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Michelle Ferguson: Boldly Charting the Course Through Success & Failure · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee 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 douse 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 Michelle Ferguson.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: She is a COO and an executive and has expertise in operations, finance and shared services.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Importantly, she is the author of Women Mentoring Women, which was published in Spring of 22.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And she has a passion for supporting women in DEI initiatives.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks, lee.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So I'm excited to jump in.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: We had some fun pre-talk, so I'm ready to roll with Michelle.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So we'll jump right into being bold.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: What does being bold look like to Michelle Ferguson?
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Lee, I think being bold for me is just doing something outside my comfort zone or something I haven't done before.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: As we talked earlier, I think sometimes people think it needs to be something big that you throw a party, have a parade, make a big announcement, but I think some of the boldest things that I've done have been little things that maybe just a handful of people know about.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they add up right, yeah, and they're part of your journey, that is all yours and it's kind of like I guess those private bold moments are probably also some of the most precious moments, meaningful moments, not to say that the big ones are the things that everyone sees, or maybe some of the LinkedIn stuff.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Those are great things, but I think I find a lot of pride in you might as well on some of those smaller, quieter moments of just iteration, evolution, advancements.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, and I think part of it is the small ones and the non-public ones are just for you Like they're mine right.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: They're not for the world, they're just for me.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that makes them private and, I think, also just more closer to your heart, honestly, yep.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: So, based on your definition of like doing something outside your comfort zone, when do you remember kind of going back, or even a recent moment when do you feel like you've been bold?
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: based on that definition, so I think maybe the first big one was when I went to college.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: So I had lived a very sheltered life.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I think on only two or three occasions had I'd ever been more than 60 miles from where I grew up.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Like we didn't travel.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I like rarely left the state, probably the average week I didn't leave my town and I chose to go to school 700 miles away from home.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I went to Notre Dame.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't know anybody there and I didn't even know how I was going to pay for it.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So that was sort of the like just my parents drove me there and just left me, just dropped you off, just dropped me off, and I was forced to make friends and find allies and I'm an introvert.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So just even the meeting so many new people at one time and sort of being dependent on that many new people at one time was big for me.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: But I learned from it.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of boldness in that.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, so getting out of your not only comfort zone, but out of your home base, and choosing something that didn't have it all figured out.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: So like you didn't know how to pay for it, you know how to get started, but you might not know the next step in the next step.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: But you had a plan to figure it out and if it didn't work out, you'd figure something else out.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So like there's a big right, like I make the biggest learning right Is the point you learn that you make a decision.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: You make the best decision If at some point it doesn't work out and just make another decision.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's an important point because I think what happens sometimes with folks I talk with is and you can relate, I bet it's we like to think about what, what ifs, like BCDFG, but what can happen if you're like sitting on plan A, b and C all the same time.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Your energy is dispersed, or your focus or your concentration can get dispersed, so you don't actually maybe even make the move to go for plan A.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So what you did and I was what I wanted to hear this is like you went for plan A knowing you could create a plan B if you needed to and had maybe thought about it.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I think, again, one of the myths of being bold is that you look without leaping, you don't think, you just do it.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It's not that.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: I know Right, I had, in terms of not being able to pay for it, like year one was okay.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly, yeah, you could get it started.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little bit almost like an entrepreneur in a way, but from a college perspective of like, I want to go here, I'm going to figure it out, what a great opportunity.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Not only can you go there, figure out your first year, but you were accepted.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big school to get into.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So and then let's talk about point number three being bold.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: You're an introvert like myself, so it doesn't mean we can't do things, it just means we, like do things certain way, which is the opposite of an extrovert usually, which is in quiet steps and smaller groups, one at a time, yeah, one at a time, you know.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So getting there and doing that, that was one absolutely big, bold move.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And then creating friendships and allies and figuring out how to maneuver a fairly large campus.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I am very geographically challenged.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I remember, like just clinging to the map, how do I get from here to there?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I'm still geographically challenged.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: You should see me try to walk with my iPhone Like it's just a mess, so thinking about your next step.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So you went, you figured it out.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: You graduated from Notre Dame, correct?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Yep, I did, yeah.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: So what were some of the things you did as you were kind of thinking about year one through four, like to get your plan in place that you think you've now utilized in your life as an adult?
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: So I think the first thing was all right, I can make a different plan.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: So among the things that I did is I started out as a science major and that was absolutely the wrong thing for me to be doing on a lot of levels.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So like I switched majors a year in right, which wasn't the end of the world, right it was.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: You can change your plan.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I sort of got to the point I was probably just based on my upbringing was risk averse and risk included debt.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: So I think the first year I had like whatever the National Direct Student Loans I don't know what they're called now and I was really hesitant, like it's like oh, I'm going to owe all this money, like which sort of in some ways immobilized me and, quite frankly, that's part of when I changed majors.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: I changed majors to accounting because accounting accountants were getting jobs that paid reasonably well so I could pay off my loans.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: But the second thing was getting comfortable with I can make it like this is a worthwhile investment in me.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: I'm a finance math person, so I understood return on investment but like this is a good investment and I could go to school someplace else and pay less, but I'm probably not, it's not going to be as much as challenging for me.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: So I sort of needed the challenge.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: In college I realized how important it was to have that peer support system.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Whether it's the first time and I think this happens to a lot of people like you come out of high school and you're a superstar like I, went to a very competitive school so everybody was like, yeah, we got graded on curves.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: So the first time like for me, like I was in high school, it was odd if I didn't get an A Like and I got I think I got a D in some like calculus test in college, right, but sort of getting by that well, like I can recover.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, things seem bigger when we're younger.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, not getting that job, not keeping that relationship with our boyfriend, but I think you know we think things are bigger, as when we're younger and as we kind of grow older which is a good thing and become more experienced, like some of the things hit us less and impact us less.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: You know, from the perspective of making a bold move too right, when we're younger we may make more bold moves we think we're making.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I honestly never thought hey, I'm making a bold move today on my checklist.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Bold move, bold move.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It's actually just you're doing you and I think it's just been part of what I have always been, and at times it's been a detriment and at times it's been an incredible thing.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And now that I'm older I'm able to hone it a little bit more.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: As you've gotten older and you kind of applied your boldness in different ways, what ways has it benefited you now as an adult?
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: versus when you were younger.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I think the whole making investments in myself and being more willing, whatever that is right, whether it's additional training you know, certainly I'm a lifetime learner, so you know opportunities to learn or if it's just that I need, you know, to take some time off and renew, I think that's a little bit easier.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I've become less risk adverse.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: I'm not that I, you know, I take calculated risks, but I probably do more willing because I think what you realize over time is the reasonable worst case scenario is usually not that bad, right, whether it's taking a new job you're not sure about it's like okay, if it doesn't work out, like I can find another job.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Right, you know, if I move someplace that I don't end up loving, then I can just move someplace else.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So I think you know and honestly, learning how to recover from failure, right, you know, do you let it immobilize you or do you let it energize you?
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Or do you learn from it and say maybe this failure is telling me something?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: In my case it was like, maybe this is not where you want to be majoring.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things you said is learning to recover from failure, which I think is something that we continue to do throughout our life, like, if you're not failing right now, to me you're most likely living in your comfort zone because you're not doing anything that has any risk and therefore you can't fail.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: And I honestly like even to say that out loud I can't imagine that life, cause even when I was in the corporate world, I was doing stuff that I could fail at probably daily, cause we were learning, innovating, trying stuff.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, bumping up the politics, those types of things.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So you know, I could fail every day or any day, but I knew I was going to learn from it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is one of, if you think about your career, what is one of the failures that you cherish that you learned the most?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: from.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Hmm, I learned the most from.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: So the one, yeah, I'm not sure I cherish it.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Or you learn the most from.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's just one or the other.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I led a payroll implementation that went less than flawlessly and, including that, we didn't pay people on time, Including people who were living paycheck to paycheck, so I was less concerned.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: You know, I think this is one of the problems with the payroll Like some senior executives increase didn't get processed on time because you didn't have the paperwork.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Like, I'm really not worried about this executive yeah, had to wait two weeks to get a retroactive payment, but someone who's you know working in our distribution center like getting their paycheck paying their mortgage, buying groceries.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: So that was really painful and I think the biggest thing I learned from it was number one that and I'm a data analysis person- right what was to trust my gut a little bit more, because I had a partner and a team that said everything was fine, but there was something in me that said it wasn't.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And the other thing I learned and this is like really tough I'm probably it was an overtruster.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So I just trusted what everybody, that people were doing, what they said they were doing, and, in the case of our partner, was trusting that they would be honest with me.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: And the reality of it is they were gonna get dinged if it didn't happen on time.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: There was no downside to them if it didn't happen on time and there was big downside to me.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So to, I guess, trust but verify a little bit more.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: And it was very public.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: You know I had to send a letter of apology any mail of apology to 17,000 employees or something like that, all of our North America employees.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: But the really reassuring thing about that was and I think this is maybe a big lesson right, like to admit your failures and admit your mistakes.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: It's a take.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: I took full responsibility for it and the responses I got and I was willing to take the responses I got more of them were positive than negative and it was around.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Basically, stuff happens.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Glad you're on this, like look forward to things being better in the future.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: So people are pretty understanding if you just admit that you blew it like.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: So my responsibility was more around poor leadership, mm-hmm, and not enough leadership, including Verifying that people were doing, because I just assume everybody's honest at some point.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: You realize that maybe not it.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a way to be.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: But then, as they get older, you realize that you still keep being you, right, michelle, like you.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: You still trust, you still Benefit of the doubt, you still have positive presupposition, but maybe it doesn't like sting as much.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: But I think you know, we, we still keep it with us in the sense of the positivity or presuming the positive, but we realize that it just may not be that way, as we've learned over time.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I think you wrote about actually and we're gonna talk about your book a little bit is Mentoring, mentorship and particularly mentoring women along your career.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: What did a mentor mean to you and how did it actually help you?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: throughout your career.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: So this is a little interesting fact.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I had never had a mentor before.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I know I had people who Were mentor-ish, I had people who informally sponsored me so spoke for me when I was in the room, but not anybody that for some long period, for any extended period Like I was with in terms of looking Forward in terms of my career, I would.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: There were people I could go to if I wanted my guidance about, like, how to do my job better, but it was sort of always short term focused and it was about the job, not necessarily about me.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: But yes, so interestingly, I know enough, I never had one.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: And maybe, you know, when I co-founded a program, it was a little bit of the jealousy of like how much better could things have been for me if I had a Mentor or two.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Right, and you know, and I think it's always sort of driven me come, can we make things better for the next generation, especially for the next generation of women?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: That, yeah, some of the struggles that some of us had, people don't have to have them or they don't need to be as much of a struggle in the future.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the impact you're having, right, you know so, and I think that's an important point for folks here too.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It's like just because we didn't have it doesn't mean someone else should have it.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: There is this mindset out there it's it's not mine or yours of like well, I had to you know my stripes or I had to do this or that, and it's pretty harsh in some of the industries.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm from health care.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: From that, from the perspective of that, I don't think it's as harsh as like publishing or some you know Some of the arts and things like that.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: So I do think that there's ways that just because we went through something that wasn't as awesome as we would have liked it, doesn't mean someone else shouldn't have a better way or a Smooth way to get there.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, because it makes it better for all of us, right?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a ripple effect, right.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so what is the definition of mentoring versus sponsorship?
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: So I look at it, mentor, as a guide, someone who can provide insights, ask great questions, make connections, you know, I think a sponsor very specifically has to be someone who can get you very specifically where you need to be next.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: So if you're in an organization and you want to stay in that organization, it needs to be somebody in your organization who can speak for you when you're not in the room, because the reality of it is a lot of jobs never get posted.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I've certainly ended up in jobs that were created after someone had a conversation about something.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: So a sponsor has to be in your organization or somebody in the industry who knows enough people in the industry to speak for you industry-wide.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: If you want to do something like be a speaker, somebody who's in the right rooms and the right and they can be virtual rooms that when it's like, oh, there's this conference coming up and we need a speaker about being bold, who do we need to talk to?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: When someone says it's me right?
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: I hope so.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is a sponsor, someone who's going to open, very specifically open a door to you for whatever's next or whatever the next after that is, that's beyond the reach of a mentor.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the mentor will probably be the quieter moments of your leadership journey, where a sponsor may be the bigger bang moments.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: They probably vent at some moment in time of the sense of what they do, but they're very distinct people to understand that.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Right, and I think the mentor can.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: If you have a mentor in your organization, they can become a sponsor, yeah, or sometimes your mentor may mention you to a sponsor, right, that's how you get connected.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I think we're doing it more intentionally now than when I grew up and I sound old, but I'm not.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: But I mean, this feels more intentional now and I'm proud to be part of hopefully a piece or part of that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: The work that you're doing is definitely part of that, and the people that you know.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: How did the book come about?
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So you always wanted to write a book, did you say?
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I'm an author?
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Like, how did that start out?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm somebody who and I spent a good part of my career in publishing, somebody who always said that everybody has a book in them.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: That was just kind of my general thing.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: And maybe seven or eight years ago, like I sat down one day and wrote an outline for a book on women's leadership and then just things happened and I landed a job, I moved I suspect that that draft that's going out during the move and it was I manually wrote it.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: See, I can remember the date June 3rd 2021,.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I was in the chief podcast Having lunch with the buddy of mine, sundia Jane Patel, who at the time was thinking about writing a book, actually about, about she.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: She'd been talking about that for probably two years at that point, as long as I knew her.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: So Sundia decided to write something else and she said but the book still needs to be written and you should write it.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: That was bold.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: And the other guy asked her.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: She was doing a program with a professor out of Georgetown and I asked if I could still get in the program, because I didn't help myself out or something Like I really had no idea I'd been the other end of publishing.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I had like no idea how to write a book.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: So I, like, started the program a week late.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: The next week started with one topic, changed the topic, I guess.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I went from the chief book to Power of Women's Networks because I realized if I did that I could be broader in my reach because I know women on six continents.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And then I got a text from a mentee of mine.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: We were matched in 2004 and have been in contact since.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: In fact, I heard from her in the last week.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: In fact, you mentioned Ohio State and I'll tell you that Guyana's got her law degree from Ohio State.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: So she and I were furiously texting during a football game a couple of weeks ago and Guyana sent an announcement that she'd been appointed the board chair of the Development Foundation at her alma mater, jackson State University, which is something we talked about getting on the board, and then, like forever, the whole process.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I said you know what I'm gonna do, that that's what I'm really passionate about mentoring.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: And so I started down the mentoring path and was gonna write a book believe it or not about selfish mentoring.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: And there's a chapter in the book about selfish mentoring and then I talked to another former colleague of mine and chief up, tula Kressamali's, and she's like what are you doing?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: You are all about women, supporting women.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Write about that.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm like you are 100% correct.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So I think maybe my biggest aha with writing the book is it's a community effort, not a solo effort.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: And partially for what community meant to me was it helped me write a book that spoke to my audience.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: It was like what they needed and wanted, not what I wanted to write.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: It's a whole thing Like I'm writing my book.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about this before we started recording.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: My book is around my framework.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: It's the women's leadership book Writing.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: You know I'm a very good writer and I've written, I'm working on my dissertation.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I have three master's degrees, so, like I've written a lot of academic work, writing a book is a whole different world.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is so.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It's a whole thing of like you learn about yourself through the process and when you wrote your book.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: What are some of the learnings that you learn?
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Not only maybe about people who are in your book, or maybe about yourself in the process itself.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So one of the things I learned is you know, there are so many skills that are transferable from one part of your life to the other, and my editor said it I in some ways was like her dream, because from the get go I assume she knew a whole lot more about this than I did.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: So if she said, change this, add more examples, take something out, this is redundant, this is inflowing I only pushed back on her on one thing, and it was a stupid little thing that had to do with my address.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So I learned that, like my ability to take feedback, and I think I've always been good at that and been hoping to serve me very well in the writing process- yeah.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: So at least I think what I came to the realization, to the process with and it sounds like you did, like you're going to get feedback and you're going to figure out how to use it to better it.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And again I go back to where you started with your plan A at Notre Dame, and even when you started to write this book, you had your plan A and you adjusted your course along the way.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I really do think that's driven by one a growth mindset, an openness to feedback and learning and not resisting change.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Those are the things that come out like loud and clear, would you say.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Those are things that you kind of 100% right that you have a plan.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It's helpful to have a plan that somebody who knows what they're doing, that's vetted, whether that's in terms of timeline.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: For me, I got very specific.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Like from the beginning, start doing research, start talking to people, start documenting and almost writing was the afterthought.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Like start having because I wrote nonfiction, so why you don't want it to be completely academic, you want some substance behind it, so some data.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: I wanted a voice that was not just mine and I tell you that a lot.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I had the good fortune to lead a mentoring program at S&P for many years, so not only did I learn from my mentees how to be better mentor, but I learned from other mentors how to be Right, from their experiences.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: So I wanted to go out.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, I know a reasonable amount about this, but there are people who know other people who know about it and a lot of there's a lot of academic there's.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: You can go out there and find something academic.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: I think mentoring is, in some ways, more art than science, so just examples of what people have used were really helpful for me.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: The other big thing I learned was I learned how to market and I learned how to read a market.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I saw you in that Notre Dame bookstore.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: You did your own book tour.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: You went out on tour and did those types of things and you were your own marketer, right.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no right, because the program I was in we were our own marketer, but building an audience on LinkedIn, but also to listen to my audience.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So I don't like.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I struggled with both the title of the book and I really struggled with the cover.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: I'm just not a visual person and I was struggling with getting what I wanted.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: So I at some point decided to put polls on LinkedIn for both the title of the book and the cover.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I remember that.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Because it's like okay, like there are people again, there are people who are better at this.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: And I started with a very cute title that like called Well, mentoring, and I remember that, yeah, and it's hard to say, it's like do we like it or not?
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And the overwhelming response is we don't, and it's like okay, so let's iterate and get to something.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: And finally, it was one of the polls, but former colleague of mine and friend, monica Richter, sent me a note.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It's like Michelle, just call it women in the dream, keep it simple.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Sometimes simplicity is best.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it is.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: It's like I'm not writing war and peace here.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you ever think you could write a fiction book?
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I don't think I could either.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I did creative writing in elementary school, but outside of that I never did.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: In fact, the thing I struggled with, even in writing my book was in the stories.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: It's just, it's rough.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Well, it is right Because, especially when I grew up in corporate America and it's an ops person, it's like the facts, like the fact, like you're writing in bullets right, yeah, you're sending emails and emails, emails, bullets and presentations like ads.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: So it's like I'm like why does it matter what the room looked like or what I was doing?
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Why do we need a story about this, like here's what you do, yeah, so I could definitely relate to that.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So, when you set out to write the book because that's one of the things you get asked because why do you want to write the book and what do you want people to walk away with so, anyone who hasn't gotten the book yet why does you want to write the book and what do you want people to walk away with?
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: So I what I want from the book is I wanted it to be a tool for anybody who was mentoring to become a better mentor, because for some people it's intuitive and some people it's not, and if you haven't had a mentor it's probably even harder.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: It's like I don't know, like you have to learn it.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the beginning of the book is like some kind of basic kind of things and then like to encourage more people to mentor.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Because, you know, among the biggest things that I learned is like you know, I for myself and a lot of other people, you know, the first time you mentor, your motivation is something around.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I want to give back.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: I had a mentor, right, it's something big and lofty and what I learned is that I was learning an awful lot from my mentee.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So it was Like it was a development tool for me too, Whether it was when I was running a business in Southern Europe and I suspected that things were more challenging for my employees who are far away from as a former colleague of mine called the Mothership.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: So I found I was running a business out of Madrid and I found a mentee in another part of the organization shouldn't report to me who was in Madrid.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: So like it was like just what are the cultural norms there and what's it like when you're speaking that most of the employees speak a different language than everybody at corporate is speaking, Something as basic as it was one day that I showed up, I think I flew in overnight and I said to her I know we're having dinner tonight, but I realized it's a holiday and she said, like what do you mean it's a holiday?
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: And I said, well, like people in my office aren't working.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: She's like oh yeah, this isn't like a real holiday.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: It's like maybe like our veterans day, where it's like it's a holiday, very few people take off for it, right?
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: now so kind of learning the norms.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, whether it's a different culture or different you know, or if you're moving, you're inspired to move, from whatever your functional expertise is into general management, and then you have to know a little bit about everything.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: So if you're, like, not a tech person and you wanna know a little bit more about tech or a little bit more about product or a little bit more about it, whatever it is right, I don't think you get a mentor for technical expertise, it's for leadership expertise.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: But along the process you can find out, like, what are the pain points for someone in a function or an industry that's not mine.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so someone's thinking about being a mentor.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: What are the first steps they should take?
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Pick up your book.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Pick up my book.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: So I think the biggest thing is to focus on where it is you can provide the most value, because I think, both with mentees and mentors, we often look for somebody who's a mirror image of ourselves.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: In fact, that's one of the things that I realized when I was writing the book is that at the time, everybody I was mentoring was sort of some past version of me.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: They were in big organizations, they were finance numbers, kind of gals, right, and I think that's what our natural thing is.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: If I'm in marketing, I need a CMO to be my mentor, I think on both sides.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: But, like, technical expertise wasn't the biggest thing I could bring.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Like, is it that someone needs help with negotiating?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Do they need help with corporate politics?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Do they need help with their presentation skills verbal or written, right?
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: So I think it's as a mentor, identifying what it is where it is, that you can bring the most value and then find someone who needs that specifically.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have to be everything to everyone.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I think it's good for people to hear you may be really good at one facet of your job.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: You know in a sense you can do your full job, but I mean, there's no way that most of us have 100% of every skill set that best.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: We have teams and that's why people do things better than us.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: That's really important to note, just for folks, cause you don't have to be the best at anything, and even you don't have to be in the same industry.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I have some clients who are mentoring people outside the industry and it's really nice for them to see like, oh, I didn't think I had anything to give, and it's like, actually, you have a fresh of the eyes, right, and so I think for people to realize that too, it doesn't have to be even same industry.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for talking about your bold life and about your book.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: All the information about Michelle and purchasing her book are in the notes.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: You can meet up and learn more about what she does and how she makes an impact in the lives of women.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, michelle.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks, lee.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast Through the continuum of bold stories.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Vulnerability to taking a leap.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: You will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.