Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Good day, everyone, and welcome to another edition of let's be diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who have supported me through this journey. A lot of you have heard a lot of my episodes, and one of the things that I am truly inspired about or love talking about is leadership. So I thought tonight I would have another leadership discussion. And today our discussion is on leadership focus and impact. And when I was figuring out who to discuss this with, I put it together, and I think I found the perfect guest to discuss this today. So my guest today is Alessandra Wall. Now, when Alessandra is not busy riding out zombie apocalypse with a good book and piping hot coffee, Alessandra is busy helping smart, ambitious executive women confidently own and thrive in careers that work for them. Alessandra Wall made a major career switch from busy psychologist to successful founder and high impact executive coach at noteworthy. She specializes in helping smart, ambitious executive women in male dominant industries to build wildly successful and deeply fulfilling careers. She is one of the most fun, energetic people that I have met in a long time. When I spoke to her on the phone, she had a little bit of a giggle because I told her I couldn't believe that I was talking to her on the phone. And then she said yes. I was just absolutely thrilled to have her on. Welcome to the show, Alessandra. It is so great to have you on today.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: I'm so happy to be here with you.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: How are things with you? What's new? What's going on in your world? What's happening?
[00:02:07] Speaker A: What's going on in my world? Tis the season, right? We are recording this. It is basically a day before Halloween and the holiday season is about to start. So my world is filled with going, oh, I should probably connect and meet with people. So I'm doing a lot of that. I am not dressing up for Halloween, and it's San Diego, so we're going through a heat wave because why not on Halloween wake? I'm having a great conversation with you. I've been having lots of great conversations with leaders recently. Everybody's gearing up for 2024. Life is good.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Awesome. So to the guests that can't see us because this will come out audio, but I am wearing a red top. Alessandra is wearing a red handkerchief around her neck, and she has red lipstick on. So it's almost like we planned a red look today. So just thought I'd share that with.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: The guests today, I took a screenshot of you and I talking, so I'll send it to you.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: You can share that. I would love that. That'll be a great idea. I'm glad to hear that things are going well. The weather here in Canada is not like how it is there. We've started winter, so there's lots of snow on the ground already, and it's cold, so winter jackets already. We don't have the tukes and the scarves and the knits yet, but that's probably around the corner. It is what it is. We live in this climate and we have to go with it. But I would rather be where you are, that is for sure.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Here we would be wearing the scarves and the mitts and all of that at about 63 degrees fahrenheit, maybe twelve or 13 degrees celsius. Love that you have snow when nobody's wearing it. But I wasn't saying. That's a gloat. I'm actually miserable. I would rather four seasons because the grass is always greener someplace else.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Oh, it is. It surely is. So, before we begin this great discussion, Alessandra, I always have a fun, thought provoking question to ask my guests. Of course, you did not know about this. It's a surprise to you. Are you ready for your question today?
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Ready. Trepidacious. Let's go.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Let's go. Your question is, what Disney princess do you think would make the best spy a spy?
[00:04:21] Speaker A: I thought you were going to ask me who I wanted to be. Which, by the way, is Tiana, hands down, any day. Businesswoman. She's setting her stuff up. She's making it for herself. Plus, she cooks. Who would make the best spy? Okay, so Merida, because nobody could understand her when she speaks in half the cases. And she's charming and she can shoot arrows really well. So I'm going with Merida.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: I think that's a pretty good choice, actually. I never thought of that one. That's a pretty good pick. Especially, like you said, that nobody understands her, so it's like the spyish language. That's pretty good.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Try to interrogate her. You're getting nothing out of that girl.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: You're getting nothing out of her. Absolutely. You won't get anything out of her. And you don't know what she's up to. So, yeah, I think that's pretty good. I'm impressed. Great answer.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: I love my Disney.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Yeah, great answer. Great. So I picked a good question. That's awesome. Awesome. Thanks for having fun with me. I appreciate that I always enjoy those questions with my guests. Why don't we start off our fun discussion with you telling us a little bit about you and your story?
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Okay. So this question I knew I was going to be asked, and I love trying to think about this because I spend a lot of time teaching other people to introduce themselves, and you would think I would be amazing at doing that. I am amazing at teaching other people to introduce themselves. But there's one thing you need to know about me is that I am proof positive that things don't need to be done the way you think they need to be done in order to be successful. So I can share three pieces of evidence. I had ADhd as a child. I didn't know I did. I had to work ridiculously hard. I'm so fortunate because I'm extremely self motivated and because I would say I still have a good genetic substrate for learning. And so I was able to get into a good college without necessarily amazing grades, but with an amazing story of leadership. They really believe that my entrance essay is what got me. It's certainly not my grades what got me into college, and then got to work into actually being a stellar student. So through college, I ended up being a stellar student, got my phd in clinical psychology. But that's the first evidence of, you don't have to be what everybody expects you to be, or you don't have to do things exactly the way people expect you to do. The other thing is, I thought I would be a clinical psychologist my whole life. And like many of your other guests, and actually, like most people in the world, I continued growing and developing and evolving as a human. So what I thought I wanted to be when I was 15 is actually not what I wanted to be when I was 35. It surprises me at this point that any of us are shocked by that. And yet so many people who go through their first career change in their early 30s are very shocked that they don't want to be what they thought they were going to be when they were a teenager. And I am now doing work in corporate, and not just corporate America. I work across the United States, Canada, I work in Europe, and I have no corporate experience or background. And yet I'm really good at the work I do with corporate America. And part of that, I think, is very specifically because I was not molded nor influenced by the corporate world. And then the third piece probably has to do with the fact that I spent my time talking to people and doing a fairly good job teaching people how to build social capital. How to build large, strong, powerful, effective, impactful. And we're going to be talking about impact a lot today.
Networks. And I am an introvert, and so it isn't in my nature to want to be thrust in a room full of people I don't know and have a whole bunch of small talk with them. I'm not socially anxious, I'm not shy, clearly. But again, this idea of sometimes if you just take a minute and there's something you really want and you need, you can get where you need to go, not approaching things in that stereotypical conventional way.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Wow, so much to pack into there. First off, I have ADHD as well. I realized it at a later stage in life, and it explained a lot to me when I was in high school because I was one of those guys where I would have to start studying for an exam probably two, three weeks before the test. And I had friends of mine who I hung out with and they were like, what are you doing? Let's do this. No, I got to study. And they'd study two days before I get like a 65, which I was thrilled of, and Nate get like an 80 for studying two days. So that's just how it was. It bothered me back then, but it doesn't bother me now because I learned that I learned differently, and I'm okay with that. The other thing that I love is that you were not molded for the corporate world. And why I love that is because, and I talk about this in a lot of my episodes, a lot of companies are hiring people to become managers or directors, but they don't have any training whatsoever as far as what they need to do. So that's fine, but where I want to go with this is that you were not molded for the corporate world, but you decided what direction you wanted to go in and what you wanted to learn and what you wanted to teach people, and that's the direction that you are going in, which is the correct way, because you teach leaders to deal with their employees with empathy and authenticity. But a lot of the companies now, they throw their managers in, but they don't teach them all this stuff, so they don't know where to go. So I just love that you figured out, this is what I want to do. I don't have any corporate background, but I'm going to teach people how to be leaders and I'm going to figure it out. Everybody thinks of different things as a good way, but I do feel, talking to a lot of people, that there is a specific way that a leader needs to be in today's workforce, and if you're not that way, you're going to struggle.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Do you want me to jump in on that one?
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. I would love it.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: I believe I did not want to work with the corporate world. When I started my coaching business. My first strategic whatever consultant coach was like, oh, you should do corporate work. And I'm like, hell, no, not doing corporate work. I don't want to do talks in an impersonal hotel ballroom with a bunch of stiff people. But what I found is I was working with so many women, very specifically men, too, but mostly women, who were just broken. Like, they weren't broken people, they were broken by their work environment. And these women were highly educated, highly trained. I spoke to somebody the other day who has four degrees, one of which is a PhD, and all the others are master level degrees. These women are highly educated, too educated, really hard workers doing all this work. And they were not just leaving their companies, they were leaving their industry. And it baffled me. And as a psychologist, what was great is I could sit and ask the right questions and figure this out. And a lot of times, initially, what I realized is they weren't speaking up or they didn't know how to advocate for themselves or they didn't know what to advocate for.
And at the beginning, I thought I had all the answers right, because hubris. And then when I started paying more attention and learning more about the corporate world and how it works and how it looks for women, I had this huge awakening. And I went from understanding or knowing the statistics about the gender gap or microaggressions or whatever else women's experience in the workplace to getting it to really understanding, because I had never worked in the corporate world. It's not that I wasn't exposed to gender bias, but a, I didn't always recognize it because I didn't think about it, and b, the reality is, in my function as a business owner and as a psychologist, my position of authority and power was very well established with my clients and with the people I worked with so that I didn't get too much pushback. And what I ended up understanding is it's far more complicated than my initial analysis of, oh, they need to speak up. There's this whole system that's set up so that it's not just that women need to be able to speak up because they all know, they've read lean in, they've read all the books, too. It's that there's a certain way of doing it. There's a certain way of doing it so that it works for you. There's a whole set of skills and a framework that needs to be built in order to be able to support success for women.
And it's not just about being successful. Right. It's about being successful and also not hating your success. That success, not bringing you down, being outside of this world allows me to often go, yeah, but why does it need to be this way? And no, I disagree. And bring in, you talked about authenticity, which is a word that I think makes most people roll their eyes up because it's been overused. But that idea of saying you actually can just be yourself and that can be good enough and you can show up as you with all your quirks and your weirdness.
I am me. I cheer up when I make speeches. I'm super passionate. I totally put my foot in my mouth sometimes. I also say what I mean and mean what I say. And if you can build the right framework around that, people will learn to respect you and to covet you for it. Like, not be envious, but to want you to come and work on their teams or want you to lead them because of that. If you don't have the right set up, especially as a human being, period. But especially as a woman, those things that make you uniquely you can work against you. It's not fair, but it's the way the world is right now.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah, my first thinking is diversity of thought. Right? So there's different ways of doing things. But you're right, there's a lot of women that are afraid to speak up. And I see it. I've seen it in my own work life, throughout my work life, and I think it has a lot to do with. I was in a meeting about ten years ago with a bunch of people, and there was one woman in the meeting, and everybody was talking over everybody. It was one of those meetings. And when the leader asked her opinion, she would start to speak, and then everybody started talking over her, so she stopped speaking. So I think it has a lot to do with that, is that everybody's trying to say their thing because they want to be the one that's heard. But I think if you're in a room, everybody needs to be heard. That's just my opinion.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Some of it's being afraid to speak up. But again, in my experience, there's certainly a measure of that. I was just doing a 360 interview for one of my clients, and I was talking to one of her biggest champions. And when we were talking about areas of opportunity. His big thing was she needs to state her opinion. She's really good at doing these very in depth analyses, but it's like you need to pry that point of view out of her. But that is what we prize in her. She has this unique ability, because of her background, to do these really fantastic analyses and synthesis of information. But in her case, to follow what you were saying, there is fear in communicating that point of view out loud. And we're talking together about why that is. Some of it is not wanting to be wrong. Some of it is not wanting to be forceful. I can work on that because that is something that she's not comfortable with. And I can help her develop the confidence, overcome the fear, figure out how to operate better in that space. A lot of the women I work with, it's not that they're afraid to talk. It's more of that latter piece of what you said. Like, they talk and it falls into deaf ears, or they talk and it gets dismissed. They have to say things three times before somebody gets it, or they have to prove that what they're saying is true. And all that extra effort after a while, you just learn not to, because what's the point? Or you do, but it's exhausting. So the cost of being heard, that cost of being able to exert the authority that you need to lead effectively is so high, it's exhausting.
So when we teach women the right skills to overcome that, the skills to manage the stress and the fatigue, because, again, it's a systemic issue. It's not that companies are terrible or men are terrible. It's just women do this to women, too. When we teach that they can manage the reality of the system.
But then if on top of that, I can come into organizations and talk to teams and train other organizations, then to go back to something that you and I have talked about, we can open up the doors for these female leaders to create more impact. And the second they're able to create that impact, everybody wins. Their teams win, the clients win, the corporation as a whole wins.
The more we can elevate these women, actually, the more we're just elevating the company to be successful. That's it. It's a great investment.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: It sure is. So I want to know, what do the words focus and impact mean to leadership?
[00:18:18] Speaker A: So many different things. I'll say what they mean with the women I work with. So the idea of focus is very much about understanding what your priorities are and understanding what skill set you bring to the table and how to leverage that skill set in the right way to meet those priorities. I'm going to talk about women again because that's my thing.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: So a lot of the women I work with are excellent. They're exceptional at what they do and they're team players and they will come to the impact. They want to create an impact. And so anywhere where they see an opportunity to move the needle forward, they will raise their hands and say, I'll do it. I can take care of that. The problem with that, especially as a leader, is your job as a leader is not to step in and do all the things that need to be done. And if you have a very specific skill set where you excel and that skill set for us at noteworthy, we talk about making sure that you leverage the skills not only that you excel at, but that you excel at and love. If you're given the opportunity and the permission sometimes to do just that, you end up being so much more effective. And as you communicate that for yourself and you learn how to help your teams communicate that you can become far more effective at delegating so that other people on your team can do the same thing. So that focus, understanding what the strategic objectives or goals are, understanding what your role is as a leader, having clarity around what you bring to the table. Like, why are you el Hefe, why are you there to do all these things and being able to lean into the right skills in the right way are going to allow you to be more impact. And then what is impact? Impact is reaching the goals, making a difference. When we talk to noteworthy women, often impact is discussed in two contexts. One is you're very tangible. What is the purpose of your team? What are their objectives? What metrics do they need to hit this year? That's all fine, that's the easy one. But a lot of the women I speak with and I work with, they have a why they do the things they do for a reason. And the goal is, and even if it's not a stated goal, once we start talking about it, they're like, yes, the goal is that they want to end their life and be able to look back and go, I made a difference. I had an impact on my industry. I changed the way things were done, or I was able to contribute to growth for the industry, for people. I did something meaningful. And that's a personal thing, an individual. But that's the other piece of impact. I think great leaders are people who do what they do, not just because of a paycheck, although it's nice to get paid very well for what you do, but because they have either internally or openly articulated this bigger why that they're trying to get met to through the work that they do. That's why there's so few great leaders, by the way. I think a lot of people are just doing it for the paycheck.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: I agree with you on that. We're talking just a little bit before we started taping today, and my thoughts of what you were saying to me is I do believe that as well. So I was talking earlier about people being put into positions and not getting the instruction or proper training. I believe that a lot of these people have taken these positions, not necessarily because, oh, I'm moving up to be a manager. They are taking it because they see, okay, I'm making this amount right now, but if I go to that, if I become a manager, I'm going to be making this. But they're not thinking about responsibilities that it entails to be in charge of a team and be charge of a department and understanding. Like you said, if we're taking on so much stuff, then how can we lead? I think a good leader as well needs to be able to delegate so that they can take on some of the things that they need to do in order for their job to function properly. But I agree with you. If you're taking everything on, you're not going to be able to do everything properly. It's like going to a restaurant and you check the menu and the menu has 40 items on there. And then you ask them, do you guys specialize in anything? No, we just put 40 items on the menu because we want to give our customers a good selection. And that's great and all, but if you're not good at one particular thing, I don't care if you have 50 items on there. You have to be good at one particular thing or item on the menu in order for you to say, hey, I'm going back there because of that.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: And there's this other thing. I think a lot of people. You mentioned it before, too. I have to stop saying I think. I don't think. I know most leaders aren't taught how to be a leader. You're an excellent individual contributor who demonstrates some kind of leadership skill. So you're promoted to manager and manager. There's a distinction between managing people and leading people. I always joke with my program manager and my future coo as we grow that I'm good at leading. I'm terrible manager. And you do need management skills to lead people. But I would rather recognize where my skills, where my deficits exist and then hire the right people to do this. I can motivate, I can create a strategic vision. I've got that excitement, I've got the hard work. I can build the connections, the day to day management to make sure that that vision, the operations get carried out. That's a skill set, and it's a very difficult skill set. And a lot of people who are excellent individual contributors, who get put into management positions become miserable managers, meaning they feel miserable suddenly. It's not about how well you can perform at a certain task. It's about how well you can get other people to do the things they do and identify and deal with the scheduling issues, the emotional issues. It's the first time where now you have multiple stakeholders, your leaders, your clients and your team. And then the higher you go up in leadership, the more stakeholders you have, the more people you have who have different priorities. And again, some people are naturally good at this. Like any other skill, a lot of other people just try to wing it, and that would be fine if they were learning how to make souffle. We can wing that skill. We can learn, and we can make the souffle and it can taste terrible, or it can cave in, or we can not cook it enough or overcook it, and it's tough. But when we're talking about doing things that impact the well being of a human being, the bottom line of a company, the experience of a client, then the cost of winging it and learning in French. I grew up in France. I don't know what the learning like. Learning as you go.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say I'm from Quebec. So, yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: It'S a cost that has a lot of potential casualties. And when I said there are a lot of terrible leaders, I don't mean that there are a lot of terrible people leading. There are a lot of people in leadership positions who have no business being in leadership positions because they never wanted to lead in the first place, or nobody has taken the time to invest in them. I was talking to a woman today who's a lot of my clients come to me because they're paying out of pocket. I'll be very clear. I am not a bargain investment, because what I'm doing is helping people be happier, lead more effectively, which means I'm helping women grow massively in their careers, but also helping companies grow and thrive. But the question she had, as we were finished talking, she goes, do you think my company would pay? And I had to tell her a small fraction of my clients have their coaching paid by their company. More often than not, these women are making these multifi figure investments out of their own pocket because, again, they have an impact that they want to make and they want to be successful. These are ambitious women. Such a beautiful word for women. They are ambitious women, but what they don't want to do is get to the top and feel like they can't make that impact or get to the top and have the cost of success be misery at every level.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Companies need to invest in this more than easy things. And unfortunately, a lot of leaders get into these positions, and that's what they see, right? My title goes up, my pay goes up, but nobody's taught them how to lead. And it's scary. It is so many people counting on you.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: So I think we've talked a little bit about this, but I want to delve into this a little bit more with you. How do leaders create focus and impact on themselves and in their teams?
[00:27:15] Speaker A: The first thing with creating focus is really, we are.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: We're repeating ourselves. So for dear listeners, please forgive us for a second. We'll reiterate, but it is about making sure that you understand what your objectives and your goals are and sharing those objectives and those goals with everybody. This is what we're working towards. This is my part of that equation.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Right?
[00:27:36] Speaker A: That's how we create. This is my part. My job is the reason I'm lucky enough to be your VP, your SVP, your managing director, your c level executive, is because what I'm really good at, where I can add the most value, is these things.
And then being able to talk to whomever is part of your team and helping them identify what's your part in our success? What do you bring to the table? How do you want those skills leveraged? How do you want to use that skill to create this outcome that we want? When we can do that together, we create focus. We create a vision and something beyond pretty words on a mission statement and something that goes beyond simply having KPIs for your year end reviews. And that's the strategic. But then there's a tactical piece to that. So we create focus by making sure that we have the right systems in place to measure success, to measure progress, to address issues as they come up. That idea of focus is more than just visionary, it is tactical, too. The impact is simply a byproduct of being able to operate within a state of focus, as far as I'm concerned. But I would love to know what.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: You think, I love when you said asking your team. That just jumps out at me because I feel like a lot of leaders, one of the biggest things that I noticed today and having a lot of conversations with people is that there's a lack of communication between the leaders and their teams. So either they're either not saying it or they're saying part of stuff and they're not giving a whole picture, and then it just looks bad. And then I feel if you're going to communicate something, if you're putting a new procedure or a new policy for your team, if you're, for example, putting in a wellness program and you get everybody all together and you're going to say, you know what? This is what we're going to do for you guys within the next six months. Let's say if it hasn't happened in six months, you have to communicate that with the team members and say, hey, I know we said that this is what's going to happen in six months. We are still doing it. We're working on it. The program is just not ready. But we wanted to let you guys know that it's not forgotten, it's not pushed aside, because when you don't say anything about it, then people come back and go, hey, Alessandra, I thought that they said there's going to be a wellness program six months ago. Did you hear anything about it? Did you get any email? No, I didn't hear anything about it. I wonder what happened with that. If it goes on deaf ears, you just totally lose everything. As far as your teams, you talked earlier about trust. I am a huge believer in trust and respect. If you don't have trust and respect as a leader, you lose your team.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: On another 360 I was doing for another leader of mine, I do interviews because I just leveraged my 20 years as a clinical psychologist, which all first sessions in therapy, probably all first three sessions are just interviewing somebody and then you have conversations. But for sure, I remember somebody talking about my client and saying, there are people who lead through influence and people who lead through authoritarian, that kind of fear. So there are people who you follow. It's a better way of looking at it because you want to, they inspire.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: And they move you forward.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: And your people you follow because they tell you to and you just do it. The informer is far more powerful than the latter. But if you want to be that person, you're right. You need to instill trust. And part of the way you instill trust is not by showing up and pretending everything or you can do everything, or if you're invaluable, it's coming in and having that communication right around. Covid, I had a lot of companies approach me and say, can you do a course for our leaders on crisis leadership? And that was one of the things that we communicated, that one of the big pieces of crisis leadership was communication, confidence, and compassion. They're the three c's of crisis leadership. So you want to communicate. You want to make sure very quickly you talk to people and you communicate what you know and what you don't know. One of my clients today just told me she survived a massive layoff in her organization, and she said, can we do a spot session in between sessions so I can figure out how to communicate and how to deal with this with my team? Because they're all feeling anxious, they're all worried, right? They have colleagues and friends who suddenly are no longer part of the organization. So the first piece is, communicate. Don't let an elephant be in the room. Explain what you do know and what you don't know. Be very clear. This is what I know to be true. This is what we don't know. How do you breed confidence? Part of that communicating confidence is making sure that you let people know. This is what we're working towards.
This is what we're going to try to do to solve the problem. That honesty about being able to communicate what you don't know, that brings the confidence there.
You don't have to pretend to be Wonder Woman or Superman when you do that. You can just come in and go, we know this, we don't know this. These are the steps we're taking, being able to let them know we will touch base with you and at regular intervals to keep you abreast of our progress and to let you know every single time, this is what we've achieved, this is what we haven't achieved. And then the compassion is this very subtle difference. The words compassion and empathy are often used by laypeople interchangeably. But empathy is the emotion that's associated with the thinking, man, that sucks. I feel bad for you and that genuinely, I feel bad for you because I can step into your shoes. Empathy requires the ability to step into somebody else's shoes. So empathy is that thing where I project myself in your situation, and because I project myself in your situation, I feel it like, this must really suck. And in a lot of crises, leaders default to empathy. During COVID when there were the first shutdowns, empathy was the mass thing. People were like, we know this is really hard. You all are working. There's a lot of uncertainty. I'm sorry, work harder. Lots of empathy. Compassion is the follow up to empathy. It's when you combine empathy with action. Compassion is the desire to make somebody's life better.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: So compassion translates into, man, that sucks. Let's see what I can do to help alleviate your burden. It's a problem solving piece, and as a leader, that is a big part of leadership. It's stepping in, having the difficult conversations, being there for your team, and being decisive with your actions.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: I love it. I love that you said that. I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago on grief in the workplace, and one of the things that we talked about was, you're a leader in an organization, and someone says, how are you doing? And they say, oh, I'm okay. I'm getting a little bit better. And then they say, you know what, I'll check on you in a couple of days and I'll see how you're doing. So what exactly you're saying a leader should come in and say, you know what? In a couple of days, let's sit down and let's go through your work and let's devise a plan to help you to get through your day. So instead of just saying, oh, yeah, I know, I get it, or like you're saying empathy, I sympathize with you. I understand when someone is really busy or they got extra work and they're stressed, the last thing that somebody needs to hear is, okay, keep at it. If you're going to come to me with a solution, say, listen, let me check on you in a couple of days. Let's see how you're doing. If at that point you still are struggling, let's sit down and let's figure out a plan to help you to get through. And I don't know about you, but for me, if I heard that busy or not, I'd be like, wow, they see me and they hear me, I'm going to keep going because if they see that I'm still struggling, they're going to do something that is a leader.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: So I have a friend who unfortunately will be two years in December. Her husband committed suicide, and clearly she didn't go back to work immediately. And her leader's approach to managing her grief, which for anybody who's been through grief, two years later, there's still daily moments of crying, just being completely washed away by the grief, really, because I know this leader in another context, and my opinion of this leader was like, man, whatever. They're not great. Their response to this event completely upgraded my opinion of this leader. So very quickly it was to send an email to all the other people at the same level, figure out who could step in and take over the responsibilities. For my friend. It was to assure this friend that despite the fact that they were going to not be working, that they would get full pay for every day that they were gone. It was in the months coming back to give this person grace when they would try to show into work and then just find themselves in a closet somewhere crying and let them step out and leave and really, actually massively reduce their workload for the first four or five months post death and not change the pay. So this person could come in and work at, let's just say, 60% and was still getting 100% of pay. And part of that was done by a getting the support and the coordination of colleagues. You can only do that when you create a good working environment where people want to help each other. But the other thing was the leadership, making that advocacy at the organizational level. To say, I am going to support, sponsor, leverage my power and privilege to make sure this person gets paid, even though they're not pulling their weight, because now they're a single parent. And it's not that they're not willing to work. It's literally they're going through something excruciatingly painful. And so I completely agree with you. That kind of leadership, if I were working within that organization, and if I had been disgruntled with that leader, which I think I would have been prior to this, would reinvigorate absolutely my feelings towards that leader. And I guarantee that for my friend, what it did change was really feeling they didn't have as much of an issue with the leader as I did, but really feeling an incredible amount of loyalty now to the leader, and therefore, the organization is less likely to lose that individual who's a top performer because their leader managed this long term grief situation extremely well and compassionately. So much compassion.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: So we talked about the struggles and how to create focus. What I want to know is, in your opinion, what does the future look like for leaders when it comes to focus and impact? What do you think it looks like in the future?
[00:38:48] Speaker A: So I got a question about your question.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Is your question, do I see this happening more and more in the future, or is your question for those people who can demonstrate that kind of focus and that impact, what does their future look like?
[00:39:01] Speaker B: The second one.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Okay. I would say this. This is very timely. In a world where a lot of things are being automated by AI right now, and we are in the cusp of a new technological revolution and pace, leaders who are able to do this very well will first and foremost continue to secure their jobs and demonstrate that they have true value. They will be able to reassure a workforce that I theorize as time goes on, is going to feel more and more scared and anxious about job security and find different ways of moving companies forward. We need this. It's been a very stressful three years and I don't think we're done with that stress from a social perspective, from a political perspective, but also then at a corporate or work level perspective, I do not see that shifting for geopolitical reasons, for financial reasons, and because of this shift in AI. So having leaders who are very clear about what the objective is, how we're going to get there, who my people are, what I bring to the table, what they bring to the table and can leverage that. They're going to be able to stabilize organizations, stabilize the workforce, and carry companies who have those kinds of leaders through this time of change with the least amount of emotional disruption and disengagement. And I think they'll save jobs in doing that because we know that in some organizations, not the kinds I would want to work in, but in some organizations, the kind of leaders I don't want to support, say, if they're going to be lazy and not do their jobs, I'm just going to get a bot to replace them. It's not the solution.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: No, I agree with you 100%. I think when you're clear and how things are going, I think leaders are going to have to learn to adapt to situations. I feel the way that AI is going, they're going to have to adapt and they're going to have to learn to, like you said before, if they don't do their job, then AI is going to take over. I think if the leader is going to say that to their employees, I think that's the wrong thing. I always say it's the words, but it's mostly the tone. So I think it's the way that things are going to be put out to employees and way that things are going to come across to them. I think it's going to ease a lot of the tension and the ones that are going to be able to stabilize their teams are going to be the ones that are going to, a, stick around and b, they're going to keep their good people with them through whatever times that it is going to happen. But I definitely think that it's important for leaders to understand what impact they're going to have on the future and making sure that they are doing the correct things to be able to adapt for the future.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I talk about this with my program manager, future COO, because she's really more of an operations coordinator. It's like this kind of support. What we're doing right now is more important than ever, because people are scared, because we need to help the women who've managed to achieve these senior leadership positions, how to operate really effectively in these companies, how to continue demonstrating their relevance and how to lead people so that they continue feeling like they have purpose and value, so that they continue exercising that purpose and value. And that's tough. It's a toleranter, but it's exciting, too.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Alessandra, if you could choose one word to describe yourself, what word would that be?
[00:42:30] Speaker A: Okay. I had to think whether this was a word in English. Audacious word in English. I have audacity. I dare. That's the other idea. Daring. I dared to try to go to a top college even though my grades weren't there.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: I dared.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: I picked up parkour when I was 38. I dared to be an optimist in sometimes systems where everything tells me it shouldn't be. I have the audacity to push the envelope, to expect more, to want more, to believe that it's there again, sometimes to my detriment. But having prepared me, I really had to think. I'm like, what is that? I'm like that I have the audacity to say things that other people don't say because you're not supposed to say them, but you are.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: I love that word for you. I was trying to think of what word you were going to say, and that is perfect. I definitely think that is the perfect word for you. I love the dare part. I think we dare sometimes to be ourselves in certain situations as well. I feel like I'm the same. I dare myself to be a certain way certain times. I dare myself sometimes to go up to somebody who is miserable, and I will purposely try to bring joy, and I will purposely say hello, and I will purposely smile, have a good day.
And not to be a jerk, but because I'm daring myself, I'll say, you know what? I'm going to bring a little bit of joy. And if I can get a grin or a smile off of you, then I did my job. And you may not admit it, but you're going to feel better for smiling. So I love that you said there. I just love that. Any final thoughts today?
[00:44:07] Speaker A: No. Thank you. We discussed so much. I am always very grateful for the opportunity to have these conversations and with these conversations to be made to think through certain things that are just automatic processes and also the opportunity to build stronger connections with people who want to think deeply as well. So thank.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Oh, Sandra, I want to say thank you. I mentioned at the beginning I wasn't kidding when I made that first phone call to you and you had said yes to me on the phone and I was teasing and joking with you, saying, oh my God, I can't believe that you said yes. I'm going to have her on my podcast. I was just starting things out and I was just getting going. I knew what direction I wanted to go in. I knew the type of conversations that I wanted to have exactly like this. And I knew that we would have this amazing conversation tonight. And I love it. And I appreciate you for taking a chance and saying yes way back, even though we knew that it was going to be a few months before we were going to do it. I appreciate you saying yes at the time, and I'm grateful for you and for this conversation.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: It is mutual. And then when I get to Quebec, you can tell me where to go out, where we can meet for a drink.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: It's a big state, so we will figure out we have to find the right city first. But I'll travel outside of will.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Definitely. There's lots of places to go for sure. I'm a foodie, so there's lots of places to eat and lots of places to go for sure. On behalf of myself and my guests, I would like to thank you all and love the fact that she came on today. I love that you guys took the time to listen to this podcast and this episode today. And until next time, be safe and remember that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: You have been listening to let's be diverse with Andrew Stout. To stay up to date with future content, hit subscribe.
