employees being able to advocate for play or to be able to come to work with play or know how to incorporate play, is so key. Yet a lot of people are again working in ops or in accounting or in these very kind of honestly stodgy places. So I'm curious as to if you have an employee that is working in corporate America, usa, and they really want to bring play more into it, what are the first one or two steps? I know we talked about the mindset earlier, but I am curious about what's a safe way somebody can advocate for bringing play into their personal work more.

Speaker 1: 40:37

So there's two aspects of that right. There's the individual side. It could be even starting with a colleague or two and trying something right. Maybe finding a method online or again like design thinking is also a fantastic methodology that you can take bits and pieces from to create playful, innovative, unique ways of approaching things For a broader team. If you have a team, if you're a leader, again, it's taking those baby steps, it's starting and one anchoring play and creativity and imagination to hopefully some type of core value within the organization.

Speaker 3: 41:09

Because I think that matters too. If you're just a company and all you want to do is yeah, if your values are to make money, then I don't know that play is right for you.

Speaker 1: 41:17

But if you're in a purpose-driven type organization that truly wants to excel at customer experience, employee experience, making a difference in people's lives and whatever again, whatever product service that you're in and I think most companies have this right, I think most companies have this right, I think most companies I've talked to or worked with there's a level that we want to create a place where people like to work and they create good products and services for our customers and happy employees and engaged employees mean happy and engaged customers and all of that is connected. I think if you have those, then play isn't extremely hard to get. It's finding the right methods that people can apply to, and it could be like starting small. It could be just having a little bit of fun. It could be just talking about what play actually means to people in the room. Like, how did you play? What was your favorite game as a kid? You could start with something as little as that.

Speaker 2: 42:19

Brandon, we have what we call a rapid round. It's quick questions, it could be yes or no or the first thing you think of. It could be longer too if it's oh no. I have more to say about about this. Are you open to doing a rapid round with us? Yes, do it.

Speaker 3: 42:36

I feel like I'm on a game show.

Speaker 1: 42:37

You are a game show okay to have more creativity.

Speaker 2: 42:44

Is it a solo walking situation or brainstorming situation?

Speaker 1: 42:49

Oh, it's both. I think it's both. Yeah, I am a walker, I love walking, get out, it's a physical movement. Yeah, our bodies and minds are connected. Walking for sure. But a good brainstorm is fun too, because you can bring other people.

Speaker 2: 43:04

Yeah, get that outside perspective. I feel like, francesca, you and I are brainstorming every day we go through. Oh my God. I feel like, francesca, you and I are brainstorming every day we go through. Oh my God, we're like what about this?

Speaker 3: 43:14

The problem is we have too many ideas that we have to be like stick to the plan, yeah, stick to the plan, yeah, walking brainstorm, though we would just be on fire, yeah, that's true, walking brainstorm, I love that yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:27

That's a good combo.

Speaker 1: 43:33

Is a playful leader, a better leader. I'm biased. I'm gonna say yeah, I would, but that would be by preference, I think. Maybe not in general, but for me, yes, for me yeah, I think so good, okay, best work day, pick me up play activity oh, my gosh man.

Speaker 1: 43:51

I just just because it popped in my head, I I would love to go swing on some monkey bars. I feel like that would be. If that was a thing, I would just go do it. I think generally adults are not allowed on children's playgrounds most of the time, but if there was one at my work, go to this.

Speaker 2: 44:04

You may just start a new fad. Instead of all the ping pong tables. It's a build in jungle game. I would do that.

Speaker 3: 44:12

That would be fun. Have you all tried to be? I tried the other day because my son can do pull-ups. I have no upper body strength. I'm like what happened here. What?

Speaker 2: 44:18

happened here. The last time I was at a playground I really embarrassed myself because the little animals that are like on that weird bendy thing that you like, so I got on one and flung myself off because I went a little too hard. Can creativity thrive under deadlines? Please say yes.

Speaker 1: 44:38

No, I think so. I think so Because I think sometimes pressure can be a good lever. So I think back to in my last job. I remember planning a manager summit and this was like a global thing. We're already doing it in like Barcelona and Shanghai, and they gave me like six weeks to the first one at least. But the pressure summit and this was like a global thing, we were already doing it in like Barcelona and Shanghai, and they gave me like six weeks to the first one at least. But the pressure forced me to get really creative, to understand, because we didn't have objectives or anything like that, and so it was it did. It forced me to move and try things so we could figure out what worked quickly. No, I do think so. I think there's a level of reason within that If you're like, do this tonight by 5, that's probably going to kill creativity. But yeah, if there's a little bit of time in there, I think pressure can help.

Speaker 2: 45:18

Okay, Best creativity booster music or silence.

Speaker 1: 45:26

Can I say I want to say walking. I feel like I know we said that before, but I think walking and it could be with music or without, I think that's a very personal preference.

Speaker 2: 45:34

Okay, okay, morning meetings. Would you provide coffee or games?

Speaker 1: 45:41

Ooh both Okay, yeah, again, I think you've really got to tap into the personalities. I think there's some people that are like I'm a morning person, so let's go. I want coffee and games, but I know other people that might stare daggers at me If there was no coffee.

Speaker 2: 45:56

they're like no. Game is still noon, I'm not showing up. Very cool. I appreciate you answering this rapid round. It has been super pleasurable to have you as a guest and we're so excited to share with our listeners all that they can learn from you from play Brandon. How can folks get in touch with you?

Speaker 1: 46:17

You can get in touch with me via my website. It's innatecreatescom. You can also go to brandonthelegoguycom.

Speaker 2: 46:24

Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1: 46:26

Thank you so much for having me Bless, all right, bye friend, that would be blessed.

Speaker 2: 46:29

All right, bye, friend. Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, Mel Plett this episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, join us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend at your work, friendscom, or visit us on your work, friendscom. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two.

Hire Your Next Job

Your Work Friends Podcast: Job Moves with Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta

Career paths change…

The climb isn’t always up. Sometimes the best move is sideways, bold, or completely unexpected. In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Michael B. Horn (Co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, Harvard Graduate School of Education) and Bob Moesta (Founder of Rewired Group, Kellogg School of Management) to discuss their groundbreaking book "Job Moves" and revolutionize how you think about career transitions.

Discover why the traditional job search process is broken and learn how to take control of your career path by "hiring" your next job. Our guests break down the four primary career quests that drive job changes, debunk the myth of "getting lucky" in job searches, and reveal why money isn't the real motivator behind career decisions.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Just because you're good at it doesn't mean you like to do it. Yeah, part of it is being able to actually know who you are and know what you're good at.

Speaker 2: 0:22

I almost wore that same lipstick today that would have been hilarious.

Speaker 3: 0:25

Sometimes you just need, like a, just a boost you know, yeah, so really it looks really beautiful. Thank you Honestly. There's just so much schmutz going on in the world right now the news cycle I cannot I cannot, I can't keep up with this news cycle Listen. We had a pretty kick-ass conversation last week.

Speaker 2: 0:43

This has been one of my most favorite discussions in a long long time. I mean, I love all our guests, but this has just been a really. It was just a rad conversation.

Speaker 3: 0:54

Yeah, I thought so too. We talked to Michael B Horn and Bob Moesta.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Yeah, Michael Horn is the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and he teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Education. And Bob is the founder of Rewired Group and also an adjunct lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management for Northwestern University and also a fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and just all around amazing human beings to talk to us about their new book, Job Moves, Job Moves. As someone who has been deeply involved with talent acquisition and now I do career coaching for individuals, I just think the tool that they've pulled together on their website and understanding the quest that you're on which, by the way, we all have four quests that we typically are on to decide what our next move is going to be Highly recommend reading the book just to understand that.

Speaker 3: 1:53

This book, honestly, is giving people permission to hire their next job. We are all in that position. This is not where you're at the mercy of employers. This is really permission and an amazing opportunity and, honestly, the data to tell you no, what you really need to do is be honest with yourself about what you want, what your strengths are, and then go out there and hire your next job. This conversation was so fun for me just because a they're just so well-researched, great conversationalists and, honestly, gave a lot of really great tips on how do you really think about hiring your next job.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Yeah, if you want to feel empowered with your career and the decisions you're making around your career, this is the book to read and this is the episode to listen to. So with that, here's Michael and Bob. Let's just get to the point real quick. What's the biggest myth that folks tell themselves about their career, growth or progress?

Speaker 1: 3:00

The one that surprised me the most was how much they thought they got lucky to get their next job, and when you really kind of unpacked everything they said and how they did it, luck is more the fact that they were prepared and the opportunity appeared and they were able to actually seize it, and so I wouldn't call that luck, but they wouldn't assign any kind of causation to it. And what we found was that there are very simple things that actually have to happen to you to make you ready for the next job and then all of a sudden, you only see them when these other things happen to you.

Speaker 4: 3:30

So that's one of them. Bob, you stole mine. I was going to say the exact same thing, so I agree. The only other thing I might add is I think people discount the role that their network plays for them when they're looking for a job. They think it's a very solo like. I applied online to hundreds of jobs. These days, increasingly, AI supported me and they don't realize the importance of their network as part of that process that Bob alluded to. Coming in, making them aware of opportunities, helping them get the job, being the trusted broker right so that I will trust and actually hire you. Most jobs are filled by someone that you know in network. They're not filled by anonymous, random things. So that's the second one I might add is people discount the role of their network around them.

Speaker 1: 4:20

I'm going to add a third. The third thing to me was money. Money is a means to an end, so money turns out to be about respect, or money turns out to be I have to provide for my family. More Like. There's like five or six different definitions of why people want more money, not one. And you start to realize like people are mixing them all up and they're just using that lever of here. Let me offer you more money, and it's it's not just more money that makes job the work satisfying.

Speaker 2: 4:45

I love to hear you say that, because I just had a conversation with a friend who was feeling so down on themselves because they hadn't reached what they felt was success in terms of salary. And she's worked with incredible people, incredible organizations, but somehow that was the sole thing telling her or at least her own narrative that she has not been successful because of that one element. So it's good to remember that doesn't define your true success.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Well, but the fact is it's one of the wrong metrics, but it's a metric of how what success or progress feels like for them, and so when you start to put that there, you don't have the why of like. Really what I want is respect, and ultimately there's other ways to get respect, and so this is why, for example, sometimes a position change will actually help people feel that progress, and without a salary increase. There's many variables here at play and ultimately it was very fascinating because we did almost like the exit interview but the real exit interviews. We did over a thousand of them and it was so fun to hear the stories and what had to happen to them to make them ready to look and then ultimately how they found it. It was kind of what the book is all about.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Yeah, I love it. What gets in the way of true progress? What? How do we remove it?

Speaker 4: 5:57

Part of it is. I mean, starting with that, we don't actually know what progress looks like for us, right? So we'll tell ourselves these storylines. Money is a great example. I want more money, and once you want more money, you want more and more. There's no limit to that, right, without understanding underneath causality of what's actually driving me to say these are the things that are not good enough in my current role, these are the priorities that I really want to get in my next role. And so not really understanding what progress looks like for you, I think is actually a big thing that gets in the way of progress. And then the second one that's maybe sort of goes in concert with that is I don't actually know how to make the trade-offs for that next role to get the progress that I really desire.

Speaker 4: 6:42

And the thinking behind that is a fewfold One. There's no perfect job on every dimension. Every job is going to have some suck in it, it's going to have some things that I don't love about it. But what are the things that I'm going to consciously choose, not settle for, but say like, hey, I'm going to take the lower salary so that I get the basically non-existent commute, I get to have the title I get to be around my kids, whatever the set of things are. We could drill down deeper into all of those, but how do I make those trade-offs? Most people, I think, don't know how to make those and as a result, they get caught up in roles that sound good in paper. They're quick returns to ego, but they're not actually helping them make that progress.

Speaker 2: 7:24

Yeah, I believe it. I think I've definitely found myself in that position, right. And then, when you don't measure the trade-offs and what's really important to you, you find yourself in the same position just two years later, like here I am again.

Speaker 4: 7:39

The yellow brick road was supposed to lead somewhere, but somehow I just looped back and we're right where we started.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I have one more to add on this. I think one of the other things is people don't have a realistic or real understanding of what they're good at, what they suck at, what gives them energy, what they don't really know who they are and how they're driven. They haven't taken the time to study themselves, and so that's part of this is having people reflect back and find those moments where they got energy and find out those moments where the energy got sucked out of them. And just because you're good at it doesn't mean you like to do it, and so part of it is being able to actually know who you are and know what you're good at. But I always think for me, the thing to learn most is what do you suck at and how do you actually realize like you don't need to get better at that?

Speaker 4: 8:27

You need to find a teammate who's actually who loves to do this stuff you suck at, yeah, and actually, mel, just stay on that for a moment, cause Bob put me on the hot seat in the last week or two on this, where he was like saying but you're so. I stopped wanting to manage people when my twin girls were born in 2014. And Bob was like but you're really good at managing, like that was something that was like a superpower of yours, and I'm like. It was like but you're really good at managing. That was like a superpower of yours. And I'm like it's the last thing I freaking want to do. And he was basically like right, because just because you're good at it, the context changed doesn't mean you get energy from it anymore.

Speaker 4: 8:56

You did Right, but here's the thing. It goes back to your friend who was telling themselves the narrative of like I need to make this much money or whatever it is. We often say like, oh, success is then I'm going to be a manager and I'm going to have this big team and I'm going to measure based on the direct reports and their direct reports, and et cetera, et cetera. And like maybe that isn't what gives you energy at this stage, even if it is something that you could do, but we don't pay attention to the context and those signals about ourselves.

Speaker 2: 9:25

Yeah, Just because you can doesn't mean you should always right. Just a good rule of thumb and your, our priorities and our values change over time, so that's constantly like you have your twins and so that's right.

Speaker 2: 9:38

Things change. Okay. Something I loved I'm going to pivot really quick. Something I really loved in the book because, as a career coach myself and a former recruiter, I always tell people you're interviewing your employer just as much as they're interviewing you as a reminder. And what I really loved was you both said it is critical to hire your next job. Why Tell our folks why?

Speaker 1: 10:04

So this is one of the things that we flipped the lens on, and we used a theory that I built with Clay Christensen called jobs to be done, and the whole premise is people don't buy products, they hire them to make progress in their life.

Speaker 1: 10:16

And so part of this was to realize, at some point in time, when you talk to people around hiring, you start to realize actually the lens is flipped. And the fact is, know people around hiring, you start to realize, like it's actually the lens is flipped and the fact is we, as an employer, you think you hire somebody, but the fact is everybody's an at will employee, or most of them are at will employees and they choose to come to you or not, and so it's actually they're hiring you more than their, than the employer is hiring the employee. And so you start to realize when that's the case, you actually need to study the employees and say why, what causes them to say today's the day I'm going to leave and what causes you to say today's the day I'm going to move to this thing better? It's really, ultimately, we're trying to get employees to hire better because once you find the place, it's the right place. It's not work anymore.

Speaker 4: 11:12

Yeah, Right, yeah, I was. I was thinking, mel, when you, when, when you said that like of of how you're coaching people to interview just as much as they're being interviewed. That really changes the agency, it really changes the equation, and I think it goes back to what Bob said in the beginning around luck is, the reason people don't do it is they think that I'm going to cross my fingers and just hope that this works out and I'll be lucky enough to be the one chosen for this job, and they're not thinking about what their priorities are. What does progress mean for me and that I get to choose? Is this the job I'm going to do in exchange for the benefits around, and not just around money, vacation, et cetera, but also the work I get to do on a daily basis and who I interact with, and so forth.

Speaker 2: 11:59

Yeah, I was equating it to being an adult and realizing you still have free will to make choices. Like I want a piece of cake, so I'm going to go have one for dinner, and you sometimes forget, in all of the everyday schmutz of life, like, oh, I do have agency and free will in these choices.

Speaker 4: 12:17

So we're the social contagion right Of like. We tell ourselves these narratives of how we think we want to be for others and how we think we're supposed to show up as opposed to. Well, what do you want and how do we understand that?

Speaker 1: 12:30

The other thing to me is the fact is is that when you study kind of the employee, employer side of this and you learn about the job description, you realize that the job description is just made up.

Speaker 1: 12:41

It's just made up and so everybody's trying to morph themselves to fit this unrealistic ideal situation of like make the people fit the job, when the reality is is what we should be doing is actually shaping the work that to fit the people. Because when you actually do that intentionally, you start to realize like okay, I suck at these three things, so, and it's part of my job, so how do I actually figure out how to get rid of that and do more of the stuff I'm really good at and find somebody to do the stuff that I suck at? And so it's this notion of like. At some point, if you really study how people make job descriptions, it's either they copy it, they do chat, gpt, they then take all the things that they don't want to do and add it to the list and it's just, and so as an employee, you don't realize that that's actually all made up and very negotiable in some cases on certain dimensions.

Speaker 3: 13:33

I want to back up what you're saying because, having led a lot of talent organizations, I can tell you that most people don't even know what they're hiring for or what they want people to really do. And the idea of opening up the opportunity to have that conversation and figure out how could this fit together, I think is really on the table, because it is shocking how many hiring managers and, honestly, how many like talent organizations don't really know what they want their people to do.

Speaker 1: 13:58

By the way, the notion of a hiring manager. I got confused by the whole process because I'm thinking, well, the hiring manager is the person inside the HR. I'm like no, no, that's the person that actually they're going to work for. I'm like, yeah, but who teaches them to write a job description? Nobody.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Nobody.

Speaker 1: 14:13

It's compliance cut and paste For half the time you're not even trained to be a manager. You're trained to be a leader, but nobody teaches management skills anymore right. You're just left out on that.

Speaker 4: 14:24

And this is why the job description has been so enduring, right? Is it's really a legal document to give me justification for my hiring and firing down the road as well, More than to your point, Francesca, like an actual set of what's this person going to do? How do I want them to contribute? What's the outcomes right? What's the work?

Speaker 2: 14:42

Yeah, we need a whole revamp on the job description. Yes, indeed.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Michael and I are going down that road. It's like we wrote this primarily for employees, to empower employees, because a billion people a year switch jobs. Most of them don't actually switch jobs in a positive way, and so part of it is how do we actually help them make better decisions so they can actually feel like they've made progress in their career. But along the way we've realized like there's so much about the employer around, kind of how do you manage, how do you do performance reviews, how do you think about fit, how do you actually rethink the hiring process and all those kinds of things, and it's really helping us kind of rethink a different way of kind of seeing it from that perspective.

Speaker 2: 15:23

We love to see it. So do we of seeing it from that perspective. We love to see it In the book. You touched on the great talent shortage and what's happening by 20, that it could exceed 85 million people. And we hear stories from folks all the time how they're applying to a thousand jobs and they have no luck, or they've been out of work for a year, right. But when you hear this one story, there's this massive talent shortage, and then you hear this other narrative that nobody can find a job. These two things are conflicting, right. So I'm hoping I can do some myth busting with you both here. Do employees actually hold the card.

Speaker 4: 15:59

So I think it's interesting. And let's just go deeper in the paradox, because the other piece of this is, if you looked at the job market, you'd be like it's actually really healthy what economists consider full employment, and people are coming off long-term unemployment and coming into the job market, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and yet it's taking longer and longer to hire. There's articles like in the Wall Street Journal even Harvard MBAs can't find jobs, and so there's all this anxiety on all sides of the market and I think what's happening is that there's a lot of paralysis because of that lack of clarity that we were just talking about of what do I really want? How would I know someone can actually do the things that I want them to do, and do they really know what they want to do and the trade-offs they're willing to make to go get it? So there's like a lot of lack of clarity on all sides. Might there be a skills gap? That's contributing Absolutely, but might it also be that we just don't have clarity about what work looks like and should be and so forth?

Speaker 4: 16:59

I think also the case, and in terms of this talent shortage. Look, all these are projections based off of a lot of macro stuff, so I think, believe it as far as you can throw a piece of paper, but I think the bottom line is that we know that there's a lot of change in skills. Ai is certainly changing the job market. The baby boomers are leaving, millennials are starting to retire, there are lower birth rates of people coming up underneath, and so that's sort of the dynamic in which you have this maelstrom we just described.

Speaker 4: 17:31

But from my perspective, employees do carry a lot more cards than they realize or would be employees. But it's not through this anonymous online posting pray for quote, unquote luck right Approach. It's instead getting clarity about myself what are my priorities, what's the work I want to do, and looking for fit, rather than just hoping someone hires me and me being able to go to the employer and be like this is what I can do, this is what I suck at. This is how I can help you and have that conversation, because I think it's a very different dialogue when you're coming in with your cards, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Face up that way, market has been automating the insanity because at some point it starts at what I call there's three layers of language. There's a pablum layer of language where we can, hey, how was your day? Oh, it was great, right, but it really wasn't great. Or if it was great, what made it be great right? And you start to realize that you have to get down from the pablum level to the fantasy level, past the fantasy down to the causal level, like what caused it to be a great day right? And so part part of it is what they did is they literally are taking everybody's resume. They're filtering it in certain ways. They're basically doing all these words Like I was trying to be on a public board and one of the things that they said is I had to have the word business leader in my CV like four to eight times, or I wouldn't even get past the filter.

Speaker 1: 18:51

I'm like what's that? Like, how does that work? I'm an engineer and I was taught to simplify and then automate, and so part of this is what we're trying to do is like how do we get this down to? What is a good job look like for me as an employee? What's the work that I need to get done. That helps me as the corporation. And how do we? Actually it's fit. It's just like product, market fit, but it's employee, employer fit, and so it's this notion of being able to do that and I think, like you said, if we stay at the pablum level, it's going to look like employment's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Speaker 1: 19:20

Because when your answer to the question is what's your greatest weakness? Oh, I work too hard. That's just not like. Come on, everybody sucks at something and you have to be able to actually be very articulated. What we found from the book is that when people can talk about look, I love to do these things, I get energy from doing this and oh, by the way, I can do these things, but they really suck the energy out of me. It allows people to actually be humble and become real. Which the pieces of paper?

Speaker 4: 19:47

don't do If we can just stay on it for one second right. Essentially, the employers we've already established are looking for unicorns, like these huge job descriptions with all these skills and whatever else. So the individuals on paper are then constructing themselves to look like superheroes, which the employers don't believe. And so if you come in there with an articulate conversation around, this is where I get energy, this is what I'm awesome at, this sucks my energy, this is what I suck at, etc. Etc. You're being honest and now we can talk about fit and you go from one of a thousand applications to one of three or four people who actually are going to fill what I need to make progress on the employer side. But it's because we've broken out of this game of like unicorns and superheroes that we all know is a lie.

Speaker 2: 20:33

Oh, agreed, it sounds like you have another book in your back pocket with the clarity shortage going on on both sides. So the unicorns. As a former recruiter, oh yeah, working with folks wanting the unicorn.

Speaker 1: 20:45

I think the other part is it's what the resume has, is what you did, it's not what you do, and just because you did, it means you don't like to do it. And so again it's this lack of clarity around what do you want to be doing and what are you actually good at and what gives you energy?

Speaker 3: 20:58

It's like this massive search for honesty on both sides. I feel like if the job market was dating, this would just be like. You know what I'm saying. You know it's like. This is how you mentioned. A million people change jobs every year. That's 30% of the workforce, which I think most people don't think that many people change jobs, but they do. And the reasons why you outlined in the book. You talk about four quests. What are those reasons why people leave?

Speaker 4: 21:47

First, as a sort of prelude, we found 30 forces that are pushing and pulling people to say, today's the day I might want to switch, and when certain combinations of them come together, they overwhelm the anxieties and the habits that are sort of holding us in place. And so the four quests for progress are essentially looking at the clusters, or closest to each other, if you will. That comprise a quest, or what Bob earlier would have called the job to be done. And so the first one we saw is what we call get out. So these are people I don't like the way I'm being managed. This is a job to nowhere. The company's going nowhere, fast stuff like that. It's a lot of push right and they're like I got to get out and fast.

Speaker 4: 22:29

On the flip side of that, there's what we call the take the next steppers, if you will, and these are people like hey, career, personal, whatever life milestones hitting, I'm ready to take that next step in my career. It feels almost like the logical next thing I would do. This is the closest to the career ladder, although it's not synonymous with it, and sort of it feels like I'm going to build on what gives me energy. I'm going to build on my current capabilities and let's keep on margin. Those are sort of the two poles, if you will. And then we have folks that say I want to regain alignment. And so these are people who say I actually like how I'm energized at the moment, but I don't like what they're asking me in terms of my capabilities to do, or I feel fundamentally disrespected on the what I do, and so these are people that I want to regain alignment in terms of the skills assets that I get to use on the job.

Speaker 4: 23:23

And then, on the other side of it is the regain control folks, and they're basically saying I actually, in this case, like what I get to do, but I don't like how it engages my energy or my time and things like that. I feel fundamentally out of whack. This might be the work-life balance folks, as an example. This might be people that say I'm being micromanaged. This might be people saying God, they're telling me I have to come into the office five days a week when I know I do the job well, when I get to work two days at home, what the heck's going on here? So these are the folks that are looking to regain control.

Speaker 4: 23:56

And basically these are four quests. They're not absolute. As you probably saw when you take the quiz. It gives you sort of a most likely fit score for each of them, but it helps you understand what's progress for me right now. And I'll give you a classic example. If you're like regain control and you're just going to march up the totem pole and take the next logical job right on the mythical career ladder in your current employer, that's probably going to be a fundamental mismatch for the things that you're actually looking for, and so you really want to understand what's driving me, what's causing me to say today's the day and then start to use that as a sorting mechanism.

Speaker 3: 24:37

Yeah, the assessment is really powerful and I consider myself someone that is savvy when it comes to my career or even knowing myself. I feel like I try to be very introspective and I will tell you, when I read the book, I realized that I haven't been as introspective as I could have throughout my career. I was just like go to whatever was paying more or the next step up. It was one of those two things. That's how I made my choices, even though it wasn't necessarily the work I liked to do, or even putting myself in a healthier situation. And I'm wondering, flipping this from, like, an employer perspective, why should employers care about the four quests?

Speaker 1: 25:16

The reason is twofold is like, at some point the current employees are going to want to make progress and if you don't have opportunities that actually match the quests of where they want to go, the reality is that they're going to have to go somewhere else, and so that's the first aspect here is that when we talk about trying to have company loyalty, it really is. It's not company loyalty like brand loyalty. This is literally like I'm willing to stay because you're actually looking out for me. Most people, they end up having to take a job because there's a vacancy in the job and the fact is it's not part of their career path, and they end up having to slot in because, oh, we have this opportunity for you, but it's not with any respect to who they are necessarily or what they want to do.

Speaker 1: 26:02

It's so we can actually keep the business going. So I think part of that is one. I think the second part is that to realize these quests, you can actually recruit completely differently. Go find people who are actually wanting to get out, Because at some point in time right now, when we put a job out there, we're only looking for the people who've already raised their hand. But I know that he's got these pushes I can attract and say, hey, don't want to be micromanaged anymore, Want to actually have a place where you can do these kinds of things. Come, come, talk to us.

Speaker 2: 26:25

My favorite recent example of a recruiter doing this really well was on LinkedIn this week where, in response to Zuckerberg's recent interview with Joe Rogan, an interview called out hey, if you don't want to work for a guy like that in an aggressive environment, come work for us, and it was flooded with comments. So I just think it's interesting for companies.

Speaker 1: 26:46

you know they'll win if they get ahead of it, and that's the thing is. But I think the employers have to realize they have to talk about.

Speaker 3: 26:53

What's the work you want me to do Is it the work you want them to do and is it also kind of tapping into that emotional need around, what they need to see in the quest, for example? You mentioned like if you don't want to be micromanaged, but is it tapping into that quest language?

Speaker 1: 27:08

Yes, and it's using that language we talk about. There's things that push you to leave and there's things that pull you to the new job, and it's ultimately the trade-offs you make that actually make it happen. For example, who's thinking about leaving? We talked to people who really left their job and went somewhere else, and so there's a big difference between wanting to do it and doing it, and so ultimately, there's a certain amount of energy that has to be part of it, and we have to understand both sides of that.

Speaker 4: 27:32

I think it's a really cool hack also right If you're a marketer or if you're trying to attract and understanding who you're trying to attract the pushes and pulls that cause people to leave. This is ultimately like their language, lived experience. This is like actually what's happening to them. It's not invented from what we would call the supply side. The company is imagining why someone might want to come to them. Companies imagining why someone might want to come to them. This is the real energy that causes someone to say today's the day and you get to use that to get the people that are right for your role. And, by the way, you get to continue to use that information on the day-to-day.

Speaker 4: 28:09

Because here's the third thing I would say we know that roughly two-thirds, depending on the survey of workers are completely disengaged. Call it quietly quitting whatever you want to do from their current role. That's not an employee I want to be hiring on my team. That's not someone I want. I want someone who's engaged, hard charging, doing a great job. So how do I make sure I understand the forces acting on them right now so I can better engage the people that I actually want to keep on my team?

Speaker 1: 28:40

I work mostly in the startup world and so I have some people have taken this and they've taken the pushes, which are, you know, do you feel micromanaged? Are you pushed across your billies? Are you bored? Do you not know where to go next? Like there's a list of 13 kind of things that have to happen, and if any four of them happen, that's when you start to get activated. But they're using that as part of the sit down and the quarterly review to say are any of these things happening? If they are, let's talk about them, because if there's no push, there's no way they're going to start thinking about anything else, and so part of it is to realize that the pushes are the things that actually create the space in the brain for you to kind of go like all right, I got to look somewhere else. So there's these little things, but those little things then accumulate into two things, and then three things, and then four things is where you go all right, it's time for me to look.

Speaker 3: 29:24

Yeah, I think, organizationally doing those kinds of audits as a team or even as an org I'm thinking for my own work and doing like culture strategy looking at those things and seeing is this true in our organization, is this the type of culture we have? And then we can get into the marketing exercise of saying, if you want this, this is where you can come in terms of us. So that's awesome. I want to go back to the employee side, because in the book you also talk about things like progress versus progression and I'm curious if you can talk through that.

Speaker 4: 29:52

So progression is that career ladder, the supply side right, we have our org charts. Career ladder, the supply side right, we have our org charts. You come in as an entry-level worker, probably an individual contributor. We imagine that you start to move up, you become manager, director, right, on and on and on, and it's sort of that climbing of the career ladder, the next step. We just keep on this progression. It's the thing that drives. Frankly, mel, like your friend who's like I had to be making this amount of money right, because that's progression, whereas progress is all the things we've been talking around, these quests and what is driving your energy and getting more of that in the next role, in the current context you're in, and so forth, and those things sometimes line up Progression as an organization or employer would think about it and progress as an individual. But our research suggests that at least 75% of the time they're not lining up that there's actually divergence between the two.

Speaker 1: 30:46

That's huge. I think the other part, though, is that as you start to think about it is when you get to progress. Most people feel like they have two lives. I have a work life and I have a home life. The reality is we have one life, we don't have two and two lives I have a work life and I have a home life. The reality is we have one life, we don't have two, and the fact is is we have to learn how to merge the two, and the reason why somebody might be great for the position but something happens at home, got to take care of the parents, have babies, whatever it is, the fact is, life changes and then, all of a sudden, what you want to make progress on before is very different than now, and nobody takes into account that we have one life and we have a whole bunch of things we have to move and, ultimately, how do we make of these spheres as very separate you?

Speaker 4: 31:21

jumped on your career track. You stayed there and that was it, and then you had your life and that was going on. I don't think that was ever really true to Bob's point. But now individuals are living increasingly in a way that shows just how much of a lie that is and how interdependent our careers and the rest of our lives are. And it's one of the reasons Bob will tell someone when he's coaching them he's like look, you don't have to get it all in the job. You can have a side hustle and then you can volunteer here and then make sure you're doing this there and together you get the things that are most important to you. But you look holistically and organizations need to sort of recognize that that's true for their employees. They can put their head in the sand and pretend it's not, but that doesn't mean the individuals aren't going to live their lives that way.

Speaker 3: 32:23

This might be an obvious question, but why don't you think people have done this type of introspection before, like why it's hard, it's hard, it's hard.

Speaker 1: 32:32

I mean, one of the things is we wrote the book, we have nine steps, like, and if you do all nine steps, you're gonna be like amazing, but the reality is not everybody's gonna do every step and but there are there's three or four of these steps are really really essential. For example, energy drivers and energy drains. You need to start to pay attention to where are those moments where you walk into a situation and you get energy. That's a thing you need to actually pay attention to, and the fact is is most people don't pay attention to that, or they know it but they don't account for it and they don't actually think about, like, what is it about this situation that gives me energy? Is it the people? Is it the topic? Is it the pressure? There's variables in that situation that does that, and so it's making people way more mindful about where do they get their energy from and where does their energy go when it gets sucked out.

Speaker 4: 33:19

I, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. The biggest question we often get when we show the pushes and pulls to audiences, they say, like money's not on that list or like the surface level thing, and I think the thing is like we've been telling ourselves a story. Bob would call it at the pablum level, I would call it. You know, we're not yet at causality right, and so what I think this book and the research frankly does is we drill down into real root causes and then we gave language to that causality. That hopefully makes it I don't want to say it's easy, it's not, but easier so that more people can start to identify what really is driving me at this point in time.

Speaker 2: 34:22

I know we can't cover the full nine-step journey and I think folks absolutely need to read your books, but one of the pieces of the journey that stood out to me was the experiences, not features. Part of that.

Speaker 4: 34:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean features. Right are the things like the money, the vacation, the title, all those sort of surface level or problem level that we were talking about before. Experiences are what do I actually do on a day-to-day basis in the role the doing right and, as Bob would push us, what will you do as opposed to what have you done, and what is this going to look like and how is it going to integrate with the rest of your life on a day-to-day basis?

Speaker 4: 35:02

The analogy we use in the book is thinking about real estate listings where they tout lots of features natural light, granite countertops, bob's built homes so he can talk more about this and the reality is they all start to blend into each other and it's not until you actually think about how am I actually going to live in this space, what are the experiences that I want, that then features actually start to take on meaning around. How will it or won't it work with my life? Right, in my case, any house I live in. I need a quiet space where I can do my work, where the kids are not going to interfere and run around as they come home from school and the like. That all of a sudden gives definition to what is a good or bad choice for me, not whether there's natural light and granite countertops in the abstract.

Speaker 1: 35:49

The reason why I love the house one is you can look at a listing, but you don't know what it's like to live in that house until you go there. And so part of it is this reality is like where's the grocery store and who are the neighbors and where's school. And you start to realize at some point they tell you all about the house but you don't even get a feel for like how to live in it. And so it's this notion of, well, we'll get you a virtual tour. That's not the thing, man tour.

Speaker 4: 36:14

That's not the thing, man. No right. My mother-in-law right now is looking at downsizing and she sent us a place that she clearly had never been to and I was like, oh boy, that's a busy intersection, there's no way that's going to work. But she had to go. She went and she emailed me. She's like, wow, that's a busy intersection, no way that's going to work. And I'm like yep.

Speaker 2: 36:28

There's an airport nearby or a church bell goes off.

Speaker 4: 36:32

every Sunday it's like a Burger King on one side and a McDonald's drive-thru on the other, and I was like I already know the answer to this question, but go for it. But part of it is they have to experience it?

Speaker 1: 36:40

No, the experience is important.

Speaker 4: 36:42

Right and her imagining oh wow, what's my day-to-day going to look like? Against that, there's nothing that replaces that.

Speaker 3: 37:00

Yeah, yeah, got to do your homework, got to do your homework. I want to flip over to where work is going, because I mean I'm excited to be alive right now, but there's just a ton of shit happening either politically with AI, yada, yada. Where do you see work going in the next two to five years, especially as it relates to job movement?

Speaker 4: 37:12

Look, obviously the velocity is high right now and the anxiety around it, I think, is higher. I think the reality is AI at the moment is more of an efficiency innovation. It's sort of automating and allowing us to do what we already did a little bit better. I think the evidence is suggesting it actually helps those who are lowest performers be better. I do think the reality is it's taking out a lot of entry-level work right away, a lot of employers, the jobs that they had open as entry-level roles. They're taking them off the table, and so that's, I think, where it's maybe making the biggest immediate impact because they can imagine how AI allows that next person on the rung to quickly use that tool to do it and then actually become more productive. For people starting their careers or switching industries or whatnot, getting experiences when you're out of before the job market, in schooling, internships, entrepreneurially, side hustles, whatever it is is going to become more and more important to show you know what to do and you can actually do the work.

Speaker 4: 38:14

I think the bigger term transformations that people love to sort of dream and speculate about. My own belief is that that's not going to come until new business models and organizations are built around these technologies sort of organically and it goes to how every technology has made its biggest impact, whether it's electricity, where people realize, oh, we can distribute, we don't have to put everything around the watermill anymore and things like that, and we can do factories differently, or I mean even frankly, digital advertising, when it's sort of a P&G brand that wants everyone to come in the store because of the way they've thought about consumer packaged goods, versus a startup that's thinking much more targeted, performance-based advertising. Technologies, I think, are most transformational when business models are actually built around them as an enabler, as opposed to trying to cram it into the existing models. I think we're a few years away from that still.

Speaker 3: 39:07

Yeah, we're just starting to see people think about AI-first organizations.

Speaker 4: 39:11

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 39:11

Yeah, I look back to history on this. When I was early in the workforce, I worked at Ford and they had something called the typing pool. This was just a bunch of people who wrote, who typed, and they had carbon paper the whole. You guys have no idea that this existed, but the big thing was like, what is word processing going to do to the typing pool? And you started to realize that it's somebody. Everybody was against it because the typing pool is going to go away. Where are they going to work? Well, it turns out those people could actually write copy and they could do all these other things and do much higher level things.

Speaker 1: 39:42

And so, channeling Clay here, clay would say what we want to do is have people work at the top of their profession, and the work that sucks is the work that we want AI to be doing for us. The thing is, we will still think more than AI, but AI can actually provide us the input to actually help us think better. I think that what's going to happen is it's going to force people to be kind of again. You know, my children ask me when they're like, what's going to happen to all the cab drivers when we have self-driving cars, they're going to figure out something else to do. They don't get to retire and they don't get to move out of that thing and they'll always be somebody who wants to actually have a human in the cab.

Speaker 1: 40:19

But the reality is it's changing the market and basically being able to say but how do we get humans as a whole to basically step up to the next level? Because we got some technology that can take care of things at the lowest level that we don't need to worry about. I'm very bullish on where it's going to go. The question is do people really want to work differently and think better and harder?

Speaker 3: 40:39

I think that's the thing, because it's like, when you think about, we can do this higher level thinking, this higher work as well, that does take work, because it's breaking out of what we've been doing I mean, we're talking about knowing thyself in this whole conversation and then it's like how do you get to that higher level? But I think we'll get there. We have gotten there before, we'll get there, it's just the next.

Speaker 4: 40:59

And there'll be dislocation right as we go through it, like there's going to be a whole bunch of people in the moment that it's stressful and they're going to have to work through it and we'll figure it out. But I think over time Bob's right, that's the direction it goes and the pathway at the moment, frankly, is those people who help people make progress on that journey. They're going to become employers of choice as well, in my mind.

Speaker 3: 41:21

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Anything you would recommend employees do now.

Speaker 4: 41:26

I think having a clear sense of your strengths but maybe equally what you're not strong at and you don't want to do and what you are going to choose to sort of say I'm going to suck at, so that you know what to build on and you know what to let others do, or let AI do for you, or whatever it might be, I think is a really important step. And then the second one comes from the book. It's this career balance sheet idea. This is where I think this idea is powerful is understanding the useful life of your current assets and where and how am I going to have to invest to make them still relevant in the future and have some sense of? Are those trade-offs that I want to make in terms of my time and money to keep those things current, or are there other things I want to invest in?

Speaker 1: 42:07

The thing to me, is the energy drivers and energy drains. Like the fact is is just being able to know what are the things that have to come together to enable you to have energy is when I'm coaching people. What I'm doing is I'm like I want you to go through the next week and just start to write down when it happens because I don't think people are actually aware of it and then start to then parameterize it to understand, like what's going on Well, oh, I get to learn a lot of new things, okay, or, or it's I get to organize things. Like my wife is in finance and the thing is my wife loves to balance. Like when it balances, it's like I hit a serotonin. Like, oh, my god, I just like that balance is perfect.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I'm like, yeah, I I get nothing from that, but she gets a lot of it's knowing where it comes from, but then all the conversely, knowing when the energy gets pulled out of you, because a lot of times you're so caught up emotionally that like it's almost like you need to step back from yourself and look at the situation and go like why is this basically draining all my energy? What's going on here? And it's like it's people, it's, it's situations, it's time of day, it's like a whole bunch of things and start to see those patterns. I it's like a whole bunch of things and start to see those patterns.

Speaker 4: 43:13

I think that's, to me, the biggest advice I'd give people and, by the way, I don't want this to be said the wrong way, but I think it's actually the easiest step you can reflect on in the book in many ways, because, as Bob said, it's not something that I have to lock myself into a closet and think three hours. It's literally I'm living life. When am I in flow? When did that suck? Okay, start to notice the patterns, start to interrogate it.

Speaker 3: 43:38

Right, just keep a sticky right and start noticing and unpacking them. I did it on my cell phone.

Speaker 4: 43:46

It's kind of like keeping a food diary it's not, and it's just you know, you just get it in the habit.

Speaker 3: 43:48

It's an excellent exercise.

Speaker 4: 43:49

And the cool thing is, you don't have to then figure out how big was that portion and how do I measure it, because that's the part about the food diary I could never figure out.

Speaker 2: 44:07

We like to do rapid round because we want to know you as human beings, aside from just your work and your book. Does that sound okay?

Speaker 4: 44:13

Yep, let's do it.

Speaker 2: 44:14

All right. What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 4: 44:17

I'm eclectic on music tastes. I've been really into the Merrily we Roll Along soundtrack, though the last week and a half I have not been able to get it out of my head. We saw it on Broadway a few months ago at this point, I guess, and it all of a sudden came back into my subconsciousness. So I've been really enjoying that.

Speaker 1: 44:37

So I'm listening to mostly I don't know the kind of music, but it's basically Bobby Alua and Matt Duncan. It's a little bit of reggae, a little bit of beach vibe, a little bit of background beat, but it's just. It's one of those things where, because I'm ADHD, like I like to have the same music play over and over and over again, and so it's one of those things I'm deep down into that one where it's like I've probably listened to the same playlist now 50 times. So that's where I'm at Nothing wrong with that. It just it just makes it lighter. It's a, it's light and airy. That's all I can tell you.

Speaker 2: 45:10

And does it make you feel warm, even though it's five?

Speaker 1: 45:14

degrees it reminds me of going to Mexico is what it does and it's like okay, here we go.

Speaker 2: 45:19

Yeah, love it. Okay, what are you reading right now?

Speaker 4: 45:24

I'm currently reading a draft of my father's book that he thinks he's writing for publication.

Speaker 2: 45:33

He thinks Well based on what I'm reading, so you're getting the feedback before.

Speaker 1: 45:41

I'm giving it to him, so maybe I should just leave it there. Does he know our podcast? Probably not.

Speaker 4: 45:43

He's got some more work to do. If he thinks it's ready for primetime, okay.

Speaker 1: 45:49

How about you, Bob? So for me I'm listening to. I have a couple of books I was listening to. One is called Radical Humility. It's very interesting. I would say I learned my humility from the best, who was Clay Christensen, but ultimately I didn't understand kind of like the components of how it works and what it is and the reality is. It's very interesting to kind of see how this person has basically broken it down and figured it out. The other book I'm reading is Fingerprints of the Gods. I'm very deep into basically electromagnetic waves and basically geometry and how the two work together, and so it's just this notion of a lot of things in ancient history. Take into account this notion of geometry and frequencies and just I don't know why I'm down there, but it's very fun, Very fun for me.

Speaker 2: 46:32

You know, in Chichen Itza, where if you clap it makes the sound of the bird in Mexico. Is that related to this?

Speaker 1: 46:39

book. The notion is that frequency, like everything, has a frequency and everything actually generates a frequency. And when you start to see natural harmonics happen, it's kind of when you get those moments where you get energy. It's related back to energy drivers and drains. But it really is this notion of like, where does that emotion come from and how do you actually get it? And it comes from, I believe, electromagnetic waves and basically geometry. So it's very deep, very deep down the rabbit hole. Sorry, no, don't apologize.

Speaker 2: 47:08

I have a million more questions, but yeah, who do you both really admire?

Speaker 4: 47:13

Am I allowed to say Bob? I feel like Bob is someone who has superpowers, who sees around corners before things happen because of his superpowers and knew we would be friends and colleagues and get to collaborate with each other Well before I understood this fact. And the reality is it's like it's come together because he understands causality in a way that I'm constantly aspiring and learning from. So I'll say you, bob, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to say you, no, I have a feeling I know who you're going to say yeah, I have to say my wife.

Speaker 1: 47:46

I most admire my wife. So I'm a neurodivergent person. I've had three close head brain injuries. I can't read, I can't write. I've done seven startups, I've worked on 3,500 products. I've had four children in five years, but my wife is the one who holds it all together. And that is just one of those things where I'm working on a book now around relationships and finding your life partner. And one of the things you realize is I thought when I got married I could not possibly love my wife anymore and I realized it was actually the lowest point of how much I love my wife. And it's just grown so much that we've been married to 35 years and it's just one of those things where we've been able to kind of just move. And it's one of those things where who are opposites don't get along well or there's there's always friction, but we know how to actually dance together very well and so it's it's it's just, it's just a joy to spend time with her and be with her oh someone cutting onions in here.

Speaker 2: 48:43

Yeah, I'm like, oh shit, I'm getting teared up I knew he was gonna pull at the heartstrings all right last question what's one piece of advice you want everyone to know, and it can be related to the book or just something personal that you want to share?

Speaker 1: 49:04

I will tell you that I think that people should be much more cognizant, explicit, intentional about the progress they're trying to make in their life. Every time you buy something, every time you change something, it always has an intention, and the more you can actually become intentional about it, that one is the less change you'll make and the more meaningful changes you'll make. And so this is just one example in your career. But like finding your life partner, buying a new pair of socks, Like I know it sounds crazy, but the fact is is all of them have that same thing of like. Do I really need a new pair of socks? And why do I need a new pair of socks? And how are these socks better than the socks I had before? And so being intentional about the changes in the purchases you make is probably one of the most satisfying things you can do, because it allows you to actually be explicit about the progress you make and take control of your life.

Speaker 4: 49:55

Far be it for me to try to build on that, because I've tried to take this into my own life, as Bob knows, with every decision I make. Now I'll say something totally different, which is a motto that I always live by, which is a kuna matata from Lion King. But no worries, I think we overstress and have a lot of anxiety that are about things that we can't control, and we should focus much more on the things that we can and worry less about the details and keep the big picture in mind.

Speaker 2: 50:25

I love it. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends. Bye friends.

The Courage Gap

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Courage Gap with Dr. Margie Warrell

Women are still being told to “lean in,” “speak up,” and “prove it”—but what if the real power lies in owning your value from the start? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Margie Warrell—global authority on courageous leadership and author of The Courage Gap—to talk about how women can stop shrinking, start leading, and close the gap between fear and action.

From micro-challenges that build your courage muscle to leading with authenticity, Margie brings 25+ years of real talk, bold strategies, and personal insight to help women thrive in today's corporate landscape—without waiting to feel ready.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

And that is this courage gap I talk about. It's the gap between who we are and who we could be if we risked being brave and backed ourselves more often. What's going on, mel? Not much. You remember that movie, field of?

Speaker 2: 0:14

Dreams? Yes, oh, mel, not much. You remember that movie. Field of Dreams? Yes, oh, I love that movie. It's such a good movie, yeah, and I rewatched it, balled my eyes out.

Speaker 3: 0:36

It gets you in the feels. It gets you in the feels. It's such a great movie. It's a great movie, it's an inspirational movie, it's a very inspirational movie. Different feeling when you watched it the first time to now.

Speaker 2: 0:52

I think I watched a movie like every 10 years randomly and every year I feel like I've taken something completely different from it. This time I got super repped when the doctor crossed the line to help the kid and then Ray Liotta's character was like hey, kid, you were good kid. And then Ray Liotta's character was like hey, kid, you were good. I fucking lost it. Jeff and I were like, and Enzo's like where's he going?

Speaker 3: 1:11

Like it's just, yeah, it's so good. I love that you're showing all these classics to Enzo too, all right, well, hey, friends, this week we had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr Margie Worrell, a leadership advisor and executive coach, a keynote speaker, a bestselling author. She wrote the Courage Gap, which is out now, and also You've Got this. She's the host of Live Brave podcast, guest lecturer at Georgetown University, and a courage catalyst is what she likes to say. And we were introduced to Dr Margie through her recent article in Forbes letting women know, as DEI is canceled, more women need to own their worth and not prove it. And the courage gap talks about five different steps that you can take to take braver action in your life, and that's what we talked about. Francesca, what did you love about this episode?

Speaker 2: 2:08

I feel like, for all the strides women have made and women before us, women before them we still have a lot of gaps that we're trying to close. From CEO titles, VP titles, pay you name it we're still on this journey. Some of that journey comes down to big changes like policy, but a lot of it comes down to these daily interactions or these daily moves that you make for yourself. That can be really courageous, and so I was really interested in talking with her about it and I loved what she had shared with us.

Speaker 3: 2:39

One of the biggest takeaways for me in the discussion was we all have these goals and things that we're aspiring to do, and it's hard to dream sometimes or express your dreams, and my favorite quote from her was be selective in who you share your dreams with, because some people might throw a cold bucket of water on it and you don't want that to happen.

Speaker 2: 3:01

I also love that she shared the five key things to have more courage for women and for men. They're very hyper practical. I'm not going to I'm not going to spoil it for folks. You have to listen to the episode. There are things that we can all be doing now to have more courage, especially at work. Right, it can feel very hard to speak up Sometimes. It can feel hard to stand up for yourself or to dream big, like you talked about, and those are those exact moments when you should.

Speaker 3: 3:30

You should. That's what I loved about her article and that's what I loved about this episode. It's really getting us through, overcoming our fear. When we make fear-based decisions, and especially as women, we probably feel like Ooh, we're, we just took 20 steps backwards, so now we need to work even harder. But that's not what we should be doing. According to Margie, we need to own what we already bring to the table. So with that, here's Dr Margie, good to be with you, good to have you with us. Recently, you wrote an article in Forbes noting that, as DEI is getting canceled everywhere, women need to own their worth and stop proving it. So we'd love to hear from you why it's more critical than ever to discuss this topic.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Oh, I wrote that article because I have always believed that, as women, we are our own greatest source of strength and elevation, even when the systems around us aren't supporting us. And as we've seen the kind of the firing or the cancellation of DEI in many spheres, I think that women are finding themselves feeling a little disheartened and demoralized and some feel like they're having to prove themselves all over again. So we can't wait for systems or other people to elevate us. We have to elevate ourselves. And yeah, we could point fingers and we can lay blame and we can complain about it, but I think, at the end of the day, the most effective thing we can do is starting with ourselves and backing ourselves and operating from a place of owning our value fully.

Speaker 3: 5:17

Yeah, yeah. I was just reading another article today in Inc Magazine I don't know if you've seen that one yet where someone just recently did a deep dive of Google searches. So what people do in the privacy of their own home when they're researching male CEOs versus female CEOs. And for male CEOs, it's all about compensation all the keywords that come up and for female CEOs, compensation is one keyword, but the remaining keywords by 1,650% is related to who is their husband, who is their family? Are they a mother? Which I found really interesting. What do you think about that?

Speaker 1: 5:53

I just think it shows that there's a long way to go until there's a genuinely level playing field. I think another one is when we get to the day when we don't blink for a man to be the caregiver at home and that's not anything to be. Oh, she's got a house husband. That's actually something that we raise our eyebrows about, and I was just with someone the other day and she is out in America from Australia, taryn Bromfitt and she was saying how her husband is at home with their four teenagers, and we sat there as women having dinner this is two nights ago saying good for him, that's great, how's he going? How's he managing at all? And she's going. Good job.

Speaker 1: 6:33

And I had four children too, and whenever my husband was left with four children, we would go good for him, he's managing. Okay, that's great. But never in the history of ever did anyone ever say to a man whose wife was at home with four kids going oh, how is she managing? That's good that she lets you go away, that's great. So there's just such this double standard and so, yes, when it's a woman, we're like oh, what's her situation? Does she have children? And I just think it speaks to the double standards, but also our own curiosity of how women who rise to senior ranks manage to do Do they have children, do they have a husband at home? And just recognizing that we all bring some level of sometimes our own bias and fascination with that, because I think we've just got a long way to go until that's just not something that's of any more interest.

Speaker 3: 7:30

Yeah, I can't wait for the day. Dei is just under a microscope right now, unfortunately. How do you feel this is specifically impacting women in the workplace you touched a little bit on. Now I feel like I have to prove myself all over again. I can relate to that. I'm sure we all can. How else is this impacting women in the future?

Speaker 1: 7:50

Look, there's some women who say and some responded to my Forbes column saying I don't feel I have to prove myself and I'm good and I don't honestly feel this has affected me. So I want to just say that out the front. But I also know, because I get to work with a lot of women in my work, who are saying, yeah, like there's been a shift in the winds, even unspoken, as there's this shift in the winds and there is a little bit of did you get to this place because you're a woman? How much of that was because of your gender? And if you're a woman of color, even more so. Are you only here because? And if you're a woman of color who is LBGTQ, even more so oh, is that why you are where you are?

Speaker 1: 8:33

And so I think any woman who already has a little self-doubt, whoever has a little imposter syndrome and I rarely meet a woman who doesn't have moments of that I think it just adds like water onto the seeds of doubt. Am I here because of that? Now, I'm not saying everyone feels that. I don't feel that at all. I have never thought I've got anywhere because I'm a woman. But I know there are some that do feel a little bit like they have to prove themselves to be more than worthy of that spot. They have to work extra hard and do an extra good job. And, let's face it, there are real biases. We know women are judged more harshly on performance and when women make a mistake it costs them more than when men make a mistake. So it's not like this is all just made up and in our minds. There is realities there too. It has left some women feeling like they do have to prove themselves and maybe they're doubting themselves a little more too. Okay.

Speaker 2: 9:34

Your article struck me. I consider myself a relatively confident person and honestly, it's a very interesting to feel like 45 and I'm still feeling this sense of am I worthy? I have to continually prove myself constantly. You're only as good as your last success and I am curious about why you think women feel this way.

Speaker 1: 9:55

I think there's multiple factors that contribute to women feeling that way. But I think, if we just go all the way back to our childhoods and where we were raised, when I did my PhD dissertation, I did it on women who had reached the C-suite in multinational corporations and so I did a lot of interviews with women who had reached these positions of significant positional power and authority and influence. And what was really interesting and I was looking at, what are the defining features, what are the defining characteristics and mindsets of women who've reached that spot and there was a host of them reach that spot and there was a host of them. But often they came from an environment where they had someone who believed in them and said you've got what it takes. A lot of them said they never, ever vaguely thought about being in the C-suite. That wasn't on their horizon, but they also had someone who they had. Experiences that helped to build like a little bit of grit and resilience up in them and they didn't let what other people said be overly defining of them, like when people would say, oh, you're just there because you're pretty or whatever. Like they were very, pretty resilient and what I would call anti-fragile. But I think we've got to recognize not everyone grows up in some environment where they do feel empowered and they're emboldened and they develop real grit and resilience and anti-fragility.

Speaker 1: 11:26

And a lot of women grow up environments with a lack of female role models, without people who are championing them, saying absolutely, you can do anything you want. You're 45. I'm 10 years on you. I grew up without any female role models, without anyone saying you can do anything you want. You're 45. I'm 10 years on you. I grew up without any female role models, without anyone saying you can do anything you want. And so I was way in my 30s and even 40s where I'm like, oh, I'm just as capable as these people over here, with that lack of belief.

Speaker 1: 11:51

And so I think we don't always grow up with the same surrounded and immersed in the same belief systems that we can do and be anything we want. We may intellectually know it's not true. We may intellectually know that we are just as capable and just as clever, but there's often these little lingering doubts in the back of our head that are going who do you think you are? And when are people going to realize you're not that good? And that's not to say that men don't also sometimes experience that, but it's more pervasive among women.

Speaker 1: 12:30

And while I'd like to think the needle has changed in the last 30, 40 years, I have a daughter who's 25. She has entered the workforce at a time that's really different to when I entered the workforce, but I still sometimes see it like oh, I don't know if I should do that. I'm thinking, why not? Of course you can, and I find myself saying that. Mind you, I sometimes still say that to my sons as well. So I'm not sure that she's got more doubt than my sons, but I still see women sometimes holding themselves back more than the barriers around them.

Speaker 2: 13:04

Yeah, those tapes that we have, those are hard ones to take out, especially the voices in your head. I am curious, if you don't have somebody that's saying you do have what it takes, or having a mentor that brings you along, that sees something in you, what can somebody do on their own to start feeling that they can own it or they do have value, that they shut off those tapes? What are some things that really help?

Speaker 1: 13:28

I would say seek out people who inspire you. Whether you get a book and read about Madeleine Albright, get a book and read about. Whether you get a book and read about Madeleine Albright, get a book and read about. Insert some woman that you find just fascinating and inspiring, whoever that may be, whether that's Angela Merkel or Oprah or whatever, because when we read those stories we can see a little of ourselves in their story and, man, they overcame that Like gee, yeah, they've got strengths and gifts that maybe are different to yours.

Speaker 1: 14:00

But I think just that one seek out in person the kind of women that you'd like to get to know better. Surround yourself, go out and go to a conference where you're going to meet those people and connect with those people. Join an organization where you get to meet those people people and connect with those people. Join an organization where you get to meet those people. I have to say myself time and time again it has been the example of other women who go oh honey, you got this, or like they'll say stuff and they don't have to know me really well, but I'm like I love what they see and they may be 15 or 20 years ahead of me or maybe they're 10 years younger than me, but it's still affirming. I would also say to be really intentional about the relationships that you invest in, but also those that you don't invest in, those that may be playing you small and sometimes that can be friends.

Speaker 1: 14:52

It can be our frenemies, it can be our family and you might not just be able to cut yourself off from family, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should. I've got family members who I'm like you know what. I don't even tell them about some of the things I'm up to because I know they will just pour a big bucket of cold water on it. They are only going to feed my doubts. When I told my family I was writing my first book, which is quite a few years ago, and I was nervous about doing it because my family is in Australia, there's something called the tall poppy syndrome and it's this cultural phenomena where, if you aspire to raise too far above your current level, you run a significant risk of being cut down like a tall poppy that's standing out from all the rest and the culture I grew up in in rural Australia was strong with this, and I remember sharing with my family.

Speaker 1: 15:46

It was Christmas and I said to everybody what's something everyone wants to do in the next 12 months? And one sister said I want to go into South America and my brother wanted to do his MBA and my mother said she'd like to volunteer more For her. That was a big, bold thing, I'd like to volunteer more. And then I got around all my siblings there were six siblings and parents and they said what do you want to do in the next 12 months? And I said I'd like to write the outline for a book. I didn't even say I wanted to write a book, I just like to write the outline. I had four kids, six and under at the time, and my brother. I have three, so I'm not going to name which one.

Speaker 1: 16:30

He immediately said what are you going to write a book about? And it was just like I didn't need that, like I did, I already had that going in my head. Who am I to write a book? And I didn't need him to go what are you going to write a book about? And I said, oh, like how to be, how to like be more confident and to go after what we really want to go after in our lives. And I could just see him like going, oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 16:54

And the conversation moved on, and so I would just say it could be family that you need to set some rails on. Don't share with them your little seedlings of ambition if you think they're going to jump all over them. And it could be your mother and it could be actually your best friend, because maybe that's threatening to her because she's not doing it. So just be careful who you share your aspirations with, particularly in the early days, when it's just a little tiny seedling that's still germinating and you're like you've got so much doubt yourself. You don't know yourself whether or not you have what it takes. So the last thing you need is someone else to jump on that wagon and go. But how are you going to do that? That could be really hard. 60% of small business owners fail. Like how are you going to manage that? That could be really hard. 60% of small business owners fail. How are you going to manage that with three young children or whatever it is?

Speaker 1: 17:42

As I said, I have four children. I remember thinking about having a fourth child and how can I ever have a fourth child and pursue a career? I did not know one woman who had four children in a career. It just speaks to that. I had a pretty limited environment and I didn't know anyone. And I had one girlfriend who said you can totally do it. I know a woman has four children. And then she started like finding examples for me of others and I clung to those examples oh, it can be done. And to give myself permission not to know exactly how I do it, but to figure it out as I went along. That was very empowering for me to go okay, I'm along. That was very empowering for me to go okay. I'm going to now allow the possibility for it to happen, which to me actually was an act of courage, because I was a little terrified that I would not manage the juggling act.

Speaker 2: 18:29

Yeah, I love that. It's an act of courage to move forward and keep on moving forward. I also like the inverse of that is the friend or the person that's going to be like yeah, go, you can do this, you've got this. Listening to those stories, especially from women, that are telling you to go and keep going is huge.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Yeah, yeah, no, yes, and I think sometimes we give away our power to the opinions of others too quickly, too readily, too often, and when I say give away our power, we let what other people might think matter way more than is serving us. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think I can do this? What will people think if I try this? Maybe they'll think I'm a little crazy. Who am I to do it?

Speaker 1: 19:17

And I say hold your own opinion in higher esteem than you hold the opinion of others. That doesn't mean you shouldn't seek out counsel and you shouldn't seek out other people's perspectives, but don't let anyone else's opinion override your own opinion. They've got their opinions and maybe there's some value in them and maybe they have some things that will broaden what you're considering and help you think about things a little more rigorously or consider things you mightn't have considered. But at the end of the day, you've got to trust yourself and trust your gut and trust your own intuition. Just be careful how much power you give to what other people think you should and shouldn't do.

Speaker 3: 20:19

What I'd love to talk about are the unique strengths women do bring to business, because I think there are unique strengths we bring, like intuitiveness. It's not to say men don't have that, but I feel like women might have that unique strength. One of the organizations Francesca and I follow is Pink Chip, which follows the success of female CEOs and how they're significantly outperforming male CEOs in terms of business success, for varying reasons. So when you think about the leadership strengths or the unique leadership strengths women bring to business success, what are those unique strengths that we bring?

Speaker 1: 20:46

Women obviously have a strong our brains are wide this way but just to be able to empathize with what's going on for others, not just intellectually understand what they think, but to be able to really sense and feel what they feel.

Speaker 1: 21:00

And we know that emotions drive action, not logic. And I think women bring a real gift and strength and some more than others, obviously at being able to empathize with what's going on for others so they can form really authentic connection with people at that deeper level, really authentic connection with people at that deeper level. I think women often aren't as settled with a sense of needing to prove their strength and be tough I'm generalizing but so there's less ego often running the show. It's what is it that it feels like the right thing to do here versus what's going to make me look strong and look tough. I think women are naturally good at building bridges and gaining collaboration and because I think we're less captive to an ego that has to prove how good we are and how strong we are, we're able to get around defensiveness at times and get underneath it and to connect with people at a meaningful, in an authentic way that sometimes men can't, because there's a little more posturing and proving, and I call it pissing competitions, without getting too crude.

Speaker 2: 22:09

I'm bigger than you.

Speaker 1: 22:10

My shoe is bigger than your shoe and I'm like, seriously, what's the outcome you're trying to achieve here and how can you go about working together to get a better outcome, versus making it about you and your big ego and needing to prove that you're trying to achieve here? And how can you go about working together to get a better outcome versus making it about you and your big ego and needing to prove that you're better than that person? I think on multiple different ways, women bring a great many strengths. Another in the research shows yes, men tend at times to be more willing to wing it, so they can be quicker to sometimes just jump in and take a risk. But they also can do more dumb, stupid things faster as well. And so women tend to be a little more considered, a little more thoughtful about is this a good? It doesn't mean women won't take risks, but they'll go about it a little more thoughtfully. They won't jump in. Test the water with two feet. They'll go. Okay, let's test the depth of the water with one foot before we jump in with two feet, and so on multiple different areas. The study that came out of Harvard of the 19 key strengths of leadership, women were stronger on 17. So I'm not going to list 17, but there is many ways that women bring those strengths to the table, and that's not to say that men don't bring a lot of strengths too.

Speaker 1: 23:23

To me, this isn't about women are better than men. I feel really strongly about that. I don't like the saying the future is female. I hope not. I really hope not.

Speaker 1: 23:28

I hope that the future is just more collaborative of men and women on an equal playing field, partnering to make better decisions and get better outcomes, because we need the strengths the feminine leadership strengths, masculine leadership strengths and we need them to be in collaboration together, and so I think it's important that that gets recognized, and this isn't about one or the other one. Better than worse than I do think there's situations where men's strengths may be more suited for that specific situation. Maybe that company in this industry in this moment in time, but yes, as you're talking about pink chip companies, obviously women are exceptionally good at what they do and make excellent leaders and can produce excellent outcomes and really good at being inclusive and, I think, harnessing the diversity within teams and diversity on all measures. Diversity isn't just about gender and it's not just about race. It is on all measures. Women are really good at being able to harness that value of diversity in all forms in the teams that they are leading, that they're part of.

Speaker 3: 24:34

Yeah, it sounds. Ideal state the future is balanced across it all.

Speaker 2: 24:39

I get your opinion on this, because this is not a political statement. I'm going on objective reporting here. There's a lot of talk in ether around masculine energy and I'm curious about when it feels like in a lot of corporate America the masculine energy is taking over. What's your point of view on how women operate now in corporate America? What's the move?

Speaker 1: 25:05

Stand your ground, stand tall in your power and your worth and, given there may be a sense that the winds are shifting a little bit, don't let people play you small. We teach people how to treat us and I think at times that means we need to push back and call things out, and that may not be natural. I know for myself. My natural state is not combative, it's not argumentative. It tends to be very accommodating and maybe a little bit too acquiescent to other people's, what other people would like, et cetera. But I know at times when I've been in a situation where I feel like someone is trying to dominate here, they're trying to claim an idea that's mine, they're trying to maybe take advantage of my agreeableness that sometimes I need to lean in and speak up and act in ways that aren't my natural. It's not my default and go sorry, excuse me, I haven't finished what I was saying. If you would just give me a moment, we can go over to you once I finished and like, versus just letting someone cut in right or someone's taking your idea going, I just want to just step back a bit for a moment. I actually suggested that yesterday and not doing it in a way that's derogatory, but we stand firm in our own power and our own value and our worth, and we make sure people know that we won't be pushed over, because I think we do get what we tolerate. And sometimes we tolerate things to avoid conflict, to avoid an awkward, difficult moment, to avoid coming across as being God, she's hard work or she's sensitive, and yet over time you're like okay, people will take advantage of that. As I wrote about in this book, the Courage Gap, how do we cultivate our capacity to take brave action? Fear constricts our actions that we take and courage expands the actions that we take, and it's about expanding your behavioral repertoire.

Speaker 1: 27:05

No, I'm not a naturally combative person, but can I be combative if I need to be? Can I be strident and really assert myself into something? Yeah, you bet I can, and I don't want to do that all the time, but I can lean in and do that when I need to, or ask for my worth or make sure my voice is heard and speak with the authority that's needed. And so practicing that and I do think it takes practice. If you're someone who tends to be a little bit more diminutive, you don't need your voice heard. You're happy not to say anything in a meeting unless you have something compelling to say. I would say no. Practice injecting your voice into that meeting. Practice speaking up with a little more volume or a little more depth. Practice standing a little taller. Practice you being first to ask a question or to put forward an idea, even though you're not 100% sure how it's going to land. Practice that it's a muscle that you build and you've got to put in those reps.

Speaker 2: 28:01

Yeah, Very true, very true, and I love it's those moments where you need to stand your ground.

Speaker 1: 28:06

And I actually think, in these times when you could rationalize why, oh, pull your head in and don't do it, I believe it is in times like this, when we can find the most reasons to be a little timid, a little cautious, to play it safe, that our voice is most needed and we are most called to step up, speak up and really claim our place. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:39

Yes, absolutely yeah. We've talked a lot about this, but when you say bet on yourself, like in one sentence, what does that truly mean? You could do two sentences. I don't want to give you limits.

Speaker 1: 28:58

Act in ways that affirm that you have everything it takes to achieve your wildest vision of success.

Speaker 3: 29:11

Okay, I want to put that on a mug. No.

Speaker 1: 29:15

When I say back yourself, like back yourself and not your doubts. Act in ways that show that you expect good things to come your way and that you're going to do your part. If the universe is conspiring for you, are you doing 100% of your part to set yourself up for those great things to happen? Like? You've got to do your part, you've got to be putting yourself out there. You've got to be taking the risks. You can't expect amazing things to happen while you're playing it safe. You've got to take the risk, take the chance and make that bet on yourself. I had curiosity.

Speaker 2: 29:54

Do you feel like most people need to be grounded in, like knowing that you have a higher self or knowing that you're here to do something? Is there a higher purpose thing going on here?

Speaker 1: 30:03

as well. You're saying does belief in something that's bigger than ourselves help us show up in the world as more of who it is, who we can be? I think that's something.

Speaker 2: 30:21

Much more articulately, steve. Yes, thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Look, I get it. There's some people who go I don't believe in God, I'm not religious, I'm not spiritual whatever. And I would just say this If you ever say, oh, I believe in karma, then you're believing in some force that's bigger than yourself. If you say the universe, you're believing in some force that's bigger than yourself. If you believe in what goes around, comes around, you're believing in something that's bigger than yourself. I actually am a Christian, so I absolutely believe in something that's bigger than myself.

Speaker 1: 30:53

But regardless of whether you have any religious belief at all, you can still believe that who you are is more than the body that you're in and more than the brains that you've got, and more than your current emotional state.

Speaker 1: 31:08

And, yes, I believe that we are all here to fulfill a purpose that leaves the world a little bit better off, because we lived, walked on it for 80, 90 years. I believe that. Does that compel me to be brave at times when I really don't want to be? Yes, it does. But even if you don't believe that, there is something that is immensely empowering to believe that you are innately worthy by the virtue of the fact that you are in the world, and that you have innate worth to bring to others around you, and you cannot bring that in all its force and all its glory if you are second guessing yourself, because when you doubt yourself, you don't only do yourself a disservice, you shortchange, I believe, the whole world, but you certainly shortchange all those people around you of who it is you can be. And that is this courage gap I talk about. It's the gap between who we are and who we could be if we risked being brave and backed ourselves more often.

Speaker 2: 32:28

How can we enable people to close that courage gap, especially women? What can we be doing as bosses, as peers, I think organizationally. What would you say to that?

Speaker 1: 32:33

When I look at leadership and I think of it as three domains of the either we and the it, personal leadership, interpersonal leadership and enterprise leadership, our organization, our business, our team, et cetera, you know what can we be doing? I just wrote a book on that, so find my book Courage Gap Shameless plug. But hey if you're going to do it.

Speaker 1: 32:52

That's what I wrote the book about. Number one I'm just going to really quickly just say five quick things. Number Number one I'm just going to really quickly just say five quick things. Number one focus on what it is that you want. What's the outcome you want for yourself? What's the outcome you want for others? What's the outcome you want for your team, your organization? Get really clear about that. And what are the values that underpin who you need to be, how you need to show up to move toward that vision of what you want? Because your vision for what you want, your commitment to that, has to be bigger than the vision of what you want. Because your vision for what you want, your commitment to that, has to be bigger than the fears of what you don't want. Otherwise, fear is going to govern.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Number two challenge the story that you're telling yourself. Our beliefs are the software of behavior and so often we're operating from a narrative oh, I don't think I've got what it takes. Oh, I'm not sure I'm ready. Oh, I need to have a bit more skill, knowledge. Oh, what will people know? What is the belief that you need to operate from for you to achieve what it is you want to achieve? To become the woman that you know you have it within you to become. What is the belief system? So re-script, what's keeping you stuck or stressed or having you living a little too safely?

Speaker 1: 33:57

Number three embody courage. Take a breath, stand tall, put your shoulders back, like how we hold ourselves physically matters. In fact, there was a study out of Kellogg Business School that found that how we hold ourselves physically shifts our perception of our own power and agency, but it also shifts how others see us. When you walk in a room like you own that room and you sit down like you absolutely belong there, it shifts how other people perceive you, but it starts with how you perceive yourself. Number four make friends with discomfort, and if you can't make friends with it, at least make a truce with it that you are going to get uncomfortable as often as need be because you cannot become who you want to be and do what you want to do and create a psychologically safe environment around you.

Speaker 1: 34:45

If you're only ever being comfortable yourself, you've got to be willing to do the very awkward things, and from a management and leadership perspective, when it comes to fostering what I call a culture of courage and I have spoken to Amy Edmondson, who coined the term psychological safety on my Live Brave podcast a few times. The two go hand in hand. They're the two sides of the same coin. We cannot foster a psychological safety if we're not willing to be vulnerable, if we're not willing to say I messed up, I don't know, or what might I have got wrong here, or invite feedback. So you've got to be role modeling that.

Speaker 1: 35:21

But start with making friends with that discomfort and doing the very things that scare you Every day. Do a little thing. I'm going to do something every day. That's a little uncomfortable, and the more often we do that, we build that muscle.

Speaker 1: 35:33

And number five be a little kinder to yourself when you mess up, because you're human.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Because you're human, you're human.

Speaker 1: 35:42

And without knowing you really well, mel or Francesca, I'm going to guess that today you were not as brilliant and brave and wonderful and organized and disciplined and patient with your children or whatever, as you'd love to be.

Speaker 1: 35:59

And that is the human condition. We are never going to be all things all the time. But when we can be a little kinder to ourselves and extend a little more grace inward, when we either try something and we balls it up or when we hold back and we're like, oh shit, I know I should reach out and have that conversation. When we hold back and we're like, oh shit, I know I should reach out and have that conversation, but oh God, I can't, I just can't, I'm just not doing it today, like when our inner chicken little gets the better of us, just be kind to yourself and go. Okay, because we're not going to risk being brave if we beat up on ourselves every time we fall and we are a lot braver and we show up as a bigger version of ourselves when we can embrace that we are fallible and we are flawed and we are not always going to be fearless.

Speaker 2: 36:46

That's a good vibe though. Yeah, that's a good vibe.

Speaker 3: 36:49

All right, all right, we are closing things out with rapid round. So, margie, this is what we like to just get to know you a little bit better one-on-one, get your thoughts outside of just this topic. Are you game for us to dive right in? Yeah, go for it. Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

Speaker 1: 37:09

I think we're going to see more fluid, purpose-driven work environments. I think the need that really was underscored during the pandemic that people are looking for meaning. They want to work for organizations that reflect their values. I think we're going to see more and more of that people prioritizing purpose and meaning over titles, that also value flexibility over formality. I think we're going to see more of that and a greater desire for real authenticity, as distinct from that sort of posturing and looking good, that people really want to see people being really human. As technology and gen AI takes on a bigger role, that human touch is going to be even more sought after and valued.

Speaker 3: 37:53

Okay. Totally agree, yes, we're on the same page. What, what music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 38:00

oh, my goodness, I have a fairly broad repertoire. I I have to listen to just 80s classics. Yeah, yes, I go back. I still love john denver and neil diamond, but I also I love ederan and I love Pink, so I just got this broad one. I love Lauren Daigle. I just there's a lot of people I like listening to. I love Kelly Clarkson, so needless to say, I'm broad.

Speaker 3: 38:27

What are you reading right now? Or listening to podcasts yourself?

Speaker 1: 38:33

Ah, podcasts. I really like Ezra Klein. I listen to him, but I actually listen to a broad spectrum of people on podcasts. I like 10% Happier. I feel like this is a weird one to say Joe Rogan I listen to Joe Rogan. I find him really interesting, though I do often fast forward through it and I do little bursts of Mel Robbins.

Speaker 3: 38:51

Okay, all right. Who do you really admire?

Speaker 1: 38:58

Who do you really admire? Who do I really admire? I did admire my mom, who passed away 18 months ago, because she had such a beautiful, humble gentle, serene way about her. She was all about service and never about ego. So I'm just going to stop there.

Speaker 3: 39:13

Okay. What's one piece of advice you want everyone to know oh, do not wait until you feel brave to do the brave thing. I love it. Thank you for being here, dr margie. We really appreciate it and we do want to plug the courage gap five steps to bra Action because that just came out. So please do check it out. And, margie, how can our listeners connect with you for ongoing insights and resources on this topic?

Speaker 1: 39:50

Oh, thank you. They can find me on social media, LinkedIn, anywhere though I'm not very active on TikTok, but Insta I am there. They can go to my website, margieworrellcom, and take my courage quiz on the book page, sign up for my newsletter, and I also have my own Live Brave podcast. That is everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 3: 40:04

Yes, we are following it, by the way. So thank you, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you being here.

Speaker 1: 40:14

It was awesome to speak with you both and I just want you two to just keep backing yourselves because you're doing great work in the world. To just keep backing yourselves because you're doing great work in the world.

Speaker 3: 40:19

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends, bye friends.

The Ego Equation for Leadership Success

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Ego Equation with Dan Springer

Impact over ego, thats the mantra for true leadership success.

What if the key to great leadership isn't confidence or charisma, but checking your ego? Former DocuSign CEO Dan Springer shares his Ego Equation and how humility, hard work, and self-awareness drive results that actually last.

So, what makes great leaders different—and how do you measure it?

(Skills ÷ Ego) ^ Work = Success.

Dan shares leadership lessons from decades in tech, including how ego almost derailed his career and what changed after a layoff turned into a leadership awakening.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I try to define ego as

Speaker 2: 0:02

High ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first, and low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals or family. It could be. Any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.

Speaker 1: 0:32

We brought Dan Springer on to talk about leadership and ego, and he's probably one of the best people to talk about this with, because this guy has ran mega organizations as a CEO, as a board member. He's genuinely a really nice guy and, more than that, he knows how to get returns in a business and really create these workplaces that people love to work at. If you ask anybody who's worked under Dan Springer, they loved where they were working, and so we wanted to figure out what was it that made him who he is and what did he attribute to his leadership success? And what he talked about was ego.

Speaker 3: 1:12

Yeah, he was such a great example of somebody who can focus on the human in the workplace while also having very successful business results, and how those two things went hand in hand together. Yeah, there is some secret sauce that he shared with us. That's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Totally agree. Dan Springer is the former CEO of DocuSign. He's also still on the board. He's an incredibly seasoned tech leader with decades of experience scaling some of the biggest names in SaaS like Responsys, teleo, nextcard, and. He began his career at McKinsey was a partner there. He's led billion-dollar exits, built high-growth teams and knows firsthand how ego can make or break great leadership. And you're right, mel. He brought this refreshingly honest take on what it really takes to lead well.

Speaker 3: 1:59

I think this is one of my favorite episodes so far and one of my favorite guests. The insights he brought were really valuable and others will get value out of this too.

Speaker 1: 2:07

It wasn't his Dave Matthews story.

Speaker 3: 2:10

I did love Dave Matthews as a fellow DMV. The fun fact in Connecticut I was at the Meadows with my friend for a DMV when there was an entire flipping of the cars and arson back in the 90s what the hell? At a Dave Matthews concert. It got out of control. I don't know what happened and we parked in a McDonald's parking lot. This is just a side story you can take out, but it got towed and we hitchhiked with some randos to go find our car at the Impel lot.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Listen my favorite Dave Matthews story, can I tell you, yeah. So there is something I celebrate every year, which is the anniversary of the Dave Matthews Band tour bus. Oh, the bridges in Chicago. And if you don't know this story, Mel, can I tell this story? Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:56

They're probably like please not again, just when we're not brought up, so I've never been in Chicago.

Speaker 1: 3:02

There's the river in Chicago and then it dumps out into the lake and over the river are a series of bridges that are grated and they can lift up and down so tall boats can go through to the lake Keyword grated. The other thing I want everyone to know about Chicago is it's a massive architecture town, so they have these wonderful architectural cruises. If you ever go to Chicago you have to go on them. They're fantastic and you can see all of the different buildings and the stories behind them, etc. They are typically open boats, so think about massive kind of pontoon boats looking up and admiring all the skyscrapers.

Speaker 1: 3:37

On this very warm summer day there was an architectural boat cruise cruising down the river looking at all the skyscrapers and at the same time the Dave Matthews Band tour bus was going over one of these graded bridges and the bus driver accidentally decided to dump the toilet out and it dumped all over this architectural horror boat. So it is one of the most disgusting stories, but also one of the funniest stories on the planet. I love to tell it just because it's so man dave matthews, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3: 4:11

If you were on that boat, the universe was just like f you, in particular today. What like?

Speaker 1: 4:18

but you've got some explaining. I love talking with dan, not only about the dave matthews story, but about his experience and how he's really looked at ego in this equation. If you don't know, dan, he's also a mathematician back liberal arts major, which I love, but he has this idea of how do you manage ego with skills and hard work. How do you pull that into balance to really set yourself up for success and to set your team up for success as well?

Speaker 3: 4:42

And you can do this equation yourself tomorrow to gut check your own ego. Yep, good tool, right away, great tool, and with that here's Dan Dan.

Speaker 1: 5:04

how are you today?

Speaker 2: 5:05

I'm doing great Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Great, absolutely All right. I want to get you right into this. We're here to talk about ego and leadership and your background. I'm so excited for it.

Speaker 3: 5:14

All right, we want to start in understanding your origin story around the whole concept of so and ego and the role ego has played, and so I'd love to understand how your own relationship with your own ego evolved throughout your professional career.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I've been called by many, particularly as a young man, to have prodigious ego, so I guess this is a good topic. The simplest construct around that I try to define ego is high ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first in the context. It could be your family, it could be your office, it could be your company, it could be your sports team, whatever it is. And low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals. Or, again, it could be family, it could be any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.

Speaker 2: 6:01

And my own origin story, I think, is a good, healthy, I mean growing up with the world being presented to me.

Speaker 2: 6:10

In a certain way. It was when I was growing up I was pretty egocentric. I think I was pretty focused on Dan, and although I had wonderful role models like my mom, my hero, who demonstrated to me by putting me first, been really dedicated to whichever life to me, I probably should have seen that sooner, but I was a little slow on the uptake and somewhere, probably in my late 20s, I at least became aware of the fact that I was a little bit of a selfish person or a selfish SOB, maybe it would be more accurate. And then professionally I started to figure that out a little bit in leading people. But it wasn't until I had my first son that I think I really figured out that it wasn't about me. And once you have that ability to love someone more than you love yourself, it opens up your ability to just be much less egocentric in everything you do. So that was probably my. So I was. I'm embarrassed to say that now, but early thirties before I probably got to a reasonably evolved sense of ego.

Speaker 3: 7:13

Yeah, that makes sense, right, our brains aren't even fully formed until we're about 24, I think so to make good decisions and things like that. So it's totally understandable. We're in the non-judgment zone, by the way.

Speaker 2: 7:22

All right.

Speaker 3: 7:22

So having your son obviously major pivotal moment. What other kind of pivotal moments did you have that really transformed your understanding of ego, especially in leadership?

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, so two, actually One before I had my son in my first job managing people. So I worked for the phone company. I was a forecaster, a econometrician, I did modeling and I showed up and they didn't have sophistication at Pacific Valley at that time. So I quickly got promoted less than a year in my first job as a college and I was now managing people. My parents' age that had been professional forecasters but didn't have some of the technical skills I had, and I quickly realized how bad I was at the job.

Speaker 2: 7:59

But I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. And who's this little jerk telling me he's experienced and good people with probably a condescending ear if we want to be honest about it. But I eventually got that feedback so I did get a snippet. Being a jerk is not the best archetype of manager that you probably want to have. Then I think fast forward to probably having a son. But the it was one period that I think was really powerful for me, where I started to respect how wonderful some of the people we work with are and I ran a company you've never heard of called Tellio. It was my first time as the CEO and I ran it into the ground.

Speaker 2: 8:38

we sold it for 50 bucks to our Donnelly maybe a little more, not very much money, and so that's why you've never heard of it and I will bury the details of the company. It's important to me but it won't be to your audience. But something happened is right after I joined. It was like it was a dire situation and we had to do a slight restructuring. It was a small company but we had to do a layoff and I had never done that in a role, in a manager role, in a manager role. I've been a consultant at McKinsey, so I've been around a little bit of cost cutting. And that night after the layoff I was in my office late and four of the guys that had been laid off were standing outside the doors like a glass door looking in and they knocked and they came in and for a minute I had this thought are they telling you to beat the crap out of?

Speaker 2: 9:19

me, I can figure out why they don't want to stay around and these four guys sat down and they just asked to check in on how I was doing and they said they could tell how difficult it had been for me to go through the layoff their layoff, not my layoff, their layoff that they were worried about me and I'll tell you for the next couple of years.

Speaker 2: 9:40

That was this incredible strong feeling.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Every time I thought about it it made me feel worse, obviously, because these are the greatest human beings that could get laid off and they're worried about the guy that just came in to be their boss, that had to carry out the action.

Speaker 2: 9:53

And two, it just made me realize how wonderful people can be and it's just always stuck with me as a message that we have a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, and I vowed I would never it hasn't happened yet, but it could never have a layoff of people who were doing their job well and were losing their opportunity because leadership in this case me failed to provide the opportunity. So don't overhire, don't get into that situation and when you have it. It's a painful lesson, but it was hugely eye-opening for me against the quality of people and the really serious responsibility we have as leaders for the people that work for us, and not everyone feels that way. I think it's really important If you're not feeling that way, not caring that much about your people, what are you doing in management?

Speaker 3: 10:40

Yeah, you have to think about the whole person and get down to humanity. At the end of the day, we are bigger than our jobs, so life is bigger than that.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Yeah. So Mel and I didn't go to math school. Dan, we did not go to math school. I know you did. I know you were being a jerk to the Yellow Pages people. Let's talk about how you were a jerk, dan. No, I'm just kidding. I was sitting there thinking like you were 30. I think I was like 35 before I got that that lesson around. Don't be a total asshole to people. But one of the things that I love about what you've come up with is an ego equation or an equation how to think about ego, because we have all these stories around. It's about how smart you are, it is about your strategy and you're playing five degree chess over here. Or maybe it's about the fact that you work your ass off. I'm wondering if you can talk about the mathy equation. You have to think about ego and work and skills as it relates to success.

Speaker 2: 11:39

It's a little bit geeky. Sure, it's only geeky when you put numbers to it. Conceptually, even liberal arts majors like myself even though I was a math and liberal arts college people we can really grasp these concepts. The simple expression which I've used in this so like sewing needle and thread is you have your skills that are usually highly correlated to the fortune you were given with your smarts and your ability to build skills. And then you have your ego.

Speaker 2: 12:04

As I mentioned earlier is your ability to control your focus on yourself versus to the broader organization, and then, as you said, how hard you work. And the equation for the geeks out there like myself is you take those skills that you have, the S, you divide it by your ego, so you want to have less ego, obviously. Then you take that and you raise it to the power of how hard you work. And if you do play around with little numbers I generally use one to five and you assess yourself. I'll give you my own self-assessment, so yeah, and then we're, we're on this spectrum think of this bell curve spectrum, not a one to five.

Speaker 2: 12:38

When it comes to skills that have been built, I think I'm a four. Most of my life asserted I was a five, but we can get to the ego point. I just had a lot of good fortunes. It's not so much that I'm smarter than other people or more skill, I just showed up in some really good situations that made me look good. So I've had a lot of serendipity. And then the ego. And again I don't think I was ever a five.

Speaker 2: 13:02

On the ego, Maybe I was a four. There's a distribution curve and there's other people out there that could be pretty condescending, jerk like two, but I was probably in the four zone. I'm down to about a two in my self-assessment. So I'm pretty good not the best, but I'm pretty good at trying to really put the organization first and get out of my own ego and then on how hard I work. It's four or five. I've been a five at times. Sustaining five is very difficult but I think I'm a good, solid four.

Speaker 2: 13:27

So if you use the four, two, four, you say four divided by two is two. You raise that to the power of four and you get two, four, eight, 16. And that's pretty good. And, of course, when you're a competitive person, like I am, you play this game and you go. Okay, what I really want to do is be a five over a one. Raise it to the it. Just, it really probably doesn't happen very often and, quite frankly, if you have people operating with a high ego, you do the math. If you're around a one, it doesn't matter how hard you work. You're not going to get the number any better. If you're below one, it's effective. A person working really hard has all focused on themselves could actually be a detriment to an organization. So that's how I think about the formula and have to chat about each of the elements more, but I use that in evaluating people and thinking about how effective they can be in our organization.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Let me ask you this so you're 16 and you're so score. Is there a range? Let's say you're building out a C-suite, for example, or you're building out whatever and you're trying to gauge where people are at what's considered like a good score.

Speaker 2: 14:32

16 is good and again, it's my form. I'm not going to create a system that I have a terrible outcome in.

Speaker 2: 14:38

And you're like, wow, I really need work, I have to change the model. But 16 is good, have to change the model there. The 16 is good and the real challenge is it's the most of us, of course, most situation. I'm talking about me as a software exec to 16. Um, by the way, the only place I've ever been better is actually in in in sports, and the reason is and this is that you're really fortunate if you have this makeup my whole life, life I played sports all through college, division III college, but still some of my college soccer and lacrosse teams.

Speaker 2: 15:09

But all through school, all through every team I ever played on, I don't think I was ever the most skilled player on my team and I had just enough self-knowledge to know. I think sometimes I was one of the better players I knew. I was never the most skilled player on any, whether it was football, soccer, basketball, cross, whatever but nobody worked harder.

Speaker 2: 15:31

I don't believe anyone on any team I was ever on. I know it was a pretty aggressive statement to make, but I can't. How are you going to know? How are you going to refute it?

Speaker 3: 15:38

anyway, Ever Sounds a little like. Ego Sounds a little like ego.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. Can you have ego about how hard you work? Maybe, and I do think if you look at the stats score you'll always see not as many points but a lot of assists from Dan's work, and that was the joy I had as being a playmaker and trying to make other people score and succeed. So in sports it's the only time I've ever been ever better than I have as a profession. But I would just clearly say 16 is taking me a career to get to. I was realistically a one-two, probably most of my career because of the ego that suppresses the ratio of the smarts, and so if you had a team of 16s, that would be a killer team.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Everyone could get their egos down. Some people might get it by a five and a three. You're playing the different modes, but yeah, it's all about getting that balance right.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Is there ever a situation where you need to have hot ego?

Speaker 2: 16:34

Yeah, and again, the problem with the definition of the word ego in general. There could be a lot of different nuances and interpretations of that, and I think they can be healthy ego for sure, in the construct that I'm defining. I don't think so. I think it's optimal is to be a team player, because not only does it help the team's output, but then it forces other people, because of that behavior you exhibit, to do the same. People want to be drawn, I think, to something bigger than themselves, and if other people lead that way, it makes it easier. So you have a knockoff effect on other people when you bring down your ego and some cultures can get to the place where that happens. But just to be clear, there's high-performing cultures that have high ego.

Speaker 2: 17:12

I worked at McKinsey. There are investment banks, I would tell you. Most of them is a model where people are fighting, particularly in banks, for their compensation. It's a big thing, it's a let me show you how great I was and the deals I got done. Therefore, I deserve more compensation in that model. By definition, I think you should answer your question. That's supposed to be a high ego place. Now, over time, that can have become destructive, and yeah, but I think that's the balance. Leadership and that kind of organization has to figure out a way to maintain that competitiveness around individual performance and at the same time still figure out how do we have some collegial nature that we can build a firm together.

Speaker 1: 17:53

You've taken your career where it is based on this model. You see it and evaluate your teams based on this model. We doubled down on ego, but I would love to understand what do you think about skills? And when you think about hard work, what would you recommend people consider when they're looking at upping those potentially? Just to balance out the equation.

Speaker 2: 18:14

One thing I tell you about the skills side, the hardest part about skills, it's the one I think we can do the least Now it doesn't mean you can't take classes and get training things, but core thing that drives and in fact you didn't ask if I stole this idea. There's no SEW, quite like the way I do it. But this construct of these sort of three forces in determining how effective people are in their work was stolen from a guy I worked with at McKinsey years ago, an Australian guy, clemenger, and he actually initially his thinking was it wasn't skills, it was smarts. It's also smarts are trainable. It's a very McKinsey way to think about it. Right, and he'd been a career McKinsey Was we just want smart people, because smart people will figure out problems, but they'll also figure out how to learn and grow To some extent your clock speed.

Speaker 2: 18:59

You can work on it. You're born with what you got. Thank or don't thank your parents, but you got what you got. So that one is much harder for people to control. And I would tell you the best thing you can do to either quote unquote improve your smarts or your skills it's the learning you get, it's taking wisdom from your experiences. So what makes you smarter, effectively or more skilled is the fact that you have ability to take feedback and say, oh, I got to move a little bit over this way, so that's probably the most important piece, except that a lot of it is going to be.

Speaker 2: 19:28

You're given processing capability and then the one is applying yourself, and if you just do more and you're active, it goes back to the work. How hard you work. If you take on opportunities. Every time you have a chance to do something new and different, you do it and then you listen and learn about how you did. That's the best thing I think you can do to improve your sort of smart skills and on work, that's probably the least complex, right?

Speaker 2: 19:51

And it's just how will you apply yourself? It's definitely about working smarter, not just harder, although I sometimes think we use the excuse of working smart, not hard, to not fully deploy ourselves and really invest ourselves in the things we're working on. But that could be personal, professional, across the board. We often know when we're just showing up and there's days sometimes where that's all you can muster, just showing up. But if you find yourself only just showing up a lot of the time, you're probably not in the right place, because you just don't have that enthusiasm for your work to allow you to get up to a four or maybe even a five on how hard you work.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, it's interesting when you have those where you. Is it context you know what I'm saying Like when you're in a situation I know when you were at DocuSign or Responsys, for example, too, it felt like that was like these magical times, right, these magical cultures where you wanted to show up, right, it's the context of it, or is it the individual that's always going to have that lens, or is it a combination of both? I think it could be situational, right.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Yeah, but your point about the magical times what makes people remember times as magical is because they work really hard with a group of people they respect and care for and built a great album, and when you do that, it bonds people. I think we were chatting the other day and I told you that there was this 10-year reunion of people from when we sold Responses to Oracle and I thought the whole idea was a little wacky in the first place, to be completely honest with you, and then, when hundreds of people showed up and said it was a really special way for them to be back with people, it felt more like a college reunion than a company had been part of. You had something special and that culture that you were part of will always be important to you.

Speaker 1: 21:37

It's the power of when you have this in masses, right, when everybody is pulling in their weight or has a high SO score, right. That's the power of that too. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever had a magical work experience where I phoned it in or where I was very egocentric, or like I was the smartest person in the freaking room, like that never, ever happened. I think that's common.

Speaker 2: 21:58

I think that experience you're describing is probably common and I would say there are times, particularly in technology industry, where you get on a wave and you probably could continue to have great success with phoning it in a little bit, although be careful, because when you're riding that kind of wave it's going to crash at some point. But I would tell you, I bet it's not a magical experience. I think it's very difficult, if you didn't really work hard at something, to truly enjoy the success and the outcome, because it's not as important, it's not as special to you as if you know that you really applied yourself fully.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Yeah, you got to be invested.

Speaker 3: 22:46

Something that really resonates with me with what you said, because, as another former athlete but I will say I was D1. Just rubbing it in a little, just a little, but I was a rower, so it doesn't really count as a former athlete, throughout my life, one of the things that I heard time and time again from my coaches and like you, I was never the best, but what I always got was the heart award. Because when you're the one giving heart and in my mind, when I keep hearing you say hard work, that's what I keep hearing.

Speaker 3: 23:12

Oh, the people who give heart, like you have the heart in it. Is that what you mean when you say hard work absolutely?

Speaker 2: 23:18

and in fact it's funny. I was thinking about your point about crew. It actually is a great example because, if you think about again, I never rode crew in any close to semblance of a real way, but oddly enough, I went to a strange high school in Seattle that happened to have crew, which is unusual, particularly unusual. Then on the West Coast, I'm going to start and for the next six, about six minutes, I'm going to get increasingly uncomfortable to the point that my body's going to hate what I'm doing and I'm going to collapse in exhaustion and you go and that's what we do every time and that's our form, and there's probably some track and field things that are like that a little bit, and it's the only one you do in unison, depending on three other, seven other I guess, four and eight if you count. But what a crazy bond that people must have with the team when you go through that.

Speaker 2: 24:17

You've probably seen it, but you see the boys in the boat. There's a movie from the book the Boys in the Boat. The book was better than the movie. Usually Not always, but usually it's the University of Washington men's crew that won the Olympic gold medal in 1936. No-transcript.

Speaker 3: 24:53

Oh, I loved crew. By the way, I think when I talked to any of my teammates, most of us did it so we could watch the sunrise before class, because it was just a fun experience at 5 am.

Speaker 3: 25:03

I wanted to go back to those high-performance work cultures, because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We work cultures because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We've worked in the big four, all of those things. Do you think something has to happen in terms of, like performance management? Performance management set up in a way to be egocentric or to build ego, because there's always this kind of back and forth? Do you brag about the work you've done and that impacts your potential bonus and your raise or your opportunities for growth, but none of us get our work done, necessarily as individual contributors. Even when you're an individual contributor, you still need others to complete your work, and so do you think there's an opportunity for organizations to think differently about performance management and how you brag about the things you've done while also bringing along everyone else who helped you get there?

Speaker 2: 25:50

I think so. Yeah, and I'll tell you the first thing. There's certain things in business life that are close to universally. True. There's probably none that are quite, but there's two I want to talk to One related to your question, but first I'll do the other one.

Speaker 2: 26:03

It's amazing how what we learned in kindergarten is so important for what we do in life. Saying please, saying thank you and saying I'm sorry when appropriate is the simplest thing to do, and when we don't do it oftentimes it leads to fairly significant conflict and problems. I'm not saying it always solves everything, but at least creates the opportunity and the space to be successful. And one of the things that I think is really corollary to that is about teams that you described. And if you say we instead of I, first of all people know.

Speaker 2: 26:40

So if you're so worried that you have to be clear that you did something, the detraction that you're going to get from your colleague to everyone else I need you to point out that it was you Way swaps, any extra benefit you might get in bonus time or what you're just got, is my opinion.

Speaker 2: 26:55

But if you do that chest beating and you do it around a wee, it's amazing how everyone gives you license to brag all you want because it's about wee, and if you figure out a way to try to give the credit in a credible way to other people, because we've all seen the bullshit, the fake oh, thank the little people, because it wasn't me and you just look and you're like, okay, that not only gets you the credit for having delivered the great results that your team's done, but, more importantly, that we language makes everyone else feel great and it sets us up for another success, because now everyone wants to do it again. So you're also building followership from teams. So I think that's the answer to the question is just be a we oriented and get away from needing to point out what people probably already know when you've done something great.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Yeah, I'll tell you too, where I've seen people be really successful is with that we language and that authentic we language like you talked about, with their team, and also cross-functionally as well. When you can be we, when you're reaching across the aisle with finance and HR and marketing and you're going at it we as one, that is hugely powerful, especially as you're going up in the ranks.

Speaker 2: 28:17

And I would also tell you I think it's powerful when you're the hardest grader on yourself. A lot of people say they're the hardest grader on themselves, they're toughest on themselves. I don't always find that to be the case and I find if you can do that and get a reputation amongst your colleagues for being tougher on yourself than you are on them, it's a really exponentially improving opportunity. I'll give you one sort of dumb example. But at Responsys I had this thing where I tried to change the way we thought about performance reviews. So we did everything out of 100. It's just just like a hundred. But a hundred was perfect Pretty hard to be perfect and I was CEO for 10 years at Responsys. I had twice a year had a review and I would submit my self-assessment, just like I would have all my managers first submit a self-assessment, and I never had a hundred. I never got above low nineties and we had a couple of quarters that led to a half year performance that you would say those were pretty good and I had a board that would push back and say come on, this has got to be a hundred percent and I'm like a hundred, how can you get a hundred? But what would happen is I'd come in and say, yeah, I think I had an 82. And they'd be this is crazy. You at least have a 90. We have to argue this up to a 90. Think about that.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Normally my experiences before that was the other way around. I think I'm about 115. And then someone else has to say, god, we really think he's about a 90, but now we've got to say he's an 80 to try to compromise. So it just totally changes that. Every single executive my direct reports at responses but one and I'll get to the one in a second Over time grasped that and said this is the way I want it to be.

Speaker 2: 29:54

I want to be in a situation when I come in tougher on myself and my manager was me says no, I think better than that. Those conversations are so rewarding and I did. One executive who was very talented and a great executive and he had grown up in a sense of I'm above 100%, everything I do is above 100%, and the math major in me says there is no above 100%. It's impossible to be above 100% Asymptomically. Approaching 100% on most things is almost impossible, and so that mentality to get out of that I got all Ben Antonio, but I got everyone else there and it was I think it was a big part of our culture that then went down and trickled down wherever what it was saying like. Let me be tougher on myself.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Let me ask you this In those moments, did you want to rate yourself 100? In the back of your mind, were you like I actually was 100, but I'm going to put it in myself at a 91? Or were you like, no, I was genuinely in 91, you wasn't you can't what's truth I think there's times where I thought I was pretty damn good.

Speaker 2: 30:56

Yeah, we had a lot of challenges too, but the early parts of the company was a complete turnaround. There was some, I think. You know I often talk I'll give you a. Let me answer your question, then I'll give you them. Yeah, there were times when I thought I was great, but because I defined it it as 100%. It's just yeah, you can't.

Speaker 2: 31:12

One of my pet peeves when people say I gave 110%, you don't have 110. There is no 110. And I appreciate what the construct they're trying to say pushing yourself. No, it's like the crew thing, like my 100% is to get us there in six minutes. I got us in five minutes and 55 seconds. I did more than a hundred percent. Well, you just reset. What a hundred percent is? That's new love.

Speaker 2: 31:32

But but that concept, yes, there are probably some times when I might've been a little bit I don't know too cute by half about saying no, the IPO was great, it just wasn't really the accomplishment I wanted for the company. I think we could have done better. Or my last time I sold the company at the highest multiple SaaS offer company I'd ever had. That was a pretty good outcome. Ceo should feel good, the whole team should feel good about that. But there were some things that just weren't quite optimized in those periods and I think it's important to always tell yourself that the grade you would give yourself is lower than the grade you'd give the company If you're the CEO or general manager for your business, because telling people I'm better than you are and I'm pulling us up, it's a hugely odd message to send, and you and I have talked about this before.

Speaker 2: 32:21

I think the leadership model I try to think about is the inverted pyramid. Instead of a CEO at the top and then all these people coming down, I say the job of a leader is to make everyone else on the team successful. So you should think about it as an inverted leadership model. And the simple example is that if you think about a company, particularly if it gets to scale, even if you have a lot of self-confidence, managed ego I have a lot of self-confidence. The best I could be at a company of scale let's say there's a thousand employees maybe I could be as good as three or four people. I would have to just be in my A game constantly. Best case, I could be as good as three or four actually, but if I could make each of those thousand people 10% better, that's like hundreds of people you've added of good work, so it just swamps it, and so if you get your mindset to think like that versus to think top, down ones, so it just swamps it.

Speaker 2: 33:09

And so if you get your mindset to think like that, versus to think top down, I think it helps you to achieve.

Speaker 3: 33:15

I like the we, not me, concept over there. Yeah, when you think about how leaders can accurately assess where they fall on this scale, can they accurately self-assess, or does it require some external measurements? I'm the only one that can self-assess.

Speaker 2: 33:32

You're the only one Awesome, sorry, sorry. Of course, everyone can do your own self-assessment. In fact, doing a self-assessment is great. More valuable for most of us probably two is to ask the people you work with, ask your colleagues, ask the team you manage, ask your manager hey, how do you think about me? In this format, and that would be the fun exercise. If you're doing it as a management team, I should do this actually my next gig. You should actually just ask everyone to do that assessment for everyone on the team and then you give people the sense of here's what you said about you and here's what the rest of us said about you.

Speaker 2: 34:04

In each of these dimensions, I think it could be really powerful way, and I'll tell you that the hard part about it is assessing. You try to think about assessing people when you don't have a lot of data. Most people, if you work with colleagues and you ask people oh yeah, francesca, usually people have a pretty similar view. The hard part is like when you're interviewing someone and you meet them and you say, hey, should we hire this person? You're trying to assess how successful they'll be. It's much harder to figure out some of these things. There's some things that are typically around the smarts and skills. People have degrees and things, or people have a track record where they've delivered tremendous performance. So you see some areas where you can get that.

Speaker 2: 34:41

The ego one, of course, is the hardest one, although the work one is interesting because a lot of people tout how hard they work and again they're just about working hard. It's about working smart. Sometimes you can't completely rock that. You get a better sense from other people, but the ego one is the hardest one and the way I'll give you my fun interview question. I love to ask people. If it were you, mel, I would say hey. So, mel, if I had in the room everyone that you've been working with for the last five years, but you weren't there and I said to them what's really great about what Mel does? What would they say? And then you answered that question and then, when I'm finished, I said, hey, if I asked that same group, what are the things Mel should be working on? What are some areas where you know Mel could be a little more effective?

Speaker 2: 35:27

What would they say to that? And of course, everyone loves the first question. First of all, they'd say I'm the smartest person. They give you, as they should. You're giving them a softball to say what's great about you, yeah. But the second question is interesting because there's basically three buckets of answers and some people are in tune with issues that they're working on and they've gotten feedback in the past. Maybe they've made some improvement, they know there's more, and that's a really thoughtful and great answer. Another answer is I don't think they have anything to say. Look, that would be it.

Speaker 3: 36:01

Look at what we're saying. Such a weird response.

Speaker 2: 36:02

Really they just have. No, they actually just they've never dawned on them that people might not think they're perfect and they may be great but just like. That's an indication that we ought to be probing further how effective they are in teams if it's never sort of done. But the worst answer of all is what I call the faux answer. And the faux answer is let me tell you what they'd say Now. First of all, they say I work too hard and carrying the load of the whole team makes everyone feel terrible because I do so much more than everyone else, and that's a real problem for people.

Speaker 2: 36:38

And they give two or three things that you're like the most ridiculous fake critique of all time. Then you actually realize this person's smart. They probably have some awareness of things that they could work on and be better, but they're manipulative and they're full of shit and they're basically going to say let me tell you how I can smooth that. That's actually indicative to me. They could be skilled and there might be certain roles where that sort of ability to communicate and feel if they're going to be an actor or something you might say that's a great skill, to be able to have right To improvise that answer. But to be a colleague, that's a person that's I'm going to be wary, I'm going to be wary. Can they really dedicate themselves to a mission to work with other people? So that's a great question to ask.

Speaker 3: 37:17

I love that question, Someone who worked in talent acquisition. I think it's such a smart question to ask because I've heard also those rehearsed answers and you're like, oh OK, yeah, I don't know about that. What are some ways? I guess, when you think about warning signs Because I would see that as a warning sign, just as you did but when someone's in the job, what are some of the warning signs that indicate ego might be creeping up or interfering with their leadership effectiveness?

Speaker 2: 37:43

Core issue of where an ego is a problem is usually not in someone's self-led efforts around their interactions with the team, and so I think where we see people who are less effective team members and aren't able to the company or the team first, that's where you see it and you see it from their colleagues. And what do I be careful about? I'm a big believer in things like 360 feedback. I'm not actually a huge believer in massive programmatic you have your talent, background, sort of solutions but I think the discipline of getting feedback in a thoughtful, targeted way, as opposed to just lots of forms that people start filling out in a shitty way, is not, honestly, the key to success. It is in a thoughtful way, given the person and the individual. You as a manager do work, but getting that feedback from folks is great. One thing to be careful about is just because other people are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. Are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. A lot of times we ask someone to carry some pretty heavy water and drive some pretty aggressive performance and some people might not like that and they might say that's a bad person. A lot of times. Let's get this at.

Speaker 2: 38:45

Docusign or CPL would say they're not living the DocuSign values. They were very important. We had this really strong set of values. Docu DocSend's an amazing company and it's got some things that are really strong. By the way, we've had some challenges last couple of years. Some of those values have allowed us, I think, to maintain more success. But it's really easy to pull the values card and say I don't like the way Mel's doing that and so I'm going to say throw the value set. I'd be really careful that the person that's willing to throw that might not just be doing well, they might be actually saying the scrutiny and management I'm getting is making me uncomfortable. And the person is trying to give me aggressive feedback and somehow I missed the memo that said feedback is a gift and since I didn't think feedback was a gift, I think the person's riding me really hard, but actually they're trying to make me better. So get feedback but make sure you're triangulating and then get observations yourself. That's how I'd propose attacking that role.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Okay, here's a question. I feel like we have a lot of representations of ego in the extreme. I've seen very high up leaders, board members, ceos, it could be even a manager. I've seen individual contributors and they're so egocentric they're bordering on narcissistic or maybe they are or just a straight psycho. We've all worked for them. What do you like? Some of those environments incent that, incent that behavior, reward that behavior. If you're in an organization that you feel like that's happening, or you're walking into a culture where that day that's happening, how do you start to advocate for more of this balance? How do you operate as yourself? If you're someone that isn't that way and likes to operate with more of the balance, do you go? What do you do? What's the play there?

Speaker 2: 40:29

So, the first thing is why? Why do you want to do what you're describing you want to do? Do you diagnose that there's a problem in the company? You see a performance challenge happening at some point, or we have a nutrition problem because we have some people's behaviors driving good people out. I'd like to try to understand what the thing I'm trying to fix is before I take my remedy. But in general, I'm a big believer in we motivate people with incentive structures. Some of those are financial incentive structures, some of the praise, all sorts of levels that we have for incentives for people. And so if you're driving behavior and you're seeing it not just one individual, but you're seeing it more creep into your business in a way that you think it's not healthy, I'd look at your incentive structure.

Speaker 2: 41:08

And so one of the phenomenas is you might say we have a lot of individual achievement awards. Let's go to a team award and a company could take a bonus approach and say it's subjectively based on each individual's performance. Or you could say we're going to have a total team outcome. These are our top three goals, and if we achieve them we all win in that award, and if we don't, that's one lever. But I think that kind of concept is thinking about what you've put in place in your organization to drive the behavior you're driving. And the other one and this is one that I don't understand why more people don't do it other than you know. I have some conflict avoidance in my own nature, so I understand it's a human phenomenon. We often avoid conflict, francesca, less you than the rest of us. You're so nice.

Speaker 2: 41:52

You spiked on that in a good way, but the answer is talk about it. I don't know. We have this thing where everyone's in a closed room secretly saying, oh, Billy's doing this and Susie's doing this. Hey, Billy, Susie, people think you're being a jerk and I don't know why. That's not who I think you are. So let's go show them that's wrong and what are the things we're going to do together to have it? And I think, same thing Not everyone accepts feedback as a gift at the beginning, but you have to explain to them.

Speaker 2: 42:18

You want to be successful here. You're going to work with me in addressing this feedback and I think you would find most people 90%-ish people if they know that you care about them and they know that you respect them, they will take that feedback and they will want to be better. And there's some people who just can't take it or see it feels too personal and they have to say it's not me, it's the person that's complaining. Understand that there's a cycle. You go through that process. Past that, I think most people can say you know what? I want to be better, I want to be more effective, so I want to work on it.

Speaker 1: 42:52

Yeah, Mel and I are. We're writing a book and we just came out of research and that's the number one thing around being feeling like you're being respected and valued. You cannot have feedback, trust, development, conversation, anything without that. That is the base, for you have to have that mutual respect and that mutual value, and I think it's something that we overlook or we assume it's just there yeah, right and we've never had a goddamn conversation about it.

Speaker 2: 43:20

Yeah, and I'll, yeah. Um, and you have data. And so what happens when you have data? You sometimes that ad is just nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. And so if you're there, you say I got all this information, make you better. I'm like, are you trying to make better? If you're there and you say I got all this information to make you better, I'm like are you trying to make better? Are you setting me up for failure? Like when I understand that you're. When you show up to tell me something, it's because you care about me and you care about the success of what we're building together. Yeah, then I really do want to know, I want to understand, I care about this feedback that's going to make me better.

Speaker 1: 43:49

Yeah, I think starting with care is such a huge thing. Starting with care might be your answer to my next question, which is I'm dead. It's a little crazy out there these days, but it's a little uncertain. Yeah, hashtag tariffs, speaking of incentive structures as opposed to sticks. I am curious, though if you're a leader, especially if you're a C-level executive, and you have the entire company on your shoulders and you're trying to navigate uncertainty it could be now, it could be in the future, I don't care, but I am curious about how you protect that balance of your ego as you're going through that, because I have to believe that it might be up and down, depending on what situation you're in, what win you have, what punch you just took in the phase. How do you maintain and balance that ego when you are just in a blitzkrieg of bullshit?

Speaker 2: 44:40

Yeah, two things. One, it was harder for me to insightfully answer that question today because I'm at a place where I've had so much good fortune in my career and I've gotten a lot of boost. That makes me feel good about myself professionally, and not that I don't have things I'm constantly working on, for sure, but I've been so fortunate that I don't walk around with a chip on my shoulder that I, you know, because of this crisis or some other, I either need to prove myself. I do feel like I need to prove myself every day, but I don't feel like I'm coming from a defensive way of doing that and proving myself. So that makes it easier. But if I go back a couple IPOs ago, yeah, I think it's a real challenge.

Speaker 2: 45:20

I think what you're describing is absolutely a challenge, and the more that the market gets crazy your market, whatever that is it's easy to feel like it's unfair and lashing out and attacking, and then sometimes even the people that are close to you. You should be pulling together. Some people are critical of them. We're blaming. You know the blame game. If you just sold more, we wouldn't have this problem. So it's your fault.

Speaker 2: 45:42

Sales is fault, which has been a huge issue, by the way, in enterprise software the last couple of years, the number of companies, because I spent a lot of time talking to people about running more software companies that say a company is great, the only problem is our sales team. If we just had a new head of sales, it's going to be great. I'm like really, because every software company is saying the same thing. Is it really just the sales leaders? I don't think so, and so I do think the hard thing when everything is going crazy like that is to just go back and say what can I control and what can I not? I can't control tariffs, I can't control any of these things. I have to make decisions based on the fact that some externalities are there and those external factors are happening. But I have to go back to our team and say I don't know what the outcome is. I just can't tell you what the outcome is going to be, but I can tell you what the inputs are and we're going our very best at doing it in the way we believe and at the quality that we believe we can deliver for our customers, for employees, whatever. And let's just do that, because that's what we can control, and I know it's the same thing like stock price is a phenomenon.

Speaker 2: 46:41

Companies go public and every CEO gives the same speech, or pretty much every CEO. Guys, we can't control the stock price. You shouldn't be spending time looking at the stock price. That response is early on. I made this thing. I said I'm not going to look at the stock price except for Friday afternoon every week. I will not look at the stock If you ask me about it. I don't want to know. I don't care. I don't want to know what the stock price is. What am I going to do on any given day? How are you.

Speaker 1: 47:06

This is a backward.

Speaker 2: 47:07

This isn't that. Leaving is a backward indicator. We got to be focused on our business and getting people out of that mindset. Actually, one thing we did response is we had the IPO and we didn't go ring the bell in New York. We did the IPO. We came back to the office and we were with the office and the people and the day after IPO we said let's play Sales to do. We got product to build. We got customers to take care of. We said what happened to go public yesterday? It's fun and Our customers take care of it. What happened to go public yesterday? It was fun and we should all feel good about it. It was a nice accomplishment. Back to work, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the context of what we have to do every day. I'm sure we care about it and create liquidity for people. Lots of wonderful things that happen. I'm not against celebrating. I'm all about celebrating. Why do we have the opportunity to celebrate?

Speaker 3: 48:03

Because, because we did these other things really well for the last several years, so let's keep doing those things. Looking back at your younger self and what you know now, what do you wish you could tell your younger self?

Speaker 2: 48:10

I think probably a couple things. One is I didn't have a lot of patience, I was in a hurry and I think it's okay to be moving fast, but I think I would tell myself as part of that smell the roses, enjoy the time, enjoy the experiences you're having, and I sometimes skip things to get on to the next, and sometimes I think that's a mistake a lot of us make. And life it's not the end, it's the journey and really making sure you enjoy the journey. And that probably is mostly then around investing in relationships, and not necessarily just like your most important relationship, but the people you know that are just wonderful. It could be colleagues, could be friends, any number of places. Really take advantage of those personal relationships. That is what life is fun to do. So that'd be number one.

Speaker 2: 48:59

Number two, and there's no question, after the practice speech I gave you on this topic earlier, I would tell myself to chill, cool my jets a little bit about then and realize that the joy I was going to get in life, the real joy I have, comes from seeing other people being successful, and I had to accumulate a certain amount of professional success and personal success before I could start to do that. So I missed a lot of years of a lot of joy I could have had. I think I had little snippets of it. I'm not a total jerk. I did care about the people I worked with but it was all in the lens of they could be successful to make me more successful. And if I think I could have just appreciated them more for them and been better for them, starting that sooner I would get a lot more joy. So those would probably be the two things. There's probably a lot of things I would tell myself, but those would be the. Those would be the.

Speaker 3: 49:52

I like it. The second one, especially when you think of giving their best advice to emerging leaders, that's like a big takeaway that they can start today. Okay.

Speaker 1: 49:59

Rapid round questions. You can answer these with one word or a sentence, or however long you want. Sometimes these are our most interesting questions. Are you ready to play? I'm ready to play. Okay, it is 2030. What does work look like? Work will be very similar to what it is today in the post-COVID world Very similar.

Speaker 2: 50:25

All right, interesting. No, I should elaborate. I thought I was supposed to do rapid fire.

Speaker 1: 50:28

Wait, now, I want to know the answer. Wait, why do you think it's going to be similar? Why do you think it's going to be similar?

Speaker 2: 50:35

I think we've had a lot of transformational change going into and coming out of COVID and I think the amount of change in the way we work, assimilate is limited. We're humans and we have our patterns and we have our trends. So I think we've gotten to this place. I don't think it's exactly equilibrium, but in terms of our people going to be in the office, are they going to be remote, I think we're getting to that zone of where we're going to be. I would add, I think artificial intelligence will change the way we work, but I think it's going to be less impact. It'll be massively impactful on business, less impactful on people than I think we realize, because we're adaptable and the things that get automated and then we do things as humans that can't be automated. So I don't think that will change as much as some people are forecasting in the next five years.

Speaker 2: 51:15

Are you an AI optimist? I'm an optimist, for sure. Yeah, I definitely. I have my I call it terminator awareness of what's happening. I just don't see it. I really don't. Maybe it's my. I'm an optimist. I'm also. My faith in humanity is pretty high. Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic.

Speaker 1: 51:31

That's good. There's a lot of really awesome possibility there. I'm stoked for it. I'm stoked for it. Yeah, what music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 2: 51:39

I've been listening to Dave Matthews almost nonstop the last 10 days. Nothing wrong with a little DMV. We had Dave come to an event. Jane Goodall introduced him to me. We did an event at DocuSign. He is the funniest person I've ever been on stage with. If he was an actor, I don't know if you know this before he became a musician he was an actor.

Speaker 2: 51:59

He's been in a number of films since he's become famous, but he is just the funniest. He has the driest, quick-witted sense of humor that I never would have fully understood, even though I've been a fan for years and then joined C&M on stage, so Dave was the bomb Best session ever. At any event, Get out. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:18

I always read him as like either really awkward to talk to or making like really uncomfortable jokes period.

Speaker 3: 52:26

Yeah, I got the impression. He seems like a good call.

Speaker 2: 52:29

So he roasted me in front. He had the DocuSign employee base and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that the docuside employee based and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that, of course, that audience love oh sure so you know he knew his audience.

Speaker 2: 52:40

Um, yeah, he's a musical genius. So you're right, sometimes there's oddities with people who are creative geniuses. Uh, there's some of that awkwardness. He's so genuine. I'll just say one little snippet. We should move past dave matthews, but he moved to seattle from charlottesville where they really got going. So he lives in in the seattle area and up until this is about five years ago, he just moved out of a one bathroom house with his three children and his wife and he was just like, yeah, and driving his 1970 something volvo, he's just a guy, that's like.

Speaker 2: 53:13

I don't have any heirs. He's just the same person that I think he wanted to be ever since he was probably 20 or something like that. Yeah, he's a treasure.

Speaker 1: 53:22

See that story restores my faith in humanity. Honestly Like that's it. Okay, what are you reading? What are you reading?

Speaker 2: 53:29

So I just finished reading something I half read. It was embarrassing Principles by Ray Dalio, which is a tome of a big book. But the exciting thing that I just started reading again and I think I read it before. But I'm embarrassed. I can remember his Profiles in Courage. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning, jfk wrote it and it's one of those books that everyone knows about, but then you just maybe never read. And anyway, jillian got it for me and I saw it at a bookstore. He's a bookstore and I'm reading it and he's a gifted writer, in addition to being such a special politician.

Speaker 1: 54:05

It's also interesting to go back, even if you have read something way back, to go back and reread it. All right, here's my last question for you. What piece of advice would you give someone? What's your best piece of advice for them?

Speaker 2: 54:15

Oh, if it's mildly professional advice I suppose there's other realms, but I guess this would fit more broadly is in life the key is to find I used to be a consultant, so I like to do everything in two by two matrices. It is to find the combination of the things that you're good at and the things you like doing and get into that upper right corner. And I think the biggest thing that people sometimes forget is the things you like, and I think we're naturally drawn to. We get positive feedback on the things we're good at, but finding that intersection of the things you really love doing, that's the thing that you need to focus on.

Speaker 1: 54:48

It makes it really enjoyable, right? I look forward to it.

Speaker 3: 54:50

Cool, love it. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2: 54:53

Me as well. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 55:00

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends. Thank you.

Overcoming the Broken Rung

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Broken Rung with Lareina Yee

The Broken Rung isn’t just a metaphor—it’s the career barrier keeping women from advancing from day one. We sat down with Lareina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of The Broken Rung, to talk about why fixing this early career promotion gap could close the gender equity gap in a single generation.

We cover the data, the hidden career tax women face, the power of experience capital, and why sponsorship—not mentorship—is the game-changer leaders need to embrace now. Whether you are navigating your own career or leading others, this is a must-listen playbook for how to advance, advocate, and unlock opportunity at every level.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived big law, big four and more than a few broken org charts. I'm Francesca.

Speaker 2: 0:07

I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit.

Speaker 1: 0:11

We host your work, friends. The podcast that breaks work down, so you stay ahead.

Speaker 2: 0:15

We talk work stuff, the human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening stuff. Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight up advice. Hit play. We've got you Ahas and ahas and, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two. We had a really interesting conversation, we did.

Speaker 1: 0:48

We were able to speak with Lorena Yee, one of the co-authors of the Broken Rung. Lorena is a senior partner at McKinsey Company and she advises companies on growth technology and transformation. She also co-founded the Women in the Workplace Study with leaninorg. That's what made us reach out to her, as we were fascinated. We covered that a few months ago in New Week New Headlines and then, obviously, the Broken Rung book came out and in that report they're highlighting all of the challenges that women are facing in corporate America.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Lorena also chairs McKinsey's Technology Council and hosts the podcast At the Edge, where she talks about technology trends. And then, beyond her professional role, she's a mom of three and she serves on the board of San Francisco's Ballet. But this was an awesome episode. She is talking about one of the earliest career barriers that women face, which is this broken rung and ways that we can overcome it together. In this book I think you and I both said it was covered cover to cover with yellow highlighter from all of the stats that we were reading- yeah, I ran out of highlighter while I was reading this book.

Speaker 2: 1:56

The thing for me is we've had the glass ceiling. We know pay parity is not there yet and probably won't be for our lifetime, and what was so interesting was this early career issue that they have really nailed on. Even if you're not early career, even if you're not a woman, the thing about this book is it is a playbook for how to get ahead in your career If you're a woman, if you're a man, if you're gender non-binary. This book is absolutely packed with how do you get ahead when you have everything against you, and it is a must read for anybody, especially in corporate America. We love talking with her. We focus a lot about women here, but I think it can apply to anybody.

Speaker 1: 2:42

One of the things that really stood out to me is this isn't just a playbook. If you're in your early career, it's identifying when this starts, but it is. It does give you information, no matter where you are, whether you're just starting out, you're in the messy middle or if you're like towards the end of in thinking about your next move. She gives you ways that you can think about how to level up. The other thing for me that was so interesting was the concept of if we were able to fix this broken rung at the start of a woman's career, then we could have parity in a generation versus 150 plus years. So that, to me, was super powerful. I'm just going to read a quote from the book Lorena mentioned was this is not just a women's issue, as you point out. It's an issue for our whole society and the global economy. So read the book, listen to the episode. Here's Lorena.

Speaker 2: 3:46

All right, loretta. For those of us that haven't heard about this concept of the broken run, I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners, like a five-year-old. What?

Speaker 3: 3:55

is the broken run. You start work, you landed the job and you find that pretty much men and women are pretty equal. When you look around the room, right, 48% women entering the corporate pipeline in the United States, for example, and similarly globally. But guess what? Time for the first promotion. And here's the rub For every 100 men who have the odds of getting that promotion, only 81 women see those same odds of advancement. And that's the broken rung. That very first step on the career ladder is broken and it comes up fast.

Speaker 2: 4:33

What was so interesting to me so much of the time we're thinking about women, advancement, we're thinking about it manager on up, how do we get people to a C-suite or a VP? Because it's happening at this manager level. We're not getting people into these upper echelons. And I thought what's so interesting about your research is that this is happening very early and if you don't nail it early or don't look at it early, it has this kind of compounding effect on your career. What about that keeps you up at night?

Speaker 3: 5:05

your career. What about that keeps you up at night? All of it. By focusing on the broken rung, I wouldn't want to take attention away from the fact that people will call that middle layer, francesca, like the messy middle, the frozen middle, that piece of it or the glass ceiling. Let's be clear that still exists, and whilst we've made progress in corporate America, as an example, when I founded Women in the Workplace, we were 19% women reporting to CEOs at the C-suite. Now we're at 29%, so we're really close to 30. So that's great, but we're all really good at math. That's not parity, that's not 50%, that doesn't represent the population. So we've got challenges across the whole talent pipeline or ladder, however you want to visualize it.

Speaker 3: 5:49

I think the challenge with the middle, though the math, is that you've already lost a lot of women, or they've gotten stuck or they're stalled. It's not entirely clear exactly what happens to all those women, because some of them don't leave the workforce altogether, but let's just say largely stalled and stuck. So you are already in the middle, dealing with probably something around 37% women. You're already dealing with a smaller population, trying to put it in slates, so you're just so many steps behind, and I do think to the early broken rung.

Speaker 3: 6:25

I do think it catches women by surprise and it may even happen and they didn't even realize it, because it's not like an exam where they publish the results. You don't know where you are on the curve and it may have been a delay by a year, six months, two years, or maybe you decided to go somewhere else and so some of these types of things may not be completely perceptible, but I think when you talk to women over the course of 20, 30 years in work and they think back, they're like huh. And when we look at the data year over year, it shows that same phenomenon. Maybe it's 84 women, maybe it's 81, maybe 79. It's bouncing around a little bit, but it's nowhere near parity.

Speaker 2: 7:06

I want to dive into that. Why that first promotion? Why is that so critical for people to really focus on?

Speaker 3: 7:15

There are a lot of things. One, if you just think of a merit-based view, you want to actually be rewarded for the work you do. So there's a simple thing. There's also financially. You're not just working to work for the benefit of society and you may feel very mission oriented, you may feel very purpose filled and you may feel incredible pride for what you do, but you're also there for your economic earnings. And to earn less through differences in promotion is another type of tax on top of a general phenomenon we see in terms of a wage disparity between women and men. It's another form. But the other thing is let's just think about a talented woman who, by and large women graduate at higher rates than men for undergraduate degrees and by and large, with higher GPAs. And so you've got a talented woman. She's doing all the right things and missing maybe by a year, maybe two or three years, that first promotion is missing her ability to reach her full professional potential, and careers in life are long and those delays have almost compound effects over time.

Speaker 2: 8:32

And we haven't even hit motherhood yet. This is the thing that I read in the book the idea of the motherhood tax, where we'll talk about it a little bit longer. But for every kid that someone has, they get taxed. More and more Theirathers get a bonus for having kids. It's phenomenal, it's absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 3: 8:50

I mean, we've all been in the meeting where the mom is rushing to go to the soccer game and everyone's like okay, fine, maybe even non-event, not even like eyebrow raising. And then the guy is I've got to go. Same thing, I've got to go, I've got to get to the soccer game at 430. And people are like high five, you're amazing. And, by the way, do I think it's amazing that dad is leaving for the soccer game, a hundred percent, I'm just saying that. I equally think it's a high five moment for the woman to leave as well.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah, it is. Eye roll for the woman oh, gotta go again. And then for the guy it's good for you, you're such a good dad. Yeah, you're a leader. You're a leader. I want to talk about experience capital. That was one of my favorite parts of the book because I agree it's totally needed. But can you share with our listeners what is experience capital?

Speaker 3: 9:40

What's that concept?

Speaker 3: 9:41

So the punchline is 50% of your lifetime earnings come from what you gain on the job, and the reason this is important is you look at many women and, as I mentioned earlier, women outperform in school, they graduate at higher rates, particularly in the United States, and oftentimes they're graduating with higher GPAs and so they have done the first part really well.

Speaker 3: 10:06

But when we just look at representation nevermind how the experience feels, which we have a lot of data on as well, it's women are not succeeding to their potential in the workplace, at least if you look at representation, right, and so the idea of experience capital is if you were really great at school, how do you apply what helped you be wonderful at school to managing intentionally your portfolio of experiences that drive both the economic outcomes for you, your livelihood, but also your professional opportunities, and so you think about choosing your major, choosing your classes, getting an A. How do you be purposeful in making those decisions, in accumulating the experiences that matter, not just the job in front of you, which certainly is important, but what is the accumulation of experience over time, and can you get it earlier? Because it pays to get it earlier often, and bigger.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Can you do that in a way that sets you up really well for a lifetime of work? One of the things that you called out that I really love too was, as part of gaining that experience capital, was making sure you gain some of that experience capital, unlike the P&L side of the house and like really being deep into the business. So for anyone listening, p&l, profit and loss, that's one example. But what are some of those examples of like business side? So, say you're, I have a very strong HR background, by the way, but to be in strategic HR, I had to get that experience pretty early. So how can folks who aren't traditionally like on that business side, how can they gain that very important business experience capital and what does that mean? How is it different when you think about the experience capital you do gain? How does that differently set them up financially down the road?

Speaker 3: 12:00

Sure, Well, let's take your career as an example, and I might be getting parts of that wrong, but you have a passion for HR and a lot of women will connect with work to where they feel purpose, where they feel talent and being an aspiring alley, which is a P&L role maybe sales, maybe product, maybe in a business unit. That experience GM. But it is to say that having that experience short long at some point will make you better at whatever you want to do. The other thing is if you aspire to be a CEO to the chip tracker idea, the pink chip one year we looked at it, 95% of the CEOs that year we looked at it all came from P&L. So like virtually impossible, very unlikely, that if you haven't had P&L experience and you realize, understandably, halfway through your career that you aspire to be a CEO, this is going to be a central part. So that's one experience. Another piece of experience capital is entrepreneurship and people think that's just being a founder and yes, that's amazing. Both of you have founded this. That's entrepreneurship. But I bet both of you also were entrepreneurs in the companies that you were in before and it's a huge skill that makes a difference. How do you take initiative, how do you lead? How do you invent Versus? Here's the thing that I was given and I've checked all the boxes, so entrepreneurship is a huge piece.

Speaker 3: 13:50

The other thing that we talk about is skill differentiation. We call that bold moves, and so if you look at one job to a next job and it could be within the same company right, You're doing different roles. Bold moves are where you do a 25% or more skill difference between your former job and your new job, and women who take two, three big bold moves over their career have outsized impact, both economically as well as their ability to progress. So there are more, but just maybe to pause, take a deep breath. There are a lot of things we can do that are super concrete that help us build experience capital. And if you're young in your career gosh, you got to build that early and often. And if you're a little older in your career you know me, or like middle age, think about the experience capital you need to maybe pivot or do something new or to expand even more opportunities. It's a huge piece.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I appreciate that because I think a lot of folks forget that you can have an entrepreneurial experience while you're in an organization. It's like looking for those project opportunities where you can gain that skill set. For somebody who might be more of an introvert I'm an ambivert right, so it takes a lot of effort to reach out for those experiences and that sort of thing. Maybe they don't have a flashy or visible role. What's a way that they can start to advocate for themselves, to begin to build that experience capital?

Speaker 3: 15:19

I think, first of all, you've got to play to your strengths. So you may see someone who's an extrovert, very charismatic, maybe an athlete, so she happens to play golf which tends to be helpful in a male world and you're not in all cases. She's out in the golf course and you're just like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all those strengths. But you're like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all the strengths, right. But you're like how do I meet other people if I'm different? So I think there's one thing which is to know yourself and build off your strengths.

Speaker 3: 15:54

I remember early in my career being in consulting. My strength was the data and the analysis that I was doing and part of the credibility was really just the work itself. But the work is a basis to have a conversation with others and a basis to build trust. And then you start maybe building a relationship and entrepreneurship is following up. I remember meeting just this amazing executive and I was like you're just so like you're a role model, and I didn't say that. But then I remember just keeping in touch with her over time. Not a ton, I was whatever, maybe 10 levels more junior to her, but I remember when I was leaving Asia, moving back to the US, she was the last person that I had kind of coffee with who was a client, before I left. You've got to do it in your own style, but I think you do need to be purposeful and, for those who are analytic, write it down. Write down who do you work with, who you have a connection and network with, who have you worked with before that you could rekindle. If you're kind of customer or client facing, or if you're supply chain facing, who's outside of your organization and also maybe people from school. So how do you think about building those networks? And just make sure that we know that women tend to have more narrow, more junior networks. Just make sure that over time it's not going to happen overnight, but over time you invest in building some more senior networks.

Speaker 3: 17:28

I know one guy that I talked to joined this nonprofit board and I invested my personal time and I spent time and had lunch with every single board member, all of which were at least a decade more advanced in their career than me, and I built this local network. He said so when you join a board, you join a nonprofit board. This is what you should do, and I was like I didn't even think about that. I'm so busy just trying to get through my day. It didn't occur to me to like schedule lunch with each person on the board, get to know them, build a relationship. And it was true. I looked at the list and I was like I am the most junior person from a professional person on this board, so there are lots of ways you can do it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I think it's. Yeah, finding your little avenue is going to be the most important. What works for you. I think folks sometimes can equate being outgoing as the folks who get the opportunity, but you don't have to fit that niche to get the same kind of experience capital you're talking about.

Speaker 3: 18:24

And some really senior people are quite introverted themselves, right? So that's not, you would find a connection.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Yeah, you'll find some kinsmanship in that, for sure. I wanted to talk about the sponsorship versus mentorship because something that really stood out to me in the Women in the Workplace report was that women are overly mentored and we're undersponsored significantly. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 3: 18:56

Yeah. So one thing is maybe just to define the difference, because sometimes I just feel like we don't have the facts to make the decision. So mentorship is Francesca, you're my mentor, I identify with you. You go to coffee. If I have a bad day or something didn't happen quite right on a project, you empathize and you give me some suggestions on how to think about it. But, mel, if you're my sponsor, you do everything Francesca does. But you also open windows and doors for me and that may be as explicit as you are actually putting me up for promotion, but it could be more everyday actions. Like Mel, you say Lorena, I know you've been working really hard on this. Why don't you come to the meeting and why don't you present? And I remember there's this really amazing sponsor we do a sponsor award at McKinsey and one of the winners.

Speaker 3: 19:54

There's this story that he faked a bloody nose because he knew that the client was like, wanted him to be there. He faked a bloody nose and he wants her to go so that the woman partner who is up for senior partner would present but also be seen as like super senior. It's like he was an actor. Everybody thought he had a bloody nose, medical reason to leave, but no bloody nose. He actually was just creating truly an opportunity for her to shine. By the way, she became one of the co-leaders of the client and all these great things happen.

Speaker 3: 20:29

You can do that on a Tuesday at four, on a Friday at nine. These are not hard things and so when you think about, and if you're senior and you're listening to this, how do you open doors and windows for others? But it can be very subtle things that help and it can be really being there in the moment to say this person should be on the slate and really helping you get promoted or keeping in touch with you and offering you an opportunity somewhere else. Women are just under-sponsored and maybe also it's not as clear how to develop sponsor relationships. But I think it's like women. If you put your mind to it, you can do it.

Speaker 1: 21:07

If you realize this is something that's as important as delivering your quota or whatever your MBOs are or OKRs, and you think about it as something you do a little bit every quarter over time you'll have a really powerful senior network something that stood out to me in the book was and I'm paraphrasing, but it was essentially the biggest issue with this broken rung is, once the first rung is broken, it just has this compounding sort of domino effect, right, because now there's less women at each stage to continue to sponsor other women up. But men can be sponsors too not trying to leave them out of the conversation, right? And the other powerful thing that you said in the book was that if we can repair this first rung, it'll help us repair all of the subsequent rungs, which could help us really fix this issue or bring parity within a generation, which is huge because that within one generation is 10 years versus 150 years. But how important is sponsorship, or what level of does sponsorship play, and the importance of fixing that first rung?

Speaker 3: 22:23

All of the above. So if 70% of the C-suite are men, then it's really important that men are sponsors in your network to percent women at the starting gate. And then we dropped down in the middle and the VP layers down to 38, et cetera, et cetera, and at the top for the SVP layers and the C-suite, we are at 29%. So it's almost like a math thing because you just have fewer women in the talent pool overall. So if I were to say I'd like to see equal men and women on the slate, that's actually something that is a little hard to accomplish because you actually have maybe a third, maybe 40% each level. You have fewer women. And so I think if we sometimes what we talk about for companies that are trying to work on this is you have a funnel, you need to have a pipe. So a really healthy company starts with a percentage of women and you would have that same percentage mirrored across all the talent levels. That would be really healthy.

Speaker 3: 23:47

Many years ago I met a tech company who was like it's just so hard, et cetera, et cetera. The classic we don't have engineers. But one thing we told them that really surprised them. I said you have a top beginning funnel problem. Yeah, you're at something.

Speaker 3: 24:00

I think they were maybe 38, 37% women at the entry, so that's not good, but interestingly enough, they had that pipe. I said so you're doing something right really well, which most of your peers are not, which is you're able to retain them. You do have a bit of a drop off at the top, but that's really amazing. So for you, if you actually could fix the entry level, you clearly have a culture that supports women in a very natural way. You are in great shape and they were like gosh. I thought we were going to have this meeting. You're going to be an awful report card and I said, yeah, I mean you're starting out ranks not so good, but actually there's some really good stuff there. For companies that want to change, you have to just take a look at your data and say, just as you would any kind of business problem, where would be the two or three most important interventions? Where, if I fix this, it would really change in one generation? And I think for companies who are very determined to do this, it's possible.

Speaker 1: 25:02

It's interesting too, speaking of what companies can do, because you mentioned, mckinsey has their sponsorship award, which I love to hear, and we've worked in talent forever, so you always hear about the mentorship program, but rarely do I hear about a formal sponsorship program. What have you seen work really well in terms of programs that support the sponsorship for this kind of success?

Speaker 3: 25:25

I think, a couple things. It's important to say that whilst women tend to feel over-mentored, under-sponsored, there are men who also feel this way. If you de-average it, maybe the men who don't have the classic archetypical attributes or men of color. So there can be, when you de-average, lots of people need this. So a couple of things. One is going from a spiritual agreement that sponsorship is a good idea to actually creating a program. So program means that you actually define mentorship, sponsorship. Program means that you actually track the data. For some you may actually hold them accountable, not like a quota, like you have to have X number of sponsor ease or mentors, but as part of how you think have to have X number of sponsorees or mentors, but as part of how you think of good leadership, as part of the equation. If you have the data, if you have the qualitative and what you value gets measured in some way.

Speaker 3: 26:19

So I'm not suggesting like a one for one. You only get promoted if you're a sponsor. We all know that and you all both know very well. Like when you think about leadership, there's a way that kind of goes into your reviews and potentially your compensation, your feedback, how you're viewed. I think you build it in yeah, you built it in a hundred percent and then you may have some programs that kind of activate it.

Speaker 3: 26:43

But I think you really commit to a culture of sponsorship, which the insane thing to me is it helps. It's like your classic all boats rise, everyone benefits everyone. And if there are women, as the human population will have, who are not good sponsors, it's good. They will, as leaders, learn to be good sponsors. Men will learn to be good sponsors and sometimes for men and I've seen this when they see their data and they realize they don't have a single woman that they sponsor, they will autocorrect that themselves. It's not like they woke up and said how can I not have any women as sponsors? Sometimes data is like an incredible amount of sunlight for people to do the right thing.

Speaker 2: 27:42

I want to talk about motherhood and navigating career transitions with motherhood. You mentioned in the book that motherhood could actually be a boost to your career, and it's not something we typically hear. Can you talk a little bit more about how it can boost your career?

Speaker 3: 27:58

Yeah, so that's not an easy thing. In the chapter we do really spend a bit of time on Claudia Goldman's Nobel Prize economist. We do want to make sure that a lot of the research that she's done gets proper understanding in terms of biases towards women and terms of a motherhood penalty and all of those things. With that said, it is hard. I think part of it was squeezing out and looking at stories where women can succeed inside of it and, for me, also a little bit of a search for the urban legend to see if it's true. So one of the stories that you saw was a woman.

Speaker 3: 28:38

The phrase that I've always used is make sure you pack a round trip ticket, not just to leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Part of that would be building your network and thinking about your skills, moderating your time, all these types of things. And one of the stories in the book is a woman who was a rising star lawyer. As she had her first kid, she made the decision to actually be a full-time mom. She's an amazing mom raised three boys. 14 years into that, she exercised her round trip ticket. She went back and she did a reboarding program. Some companies, not all, offer this, but LinkedIn offered it. She got back into the workforce and is a rising star lawyer at LinkedIn and I just think this concept that we measure it in very zero one ways Okay, I had the baby, I'm having the baby, I take my paid maternity or parental leave, I come back. I think there are variations to make that work for you. So that's one story that I was very inspired by.

Speaker 3: 29:45

The other thing is would you use the policies as ingredients to bake your own cake, would you say? Look, in my company there's the parental leave and I see a lot of mostly dual career couples. We see a lot more of women and men under 40 are dual career, whereas baby boomers tend to be more like a single person leading the household. Let's use the woman and the partner's parental leave to maximize it. How do we, how do we go slow, go fast across that portfolio? Like really sharing with your partner the chutes and ladders of a career? We see also like how do you use some of the part-time? How to use rotations to kickstart your next bold move, like maybe you're like, okay, I'm going to do the thing that I really know how to do in an excellent way and I'm going to do it at 80%, but then actually, when my littlest one is in school, hits three, I'm going to take a bold move and I'm going to do this. Or, by the way, I'm going to actually invest in a bunch of technology skills and pilots and things because I'm going to make a bold move.

Speaker 3: 30:54

And these are just like excessive examples. How do you apply really intentional thinking to that time as opposed to gosh? This is just the discount time. And also back to the network point, I think and I don't think this is as much in the book, but I think having a peer network when you're a young mom at least for me personally I see you nodding, being able to call someone who was working full time, who had kids under 10, like me, and just to say I've had the hardest week in that time. I didn't need a sponsor, I didn't need a mentor, I just needed a friend to say, yeah, it's really hard with you.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Yeah, it's tough, right. I remember this is a little bit maybe TMI, but I always go there is. I remember I was at the point where I was breastfeeding and I was still working and shipping my milk back until it was really great about that, like freezing it and shipping it back home, which is amazing and lovely. But I remember just feeling touched out, vultured because I was getting it at work and I was literally having the call with her while my pump was going and I felt totally okay with it.

Speaker 3: 32:06

But she knew both of my lives and you really do need that, that feeling of someone gets you A little grace Like I think you have to set the pace of your own career versus expect others, and both of you have done that in your careers. But there may be times where you're like I'm going 60 miles an hour and by the way I've structured it and my expectations are that, and then there are times I'm doubling down and going super fast and I'm going to do a bold move and a this and a that, and so I don't. I don't think it's a linear climb and actually when we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just. When we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just I think it's. We try. Sometimes perfection can be the enemy of progress. That phrase and maybe redefine what perfection is.

Speaker 3: 32:58

At certain moments of your career, I took a really long first parental leave and I was really fortunate to be in a dual career situation so I could afford to. But I was really young, I wasn't even 30 yet and I really I just wanted to learn how to be a mom for a while. I wanted to take nine months off and at that time paid leave was not six weeks, single digits or something like that that's also betting on yourself and taking a risk. It's saying I'm confident that when I'm ready to go back, that job will be there and I may have missed something. But I actually, as a gift not just to my child but also to myself, would like to learn how to be a mom for a bit and enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 33:47

The beautiful thing about the book, though, is it does give you the playbook, for if you're going to make those choices which are totally great to make that there are other moves you can make that won't make that choice, just like a lifelong decision to write. I feel like this idea of these are your options, these are the ways you can put it in sixth gear, pull it down to third gear, make a right turn, make a left turn and create a beautiful career for yourself and a great life too, because I feel like I'm not saying you can balance everything all the time and have everything you want, but you can sure as hell be way more intentional about it and get to where you want to go in a way that maybe was linear to your point.

Speaker 3: 34:34

And some of those basics matter. I remember we talk about negotiation. People always think negotiation is just your pay, by the way, women tend not to negotiate. So, hi, pro tip, do negotiate. But negotiation is also other types of things.

Speaker 3: 34:46

So I remember because we didn't have at the time this was 22 years ago we didn't have the type of programs and I was actually not even in the United States, and so I remember talking to the office manager and saying look, I know that this isn't the typical thing, but I'd really like to take nine months, maybe more off, but I actually am super committed to coming back and I will stay in touch. And when I came back, they were like that's hard and consulting, and you were flying out. And I said, look, just for my first thing, back for my first month, can you just help me do something local so that I just don't get straight on an airplane and whatever that is, I'll do it. Any industry, any team, that would be such a gift and that's part of negotiating how you come back. He said got it, let's do. That Turns out to the entrepreneurship we were working on something that became a huge local client and because I worked on it and worked really hard with all these other folks, some of which I didn't know already.

Speaker 3: 35:54

We actually had all these sort of. I had a year where I didn't get on the airplane, and part of it is a little bit of a little bit of luck, a little bit of negotiating, asking that's. That's a positive negotiation. I will work really hard, but could you help me not reduce travel just for a little bit, and then we'll sort it out. Just give me a sec to rebase. I'm still the person that you loved and valued before. I didn't think at the time. It takes courage to do that, but it does take some courage to have that conversation and you do need to work in an environment where that conversation would be received well, not to make too much of the example, but I do think in the book there are all these women who make it work in spite of, and so there's a lot of data, mel, as you mentioned, but for me I think the stories are just really inspirational about what are the tactical things they did to get from A to B.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Yeah, a lot of great moves. I think it's required reading, quite honestly, to think about how do you really own your career, and own your career as a woman? Just you got to read up.

Speaker 1: 37:00

You got to read up. Keeping it simple for our listeners, especially those who might be like am I already part of the broken rung? Do I need to address this? What's one thing they can do next week to get back on track?

Speaker 3: 37:16

reframe. You're not off track. You are always on track and there's always opportunity in front of you, and betting on yourself is always a good bet. So look ahead and what's your next move? Do you want to go to the power alley? Do you want to exercise entrepreneurship? Do you want to build in the skills that matter for the future, the 12 million occupations that we know will shift by 2030. Do you want to increase your network? Pick one, pick one, just pick one and get started.

Speaker 1: 37:53

I love that. I love that concept that you're never off track. You're never off track. Yeah, we're just all taking fun side quests.

Speaker 3: 38:04

How much you have already. Yeah, I, your portfolio just may look a little different than that guy next door to you, and that's okay. Really, what are you good at? What do you have? Where does that point you? And then start opening the windows and doors yourself. Go get people to help you. Yeah, I love it. You can do it.

Speaker 1: 38:28

What about leaders? If you're a leader leading a team and this is information new and for maybe it's new information for somebody listening today what's something that they can take away or start to do to analyze and make sure that they're being a good sponsor or they're recognizing that they might be holding people back. How can they support not holding them back or pushing them forward?

Speaker 3: 38:54

The first thing is to maybe just mark a couple of like a piece of data or story that that honestly struck you very authentically. Doesn't need to be many, just one or two. And I would go share that with a man and a woman on your team and just say I was reading this since stopped me in my tracks. What do you think? Do you think we have a fair workplace? Do you feel the opportunities are the same? And the man might say I feel over-mentored, under-sponsored. You're like that's good feedback, but pro tip, does any of this resonate with you? I just start with that. Just start locally, in your own community and neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 39:40

Starting the conversation. Let's just have the conversation.

Speaker 3: 39:50

Yeah, and I think the other thing a leader can de-risk what feel like high stakes conversations, and opening to have the conversation, to listen, to learn, is huge. There's a story of a woman who was in the creative arts. She was in performing arts in New York and she had an underlying mindset that if you are creative it's okay to be disorganized, because that kind of comes with being creative. And she didn't even know that this was an underlying mindset. But she was super disorganized and she had her baby a couple months old and for women who remember or who have had babies in that early stage, there's very few windows. If you live in New York City, you can get that baby outside and take the baby for a walk before the baby needs to eat and nap. And so she missed the whole window because she was so disorganized. She was like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window and she was so disorganized she's like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window. And then the baby's crying and she describes and I've talked to her about this also personally she describes looking at this wonderful child's face and saying, kiddo, this isn't going to work.

Speaker 3: 40:53

So not only that's a point of deep failure, like I think for me.

Speaker 3: 40:57

I'm like, oh my god, I would have been in a ball and tears and like that just sounds awful and we've all been there.

Speaker 3: 41:04

Anyway, the reason I mentioned this is because it's a very relatable moment. But from that moment, not only does she become really good at organizing, she builds a business to organize other executives, both men and women. She writes two New York Times bestseller books or more, and she has this whole career where she actually helps people with their operating models, with their leadership. But it starts with the wedge of what was a point of failure became a point of strength, became a point of building a business, became a point of giving to others and helping others not organize how they get their walks for their babies, but like thinking about how the softer skills help you be a better leader, the full set of softer skills. And she's no longer in performing arts, she's in corporate America and I just I also just wanted to share that sometimes both men and women are so afraid to make a mistake and there's a lot in the zeitgeist about that. But I do think you never know, like, how do you take that in as a pivot point to something else we'll run on.

Speaker 1: 42:26

I'm gonna start with some high-level questions. They can be one word responses, or one sentence, two sentences, whatever you feel most confident with, but the whole point is just to get your immediate reaction to the question. Okay, ready to dive in, ready? Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like? It will be AI powered. Okay, what's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good? Bias, thank you. What's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 3: 42:57

Women, young women, even better answer.

Speaker 1: 43:02

What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 3: 43:05

Oh, I really like Bruno Mars and his collaborations, many of which are women artists, but I do really love the collaborations.

Speaker 1: 43:13

I like his new stuff too. It's like fun, yeah, so good. What are you reading, and that could be physically reading or listening to an audio book right now?

Speaker 3: 43:25

I am obsessed with AI podcasts, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:29

What's your favorite AI podcast? What do you recommend?

Speaker 3: 43:32

Oh, I really like no Priors and Training Data from Sequoia and the Possible podcast. And of course, I think everyone in tech listens to Hard Fork. I'd be remiss not to mention Hard Fork, but that's kind of obvious.

Speaker 2: 43:47

Love that.

Speaker 1: 43:50

Perfect, who do?

Speaker 3: 43:54

you really admire the 11% women CEOs of the world Each and every one of them. For everything that they're doing and for being a pioneer Awesome.

Speaker 1: 44:07

We recommend all the time on this podcast that people start to follow. I'm sure you do, but the organization Pink Chip that's tracking all of the global female CEOs and their success. So, yeah, any chance I can to plug it, I like to bring it back up. Good plug. Yeah, what's a piece of advice you want everyone to know?

Speaker 3: 44:26

Build your networks make sure they're powerful networks and people who are going to be your personal board of directors. I love that.

Speaker 1: 44:34

All right. Last thing, where can listeners follow? You stay abreast of all of the goodness and new research that you have coming out on this topic. What's the what's the best? Obviously, read the book. We're going to link to that but how can they continue to stay informed beyond reading the book?

Speaker 3: 44:53

All of our gender and research. On mckinseycom, you can search under my name or just search under the topics. We have 10 years of women in the workplace, so there's a lot of data in there. And I'm on LinkedIn and I've been trying to be better at posting thoughts and sharing things that are interesting. You all can give me the feedback. You're like, nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more. But I'm focused on LinkedIn me the feedback. You're like nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more but I'm focused on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 45:26

This has been so lovely. Lorena, thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you. Both Appreciate you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra, and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

The Power of Mattering

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Power of Mattering with Zach Mercurio

This episode is for anyone who has ever questioned their worth or forgotten the impact they have on others. We sat down with Zach Mercurio to explore what happens when people truly feel seen, valued, and significant. Whether you are the one needing the reminder or the one in a position to give it, this conversation unpacks why mattering is not soft, it is essential.

From how we lead and collaborate to how we show up for our families and friends, we all rise when people know they count. If you have been feeling invisible or want to create spaces where others feel seen, this is the episode to hit play.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:05

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived Big Law, big Four and more than a few broken org charts.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I'm Francesca. I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit. We host your work friends, the podcast that breaks work down so you stay ahead. We talk work stuff. The human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening, stuff Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight-up advice Hit, play. We've got you, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hey, this is your Work, friends podcast. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work, so you stay ahead, Francesca. What's going on?

Speaker 3: 0:50

Not much. Summer's full rolling Went to an airplane house.

Speaker 1: 0:53

You sent me those pictures of the airplane house and I'm intrigued. I want to see the inside. Sounds interesting.

Speaker 3: 0:59

Yeah, For those that don't know, in the Portland area there's a guy that. For those that don't know, in the Portland area, there's a guy that I think it's a 727 that he took apart and rebuilt in the woods and you can go up to this airplane that is now his house. My understanding is that he's also going to be building one in Japan as well, but it's actually really cool because he lets anybody on his property you can go and stand on the wing. Would you ever want to live in a plane?

Speaker 1: 1:27

I could see myself living in a plane. If it was gutted and you made it into something really cool, why not? Who?

Speaker 3: 1:31

cares. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a prefab home yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Yeah, why not I don't know If you could turn a school bus into a home.

Speaker 3: 1:40

There's options here Recycling.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Yes, that is the name of the game. Okay, we sat down with Zach Mercurio, who recently published his book the Power of Mattering, which just blew me away. Zach is a researcher, an author, a speaker, and he specializes in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work and positive org psychology. He wrote the Power of Mattering how Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance, and he also wrote the Invisible Leader Transforming your Life, your Work and your Org, and the Power of Authentic Purpose. And he's worked with hundreds of organizations worldwide, including teams at JP Morgan, delta, marriott International, the National Park Service, the Army and more. And his work, his research on meaningful work, has been awarded by ATD, the Academy of Management and the Academy of Human Resource Development. And I don't know about you, but this book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter right now. This book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter.

Speaker 3: 2:45

Right now, I'll tell you, for the majority of the book, I had, like, almost felt like I was going to cry, like I was feeling so emotional about it. And it's because, at the end of the day and what Zach talks about is, even from the very first moments of your life, you want to feel like you matter. You need to know that you matter and, by the way, that does not change ever. Yet there's so many of us walking around feeling like we don't matter at all. You'll hear Zach talk about this, but just so you understand the difference also between belonging and inclusion and mattering belonging is being asked to be a part of the team, inclusion is getting to play the game, and mattering is knowing how you contribute, knowing how you're significant to the team, and that's the difference. It's the knowing of how you offer value, how you're significant and feeling. That's the difference. We've got opportunities to do that every day, all day, for everybody in your life.

Speaker 1: 3:51

For everybody. Yeah, Personally and professionally. And listen, the squishy stuff matters. People don't want to talk about the squish, but the squishy stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit. Stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit and it's different than belonging. It's actually you seeing why you matter. I love the example he also gives about NASA and laddering, and everyone from the janitor up through the astronaut knew how they contributed to getting a man on the moon and it got me thinking how are we doing that for our own teams and our people at work, Even if it's on a project? How are you letting them know how their contribution even if they're doing the design of the deck, like how does that contribute to the overall results and why? It not just how it contributes, but why it matters and why their role in this matters? I would say, on my own reflection, I wish I did more of that. It's something I definitely will be paying a lot more attention to.

Speaker 3: 4:49

Yeah, yeah, I think the I feel like I tried to do this and I feel like I should have done it even more no-transcript, no-transcript, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 45:17

Okay, these can be one word answers. They could be a sentence. We could dive in further wherever it goes. All right, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

Speaker 4: 45:26

There's two ways it could go. So one, the bosses are getting the power back right now because the talent market has shifted. You know it was more pro employee, Now it's more in favor of employers right now, and whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of working I, whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 57:09

Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.