Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #219| How Redefining Success Can Help You Beat Overwhelm and Love Your Work

Transcript

#219| How Redefining Success Can Help You Beat Overwhelm and Love Your Work · Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing

• 0:00
  Cassie Leonard: Maybe we don't all want to ride this conveyor belt and retire at 65, corporate for life.
• 0:10
  Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
• 0:17
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
• 0:22
  Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
• 0:27
  Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
• 0:36
  Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
• 0:37
  Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
• 0:38
  Michelle Gauthier: I have a great interview for you.
• 0:40
  Michelle Gauthier: I am talking to Cassie Leonard.
• 0:43
  Michelle Gauthier: She spent 20 years working in the male-dominated world of engineering and aerospace defense and ended up leaving corporate leadership to coach high-achieving women who wanted to redefine what success looks like on their own terms.
• 0:56
  Michelle Gauthier: When you listen to today's episode, you will learn why burnout isn't just about doing too much and how the ideal worker myth, she's gonna explain what that is, fueling overwhelmed for so many women, how to shift from chasing external achievements.
• 1:11
  Michelle Gauthier: Ooh, that's a big one.
• 1:13
  Michelle Gauthier: A simple tool, which she calls her top 10 list that will help you clarify what you truly need in your next role, job, or just season of life.
• 1:21
  Michelle Gauthier: If you've ever been in your job and thought, okay, I really don't want the next promotion, but I don't know what I do want, this is a great episode for you to listen to.
• 1:29
  Michelle Gauthier: So let's tune in.
• 1:31
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much, Cassie, for being here with us today.
• 1:33
  Michelle Gauthier: I really appreciate it.
• 1:34
  Michelle Gauthier: So happy to be here, Michelle.
• 1:36
  Cassie Leonard: Thank you.
• 1:37
  Michelle Gauthier: So you transitioned from a 20-year aerospace career into coaching and being an author.
• 1:43
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm always so curious to know what happened that led you to do that.
• 1:48
  Michelle Gauthier: What's your story or your background?
• 1:50
  Cassie Leonard: It wasn't one major thing that happened.
• 1:52
  Cassie Leonard: It was a thousand little things.
• 1:55
  Cassie Leonard: Some that I was aware of, some that I wasn't aware of.
• 1:57
  Cassie Leonard: One that I was definitely aware of was COVID being at home running an organization across two coasts, all virtually with a kindergartner and a fourth grader at home.
• 2:08
  Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh, kindergartner at home.
• 2:11
  Michelle Gauthier: No.
• 2:12
  Cassie Leonard: And he had never had screen time before, and then the school sent him an iPad.
• 2:16
  Cassie Leonard: So I had all this new transition all at once.
• 2:19
  Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
• 2:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Oh, that is terrible.
• 2:22
  Michelle Gauthier: Too much.
• 2:23
  Michelle Gauthier: Everyone who had kids during COVID is just like, oh my gosh, yes.
• 2:27
  Michelle Gauthier: My daughter was in third grade and she went to a really small private school.
• 2:32
  Michelle Gauthier: And most of the moms there were stay-at-home moms.
• 2:35
  Michelle Gauthier: And so when they transitioned to home, they would send us all their work for the day that we were supposed to do with them.
• 2:41
  Michelle Gauthier: And I literally called the teacher on the first day and I was like, there's just no way I can do this.
• 2:46
  Michelle Gauthier: And I'm a single mom.
• 2:47
  Michelle Gauthier: And I just remember feeling like completely overwhelmed.
• 2:50
  Michelle Gauthier: She could not have been nicer, by the way.
• 2:52
  Michelle Gauthier: She gave my third grader her phone number and she would call their teacher directly if she had.
• 2:56
  Michelle Gauthier: That's amazing.
• 2:57
  Michelle Gauthier: Anyway, that's an aside.
• 2:59
  Michelle Gauthier: So that's a great setup.
• 3:01
  Michelle Gauthier: So there's COVID and there's having two children home with you.
• 3:03
  Michelle Gauthier: And then what?
• 3:04
  Cassie Leonard: And then, yeah, I had the same experience.
• 3:06
  Cassie Leonard: I had to call a teacher and say, okay, this is not gonna work.
• 3:11
  Cassie Leonard: Let's create new boundaries because a kid playing on Minecraft videos on YouTube, which he suddenly discovered, is not the same as going to school.
• 3:20
  Cassie Leonard: So we established a new schedule where for 40 minutes a day he was at school online because that was when the teacher was reading stories.
• 3:31
  Cassie Leonard: And that was where he could get the value from that time being online.
• 3:35
  Cassie Leonard: And everything else became self-directed, homeschool, no screens.
• 3:40
  Cassie Leonard: We just had to make a new plan that actually worked for ourselves.
• 3:43
  Michelle Gauthier: Meanwhile, you're managing a multi-coastal team in your space time.
• 3:48
  Cassie Leonard: We were also making new plans on how to manage virtual meetings and getting aircraft still out the door.
• 3:54
  Cassie Leonard: Yeah, it was the exact same skills.
• 3:56
  Cassie Leonard: That's one of the things that I talk about in my first book is the skills that you have as a mom, the skills that you have as a leader and a technical professional like me, or whatever profession you are.
• 4:08
  Cassie Leonard: If you can practice merging those and overlapping and using them in their different facets, it's a lot easier to handle the overwhelm, is my theory.
• 4:18
  Cassie Leonard: And I put it to the test then and it worked.
• 4:20
  Cassie Leonard: But the reason I left ultimately was in addition to being tired of using all those skills in all the places, I was starting to not be quite so excited by the airplanes, not be quite so excited by I was working on submarines at that point, so really not excited.
• 4:37
  Cassie Leonard: I lost the love of the mission, but I still loved working with people.
• 4:42
  Cassie Leonard: I loved watching someone grow in their career, and I loved anytime I could bring people together, and I wanted to do that in a space that I could own.
• 4:51
  Cassie Leonard: And so I opened up my business, and that's when I became a coach.
• 4:56
  Michelle Gauthier: That's so great. Did you have any thoughts at that time?
• 4:57
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm like projecting this on you because I did.
• 4:59
  Michelle Gauthier: But did you have any thoughts at the time of okay, I wanted to be a coach.
• 5:03
  Michelle Gauthier: I had a successful career that had nothing to do with coaching, although really it did, like mentoring and that kind of stuff.
• 5:10
  Michelle Gauthier: But I when I was quitting, I was thinking, what am I doing?
• 5:13
  Michelle Gauthier: I don't even know how to do this.
• 5:15
  Michelle Gauthier: Did you feel confident about your shift into being a coach or were you also nervous?
• 5:20
  Cassie Leonard: I felt confident about the coaching piece.
• 5:23
  Cassie Leonard: I started my certification before I left.
• 5:25
  Cassie Leonard: I felt like I love mentoring.
• 5:28
  Cassie Leonard: If I love something, I'm gonna pour my heart into it and I'll figure it out.
• 5:31
  Cassie Leonard: What I was scared about was the entrepreneurship because I didn't know anyone in my sphere who runs a business and can actually afford to eat.
• 5:40
  Cassie Leonard: So making sure that we had enough finances so I could play in the play box for a while, figure it out without feeling that much stress.
• 5:48
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
• 5:49
  Michelle Gauthier: I felt the flip, but then I realized oh, my favorite part of my corporate career was actually running the women's network, which was like a volunteer job within my job and mentoring.
• 6:00
  Michelle Gauthier: Like I used to get assigned a mentor every year, and I loved that so much.
• 6:04
  Michelle Gauthier: And I feel like you do get a lot of those same skills.
• 6:08
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so your most recent book is called Beyond the Pipeline.
• 6:12
  Michelle Gauthier: Tell us the metaphor of the leaky pipeline and why you named it this and how you hope to redefine that.
• 6:19
  Cassie Leonard: Yes, the leaky pipeline is in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine.
• 6:24
  Cassie Leonard: So in STEM, a pervasive narrative that the pipeline is the ideal.
• 6:30
  Cassie Leonard: It's you get in through early childhood, you go to college, you get your bachelor's in science, you get the job, you progress up this beautiful conveyor belt of promotions, and then you retire at 65 as CEO or C-suite, something.
• 6:47
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, fully satisfied with your amazing pipeline.
• 6:50
  Michelle Gauthier: Check, you did the job.
• 6:53
  Cassie Leonard: Well done.
• 6:53
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, exactly.
• 6:54
  Cassie Leonard: But the leaky pipeline narrative is it started in the 1980s, pretty much.
• 7:00
  Cassie Leonard: There is some references before that.
• 7:02
  Cassie Leonard: But it was looking at women and people of color and STEM and how we don't make it to C-suite and we don't get that gold star because people choose to leave for having children or for opening coaching businesses, or they've got a STEM degree and they decided to be a teacher, or there's so many different ways.
• 7:22
  Cassie Leonard: And the narrative implies that those leaks are failure or loss to the system.
• 7:26
  Cassie Leonard: And it was invented or written as a really constructive way to try to support and get more people to get to that finish line.
• 7:33
  Cassie Leonard: But this book, beyond the pipeline, is saying maybe that's not the end goal for every person.
• 7:38
  Cassie Leonard: Maybe we don't all want to ride this conveyor belt and retire at 65, corporate for life.
• 7:44
  Cassie Leonard: Maybe we can make our choices.
• 7:45
  Cassie Leonard: And on the flip side, maybe the system doesn't need to push as many of us out through unconscious bias, through all these barriers, not recognizing that menopause affects us, not recognizing the motherhood creates these barriers.
• 7:59
  Cassie Leonard: So if we can change the system so it's tenable, so we can all stay if we want, and then not call it failure if we choose to leave, what a beautiful world.
• 8:08
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, I see.
• 8:08
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I like that.
• 8:10
  Michelle Gauthier: And what would you say based on your intimate knowledge of working in it and now working with people in STEM?
• 8:16
  Michelle Gauthier: What is the culture right now as far as women go?
• 8:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Is it getting to be a better place for women to work, in your opinion?
• 8:25
  Cassie Leonard: I believe that we are on the path of yes, it's continuously getting better, but it's incremental and we need step function change.
• 8:34
  Cassie Leonard: We're waiting for the next generations to come in to fix it at this point.
• 8:38
  Cassie Leonard: Which still less than 25% women in most STEM professions.
• 8:43
  Cassie Leonard: When I started my first job, I was one woman on a 35-person team.
• 8:47
  Cassie Leonard: So just the understanding and the awareness of women's experiences and how they are different and how word choice in the workplace affects us, how visual cues, how having meetings during drop-off and pickup of school, like everything is a little factor that needs addressing.
• 9:04
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 9:05
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's hopeful, but not to the place where it sounds like you and I too hope that we'll get.
• 9:12
  Cassie Leonard: We need to get there a lot quicker.
• 9:14
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes.
• 9:15
  Michelle Gauthier: In your opinion, what do you think is fueling the burnout culture that's happening right now?
• 9:22
  Michelle Gauthier: And how can we like we as individuals start to dismantle that or even prevent it if you think that's possible?
• 9:31
  Cassie Leonard: I think for each individual it's possible.
• 9:34
  Cassie Leonard: Burnout doesn't need to be in your life story.
• 9:38
  Cassie Leonard: But the culture, especially in STEM, which is my sphere, but I think it rolls through most of the corporate, is there's this ideal worker narrative that right now, like you need to have that cell phone on and getting those texts, and you need to be replying to the emails at midnight, you need to be willing to go on that business trip at second's notice.
• 9:59
  Cassie Leonard: And it's just like this expectation that the perfect worker is just ready to go for the company.
• 10:05
  Cassie Leonard: But at the same time, for women who are mothers, you also need to make sure every kid's form is submitted to school, and you need to make sure they get to every soccer practice, and you need to make sure that they have their snack and their lunch.
• 10:17
  Cassie Leonard: And it's just the expectations of being a mother have gone up significantly in the last 70 years.
• 10:23
  Cassie Leonard: There's data on how much more time we spend with our children compared to the 1950s housewife.
• 10:29
  Cassie Leonard: Interesting.
• 10:30
  Cassie Leonard: And we have a forty-hour job for all so doing.
• 10:33
  Cassie Leonard: So it's like the level of burnout that you could achieve from all that is just ridiculous.
• 10:38
  Cassie Leonard: So it's all about setting boundaries and knowing which parts of those expectations you're willing to meet and which parts are just ridiculous.
• 10:45
  Cassie Leonard: And you can say no to.
• 10:47
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
• 10:47
  Michelle Gauthier: And I think that is something that we need to consider right now.
• 10:51
  Michelle Gauthier: So for anyone listening, think about yourself and in terms of how hard you've been working for how long do you find yourself getting close to that burnout?
• 11:00
  Michelle Gauthier: Because I don't know if I knew the word burnout, but I feel if a 10 is where you have the literal breakdown.
• 11:06
  Michelle Gauthier: I was at like a nine, nine and a half before I realized like, what is happening here?
• 11:12
  Michelle Gauthier: I don't feel like myself anymore.
• 11:14
  Michelle Gauthier: Like, I have no passion for the mission, as you called it.
• 11:17
  Michelle Gauthier: I am just like not able to really focus as well as I used to be able to.
• 11:23
  Michelle Gauthier: All these signs, but I didn't know.
• 11:24
  Michelle Gauthier: I didn't know that they were signs that I needed to back it down a little bit.
• 11:28
  Michelle Gauthier: And I didn't know how, even if I would have known that, how to set a boundary, you know, how to do all of those things.
• 11:35
  Michelle Gauthier: So it just seemed like I had to be part of if there was a leaky pipeline, I had to be part of the leaky pipeline and just okay, I gotta do something different.
• 11:42
  Michelle Gauthier: So, do you coach women who stay in STEM or do you coach people who mostly are leaving it?
• 11:50
  Cassie Leonard: All of the above.
• 11:51
  Cassie Leonard: Most of my clients actually are still in STEM and are loving their careers.
• 11:55
  Cassie Leonard: A lot of people are looking for that next step, that next transition.
• 11:59
  Cassie Leonard: Some are looking for permission to not have that next step be a promotion.
• 12:03
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
• 12:04
  Cassie Leonard: Uh they want a new job, but a lot of the times when we want to switch because we're burned out or there's something wrong, we're in a toxic environment.
• 12:11
  Cassie Leonard: You feel like you still need to get a promotion to validate why you left.
• 12:16
  Cassie Leonard: And sometimes there's no way it's just you need to figure out what your version of success is, and that might be more flexibility instead of more money or a bigger title.
• 12:24
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Cassie Leonard: So we worked through all of what makes you happy, and it doesn't have to be in or out of step.
• 12:31
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
• 12:31
  Michelle Gauthier: I think that's an amazing way to look at it because I feel like you don't get to the position where you were, and I'm sure all of your clients are, I know all of my clients, and probably lots of the people listening.
• 12:42
  Michelle Gauthier: You don't get there by being like, uh, I don't know, we'll just see what happens.
• 12:45
  Michelle Gauthier: It's I'm gonna get A's and I'm gonna get into college and then I'm gonna get this job and get promoted.
• 12:50
  Michelle Gauthier: And you're so on that track that at least for me, when I got to the point when I thought, I don't want my boss's job, like I don't want to keep going up this ladder anymore.
• 13:00
  Michelle Gauthier: And then I was like, Am I a loser now?
• 13:02
  Michelle Gauthier: Do I just not try hard or care about this kind of stuff anymore?
• 13:06
  Michelle Gauthier: So that was really a hard realization for me.
• 13:09
  Michelle Gauthier: And I've talked to lots of women who've been in that same situation.
• 13:12
  Michelle Gauthier: So I love that you're just saying that can also be the answer.
• 13:16
  Michelle Gauthier: The question is like, what will make me happy next?
• 13:19
  Michelle Gauthier: And yeah, for me, it was like being able to work half days on Mondays for a while or whatever I was able to do within that corporate structure.
• 13:29
  Cassie Leonard: Absolutely.
• 13:30
  Cassie Leonard: And you going back to the first question of why I chose to leave, if I'd had an opportunity or if I'd realized I could negotiate for part-time, or if I'd known that I could just say no.
• 13:41
  Cassie Leonard: I was on that hitting the rooftop of going into executive, and I didn't want to be an executive.
• 13:46
  Cassie Leonard: I it didn't look fun, but I didn't know that I could just say, no, I'm gonna stay here and stop and keep crushing this job.
• 13:53
  Cassie Leonard: I didn't have that verbiage yet to give myself that freedom.
• 13:56
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 13:58
  Michelle Gauthier: And I think you and I probably have very similar situations with our clients in that people will come to me because they hate their job and they want out, and then they do coaching and then they stay and they like it.
• 14:07
  Michelle Gauthier: It's just the way that you're looking at it and the things that you're valuing at the time.
• 14:12
  Michelle Gauthier: So you've worked with lots of high-achieving women.
• 14:15
  Michelle Gauthier: You yourself are one, juggling careers and caregiving.
• 14:19
  Michelle Gauthier: What are some of the strategies that you've seen actually work for sustaining long-term well-being?
• 14:26
  Cassie Leonard: I think one of the most important things I work with my clients is knowing what you truly value and really getting down to your why.
• 14:34
  Cassie Leonard: Because once you have that locked in, your clarity, purpose, your mission, how what you're doing every day connects to a bigger picture that you actually are bought into instead of the leaky pipeline narrative or the I need to get to the sweet seat, all these external versions of success.
• 14:51
  Cassie Leonard: Once you know why you want to get to where you want to go to, it makes every day-to-day a lot more enjoyable.
• 14:57
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
• 14:57
  Michelle Gauthier: And having that skill can see you out for the rest of life because you can always ask yourself that question.
• 15:03
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
• 15:04
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so if someone's listening and they're as they're hearing us, they're like, oh, that felt like me.
• 15:09
  Michelle Gauthier: And I think I am getting close to burnout.
• 15:11
  Michelle Gauthier: If you could give them like one small actionable step that you would recommend that they take before they reach that burnout stage, what would it be?
• 15:19
  Cassie Leonard: I'm actually just currently recording my audiobook for my first book.
• 15:23
  Cassie Leonard: So I'm going back and rereading a book I wrote two years ago.
• 15:26
  Cassie Leonard: And I just did yesterday the section on building your top 10 list.
• 15:30
  Cassie Leonard: So 10 things that are non-negotiable for any job that you're ever going to take.
• 15:35
  Cassie Leonard: And it was so much fun to go through.
• 15:37
  Cassie Leonard: I have like pre-work questions, so it's not a small task, but pre-work questions in there.
• 15:41
  Cassie Leonard: But once you have this little simple list fits on a post-it of what's the no-kidding this matters to you list, everything gets easier.
• 15:50
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
• 15:50
  Michelle Gauthier: What are some of those?
• 15:51
  Michelle Gauthier: Like what examples did you have in the book?
• 15:54
  Cassie Leonard: For me, one of them was I wanted to have leadership that supported me and trusted me because I had worked in environments where I didn't have that.
• 16:03
  Cassie Leonard: So I knew that was important to me.
• 16:04
  Cassie Leonard: Another one was I wanted flexibility to be home to pick up my kids and take them to soccer practice most nights.
• 16:12
  Cassie Leonard: So, like you can have very different examples on that list of commute time, mission, balance, whatever it is.
• 16:19
  Cassie Leonard: But it's that collection of 10.
• 16:22
  Cassie Leonard: I think 10 or plus or minus is really important because as working women, we are solving for many variables.
• 16:28
  Cassie Leonard: You can't just have a one statement clarity.
• 16:31
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:33
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
• 16:34
  Michelle Gauthier: So I'm gonna go to the signature questions now that I always ask every guest on the show.
• 16:41
  Michelle Gauthier: What is something that you personally do when you feel overwhelmed to make yourself feel better?
• 16:46
  Cassie Leonard: When I remember, I take a deep breath.
• 16:49
  Cassie Leonard: That's the simplest, easiest, but it's amazing, especially if you can get your exhale to be longer than your inhale.
• 16:58
  Cassie Leonard: I always feel much more at ease after that.
• 17:01
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
• 17:01
  Michelle Gauthier: And you I love how you said if I remember, because it's funny how much you can be like holding your breath and tensing all your muscles, and you don't even realize that you take that breath and you're like, oh, geez, sorry, body.
• 17:13
  Michelle Gauthier: I was holding on tight there.
• 17:16
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, great.
• 17:17
  Michelle Gauthier: And then what is something you do to save time or do less?
• 17:22
  Cassie Leonard: It goes back to boundaries.
• 17:23
  Cassie Leonard: Uh, and I have been very intentional for many years now at saying no when I don't want to do it.
• 17:30
  Cassie Leonard: And not to be like in a selfish, but it feels selfish to say out loud.
• 17:33
  Cassie Leonard: But sometimes there are asks for your time that don't serve you or the people around you that you love.
• 17:40
  Cassie Leonard: And then I feel very free to say no.
• 17:42
  Michelle Gauthier: That's great.
• 17:43
  Michelle Gauthier: I think that is a very hard skill for most, if not all, women that everyone I know who's great at saying no and who has great boundaries has worked on it.
• 17:52
  Michelle Gauthier: I just don't think it's like a built-in skill that we have.
• 17:55
  Michelle Gauthier: What were your tricks when you were first learning to say no?
• 17:58
  Michelle Gauthier: Or have you always been good at it?
• 18:00
  Cassie Leonard: I have not always been good at it.
• 18:01
  Cassie Leonard: Of course not.
• 18:01
  Cassie Leonard: I don't think society wants us to be good at it.
• 18:04
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
• 18:04
  Cassie Leonard: But at first, it was my husband actually asking me, like, wait, why would you do that?
• 18:09
  Cassie Leonard: And I was like, Because I have to.
• 18:11
  Cassie Leonard: My example is the PTA.
• 18:13
  Cassie Leonard: My mom was a school teacher and she was on four different PTAs at the same time because her schools, for three daughters, and it's just what moms do.
• 18:22
  Cassie Leonard: And then I went to sign up for the PTA when I was a working woman with two kids, and I was all these things going on.
• 18:29
  Cassie Leonard: He's like, Why?
• 18:30
  Cassie Leonard: Because I have to.
• 18:30
  Cassie Leonard: And he's like, You don't have it, it just shocked my brain, and I had to really spend a lot of time processing this.
• 18:36
  Cassie Leonard: I can make a choice to volunteer where I want to dedicate my time and not also have to do this.
• 18:42
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yes, that's so great.
• 18:44
  Michelle Gauthier: When you were talking about being on a team with 35 men and one woman when I had that experience where I was the only woman, I felt like I learned a lot from the way that men communicate.
• 18:54
  Michelle Gauthier: Just that, like straight up, nope, I'm working on this, I can't work on that.
• 18:58
  Michelle Gauthier: I was like, holy crap, you can just say that if you don't work on break to the punch.
• 19:03
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, exactly.
• 19:04
  Michelle Gauthier: And I really got to the point where I almost preferred that type of communication.
• 19:09
  Michelle Gauthier: I think because I did work with so many men, but it was just so straightforward.
• 19:13
  Michelle Gauthier: And I did learn a lot about saying no just from being in that type of culture.
• 19:18
  Michelle Gauthier: So I guess there are some pros to being the only woman sometimes.
• 19:21
  Cassie Leonard: Yes, I can absolutely learn from that.
• 19:23
  Cassie Leonard: And in Beyond the Pipeline, the chapters are written by many different women and allies, so that we get lots of experiences.
• 19:30
  Cassie Leonard: Carly Aubell wrote one chapter, which was fantastic.
• 19:34
  Cassie Leonard: And I think she'll be on your show.
• 19:36
  Cassie Leonard: She mentioned how when she was doing drop off and pickup, there was a man on her team who said, I can't do 7 30 meeting.
• 19:44
  Cassie Leonard: I'm taking my kid to kindergarten.
• 19:46
  Cassie Leonard: And she was just like, You're allowed to say that.
• 19:48
  Cassie Leonard: And like, of course, the team was like, Oh, yeah, we'll move the meeting.
• 19:51
  Cassie Leonard: And so it just like that allyship and that support of being like, This is how we talk and we stand up for our boundaries was wonderful because it helped.
• 20:02
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 20:04
  Michelle Gauthier: So if you are a person who's struggling with saying no, first of all, I've got many episodes on the podcast about that, but think of somebody in your life who is good at saying no and just try to model the way that they do it and see how that feels for you.
• 20:18
  Michelle Gauthier: I had a girlfriend who was also really good at saying no, and it was interesting because I always thought, if I say no, people won't like me or they'll be mad.
• 20:24
  Michelle Gauthier: And I never thought that about her.
• 20:26
  Michelle Gauthier: I just always thought that she doesn't want to go, she'll say no.
• 20:28
  Michelle Gauthier: And if she wants to go, she'll say yes.
• 20:29
  Michelle Gauthier: It made me feel very like trusting of her response versus like mad about it.
• 20:34
  Michelle Gauthier: Interesting.
• 20:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
• 20:35
  Michelle Gauthier: All right.
• 20:36
  Michelle Gauthier: Well, thank you so much, Cassie, for being here today.
• 20:39
  Michelle Gauthier: I mentioned that the title of your second book is Beyond the Pipeline.
• 20:42
  Michelle Gauthier: Do you want to tell us where they can find that book and your earlier book that has that top 10 experience written into it and anything about your coaching?
• 20:51
  Michelle Gauthier: Just basically tell people where they can find you.
• 20:54
  Cassie Leonard: Yeah, thank you.
• 20:55
  Cassie Leonard: Beyond the Pipeline is available on Amazon on all international platforms of Amazon as well.
• 21:01
  Cassie Leonard: It's international bestseller in Canada.
• 21:04
  Michelle Gauthier: Gosh, that's amazing.
• 21:05
  Michelle Gauthier: In the business category or self-help or what?
• 21:07
  Michelle Gauthier: Women in business.
• 21:08
  Michelle Gauthier: Oh, I love that.
• 21:10
  Michelle Gauthier: Great job.
• 21:10
  Michelle Gauthier: That's so exciting.
• 21:13
  Cassie Leonard: And STEM moms, so S-T-E-M Moms is my first book.
• 21:17
  Cassie Leonard: And that one's almost more of a workbook coaching guide.
• 21:20
  Cassie Leonard: So it's got my narrative and then all the things that I've learned through coaching and mentoring over the past 20 years.
• 21:26
  Cassie Leonard: And that's also available on Amazon or both are available at my website, elmcoaching.com, which is elmcoaching.com.
• 21:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay, perfect.
• 21:36
  Michelle Gauthier: So if they want to just go one stop shopping, they can go to elmcoaching.com, Elm with two M's, not like the tree, and then they can find your book, your coaching, everything they need to know.
• 21:46
  Cassie Leonard: Yep, everything's there.
• 21:47
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, wonderful.
• 21:48
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for being with us today.
• 21:50
  Michelle Gauthier: That was a very informative and helpful interview.
• 21:53
  Cassie Leonard: Thank you, Michelle.
• 21:58
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
• 22:01
  Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at Michelle Gauthier.com.
• 22:07
  Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.