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Women, Leadership & the Stories We Carry | Best of Leslie Traub · Speaking of Meaning

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Today I'm joined by Leslie Trau.
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SPEAKER_00: Leslie has been leading transformational,
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SPEAKER_00: organizational, personal, and spiritual development programs for more than 40 years.
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SPEAKER_00: Leslie, you have a lot of experience.
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SPEAKER_00: Tell me about your mission and how your mission has changed throughout the years.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, beautiful.
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SPEAKER_01: I love that question to start with.
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SPEAKER_01: My mission.
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SPEAKER_01: My story is that I began my career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo,
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SPEAKER_01: West Africa, which is where I had my very first experience leading a group at 21.
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SPEAKER_01: I had to design a three-month training program for new volunteers.
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SPEAKER_01: And that was my sliding door moment,
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SPEAKER_01: as I say, into the world of group process and group facilitation.
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SPEAKER_01: My career then took me into the world of organization development,
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SPEAKER_01: diversity, equity and inclusion, and leadership and management development.
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SPEAKER_01: The happiest moments of my career were working with women.
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SPEAKER_01: Coaching executive women,
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SPEAKER_01: working with groups of women,
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SPEAKER_01: and probably the best piece
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SPEAKER_01: of work I think I'd ever done was bringing together white women and women of color
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SPEAKER_01: for two days and unpacking that which stands between us.
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SPEAKER_01: And I continued that mission through today, working with women over 50.
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SPEAKER_00: What have you discovered?
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SPEAKER_00: What stands between women of color and white women?
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SPEAKER_01: I wasn't expecting to talk about that, but it's our stories.
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SPEAKER_01: It's the stories that we've been told and that we tell ourselves,
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SPEAKER_01: our projections,
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SPEAKER_01: and the realities of the different lived experiences that we have between us,
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SPEAKER_01: and not really fully grasping.
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SPEAKER_01: That these are not individual paths in terms of our growth and development,
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SPEAKER_01: but the pathways are intrinsically evolved or involved with our identities.
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SPEAKER_01: And so for us to navigate our own relationship across ethnicity,
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SPEAKER_01: we have to understand our own stories and our own path and be curious about that
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SPEAKER_01: of other women.
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SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: And to take responsibility for when we have privilege and we can impact the journeys
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SPEAKER_01: of other women through our allyship and sponsorship
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SPEAKER_00: and support.
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SPEAKER_00: Is it easy to be blinded by your own privilege?
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SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
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SPEAKER_01: I think that not a lot of people can really understand the privilege.
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SPEAKER_01: The impact of privilege, and that's by definition the word privilege.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't need to understand that I might have advantages
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SPEAKER_01: that other women don't simply by having light-colored skin.
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SPEAKER_01: And whatever other privileges I may have of great education and knowing people
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SPEAKER_01: in workplaces that know me,
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SPEAKER_01: who can sponsor and support me, that's all expression of privilege.
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SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_00: And so you've worked with women now and you still work with women.
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SPEAKER_00: And what I know is that you work with women over 50.
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SPEAKER_00: And so can you tell me what work are you doing to support women over 50 and why?
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SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
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SPEAKER_01: I believe that women over 50 have particularly...
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SPEAKER_01: There are changes, if our parents are alive, to change.
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SPEAKER_01: Their well-beings and,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, when our parents get into their 80s and 90s, their needs change.
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SPEAKER_01: It is frequently the purview of the daughter or even the daughter-in-law to take on
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SPEAKER_01: the care of the parents.
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SPEAKER_01: There are many people,
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SPEAKER_01: many women in particular,
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SPEAKER_01: who wake up to the fact that their 25
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SPEAKER_01: or 35-year marriages may actually not be serving them at this point in life and
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SPEAKER_01: then were faced with What it is to navigate life as a single woman.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the sandwich generation is real.
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SPEAKER_01: You know, we may have young children and take care of parents.
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SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot happening.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think underneath that is the longing that we feel at this age
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SPEAKER_01: to be more aligned with our soul's path.
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SPEAKER_01: Then with whatever it is we've spent our life doing that really built our ego,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, ego building happens in the first part of life.
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SPEAKER_01: We put the tent poles up so that we know who we are.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think as we move into 50s and older,
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SPEAKER_01: then the longing for unpacking that and
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SPEAKER_01: to ask ourselves what is real is also what's present at this time of life.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's a transition too.
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SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
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SPEAKER_01: Because when you've got women late career,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: people aren't coming to us for fresh ideas or new projects or opportunities to grow,
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SPEAKER_01: because I think there's a belief system about women of our age
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SPEAKER_01: that we're not generative.
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SPEAKER_01: And so you can see that as our inner authority and our wisdom increase,
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SPEAKER_01: the recognition of the value of that decreases in the workplace at the same time.
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SPEAKER_01: And so as women are contemplating their move out of the workplace,
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SPEAKER_01: I can help them recontextualize their gifts in a way that really supports them for
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SPEAKER_01: the rest of their lives.
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SPEAKER_00: Why do you think their value is not appreciated in the workplace?
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SPEAKER_01: Because I think that there is bias about women of our age that,
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SPEAKER_01: like I said,
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SPEAKER_01: that we're not generative,
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SPEAKER_01: we're less adaptive,
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SPEAKER_01: that we've got fewer technical skills,
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SPEAKER_01: that we're not ambitious, and that we're past our prime.
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SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: These are all well-seated in our cultures,
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SPEAKER_01: and it gets acted out by decisions that leaders make about us.
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SPEAKER_01: And in a more pernicious way,
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SPEAKER_01: we also can begin to believe that about ourselves because the narrative is so
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SPEAKER_01: in our common culture.
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SPEAKER_00: Over time, you start to...
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SPEAKER_00: Internalize those biases out there.
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SPEAKER_01: No question about that.
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SPEAKER_01: In every place there's bias,
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SPEAKER_01: we can internalize that and believe that it's true unless we have the resilience and
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SPEAKER_01: the self-concept to know that all of this is projection from some other story
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SPEAKER_01: and doesn't belong to us.
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SPEAKER_01: But it's hard to really have that kind of resilience if we haven't done the personal
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SPEAKER_01: and maybe spiritual development work to know who we really are and to know the value
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SPEAKER_01: that we have in the world.
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SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: Wisdom comes from the wounds that we've experienced and how we've learned,
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SPEAKER_01: what we've learned about ourselves from those difficult moments in our life,
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SPEAKER_01: whether it was in our childhood or in our workplace.
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SPEAKER_01: There's always moments of stretching and growing.
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SPEAKER_01: And if we don't lean into those opportunities, we don't get the benefit of it.
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SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: But if we have enough presence of mind,
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SPEAKER_01: when we lose a job,
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SPEAKER_01: when we didn't get the promotion,
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SPEAKER_01: when what we had to share in that meeting wasn't received,
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SPEAKER_01: or whatever the moment our kid says that he or she hates us,
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SPEAKER_01: whatever the moment,
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SPEAKER_01: the trigger,
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SPEAKER_01: if we have the presence of mind to lean into the learning that that offers us,
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SPEAKER_01: then we grow in wisdom.
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SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing is that I think if leaders and organizations understand that
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SPEAKER_00: if people feel that they belong,
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SPEAKER_00: that they are safe,
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SPEAKER_00: that they can bring their whole selves to work,
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SPEAKER_00: they're actually going to perform much better.
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SPEAKER_00: Because they don't have to pretend.
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SPEAKER_00: They don't have to cover things about themselves.
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SPEAKER_00: They can just be themselves.
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SPEAKER_01: That's right.
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SPEAKER_00: They're probably going to perform better and probably have better careers as well.
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SPEAKER_01: No question about it.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've been talking about that for decades in the diversity, equity,
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SPEAKER_01: and belonging world,
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SPEAKER_01: that when you're in a position of power,
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SPEAKER_01: that you make decisions that impact the lives and careers of other people,
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SPEAKER_01: that you have an obligation to,
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SPEAKER_01: if you want the best from your workplace,
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SPEAKER_01: to create environments of what we call psychological safety,
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SPEAKER_01: where people can bring Hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: And so it's really incumbent on people who are in decision-making authority
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SPEAKER_01: in organizations to really understand culture and belonging
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SPEAKER_01: and what creates psychological safety so that his or her employees can contribute
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SPEAKER_01: the most that they're able to.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think that bias really negatively impacts women's ability to To bring all of our gifts.
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SPEAKER_01: Because we self-modulate.
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SPEAKER_01: Because the words I was looking for before was imposter syndrome, by the way.
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SPEAKER_00: Imposter syndrome, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Imposter syndrome.
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SPEAKER_01: So we self-modulate because there is something about us that actually believes
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SPEAKER_01: that we don't belong.
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SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_01: And so we develop all these compensatory skills to belong more,
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SPEAKER_01: which is the double bind that women find themselves in.
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SPEAKER_01: To belong more,
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SPEAKER_01: I have to bring forward more of my masculine,
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SPEAKER_01: and I need to press down my feminine because my workplace doesn't appreciate
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SPEAKER_01: the more feminine aspects of leadership,
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SPEAKER_01: and so I have to become something that I'm not.
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SPEAKER_01: Which costs tremendously in our lives and our ability to work in
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SPEAKER_01: a more relaxed flow state because we're having to adapt constantly to norms
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SPEAKER_01: that are not integral to who we are.
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SPEAKER_00: You mentioned yesterday when I was talking to you, you told me about priming, priming.
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SPEAKER_00: What is priming, Leslie?
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SPEAKER_01: Priming is a vehicle to remind our brains of something important right before I make
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SPEAKER_01: a decision about that.
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SPEAKER_01: So when we were at CookRoss,
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SPEAKER_01: we had created a bank of what we called priming tools,
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SPEAKER_01: which were little animated videos,
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SPEAKER_01: less than one minute,
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SPEAKER_01: That I could watch before I interviewed somebody,
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SPEAKER_01: before I made a decision about mentoring,
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SPEAKER_01: talent management,
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SPEAKER_01: who got to participate in some sort of great development activity,
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SPEAKER_01: any decision, any formal decision that I needed to make.
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SPEAKER_01: Performance review was a really big one.
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SPEAKER_01: So we created and watched these videos before we did our own decision making.
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SPEAKER_01: Because we all know conceptually, not all of us, but many people conceptually understand bias.
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SPEAKER_01: But the synaptic grooves,
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SPEAKER_01: the neuronal pathways that we have grooved,
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SPEAKER_01: I prefer people who can mirror me, like the really unconscious preferences, Ibrahim.
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SPEAKER_01: It reminds me that that is indeed a preference,
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SPEAKER_01: and it is not predictive of somebody's opportunity to be successful.
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SPEAKER_01: So we found just a little nudge, and there's been a lot of data on nudges over the years.
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SPEAKER_01: A little nudge actually has us make more open decisions instead
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SPEAKER_01: of patterned decisions around talent.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_00: And you're talking, as you said, about unconscious preferences.
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SPEAKER_00: Because if I will ask you,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, should we have a level playing field, you're going to tell me yes.
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SPEAKER_00: But then when you make decisions,
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SPEAKER_00: So, what I hear you say is priming basically helps you to be reminded that
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to say rational decisions,
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SPEAKER_00: but decisions not based on gut feeling and unconscious preferences.
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SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
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SPEAKER_01: And I really appreciate you bringing up the distinction gut feeling,
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SPEAKER_01: because there's nothing more biased than our gut feeling.
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SPEAKER_01: Our gut feeling is only preference,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's unconscious to us, and that's why we call it a gut feeling.
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SPEAKER_01: I like you,
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SPEAKER_01: because there's something about you that reminds me of somebody in my life
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SPEAKER_01: that I really like or I don't like.
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SPEAKER_01: That's the gut feeling.
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SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have anything to do with you.
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SPEAKER_01: It has everything to do with my past experience.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's patently unfair.
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SPEAKER_01: And we do it all the time.
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SPEAKER_01: And we've got to commit to the process of waking ourselves up to that humans do this.
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SPEAKER_01: And when we're clear about our commitment,
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SPEAKER_01: To equity or to getting the very best talent that we can,
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SPEAKER_01: then I might invest that minute or two minutes in whatever processes will allow me
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SPEAKER_01: to bypass the gut feeling and to anchor on your qualifications.
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SPEAKER_00: A lot of leaders,
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SPEAKER_00: a lot of organizations,
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SPEAKER_00: they proudly say that they work against bias and they embrace diversity.
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SPEAKER_00: It looks really good on the website and they've checked all the boxes.
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SPEAKER_00: They have a training, a bias training, a diversity training and so forth.
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SPEAKER_00: But when you look deeper, you see that, you know, there's toxic culture, people quit.
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SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I feel that organizations do that just to look good on paper.
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SPEAKER_01: No question about it.
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SPEAKER_01: And by the way, in today's world, all of that has been stripped away.
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SPEAKER_01: So the externalized branding is Of being an organization that values inclusion
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SPEAKER_01: and diversity is now, you know, can be seen as a liability and not an asset.
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SPEAKER_01: So the world of diversity and inclusion is not what you say about it.
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SPEAKER_01: It's how you be.
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SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you an example of a gentleman I met three weeks ago.
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SPEAKER_01: Who runs an organization in the world of TV and video and things like that.
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SPEAKER_01: He has a large department and he was sharing with me
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SPEAKER_01: that his department always gets top scores in their organization culture surveys.
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SPEAKER_01: And far higher than any other unit in his organization.
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SPEAKER_01: I've seen that before and this wasn't about him
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SPEAKER_01: What he was doing is this is a man who has done a tremendous amount
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SPEAKER_01: of personal development work.
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SPEAKER_01: He has really taken himself on and he has learned how to lead his employees in such
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SPEAKER_01: a way that allows the diversity of their employees.
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SPEAKER_01: Their experience and their thoughts,
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SPEAKER_01: not even identity,
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SPEAKER_01: although he has a diverse workforce, but he permits that to come forward.
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SPEAKER_01: People feel like he cares about them and that he supports them in their development.
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SPEAKER_01: He's a white guy,
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SPEAKER_01: but what's really important about him is his commitment to the health of
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SPEAKER_01: the culture.
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SPEAKER_01: And for him, because he's done his own work, it's not that there was a mission statement.
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SPEAKER_01: It's not that there were values on the wall of his department.
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SPEAKER_01: He's done his own work so that his ego is not the one making the decisions
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SPEAKER_01: about his workplace,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's his commitment to the quality of what gets created and And to
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SPEAKER_01: the individuals who populate his place of work.
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SPEAKER_01: That's what inclusion and diversity is.
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SPEAKER_01: It's great leadership, Ibrahim.
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SPEAKER_01: That's what it is.
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SPEAKER_01: That's why the conversation of diversity and inclusion can never be separated from leadership.
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SPEAKER_01: This is not something that the Excuse me, the DEI department does.
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SPEAKER_01: This is something that all leaders have to embrace.
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SPEAKER_01: And there's not that many leaders who have the growth,
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SPEAKER_01: the human growth to really be effective in that way.
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SPEAKER_01: And when you find them, they're treasures.
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SPEAKER_01: And there are people out there who are really great at it.
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SPEAKER_01: They're great leaders.
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SPEAKER_01: Inclusion and diversity is just one of the impacts of great leadership.
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SPEAKER_00: I believe it's about self-esteem,
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SPEAKER_00: how you see yourself,
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SPEAKER_00: how you value yourself, the degree to which you like and respect yourself.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
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SPEAKER_01: But that's not automatic, Ibrahim.
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SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: Right?
21:37
SPEAKER_01: Because there are a lot of people who have some kind of childhood trauma,
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SPEAKER_01: far more than we realize.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: You know, something unresolved in their early years that shows up as adults.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: But until we name it and work with it, then it makes decisions for us.
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SPEAKER_01: A lot of people,
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SPEAKER_01: a lot of leaders and organizations are four and five-year-olds making decisions
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SPEAKER_01: about multi-billion dollar organizations out of their feelings and Than people
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SPEAKER_01: in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, 60s, 70s, whatever.
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SPEAKER_01: So if we haven't done that inquiry into who we are,
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SPEAKER_01: so that we can build that self-esteem, of course we're born with it, right?
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SPEAKER_01: We're born whole and complete,
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SPEAKER_01: and it erodes in the life experiences, especially the early life experiences.
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SPEAKER_00: Especially, yeah.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: Journey is to reclaim that.
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SPEAKER_01: That's the personal development work is to,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: the things that have me contract as a human being,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: the imposter syndrome,
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SPEAKER_01: the not good enough, that we release that if we do our work so that we can be whole.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, interestingly enough, you know, I sit in groups of 10.
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SPEAKER_01: Sitting around a circle of 10 women,
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SPEAKER_01: most of these women, and these are top performers in the world.
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SPEAKER_01: These are women with amazing titles and experience.
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SPEAKER_01: A lot of them have not done that work.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: And that stands between them and a happy and whole second half of life.
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SPEAKER_01: Because if we never resolve what's there and what's present,
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SPEAKER_01: then those voices,
23:47
SPEAKER_01: those parts of ourselves,
23:49
SPEAKER_01: will be making the very important decisions that we make as humans at this time
23:54
SPEAKER_01: of life.
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SPEAKER_01: Am I going to keep working?
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Am I going to retire?
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SPEAKER_01: Am I going to stay married?
24:00
SPEAKER_01: Am I going to start a new career?
24:02
SPEAKER_01: All of the am I's...
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SPEAKER_01: We have to be super mindful that the decisions are being made by the essence of
24:11
SPEAKER_01: who we are and by the purpose-driven being that is in all of us instead of
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SPEAKER_01: a hurt five-year-old.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Is there something I should have asked you today?
24:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: This was a pretty wide-ranging conversation.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: You asked me about, you know, why working with women was important to me.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: I think to close,
24:39
SPEAKER_01: I would say that working with women has been one of the greatest privileges
24:47
SPEAKER_01: of my life.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And every time I sit in circle with other women that I grow,
24:55
SPEAKER_01: So there definitely is a selfish component to that.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: When we work together in a group, and I do all of my work in person, I don't do it by Zoom.
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SPEAKER_01: When we work together in a group and women are telling their stories,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: what happens in that group is that she is saying a part of her story
25:19
SPEAKER_01: that I have not recognized in my own life.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: And it's a way for me to complete something by hearing somebody else's story.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: And groups work on many different levels,
25:34
SPEAKER_01: many of which we can't see or name,
25:36
SPEAKER_01: but there is an incredible power in people coming together and exposing the parts
25:43
SPEAKER_01: of themselves that are vulnerable where there's fear and
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SPEAKER_01: And seeing how many other people share that same concern, that same fear.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: There's something really healing about that.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: So I'll just close by sharing the power of that
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SPEAKER_01: and how much I grow every time I'm given an opportunity to sit with other women.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: And it's not all about me.
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SPEAKER_01: It's about us.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Speaking of Meaning.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: If today's episode helped you see communication in a new way,
26:20
SPEAKER_00: share it with someone you care about,
26:22
SPEAKER_00: a friend, a partner, or a colleague who wants to grow.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm Ibrahim.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, better communication, greater impact.