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Sabina Nawaz: The Bold Truth About Being a Boss · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Sabina Nawaz.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is an elite executive coach who advises C-level executives and teams of Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits and academic institutions around the world.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Sabina routinely gives speeches each year and teaches faculty at Northeastern and Drexel Universities.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Her 14-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company's executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly 1,000 executives, advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: She has written for and been featured in, harvard Business Review, wall Street Journal, forbes Inc.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Fast Company, nbc, wall Street Journal, forbes Inc.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Fast Company, nbc, nasdaq and MarketWatch.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited to talk to you and talk about your new book.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, leigh.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So let's start off.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: We were talking a little bit in the green room about being bold, but I'd love to know what is your definition of bold?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: How do you define it?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Bold to me means you take action despite your heart pounding.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I often tell people I am paid to raise people's heart rates because I'm in the business of leadership and leadership development and leadership coaching.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I truly believe it's not rocket science to know about leadership.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It requires courage.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: And that courage and that boldness comes when we're taking action despite our heart pounding.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: So whatever makes your heart pound, if you act in those moments, you're being bold.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: How many heart pounding moments does someone have in a lifetime?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: There's so many levels of that right Personal, professional relationships, et cetera.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so, when you think about living that definition, what comes to mind for you as one of your many, probably examples of these moments where you've been bold?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Well, if I took it immediately to today, it would mean doing my eight mile run this morning where my heart was pounding Gorgeous sunny day that I was running.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: But I was thinking about this question as I listened to your other podcast, lee, and it brings me back to when I was nine years old, and this is in Calcutta, india.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: It's a day in April, it's humid, it's hot, and I had a knife to my throat and that knife was placed at my throat by me.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: So I'm standing on this stoop with this knife and it's stuck against.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I'm holding it against my throat, I've got sweat dripping from my forehead onto the knife, the backs of my knees are wet with sweat, my toes are curling up in my flip-flops and I'm thinking do I push in the knife and kill myself?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Flip-flops?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And I'm thinking do I push in the knife and kill myself?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: And the reason being that I grew up in a home filled with domestic violence and I felt it was just very painful to keep going.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: You would think that would be a bold move to try and make that decision, but I think the boldness was the choice to put down that knife.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: And the reason I put down that knife was because I remembered something this guy called Jalil said to me that very morning.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Jalil was a man who lived in our building.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: He had no education, he would run some errands for us every morning and then my mom would give him his breakfast a cup of tea, a loaf of bread.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: And I'd be sitting there on that stoop studying, and Jalil would look up at me and he would be so admiring and so kind and he had all this confidence about how far I was going to go and how successful I was going to be.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: And I stood there with that knife, thinking what's going to be easier to push the knife in and end this pain, or to believe, to trust, to externalize the trust, because I didn't have any trust that things would get better, to trust that things will get better and that I had the strength to get through this.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And I chose to believe Jalil's voice.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: So being bold sometimes, to me, then, means having the wherewithal to listen to somebody else's voice, those positive voices, when the negative voices are clamoring inside your head.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Right, that is extremely powerful example, so I'm very appreciative of you sharing it and the vulnerability of it all in that sense as well.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: But something you just said really resonates strongly with me, in the sense of sometimes what's happening within us is how we speak to ourselves, or what we're seeing, or how we're viewing something is could be very, very negative and very, very real, like not because it should be positive, it actually is very negative.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And you, choosing to listen to someone externally, which I think in general, a lot of the times we don't, you know, we try to like drowned out the noise or we try to stop, you know, hearing we need to make decisions for ourselves and you know, be autonomous and those types of things or do it alone, right, and I think that's one of the things about being bold.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: One of the myths around being bold is that you do it alone and that is just not how it usually works out.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Like you're, you have to take a step, you had to put the knife down, you had to do that.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: You know no one else could do that for you, but you listen to his voice, you listen to the positivity that he was putting into your life and into your world and to take that step, that very, very bold step, which I'm so thankful you took for so many reasons, including be able to meet you and learn from you.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So thank you for sharing that.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So, when you think you have that big of a bold moment at nine and as you move through you know, getting into college and doing the things that you did, did you always feel like you were going to end up in this space of being someone who could guide, who could almost be a docent, right For executives to kind of?
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: This is what you should do, this is what you should see and look over here, you know, make sure you pay attention.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I love that term.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you always have that about your, at least as a goal or a sense of what you would be Heck?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: no, Most of the time back to my internal dialogue, lee was I have no idea what I'm doing.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: I'm making this stuff as fast as I can make it up.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: When am I going to get found out?
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Failure is around the corner and my worst days.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, there were days where I went I can do this.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: The corner and my worst days.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, there were days where I went I can do this.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do know that growing up, often people would come to me for advice, everything from my aunt going, hey, can we brainstorm what we give this person for their birthday gift?
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Somehow I was the person that they came to, or friends who would come and confide in me their deepest struggles and sorrows and teenage crushes.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: So people often did come and talk to me.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: But my first career was as an engineer and then, of course, I became a manager and got a lot of feedback, a lot of positive feedback about how I cared about people and how I nurtured them and grew them.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: And I got a lot of positive feedback as a manager cared about people and how I nurtured them and grew them.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And I got a lot of positive feedback as a manager until I didn't.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: I went from being the best boss ever to the worst boss ever.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: That's a whole different story, but I did not have this in mind and this happened quite accidentally.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so when you think about being nurturing or having someone that has high EQ and empathy and understanding of many things that some people just don't have the skills for when they're leaders, you were able to get into a space where you went from managing something very small to something very big.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: What were the steps?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: When you think about the journey at Microsoft, that happened that led you to being in that space with over 11,000 managers and being the direct connect, the genesis of that, I like to say Lee, happened as I was sitting on a couch eating bonbons.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: This is one of the tools I actually strongly advocate for in my book.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: It is a practice that many of my clients do, called blank space, which is where you sit around doing nothing for a while, two hours a week to be precise.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: In my case, I had an eight-week sabbatical that Microsoft had awarded me, and after three weeks of traveling and stuff, I was sitting on the couch eating bonbons doing nothing and then had this realization that it was no longer a matter of if but when.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: I would become a corporate vice president, which had been my career aspiration at that point, especially as a woman, and it was really anticlimactic because I thought, well, if I know how to do it, then why would I spend my time chasing it?
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And then I went shoot.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: What do I do with my life?
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, I enjoy working with people.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I enjoy managing people.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'll go into management development.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: So that's how it started.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: On the outside it could look like a bold move that you're moving from engineering to HR without any formal training, but it did not feel bold at all for me because my manager on the engineering side had given me an open door of hey, come back anytime, we don't want to lose you, especially as a woman in tech, and the hiring manager on the other side was welcoming me with open arms and said you can renew your lease as often as you want.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Just get started and give it a shot.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: So that's how that started.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: So having a workplace that allows for growth and trial and curiosity I mean, that's incredible, just that as an environment as well.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So, when you think about writing this book, which is called You're the Boss, what came to mind for you as to why we need this book and why we need this book right now?
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: There's so many different answers to this question, Lee.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: One of them is that we live in such uncertain times and times that are changing every single day.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: We wake up in the morning and there's a news headline that was different from what it was yesterday.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Whether it's climate, whether it's politics, whether it's financial outcomes that people are going after, there's a lot of unprecedented change.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: At that time, we need more leadership and we need managers to really be able to handle the pressures that come with deep ambiguity and lack of certainty and stress.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So those words like ambiguity, stress and ongoing change for me, as you were talking, I feel like we've been in that phase since 2020.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: It was happening before, mind you, but I feel like it's just been a constant since then and it tires you out I mean at least me.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: It tires me out.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So, as a leader, in those moments, your ability to lead, how you lead, how you take care of yourself, so, so important.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: But one of the things in the subtitle of your book You're the Boss, becoming the manager you want to be and others need.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: So let's just start out there in the sense of, as you think about what people need, and you did some incredible research.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: You had access to thousands of 360 degree reviews, which were some of the things I did enjoy at my time when I was in the corporate.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But what makes someone a boss versus someone who is not a boss?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Like, even using that word is interesting.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So, in your mind, what defines a boss?
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: In a sense of characteristics or things that you see, and then is everyone able to be a boss?
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: A sense of characteristics or things that you see, and then is everyone able to be a boss.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Great question, and I'm taking, lee, your meaning of boss to be somebody who's really leading like a boss.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: In charge yeah.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly in charge and crushing it, doing it really well.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Anybody can do that.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Only, what you want to remember is that everybody will also fall into a place of not bossing like a boss from time to time, because we are human.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: We are human, so it is not personal.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, of course, you want to take accountability for your actions and all of that, but it's not power that corrupts us, it's pressure.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: That is one of the key tenets of my book.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Is it's pressure?
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: And when I say corrupts, we become short and snippy with people, we might not recognize their good efforts, we might not take time to explain things to them clearly.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I want to read to you something that someone just sent me today.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: This is someone who has just started reading my book.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, and he says I started reading the book last night.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I'm not super far into it, but I'm already loving it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Knowing you, your stories about when you were not a good boss are surprising and therefore sobering for me.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: If it could happen to you, it may be happening to me.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Right now, I'm already re-evaluating my interactions with my team.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So it's doing it already, day one right Inspiring change, pausing for thought and seeing it from a different vantage point.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, as leaders, we don't have a lot of time for that right.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: We don't think we have time.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: We don't think we have time is the right way to do it.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: We don't think we have time.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: We don't think we have time is the right way to do it Because when you think and those are the times where we're most likely to have pressure corrupt our behaviors, and guess what?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: There's the diabolical twins of pressure and power.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So pressure corrupts our actions and then guess what?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Because we're in positions of power where we have a lot of control over people's fate.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Nobody is going to tell us that, especially if we're acting rude, crude, whatever, because people are afraid for their own safety, for their own livelihood.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: So you keep going and then you're completely clueless and then it's a shock.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And that's one of the reasons I wrote this book is to shockproof the readers.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Because you know what, when I did all those 360 interviews interviewing team members about what they actually think about their bosses and 12,000 pages of data, hundreds of clients that I did this for, every single one of them was shocked when they read in the words of their team members the effect that they were having Because of course, they're not waking up in the morning saying their team members, the effect that they were having Because, of course, they're not waking up in the morning saying I know, let me go be a grand jerk to people.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Today they're waking up going.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: We want to do a good job, we want to get great business results.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing that happened to me that this person is referring to in their email.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I was shocked when somebody was kind enough to point out that someone else was crying in their office because of my actions having a way to actually get good feedback.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I think that is part of the challenge as a leader, because one of the things you just said, there's a power differential.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I do remember extremely excellent admins that I had that would, would be able to be real with me, you know, would be able to say, well, I think that maybe landed differently than you wanted it to.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So I was always very thankful when someone would say something, because the last thing I wanted to do was make someone cry or have hurt feelings or, you know, not understand why we had to make that difficult decision.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: But leading isn't always going to make people happy or create harmony, and that is something that I also know and understand.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: When you're being innovative or creating change or turning something around which was usually where I was in an organization it is a place of change and I would say disruption right, absolutely yeah.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: So when you're leading in those times, I think the pressure goes up right.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: So I love that you say it's not power, it's pressure.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite parts of the book is really, you know falling into, I think, some of the myths that we have like around our you know falling into, I think, some of the myths that we have like around our, you know, being a leader or being a boss.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: One of those is there's no good or bad bosses, so help me understand that, because I can think of a few that weren't so great.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: There might be rare exceptions, but, lee, like you, you know, whenever I sit next to somebody on the airplane, like you know, do a little bit of chit chat and they find out I'm writing a book about bosses.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: They're like oh, let me tell you about mine.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: And everybody has that boss.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: The thing is, none of us thinks of ourselves as that boss.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Right Again, with the Again.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe there are some rare exceptions, but generally, just like there are rarely good people or bad people, we all make some choices that we're proud of and some choices that we're not proud of.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: It's no different when you're a boss, when you're under pressure, it's bad behaviors that are forged under pressure.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Pressure transmutes our behaviors, our intentions, into behaviors that are less than ideal, that don't land well on other people.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So that's what I mean by that.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, another myth you said is business isn't personal.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It always felt personal to me, so I was happy to see this one.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: So can you share this one, because I bet people have heard that even in their reviews of don't take it personal, right, which is different Business isn't personal.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Right, right, how can someone not take it personally?
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: On the one hand, we want people to be passionate, we say we're hiring people for their passion, and on the other hand, we say don't take it personally.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: So how does that work out?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, here's an example of somebody I'm co, I was coaching, and where their organization got acquired by another and they did the typical announcement the parent organization that often says no changes are expected which we all know is his code for changes are coming.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: His code for changes are coming Exactly.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: And so, of course, you know, in a bit of time, some of the central functions were starting to get consolidated finance, hr and so on.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: This person believed that their department would be left alone, but people were starting to worry, and so, as I was coaching them, I said so what are you going to tell your team?
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: And they said well, I'm going to tell them not to worry.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: And I said that would be the exact wrong thing to do, because, first of all, you'll have some people who are not as worried, but as soon as they hear you say not to worry, they're going to go.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, this means I should worry about something.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: What is it that I need to worry about and those who are worrying.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: You cannot tell people how to feel or not feel, so instead of fighting that, it's like fighting gravity.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Why don't you acknowledge that some of you might be worried, some of you might be excited, some of you might be confused?
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: So why are we indulging in some magical thinking?
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: This is not Disneyland, where we put on a smiley face and pretend everything is okay.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Right, let's just acknowledge those, because it's actually much easier to get through those tough feelings when we can name them and acknowledge that they exist.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, even thinking about how you would talk to your child because, like when you know your child is growing up, you name the emotion you want to look at.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Well, you're, you're feeling frustrated, you're feeling angry, you're feeling scared, like I totally get it.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: And you know, these are the things that we can do while we're working through these emotions and how we're feeling, because I think I tried to keep it real, obviously, and still have a way to lead forward, but acknowledge that it was a time of potential change that would affect some of us and you know we weren't sure what was coming.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: So we're kind of a bold moment as an organization to going through that change and not know what would happen, but we'd learn from it no matter what.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: And when you say that, like to the child or to people on your team, there's so much power in somebody just feeling understood.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: You know the leaders of leaders.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think there's those moments of like does anyone even understand what I'm going through?
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And I think I always reiterate this with the women that I work with across industries and these incredible roles and impact that they have of like you're not alone.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I know it feels like that on certain days, but just know that you're not alone, because I think it sometimes feels very lonely when you're going through these pressure filled moments, when you you're getting feedback or you're having to lead through something that's very unpopular and maybe you don't even agree with it, but as a leader you're, you know, you believe in what the institution is doing and you're got to move it forward.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: This is one of the biggest things that people tell me at the end of some of my coaching calls.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: When I asked what they're taking away from the meeting, they'll come in feeling awful, feeling ashamed, like I should.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I should, all these shoulds.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: I should have been able to do this.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: I should have figured this out.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't feel so stressed or whatever.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm not cut out for this.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: And then when I tell them you know what five other people have told me this exact same scenario this week immediately shifts their perspective.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: You know, listeners, not only are you not alone, you're not special.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: This is not you screwing it up.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: For the most part, when that pressure crushes you, it's not you.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: That's a common human response to pressure, right.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And it's just keeping moving forward.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I think that's important and learning, like you said, when you're getting good feedback or you're able to get good feedback, how to use it.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: And I know early on in my career there were things that were said in some 360s.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I was always late to meetings because I was back to back.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: My own fault, but my people pleaser in me was to make every meeting and to make everyone feel important, right, so literally 10 hours a day easily in meetings, and one of my employees felt that because I was late, it meant I didn't value their time and that just kind of crushed me.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And I remember my boss saying you know you need to think about when you get feedback, what you're going to take in and what you're not going to do anything about.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Right, she's like you could consider maybe having some space in between meetings and maybe reducing it.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So we talked about some of that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: But is all feedback good feedback?
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: All feedback is just that it's feedback, and it's feedback that you as you did, lee, decide what you take in and to what degree.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So, for example, when you were crushed, one interpretation of that could be you deeply care about people and you actually really cared about that person, so it was crushing to hear that they didn't think you'd cared about them.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Another could be that there's something about people pleasing that's more important to you than the average person and that degree of people pleasing might create a stronger reaction in you with that piece of feedback than it might for somebody else.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Noticing your reaction to the feedback, if it's really strong, think about why.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And is that because you're caught and you're feeling embarrassed and ashamed?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Is it because there's a historical reason that has less to do with the current situation than with the past?
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pausing that sort of strong reaction because maybe earlier in that person's life or their career it was a matter of survival if they didn't please everybody or if they weren't the smartest person in the room or whatever the piece of feedback is for them now.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: So, like when you get feedback and you have a really strong response, like sit with it for a bit and kind of maybe where that's coming from.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Is it inside history?
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Is it experience?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Is it because you cared for that person and you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings?
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't know I was a people pleaser until last year, so I definitely wasn't doing it because I thought I was one.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: But I mean in the sense of kind of why that crushed me was like I didn't really want anyone to think that I thought I was more important than anybody else Like I.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You know I'm a member of the team, so that was really important.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Plus, I was a younger, younger person in my experience, you know, I was a chief by 40.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So I was in these big roles pretty early on in my career because I wanted to be and excited about it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: So well, and that's another.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Another thing.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: The people I coach also say similar things of I'm just one of them.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I, you know, I want to be seen as a team member, but you're never going to be.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: You're never going to be once you have a different title, maybe a corner office, and add, you know all the perks that come with power.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: So recognizing that and recognizing what it looks like from the other side this is why I say getting promoted is sometimes the most dangerous time in our career.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell me about that, because you think it's the best time, or it's an exciting time, or you've reached this milestone, but it also sounds like one of the most precarious moments that you should pay attention to.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Well, there are two reasons why some of my previous clients often come back to me and call me Is they're either getting promoted or they're about to get fired.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: And they're getting promoted Absolutely.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Who doesn't want a promotion?
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: We want to celebrate it.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: But once the bubblies die down, what we realize is some of our superpowers.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Some of the things that got us promoted, look very different when viewed from the other side of the power divide, because there is a power divide as you get promoted.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: For example, let's say a strength of somebody is they have a lot of attention to detail.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: What would that look like for somebody who's now reporting to them?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Well, you might think that this person is going to micromanage me, right?
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Or let's say, somebody has a strength of being super calm.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Now they could come across as uncaring, detached, cold right.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Let's say you're strategic.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: You could come across as manipulative.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: This happened to a client of mine who's very strategic, tries to speak later in a meeting to understand, and now people are thinking, oh, this person's going where the wind blows.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: They're looking at what the big bosses are saying.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: They're very manipulative.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: So they had to learn how to undo that and speak to it in a different way so people understood.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so these are all things that can be learned, you think, absolutely Without getting a personality transplant.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think anyone needs that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I used to say no one wakes up and tries to fail on purpose, right?
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: No one, like you said, no one wakes up and says I'm going to make someone miserable today.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: They're really trying to do their very best.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Now, what that looks like sometimes may not be what we see as the best, but it is their best, right, in that sense.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: When you think about promotions and getting those points, like you said, someone said that I'm either getting fired or I'm getting promoted, which is funny because it kind of feels like the same way sometimes when you're in that spot.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's some things that we should do when we first get into our roles, especially within an organization?
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's different when you go outside or you go external.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: But when you get promoted from within which I did multiple times in my career I started out as a project manager and worked all the way to chief as an example.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: So I hit some milestones in there and I did.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: I would be side by side with someone and then you know, once promoted, I was now their leader, their manager, director, as you kind of go through it.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Are there any things that you've learned from the feedback and all the things that you've researched that help us kind of step into that or maybe pause.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Mine was always listen Like that is my job for a while is to listen and not act on anything that wasn't egregious or something that needed to be done.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: You know, in the sense of do nothing but listen.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know Was that was that right thing to do.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: That's fantastically.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I have a tool in the book called the shut up muscle.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, exactly, there are four steps of how you listen in a way that's truly curious, including being at least the third, if not later, to speak in meetings.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So I think you were spot on.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: One characteristic and this is particularly true when somebody is getting to a CEO or a C role that you're more likely to get promoted is if your peers are willing to work for you.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: If they're not willing to work for you, guess who your direct reports are going to be?
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: You're going to have a rebellion in your hand, and or you're just not going to get promoted.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: You're exactly right.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: So you put your finger on.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: The one of the big things is now your peers are your direct reports.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: What do you do with that?
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Listening is absolutely a super helpful tool.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: The other is to not jump in and be the sole provider, as though suddenly, with your anointing, you now have all the answers.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: This also comes from a strength of deep caring.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, everybody's under so much pressure, I'll just jump in and do this, I'll caretake for them.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: But it disempowers people and it keeps them stuck and not growing.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: So that would be.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Another piece is loosening your hand on the steering wheel If you're into control, this is particularly hard and allowing people to provide answers, learning how to coach instead of tell, and there is a tool called the delegation dial and you're the boss that is not treating it as an on-off switch, but doing it with supervision.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Doing it with frequent check-ins, but judging where people are and therefore giving them appropriate amounts of leeway Not all of it, but appropriate amounts.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: So I love how you lay out the book.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: So kind of the starts out you know the view from the top, the surprising view from the top.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: We move into becoming the boss of you, which is the foundational tools that I want to loop back to.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: But you were just talking around.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: You know part four, which is navigating the hidden pressure pitfalls, and one of them was being the sole provider, like you're the only one that can get it done.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: You're the only one that people can come to.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: You know delegating and be able to do that, which there's some incredible tools there.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: The superhero syndrome was one that, even as I started reading the chapter, it kind of made me laugh a little bit, because I could relate to some of it, right, and I wasn't ever trying to be a superhero.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Though Tell me a little bit about what is the superhero syndrome and how can we avoid it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Well, if the sole provider is I must do it all, the superhero syndrome is I can do it all, which leads to burnout.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Which leads to burnout not just of yours, but your teams, right?
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're not doing meaningful work when you're swooping in with your cape flying all the time full work.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: When you're swooping in with your cape flying all the time and you're stuck in the minutia and missing the big picture, so the business, in fact, can tank.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: If you're in that superhero syndrome, thinking you're saving the day but you're losing the year as a result, yeah, you're losing your people.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, some of it is actually fear-based, I think, because, going back to when you're freshly promoted, no matter at what level, there's a bit of imposter syndrome or danger of imposter syndrome.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: And with that imposter syndrome comes clinging to what we know how to do versus what we're uniquely now qualified to do in this role.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Often we reach a key point in our coaching sessions when somebody comes to me and says okay, I've done all these things, I've freed up my calendar, I've delegated.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm going home at five o'clock every day and I say and what's the problem with that?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Well, when are they going to find out?
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: I'm not earning my full paycheck.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not as frantic as my team.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: I even worked out three times and had lunch with my partner this week.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: I even worked out three times and had lunch with my partner this week.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: And then I say congratulations.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: This is when the real work of coaching begins, because now let's talk about what you truly need to do in your job, including making self-care number one.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: That's one way to deal with superhero syndrome is focusing on self-care.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: But, more importantly, there's a tool called the time portfolio, lee, we say that time is our most valuable asset, but we don't treat it like that.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Sometimes, superheroes certainly indiscriminately use their time because they think they can do it all, and they have this sort of magical thinking too.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but for me, if somebody cancels and I have 30 minutes on my calendar, suddenly I'm fantasizing about doing five hours of work in that 30 minutes, plus maybe going for a little run as well.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: So it's this we don't think about time as consciously and as strategically as we can.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: With the time portfolio, the idea is to treat it like you would any other set of assets treat it as a portfolio.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: What are the main categories of time that you spend at work Maybe managing my team, doing staff meetings, running the performance reviews all of that is one bucket.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Email messaging, other communications, might be another bucket.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Speaking to investors, let's say, is a bucket.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: My manager's meetings, reviews and so on could be another category, and so on.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: So you identify these categories, you put down a rough estimate of what relative percentage you spend on each bucket and then think about what do you need to change?
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Let's say you spend 30% of your time on emails and you want it to become 15% down the road.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: So you have a current column and you have a future column with these percentages that you've shifted around and you're going to take that extra time that you gain from emails into doing more investor relations.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Great Big mistake would be to think that you're going to go from that 30 to 15 overnight.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: That'll last as long as New Year's resolutions last about five minutes.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: So instead you have an intermediate column that says, okay, from 30, I'm going to go down to 28%, and here's my next action.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: My next action is to, let's say, remove all notifications or work offline for five minutes a day something very small and modest so I can start to slowly turn up that dial and spend more time in investor relations and less time in email management.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what's interesting about that a lot of the women that I work with in the sense of they don't take the agency, which is easier to say, I know, when we're coaching someone sometimes and you know hearing it ourselves but they don't take the agency to control what they're doing.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: They think it's happening to them versus I have to do this and I have to be there and I the whole list of have tos right.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: So what do?
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: you.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you do when someone gives you the excuses of why they can't?
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: That might you know easily.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: In one of the institutions I work with, it was easy 200 email days on regular basis and not just.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: That wasn't pottery barn and anything you know fun and there was literal those were actual messages.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: So when we're thinking about that, it's very doable, but you have to start as that.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I always say that, well, let's start, cause when you start, you learn, you figure out, you know what maybe is happening or what you're seeing, or are you creating the emails?
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Are you CC and everybody and their brother?
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: You know which creates more you know.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: So I think if someone's feeling like it's happening to them, is there any guidance you can share that has worked, helped them start.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: This is why it's just Lee, you're brilliant.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: That start, that start.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: And this is why the start has to be really modest.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: It goes back to the foundational tools and something called micro habits.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: It has to be really micro, and all of us, we didn't get here.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: This book, as I said, is for people who are already successful.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: So successful people like to think big and the only way to overachieve in these kinds of things is to start by underachieving.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I would say what's one tiny thing you're going to do?
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: So let's say that you want to increase the amount of time you spend on your health.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Well, we know that if your idea of health is watching somebody else on a dance show right now, then you're not going to tomorrow.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Start going to the gym 30 minutes a day, right?
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: No, that's not going to happen, so let's not waste our time.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: So then people will tell me they negotiate with me and they say, okay, okay, fine, I won't go to the gym, I'll do 15 minutes jumping jacks, pushups, something like that.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: I said, yep, that's not going to happen either.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, that's going to happen.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: I'm like, well, you're welcome to try and then come back when it's not, or we can set something even more modest, so we start with one pushup Now it's not.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Or we can set something even more modest, so we start with one push-up Now.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: It's really hard to say no to one push-up, and you do that for a very long time until it's so natural that you just go to two, and so on.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: I had a participant in a group coaching call.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: She started with one and then we got together several months later and at the restaurant she got down on the floor and gave us 30 pushups.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's awesome.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mine's like a pull up, like I really want to do a pull up like that, especially like in my early 50s, Like I gotta have good strength, like I need to build it right now.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: So 30 pushups, that's incredible, yeah, and she didn't get there overnight, right.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I think we have this overnightness about us or this, you know, immediate gratification or I need to see the results as soon as I can, and you know I fall into that too.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: So I think, but realizing, you just start and try not to repeat what you've done in the past, don't you know?
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Like you said, oh, I'm going to do this 15 minutes a day and I've seen that not work so many times for myself and for others.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: It is like where can you start?
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: That is absolutely, basically, like you said, underachieving, like a goal of one pushup feels like a little lame in the sense of a goal, but start there and then, when you crush that, go to two, go to three, right, so it feels a lot better than saying 30, and then you only do one and then you quit right.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: That's exactly why you do this.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: The benefit is you get your gold star, and we love those gold stars.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, how many of us are tracking our steps every minute?
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you get a gold star, you're more motivated to come back the next day and do it Wherever you start.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: If you find that it's not working, do less.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: And then it's not working again, do even less.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Now, how many times do you get advice to do less?
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: This is the place Not very often.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe for my daughter.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: She's very good at that, but I am not.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: I'm usually like, oh, I need to do more, I need to.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: I'm probably my worst advisor on some of that when it comes to it.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: All right, well, as we close out, I just want to talk about.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: One of the things that you say in the book is that some strengths can really be a weakness as a boss.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if you could share what some of those are and then how we maybe get unstuck from them.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: It's similar to when we were talking Lee, about.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Being promoted is sometimes the most dangerous time in your career, and if your strength is attention to detail, now it becomes micromanaging.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Got it?
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, it can be swung in a different direction.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: It can be swung in a different direction.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's say you're confident.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Now, as women, we work to project confidence and be confident and guess what?
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: That can come across as arrogance.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Now we all know about the double bind too of oh, you can be seen as competent or be likable, but how do you make sure you're still connected to people and confident?
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: So it becomes an and that you need to work in there.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, like thinking about the companion skill set that goes along with that.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly right.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly right so I could be very confident and I could say see, a sign of confidence is also saying I don't know, Right, and we have these, these sort of really black and white Hollywood views, perfectionistic views of what some of these things might mean.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: And so what if I said I think this is the path to go to and I could be completely wrong.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I want everybody in this room right now to play devil's advocate with me for the next five minutes and shoot holes in it.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Now I'm not coming across as arrogant.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're inviting feedback.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: I love that, not that everyone will still step in it.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Now I'm not coming across as arrogant.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're inviting feedback.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I love that, not that everyone will still step into it.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Not everybody will, and you could externalize the question in a way that they are more likely to.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: So you might say perhaps all of you are on board with me, because of course they're gonna say yes, boss, whatever you say is wonderful.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: You could say the question you could ask is is wonderful.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: You could say, the question you could ask is what would our competition say?
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: How would they poke holes in this?
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: So if you externalize the ask, you're more likely to get the truth.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Well, I am so excited about this book being in the world.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Please, everyone, pick up.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: You're the Boss Becoming the Manager you Want to Be and Others Need, and I'm so excited that all the information is down in the episode notes for folks to pick up wherever they buy their books.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: And what is a parting mantra or moment you would want to impart to others when they pick up this book?
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: What kind of mindset?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Where do they start?
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: What should be their tension with the book as they pick it up?
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Well, Lee, I'll end where we started, which is about boldness, and sometimes being bold means accepting that you're already great at what you do.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: The mindset I would want readers to have as they pick up You're the Boss is the mindset of I'm already great at what I do.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: This book is about showing me some things that I may not know yet.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: So if you want to know your blind spots or you want to like relate to some of these things that I did and I was giggling as I was like, well, that is me and I didn't know that was me, so pick up, You're the Boss.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Sabina, for sharing this, your knowledge, and being on the Bold podcast today.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Leigh.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Thank podcast today.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, lee.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.