Me. Hey, John. Me. Yeah. When I wake up in the sunlight hurts man. Something with you and the world. All right. Just one. And then it's gone. When the day of the ladder seemed impossible. When someone else instead of always seems to know the way the world, all right? They just want to get to know them. When someone else seems to know. Right. Good morning everybody. It is so wonderful to see you all here to have such a fantastic group of people joining us online. My name is Wendy Smith. I am faculty at abba Lerner College of Business and the Faculty Director of the Women's Leadership Initiative. And I'm here joined by my friend, colleague for many, many years coauthor and the Dean of the School of Business at the University of Cincinnati, Maryanne Louis. And we are so thrilled to be back online with you all with this webinar, to be online with you all with this webinar that is being co-sponsored by lynn nerve by the Women's Leadership Initiative at UD or Linder at University of Cincinnati, the Women's Leadership Initiative at UMD and the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. It has been such a pleasure to pull these different groups together. I know that Maryann and I love working together as coauthors and colleagues and it is such a pleasure to pull together our different institutions. Our goal this morning is to explore the idea of both and the notion of paradox and how it shows up in particular in the context of women and women's leadership and what that means. And in part, this was triggered inspired, if you will, by the research that Maryann and I have been doing for the last 2025 years together. And that has emerged in the book that we just released in August. Both and thinking, embracing creative pensions to solve your toughest problems. The two of us have been thinking about this idea of how we end, the big idea of how we move from either or thinking in the competing demands that we experience into both. And thinking in the ideas of and to re-frame our tensions to be more generative and creative. And it's certainly as we experience, it applies deeply to the challenges of women's leadership, something that we both talked a lot about. And so we're excited to have that conversation and speak with the panel here today. Thank you, Wendy. I just want to reiterate it. I love seeing all the messages and from everywhere around this country, we may have people even beyond. This was really a pleasure. When, when you and I both started exploring tensions, what we found is that they're everywhere, that we live and sometimes thrives, sometimes are truly challenged by our greatest tensions, whether it's an organization or a really strategic level, are we focused on the short-term and the long-term? Do we think about financial responsibility or social responsibility, inclusion and excellence to the teams and the projects that we work on, on a regular basis. To our leadership. To thinking about how do we leave from the head and the heart to be courageous and bold, yet vulnerable and compassionate. And really going all the way to the individual that these are part of our lives. These are part of our existence from our professional life to our very personal spheres that pushed us to think about how do we navigate. We've studied this in a variety of ways. But what we found is that one of the great challenges is that our default is to either or. Thinking about with a formal logic, you can see the scale or typical approaches. You say it's either this or this. Let's weigh the pros and cons of each. And let's make a trade-off. The problem with either or thinking, that's really two-fold. One is it's extremely limiting and we really just constrained to two choices. Furthermore, if we are limiting ourselves to those choices over time, we will tend to continuously gravitate toward our preferred or more comfortable side. But what we found in this study is that there's a better way. And in our work, we started to shift our own mindsets, our work with other leaders to really think about Paradox. And how do we move from viewing these tensions, this tug of war that we feel in so many spheres of our lives and our professional work to a both. And when you think of a paradox, we often turn to the symbol of Yin Yang, as you can see on this slide, the beauty of the in Yang is that you have two opposing slivers, but they're actually defining each other. They work together. We need these contradictions, but we also come to realize that they're interdependent, that they're connected, and they don't go away. We may make a decision today about are we going to be focused on the short-term versus the long-term, but we're going to have to make it again. Likewise, when we really start to think about some of the tensions that we find with the remarkable women leaders that we work with. We can see some very particular tensions that we hear again and again. So you can see some of them here, but e.g. Should it be really focused on my competence, demonstrating my capabilities, my skills, my expertise, and how do I be a compassionate leader focused on the culture, think about the people that I worked with. Care to the situation, develops psychological safety. When we think about these types of tensions as paradoxes, we see that we need both. In fact, they work together in really powerful ways that open new possibilities. Certainly this goes beyond the compassionate and competence to, or we collaborative and competing. Can we focus on our work and make sure our lives are going well outside of our professional selves. Think about ourself and others. These different tensions make up so much of the challenges and beauties of being women leaders. And I'm just monitoring the chat as the phenotype is set. Our colleague at the Women's Leadership Initiative. The core idea here is that we all face tensions. It's not if we face them. But how, how one of the reasons that we wrote this book was in part when we first started out studying a notion of paradox and living in the both and the word paradox felt very foreign to people, the notion of both and felt very foreign to people. And we had to convince people that there, that there was value in moving away from our linear, either or very reductionist thinking into a more holistic both and thinking, it just seems irrational to us. And yet what we found over the last 2025 years is that not only have people started to engage with this idea of both, and we're using the language everywhere. And in fact, we're starting to use this language of paradox everywhere we see, not only do Maryann and I see them everywhere, we see that the language shows that people are seeing them everywhere. Paradoxes of leadership and certainly paradox is a women's leadership. And we have had the pleasure of being in an academic growing academic community where our college, where we and our colleagues have been doing significant research around this. So the core idea that we were hoping to convey in this book is how do we move beyond the label of both and move beyond the label of paradox and really effectively navigate these tensions. I'm sharing this in parts, maybe as a bit of a teaser to what you can engage with with the book. But the core idea in the book is that we engage, There's different sets of tools that we use to effectively engage tensions. And I'll tell you, Maryann and I spent quite some time trying to get those tools until labels that easily are a, B, C, D. But very quickly our assumptions is how we think about frame are tensions and re-frame them from an either or to a both. And jumping over to the other side. Our comfort is how we feel about tension. So it's how we think about them and also how we feel about them. One of the things that we've experienced in our own work and then working with others is just how challenging these tug of wars feel and how we can get caught up in them. And the need to let go or to say it differently to honor the discomfort but not let it drive our actions. If we go to the top and the bottom. So those are both about where we are as individuals. The top and bottom are about the context we create around ourselves, the structures or the scaffolding we like to say that we create around ourselves to navigate competing demands and a both and way. Boundaries are about things like setting a higher vision longer-term, so we don't get so enmeshed in attention at the moment, but we're able to look out too. So if you're ever in a either or right, wrong conflict with someone you know that you can get really tied up in the specifics of the moment. And you can find ways to find a more holistic integrative possibility with other people when you look out to the long-term horizon. And then Dynamics is about the fact that we're constantly shifting when we navigate tensions were constantly moving and changing when we navigate tensions. Again, I'll leave that there may be as a teaser to what the book has to offer. Because what we really want to do is jump into our panel. Maybe say one more quick idea, which is that what we find is that while navigating paradox, living in Paradox, honoring both and is a lifetime of practice. It's something we're constantly even reminding ourselves and each other in this work. The starting point is about changing the question. My colleagues know, I'm sure Maryanne colleagues know that whenever we hear an either or question, we will pause and say, what's the both? And in part we love this idea from Paul watts Loic, that it's about how do we reframe our attentions or said differently, the framing of our tensions matters in terms of how we navigate them. So it's not the tensions or a bad thing, it's how we navigate them. And the first entree into shifting how we navigate them is about changing the question. Watson-crick, his quote was, The problem is not the problem. The problem is the way that we think about the problem. For today is to explore with four amazing female leaders that have been in incredible roles, both as leaders, as board members. Thinking about women's leadership in, in, in management, women's leadership in the boardroom. And how reframing some of the tensions and tradeoffs that we feel as female leaders that feel like they're a tug of war can shift us into the booth and shift us into thinking about possibly using the both answers shift us into thinking about possibilities and opportunities rather than obstacles and problems. And so I want to invite our four amazing panelists to come and join us. Again. We're so thrilled to have two alumni from University of Cincinnati to the lungs from University of Delaware here joining us. Susan Alexander Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute fellow and the former Chief Human Resources Officer at Sotheby's lies the cartel senior counsel for board of manufacturing and Delaware manufacturing associate association, Ashley Carlisle data and platforms accountant at Google, currently, previously at Hershey's and feeder Richardson, President and CEO of the Association of corporate counsel and a member of the Weinberg board of Board of Governors, of the Weinberg Center Board of Governors. So I want to invite you all to, to open up your videos and welcome you all here. Hello, wonderful. It's so good to have everyone here. Both and thinking applies to our personal tensions as well as our leadership tensions. So we thought we would start by exploring some of our tensions at a more individual level, those that have risen and that you've navigated in your career. So Ashley, if I may start with you. I know you've experienced the tension between being bold and speaking up when feeling wronged in the workplace and not wanting to offend especially people more senior. You and I have discussed this over time and I think a lot of people grapple with that tension. But you found a way to be bold and not to offend, but rather to create an ally. I'd love you to share that story if you would. Absolutely. I'd also like to just frame it in some contexts a little bit about being Hello everyone. I am a proud graduate of the University of Cincinnati, but also a proud first-generation graduate. So that means a lot of things. And it's super related to navigating the workplace when you often feel as though you are a pioneer. And so it adds an extra level of weight, you know, of responsibility where you feel like you're walking through these doors for the first time. And not only am I representing myself, I feel like I'm representing my mother who sacrificed a lot for me to be here. I'm representing my race because a lot of times I feel as though I'm the first or only are different at the table. And so if you think about that and I just want to take, wanted to take thirty-seconds to set you in that context. As a woman leader, sometimes fear and doubt can creep in evenly. You meet injustice in the professional realm, right? Because you're thinking, am I going to sacrifice my livelihood? So a little bit more about the story that Maryann and I spoke about has to do with finding my voice in the workplace in addressing a situation where I felt like I was not being acknowledged for the work that was bringing. And just a small thing I remember so distinctly getting getting to work at 09:00 A.M. logging in like we had. We had a little bit of a relaxed culture to start a little later and see an email come through from my senior, the leader, say it like bragging about my manager in this innovative work and how I went to the board. And I said, wait a minute, does not in my stomach, I work at attention. I had to quickly get up from my desk, take a walk outside because I felt the heat on my face. I was so angry. How could this new manager who had just gotten here take credit or even not even acknowledged the senior leader, Hey, this person actually it was her idea, this was her baby. I felt as though it was my baby. How did he how they're taken us that back in that tension that I felt, I was going home every night feeling sick to my stomach not wanting to eat. That is how angry and disturbed I felt because I felt like it was a huge injustice that was glaringly obvious that I had been building this for the longest. However, I felt like I didn't want to say anything at work. I always knew that this person was my manager at the time, talking over me and meetings. And then finally I had gotten to this crossroads, right? Because I realized I had been placing him into this category of an adversary versus an advocate. That was the pivot that happened. And the way that I had met this intersection was actually through having a truth teller in my life. Like I had someone who loved me, care for me, knew all the intricacies about me and the truth-teller set and said, Hey, you have to honor yourself. And then they actually highlighted the story in a parable, a Hindu parable about being like an archer and focusing on the target and not worrying about if the target moves or the surrounding war that is going on around you. But focus on landing the message and your target. How are you going to address it? So I'll make a long story short is I did take action to address it, but it wasn't in one fell swoop, it was in micro movements, micro behaviors, and a long story short, he ended up becoming an advocate. He pivot from being my adversary to now one of my biggest advocate. And because I had addressed it in and I thought a FinTech thoughtful way, I had begun with assuming positive intent. Even though I didn't want to. I'm like this is so obvious. Like why do I why do I have to assume positive intent? But really, that's really for your own benefit. That's to free your mind so that you are, you have all the faculties of the brilliance that is you to address the situation because you're not so focused on this is an or situation. And then I'd say the last thing that won him over as an advocate is I wrote out my vision. I showed my swim lanes. I also shared up. Right. I didn't I didn't complain up, but I got a very senior champion different from an advocate. This is a champion. I felt already that my voice was heard regardless of this person would act on my feedback. But the person was like, Wow, I didn't even realize I was doing that. That was the that was the craziest thing to me. I had to laugh in the meeting. And it didn't mean it in a disrespectful way. Like, Oh, he's like, I didn't even realize, what do you need from me? How can I help? I said, I want to build my brand. I want more visibility. Then he started open doors for external speaking engagements. He began fighting on my behalf. And then post MI leaving the company I was at. He actually was a huge, huge champion, an advocate for me getting into Google, right? So that really set me on a launch fast because before I would sit in meetings in general even before this manager and have like a quiet strength about myself. But in reality, there was a fiery heat that was taking place where I had to eventually step over into action. Thank you, Ashley. I mean, that's such a powerful story and I think it's a wonderful example of in those crossroads. We have, we have so many choices. And your example of both managing your emotions, but also we call it tight rope walking. I mean, thinking about these micro chefs, rather than going in either paralyzed or so strong that you kinda burn, burn the relationships as you go is just a tremendous example of both and thinking. You know, Susan, we've talked about this as well because certainly if you've navigated tensions throughout your career, but authenticity has been a big one that we've discussed. We're wanting to fit to fit in, to be part of the organization, part of the leadership team. He had also be true to yourself. And I think you've found interesting ways to navigate the both end. Could you share her story? Sure. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. I'm taking you back in time to 1976 when I had a summer internship after my first year of my MBA at UC. I had so many fabulous experiences there as I traveled through the organization. And at the end of the summer, all the introns were supposed to make a presentation about their experience. So I naively assumed they really wanted to hear what I had to say. So on The Big Day, my fellow interns made their presentations and they were followed by applause, engaged conversations. So I was pretty buoyant. I was last on the agenda as I stepped up and express my gratitude for this incredible opportunity to integrate my training as a musician with my new education in the business school for the first time, apply it in some kind of practical setting. And I explained that my that my music experience had provided a unique lens through which I could process all of these experiences at GM. And I wanted to share this so they could see this through my eyes, through the eyes of a musician. So I projected the music for a Bach fugue on the wall. And I explain the four different voices, each knowing its role. You know, when to be dominant, when to collaborate, when to support, when to be silent. Then. I asked them to try to hear each voice as I played that piece. Yeah. You heard me, I played my violin at General Motors. Then I projected another piece on the wall, Paganini Caprice and explain that this was a virtuoso piece often played as an encore after a performance to show off and show my technical prowess. And I wanted them to hear what that sounded like. So I went on to explain that over the course of the summer, I had observed these same behaviors at work at General Motors. I saw people working in concert effectively as a team. I saw people grandstanding and looking for the limelight. And I saw like all kinds of variations in between. And I described the skills that I had honed as a musician. Analysis, interpretation, focus, individual excellence, discipline, listening, teamwork. And I was increasingly seeing the application of these in the work environment. So this kind of integrative thinking seems to be really unusual at General Motors. And that made sense because most of the people there looked alike and they'd actually been trained, uh, like most of them had graduated from General Motors Institute. So I suggested that diversifying their staff could prepare them for the inevitable demographic shifts in their customer base. And combining input from different disciplines, from different lived experiences, different sexes, races, cultures could only strengthen their decision-making in their design process. Would cars designed and marketed by white men appeal to increasingly diverse customers? Could GM success continue if they were not preparing for a different future? Could their culture even embrace the value that new faces and new voices could bring? These were the questions at the top of my mind. At the end of my summer, I ended with perfuse. Thanks for this opportunity and such an enriching experience. No one clapped. And there were no questions. And everyone silently filed out of the conference room. And I was left wondering what had I done. The other intern stopped by my desk later that afternoon offering condolences. They thought I was crazy. And clearly I was never going to get a job offer from General Motors after this stumped. And then something really unexpected happens the next week, my phone started ringing and every person at that meeting invited me to breakfast, coffee, to lunch. And at first I thought they must just be feeling sorry for me. But these discussions took a unexpectedly personal turn and people shared their career highlights and their disappointments. The challenge is balancing their personal and their professional lives. And none had been comfortable even acknowledging anything in my presentation, much less sharing any kind of private thoughts. Somehow that presentation opened the door for introspection and self reflection. Then I was sent on the corporate jet to the company headquarters to meet all of the top Brex. And my head was really like, was this really a success after all? Like, was it okay to be my authentic self? This messy combination of both and thinking this musician in this business person. So on my last day, my boss asked me to stop by his office and I was so worried that I had somehow compromised him by allowing me to make this crazy presentation. And he said he wanted me to make a promise. I said anything, I'll promise anything. This was such a marvelous opportunity. And he said, promise me, you will never work for General Motors. I was stunned. I clearly had misinterpreted absolutely everything. And he saw my confusion in my distress and said no, no, wait, wait, wait. You don't understand. I need to explain. You will get job offers from General Motors, but you don't belong here. This place will crush you. There is one way that General Motors, and that is the GM way. And you need to find somewhere where your gifts will be appreciated, where you can thrive and bring your whole self to work. And that place is definitely not. Gm was the best advice. Forgot. And I finally found my place. It's other beats where I spent over 30 years building a high-performing collaborative culture of passionate, quirky colleagues from 40 different countries. And that advice also really defined my life's purpose, which is helping others navigate towards those opportunities and experiences that will help them flourish personally and professionally. So I found that life is much more interesting. If we can avoid boxing ourselves into the either or scenarios and embrace the liminality in our lives. Both and thinking, unexpected solutions emerge, and that's when the real magic can happen. Oh, thank you, Susan. I think that's a remarkable example just for us to hold as well when we think about you don't know, what you don't know and what could come out of these remarkable moments of creative friction you made possible by putting yourself out there on that way. Thank you. Susan. I just want to highlight the chat is blowing up with goosebumps. Ashley and Susan. Both of your stories really resonated with so many people online. I just want to remind you, we have several hundred. I think we're almost up to 300 people online here with us and we would love, please join us in the chat, join these conversations. And who resonate with these ideas? And as these ideas really resonate with your own tensions, Susan, I just want to reflect that one of the things that we think a lot about is in the context of change and the context of making a difference in the context of the work that we do. There's the question of, is this about the individual, what we can bring to the table as individuals, as women, as people, and isn't about taxed. And that unto itself is its own false dichotomy, either or, but it's about the individual resonating with the contexts and your story. You brought your authentic self and your story reminded us how the importance of having the context that reinforces the ways in which our individual self can be most powerful. So thank you so much for sharing that. I want to turn one of, one of the things that Marianne and I experienced in this work about both and is that it informs and enables our individual experiences. It enables us to be more powerful in our individual decisions are individual choices. Whether at work is Ashley Susan, you both shared with us or in our individual lives. And it informs how we as leaders navigate the more corporate challenges, navigate our strategic challenges along the way. And I want to turn lies and Beta-2 some of your stories. It turns out that we're Maryann and I both started. Each of us in this work was around the tensions that we feel about innovation, creativity change, and the tension between trying to enable things to change while holding onto the things that we love that are stable and that tension between today and tomorrow, innovation change and stability, existing world and lies. I wanted to just turn to you first because that was a challenge that you face in your leadership and invite you to share a little bit about that and how you navigated that. And in part, how bringing your authentic self, your, your female authentic self helped you to navigate that in a way that enabled you to move past them. Real tensions and real resistance. Thank you, Wendy. Good morning, everybody. Glad to be with you. You're right. I had a situation that I think is a great one to share here. The company I worked for a long time as Agilent Technologies spin-off of Hewlett-Packard. And I was a manufacturing manager and we had multiple manufacturing sites and everybody was producing their own products and shipping them directly to the customers. Are customers weren't very happy about that. In that are cut. Our customers needed the products to come all at the same time because many of the factories were making things that went together. So think about it for you. These are technical products like gas chromatographs. But think about it in terms of your PC. You have a laptop, maybe a monitor, maybe a keyboard, a separate keyboard, maybe a printer makes the system and it doesn't work unless all the components are there together. So you might receive The maybe you ordered the whole thing at one time, but you might receive the monitor and then you get the printer, but you still can't make it work until it's all there and you have the PC and you hook it all up. That's what was happening to our customers. They would get the one item from one factory, the other maybe two weeks later from a different factory. And so what was happening is they were ending up with boxes sitting in their hallways waiting for everything to show up before they could make a system that would actually work in their laboratory. But the team that I was leaving was very happy with where they were. They liked the fact that they had control. They were building the product, they were shipping it out to the customer and they could invoice the customer at that time. So they were pleased with where they were and didn't really want to change very decentralized, love that and so wanted the control they had and keep it the way it was. But in the back of my mind, I'm hearing the customers not happy. The customer is not happy. That's not good for our business. And so as we started to talk about it as a team, my team was very deeply rooted in, I like it just the way it is. And so I was trying to figure out what could we do. Have one member of the team who had a diverse background and came from a particular program that had some logistics background and also a different culture. And he came up with this idea about a. And today it seems obvious but a logistics center where we would merge together the products, everybody at the manufacturing sites would ship their products, these logistic centers, and then they would send them out all at once. The customer got everything at one time. The team was very negative about it. And people said, No, we can't do that. There was quite a bit of rejection of the idea. And I had been to some training in the past where he'd been reminded that when every single bone in your body says we've done that, we've been there. We don't like it. We don't want to do it. As a leader. The thing that you should do is say Tell me more, ask a question and get the person to tell you more. And so I did that and I said, tell me more about how this is going to work because I could hear everybody saying it's not going to work, it's not going to work. So I gave air, gave this person the time to be able to talk about how they envisioned it working. So by getting those ideas out, we had, again, a lot of rejection. I just kept saying I need to know more. Tell me more. How would you respond to the complaint that people are having about it not working? And what ended up happening or make sort of condensed a little bit. What ended up happening is we came up with a real both and solution, which was for those products that went to customers as a solution where they needed everything to come together. They would go to a logistics center. So we actually set up a logistics center and factories shipped to that logistics center. But there were products that customers didn't have to have merged with other things that could ship directly from a factory and the customer would be very happy with it. So things like think about like a vial and a laboratory. You put a sample in a vial. They don't need those to go with a solution. They use them all the time, so just ship them direct to them. So we had a solution that ended up being a both end solution, which was really about have the factories that needed to merge the products, get them merchant or logistic centers. So the customers were happy. This customer satisfaction ratings went up substantially after that. And they were very happy with getting everything at one time because then they could schedule an installation and a technical person to come help them set up the item in their laboratory. I think the key thing for us was in my thinking back over it is at first I was. So with the rest of the group about we don't need to change anything. Everything is fine. We like it just the way it is. But realizing that one, the customer's first, it will make you think we need to change. And secondly, how you go about doing that is getting a diverse group of people together who have different ideas and giving room for those people to speak. And if you don't give room to them, you will continue down the path that you always are in. So it's about hiring people of diverse backgrounds. It's about giving those people the opportunity to speak and to listen to their ideas by generating more questions. Asking them to tell you more. Even when you say in your heart of hearts, you don t think it's going to work. Let him tell you more because many times it will work. License. So I have goosebumps and listening to that story. If anybody popped out of the webinar mentally for a minute, I want to invite you to just pop back in for a minute and hear those words. Tell me more and the power of them. And the last sentence that you just said, because when we've been talking about this notion of both and thinking, a piece of big piece that comes up is the conflicts that happen across people who have different points of view. We espouse diversity in different points of view. And yet we go into these conversations, dukes up ready to reject other people's points of view and positions. And we see that at the individual level with our With our personal relationships, we see that at the organizational level with people with different points of view about the strategy, we see that in terms of political polarization and the value of just pausing to listen to somebody who's different than you and you don't have to agree, you just have to start by inviting in that conversation is so powerful. So Lisa, thank you for putting that on the table in terms of the value of doing that towards both and thinking, Vina, you had a similar story. Before I invite you to tell your story, I just want to say it's so nice to be back on a webinar with you. You and I were on a webinar together when your book came out and I'm going to try quickly to put your book into there it is into the chat so that people can take a look at your book, takes six, which is about your leadership journey and what you learned along the way with some powerful lessons. And one of the lessons is learning how to navigate organizational change and the tensions that came up there. So I will turn it over to you for that converts. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to congratulate you and Maryanne on your blog. I've certainly learned a lot from review of it, especially your chapter six, which is all about finding comfort and the discomfort. That's one that I intend to circulate amongst my team. We have experienced organizational tension around change. And let me back up and say that I am ACC is President and CEO and haven't been in the job about 11 years. When I took over, the organization was appointed. The organization had been founded in 1982. So it had been around for a little more than 30 years when I took the helm. Like Ashley, so many lessons from our other fantastic panelists Like Ashley, I came into the organization as at first, I was the first minority person of color ever in their management structure for 30 years. Ever in the management structure in a profession where minority women are very much an underrepresented group. So coming into that organization, also being tasked with the big challenge. At the time, ACC was largely known as the American Corporate Counsel Association. And as I became CEO, the board had said a big vision that our association needed to go global. But it coming into it after having my previous position, then, looking at organizations, thinking about some of the things that Susan and lies have talked about in terms of the importance of diversity coming into the organization, it was clear that the organization was not well equipped to make the turn to be global. And that's because of how they went about hiring. It was largely an organization that hired by recommendations of people on staff. If you don't have global perspectives or lots of diversity on your staff. That's your referral network for bringing new talent in. Diversity is going to fail. So we had to look at how we re-approach talent and recruiting talent. We had to think about diversifying our board of directors in order to go global. You can't just have lawyers who practice law in the United States. You need to reach across continents. Even. So, we needed to really re-engineer how we look at leadership. We also had to think about doing some training within our team because it wasn't either we will be US focused or we will be globally focus. We had to be both us bogus because that was the corpus of our membership. And we needed to be adding that global perspective as well. And so in brief, that's the change that I needed to navigate and founds that as we diversified staff, our leadership and invested in that multi-cultural training. For those who had been previously very US-centric. We were really able to make significant inroads where we went from a very small sector of our membership residing and working and being outside of North America. To now, 27% of our membership is from outside of North America and growing. And we've also found that it has enabled us to attract more companies that do business multinationals. Now 60% of our membership is comprised of multinational companies. So it really was about honoring who we were. And making that transition to be able to serve globally. I love that. We embedded in that is this tension between tradition, what we love and want to bring with us and modernization change. And it's not either or they're either. It's the same with us as individuals, people talk about being authentic. And Susan, You had talked about being authentic and yet our authenticity, There's a paradox there because we also want to grow and change. And so there's this tension between who we are and who we change into and those are so powerful I just want to highlight beat in the chat. One of your ACC members, Kara is giving you a shout out for the organization. And you've got some shout outs there. So there I'll turn it back over to you. Well, we've got some really good questions coming before, before we turn to those questions, I think it's a wonderful opportunity to really ask the panelists, especially because we have a number of rising leaders on this webinar. What tips would you provide? Would you offer the rising leader? And let's be fair, we're all rising, whatever stage of leadership. What would you be, your encouragement, their suggestions. How about, how about maybe we'll start in the same order, Ashley, we want to kick us off. I get so excited when I get the chance to speak to rising leaders. And, or if you're finding your journey regardless of where you are. I love that question. Thank you for that question. Thank you all to the panelists because I just feel so inspired in like honored. It was almost like another set of feel like, you know, another refill filling up my tank as I go forward in my career, I want to start by this, like imagine you have a girl from Cincinnati born of a single parent. And now I'm like, wow, leading tech selling tech solutions. This is the result of these three things that I want rising leaders to take away here. Number one, lean into that creative tension. I love how the book frames that cause a creative, because it almost as a juxtaposition like, I hate that word tension. But listen, you can't even start a fire without tension. You know, you're going to have to strike a match and that fire once you lean into that heat. I remember I said assume positive intent, but I didn't say forget who you are, forget your emotions. Validate that you are angry that there was an injustice. Because the quicker that you can move through those emotions, the more you get access to the faculties that existing your mind and to drive creative solutions. So that's number one is lean into that heat. Allow that tension to build. Because again, I spoke about going from adversary to advocate. Yeah, I felt like this was my very real my truth was this was my adversary. This is a white male, he's just coming over. That, that is true. And then it released me to start to think of how is this, how am I wrong in this? Like what does the other side of this? And it created two things that happen. I found my voice in the corporate world. I started speaking up in meetings. I kind of said, Hey, I just said that. I just want to be clear, but maybe doing it with humor, I found my authentic voice and I built an advocate and a lifelong friend, like in this person who was my adversary. And then I'll say the last two is lift as you climb. Lift as you climb. Because whatever learning that you unlock after you start reverse engineering, how do you democratize that information? And Maria, you know, we started, there's a scholarship that we started for black business students in the, in the University of Cincinnati. Like that is, I'm not 100% wealthy, but I think it's important to democratize AI opportunities and share what I've learned to others to ensure that we diversify the world of business. And I'd say lastly, is all battles. 100% of the battle start in the mind. They start in the mind. So do not underestimate the power of moving through your emotions, writing down your emotions, putting together a game plan, and being in isolation for a minute until you develop your approach to shifting the atmosphere are shifting the story. That's what I want to leave leaders with. Thank you, Ashley, I think those are treasured insights. Susan, can I shift you? Thank you. Well, first, I think Ashley's got a career as a motivational speaker. I don't think I can compete with that. But when I think about authenticity and it has been central to my life and career because I grew up in a little town in Indiana and then wound up working all over the world with people from all different kinds of cultures. You also have a responsibility to be authentic. You can't expect organizations or colleagues to read your mind. They don't know these unique, crazy. Experiences and talents that you bring. So you have the responsibility to somehow translate those and operationalize those organizations. Have a fighting chance to embrace those and help you be a whole person at work. So, you know, I've done 40 years of HR and I've hired people, I've trained and developed people and it's pretty clear when somebody is being authentic and when they aren't. And I can tell you it's the authentic people really thrive over time. So be true to yourself, but accept the responsibility that goes along with that. Thank you. Susan, Lisa. Yeah. I would say it starts for me at hiring. So many times companies hire people that they think are like them. And so, you know, you like somebody, you meet them and you talk to them and so forth. And you say, Gee, I get along with this person, I think they're a good fit. And that term good fit drives me crazy because it is a indication that you're trying to hire people just like you. And so for me, the key is hiring people. And this is true from the first hire into the company as well as hiring people for your team. I would say your success is dependent upon how good your team is and how diverse your team is. And I mean that from background standpoint, sex, race, culture, but also skill set, education, all of those things matter. And surrounding yourself with people as best as you can on your team who are different will cause tension. It won't be all happy smiles and everybody whom Bye. But it will get you better outcomes because your success is dependent upon how good your team is. And so you want that team to be made up of a variety of people with different ideas. And then as I said before, you have to then listen to those ideas and give everybody an opportunity to bring those ideas forward. Because it would be a crime if you hire people who are different than you, and then you squash them all the time and say, No, no, no, no, they're going to leave for sure. So hire really good people, but then also make sure they're all different so that you can actually use all those good ideas to get to more success. I love that leg. Really empowering the diversity that you bring and the authenticity. Yeah, I would say that what I've learned, especially during this pandemic and leading and being CEO during the great resignation. One of the things we're proud of is that ACC has been able to keep its turnover at well less than what our association peers are experiencing. And I believe that that is because when you talk about it in the book, that letting your heart do the talking. So I believe that today as a leader, you must be authentic. And secondly, you must be comfortable leading, managing, and working with diverse teams. And to the extent leaders haven't developed that skill, they need to lean in and quickly develop it. Because that's the, that's the skill that most enables you to allow a workforce to feel that you are invested in them. One of the things that we've done at ACC is in leading and listening. We survey our employees more. We demonstrate when we as management talk about the changes that are going to come and what changes we're going to be making in our workplace. We demonstrate this is what we heard from you. This is what we're going to do. If what we're doing differs from the population may have suggested, were explaining why and explaining why we believe that it's in the organization's best interests, but as, as well as the employee. And I close by saying, I also think leaders need to have the ability to look at talent differently. Because sometimes people don't raise their hand to try doing something different. So as leaders, sometimes we need to see the possibilities in terms of ways that people who are employed by us might serve in a new capacity, different task. I'll just jump in and say, I know that in the chat we're hearing, people say how inspired they are. Ashley, I also appreciate your comment. I feel so deeply inspired. Maryann and I have talked about with this new book out, what's next. It's always good to look at. And we've often questioned whether next for us in terms of a project is the paradoxes of women's leadership and how to navigate this. Conversation is so rich and tips and tricks from so from all of you having been there on the frontlines, having navigated these tensions, we have a couple of minutes left and one of the pieces that has come up again and again in the chat is the tension of diversity and navigating diversity. Again, life, as you said, diversity of all kinds are friend monica Ibotta, Monica, I'll quote you here. Went back to your comments, Susan, and just pointing out what a pioneer you were in authenticity in the workplace and the 1870s. And how that wasn't really even a thing then. And yet, we're still grappling with that today, which is enabling women, enabling people of color, enabling women of color to be their authentic self in the workplace. What does that look like from a leadership point of view? And what does that look like from a personal point of view? You all touched on that in some different ways, but I'm wondering if we can double down on that topic for some tips around that very briefly because we only have just a couple of minutes left. I'll invite any of you that want to pop in. And again, just throw your maybe two sentences on this. I'll jump in then our workforce is global. And so we're very mindful about how we schedule meetings, although the majority of the team might be based in the US. My favorite meeting is our global staff meeting, where we hold it late in the day in the US. And then it's midday or mid evening for those who are in Brussels and in Australia, they're having coffee. So it's kinda like the contrast between coffee in one region of the world and cocktails and the other that will serve to get people to mingle and have a chance to get together. I would say empathy is always a good thing. Susan, can you say about that because that is probably somebody in the attachment. Write that down to the empathy is always a good thing. Say one more sentence about what you mean by what. I've had to do some very difficult things throughout my career. And when I have done them with authenticity and empathy, it's always worked. I have remained very close friends with people that I had to fire. Yeah. I've had to close organizations. I've had to restructure things. My boss was convicted of a felony. When you deal with people authentically and with empathy, they understand. You're right. That's what they said. Let the heart do the talking. Yeah. Yeah, I assume positive intent Ashley lives that we have about 1 min. Any quick thoughts about that from either of you? I can certainly jump in real quick and say, I think that you need to care about the people that you work with and even if they're very different from you. So maybe empathy and carrying or sort of the same thing. But I feel like if you care about the individuals, you will do the right things for them. Even in bad situations or as Susan described, horrible things you have to do. Ashley, any last question? I think finally, the biggest learning I've, I've garnered this past couple of years is perspective. And that two things can be true at the same time. Understanding that is like the start of any conversation. And number two, I would say is like, if this is important than it should cost us collectively something cost us our time, cost us our intelligence like dedicating time toward it. And, or the company. Monetary investment like it. This is not a one and done conversation. This is an ongoing, evolving thing to achieve what we all universally believe is the right thing to do. Brilliant. Well, don't hop off yet if you are closing out with us because in the next 1 min we're going to raffle off one of our books for one of you and we want you to be around. And I just saw in the chat allele can fully who's here with us. So Leila, Thank you. That was our agent who has helped us get this book into the hands of so many people were like, Thank you for being with us, and thank you all for being with us with this powerful conversation. Thank you, veto. And Susan and Ashley and lies up for such powerful ideas. I am just going to end with, I'm Maryann and my favorite quotes. The thinker without paradox is like a lover without feeling a paltry mediocrity. We are so inspired to share the ideas in this book because of the powerful ways in which they inform the leadership and the lives of people. And you all have been such a remarkable, a testament to that. I'm getting a text from the phenotype body saying Esther, Esther neuron, whoa, you are the lucky raffle of the book. If you can send us in the chat or email your address, we will share a book. It's 10:00. So I will say thank you to our panelists and thank you to all of you for being here and turn it over to Marianne to close this out with a thank you again, thank you for your inspiration. Whatever coast you're on, this is a wonderful part of your day. I hope that you found it as tank filling to use ashes words as we did. It's been such an honor. All the best everyone, as you navigate your tensions. Thank you. Hello.
Both/And of Women's Leadership: Advancing Gender Equity from the Classroom to the Boardroom
From Kimberly Ragan November 14, 2022
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