Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - The Woman Who Transformed How We Think About Inclusive Leadership | Sally Helgesen

Starting point is 00:00:00 There's been an evolution in how we think about what constitutes good leadership, and women have had a key role in that. First of all, I don't believe that one half of the human race can come into organizations and not change things. And secondly, I believe that how we do leadership is starting to change. I got a lot of pushback from men, but I also got a lot of pushback from women. Sally, how do you keep on going? You can go through anything if you're Sally Helgeson, expert in women's leadership. She's an international bestselling author of seven books, not one, not two, seven, including the bestseller, How Women Rise with Marsha Goldsmith. And we have

Starting point is 00:01:05 a new book that was coming. We'll talk about it. She's a speaker. She's a leadership coach for 35 years. Sally, how did it start? Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Alana. It started in a totally unexpected way. Back in the mid-late 1980s, I was in corporate communications. I worked at a lot of very good companies. I did mostly speech writing. But what I began to notice was that the companies I worked for had basically no idea of what women could be contributing at any kind of strategic or thinking level. Women were starting to come in to organizations in significant numbers and even starting to achieve some positions of influence, but the organizations didn't have an idea about women as leaders.

Starting point is 00:02:05 Now, it's not surprising because almost everything that had been published up until that time and even a few years later emphasized that what women needed to do was change and adapt to the leadership model they found. I remember one very best-selling author said, you're in the Army now. If it moves, salute it. Leave your values at home. You're not going to change anything. And I thought, I'm not buying that.

Starting point is 00:02:34 I don't believe that. First of all, I don't believe that one half of the human race can come into organizations and not change things. And secondly, I believe that how we do leadership is starting to change. The technology of work was changing. It was becoming more networked. And I just didn't see the kind of leadership that was considered great leadership, my way or the highway, very top down, as continuing to be successful given that shift. So what I decided I wanted to do was to study some of the best women leaders to see and to document how they did things so that I could help organizations understand what they would have

Starting point is 00:03:28 to contribute. So that was the genesis of the book that became The Female Advantage, Women's Ways of Leadership, published in 1990. Very proud to say it has been continuously in print ever since. So that was how that started. But my ambition had been very much to influence organizations. That's not what happened. I influenced women.

Starting point is 00:03:54 I influenced women in terms of how they thought about themselves. At the time the book came out, I still had a job in corporate communications. And I remember getting this letter from a woman in Kansas who said, I always thought I could never be a leader because I don't lead like my father did. He was one of those guys who was, don't object to anything I say. It's your job just to do what I tell you to do. She said, and I wasn't comfortable with that, so I thought I'll never be a leader. She said, but seeing these women described and how they did things documented helped me understand that I do have a leadership style and go for it. So when I got that letter, I thought, you know what?

Starting point is 00:04:45 I'm quitting my job and I am going to spend full time trying to make this point of view work in the world. Back in the days, and again, I probably joined Intel in 96, and there was just not a lot of women, period, especially in engineering and computers and hardware. And I assume it wasn't easy to find those women in leadership to even talk to them. How did that come about? Well, when it started, I wasn't talking to women in leadership.

Starting point is 00:05:18 I was talking to basically anybody who would have me. And because they didn't have sponsorship from organizations, they usually didn't have much of a budget. I didn't have a job. I was using mileage that I'd accumulated. And I would show up as long as people would buy a book and I would get publicity. Often it was just local or in the sector, you know, women in oil and gas of Western Canada, something like that. But I was not speaking to leaders. I was speaking to women who were curious about the possibility for themselves of holding leadership positions. And then probably mid-late 90s, companies like Intel began to get interested, Microsoft, et cetera, and would have me in usually for pretty low fees.

Starting point is 00:06:18 I had lots of male colleagues, Marshall Goldsmith, Jim Kouzes, people like that, Tom Peters, they were making multiples of what I was making, but that's okay. I thought this is starting something new. So I was able to really build a career from the determination to put an idea out there in the world and then do whatever I could to stand behind it because I thought it was the right thing. So Sally, take me back to that moment when you decide to leave a comfortable, stable job, right, that pays the bills and go into this massive unknown trying to go for something that you care about, but you have no clue if it's going to pay

Starting point is 00:07:06 off. It's a lot easier now because we know coaching is a big business. We know that it can generate cash. None of that was known, Sally. Take me back in time. That's a scary move. It was a scary move. And my parents were stunned. I was about 42 at the time, but it was quite a surprising decision, especially because I had just gotten my dream job, a really well-paid job with one of the world's great companies at that time. And I had a lot of freedom. And I thought, I can't do both. I wrote this book. I wrote it because I believed in it. I spent a lot of time and a lot of capital of my own. I don't mean

Starting point is 00:07:55 financial, but my own capital in terms of passion, interest, time. And either I can quit and make this successful, or I can let this opportunity pass. And I knew, I don't know how, but I knew that we don't get that many opportunities like that where something comes along. And so not only did I not have evidence that it would work, but for the first four or five years, I had a lot of evidence that it wasn't going to work because I was getting such low fees. But I just knew that it would work. I had a lot of respect from colleagues, from mostly male colleagues, because that's who was doing this. They seemed to accept me as one of them, which was very surprising. So that was good. I also want to mention that I got tremendous amount

Starting point is 00:08:52 of pushback. I got a lot of pushback from men, you know, I think you're disrespecting men and we have run things brilliantly and if I didn't lead well, why would I be successful, etc. But I also got a lot of pushback from women who were telling me, you're stereotyping women because you are talking about women as having a certain set of leadership capabilities and capacities that are in some ways different from men. I certainly wasn't saying all women have these or all men have those, but people would often hear it that way, even when I would clarify. So it was hard for me to take that pushback. I don't like being out there as someone who's controversial and I do an interview with a journalist and then they end up trashing me. That was very painful,

Starting point is 00:09:45 but it's what happened. And it was just part of what I realized that I had to accept. So let me take you there because I think you almost need to build a level of thick skin in order to be out there because there will be naysayers. There will be a lot of rejections. There will be a lot of people that don't like your ways, especially the more you're out there, the more you're bold, the more you're doing things that you care about, you will get that pushback.

Starting point is 00:10:13 How do you create that thick skin or how do you build it, Sally? I think it's much harder now because of the social media. This was definitely way pre-social media era. And I think it's tougher, more brutal, more disrespectful than certainly it was then. But building a tough skin, I think, is really a question of having allies. I don't know how you can do that yourself. You need to have allies that you respect who've been through a similar process, who you can call on and say, you know, I thought this interview in X magazine was going to be terrific. The woman who interviewed me pretended like this was the best thing she'd ever read,

Starting point is 00:11:01 and then she just totally trashed it. And then colleagues that I asked who'd been through these experiences would just say, move on, move on, move on, move on. And so I decided, okay, I'll take their advice. They know what they're talking about and I will move on. I think sometimes it's harder depending on personality, for a woman to develop a really thick skin. We want to be liked. We want to be the popular girl, et cetera. I certainly had that aspiration.

Starting point is 00:11:33 But I knew that if I wanted to, in this idea, this way of playing with the big boys, that is making a real contribution to how people perceive excellence in leadership, that this was necessary and that I had to do this. And even though it was really hard for me because it wasn't how I was raised. You know, women don't get in fights. They're not getting beaten up on the way home, stuff like that, generally in school. And I didn't have that experience. So it was tough.

Starting point is 00:12:08 But it's a question of how focused you are on your mission. One other thing I want to add, one of the women that I interviewed, or actually, I didn't interview them. I did diary studies of the women so I could really show how they led rather than talk about how they led, which was one of the like Peter Drucker, who was the leading leadership guru of the time, to be one of the best leaders in the world. And she led the Girl Scouts of America, but she had so much respect from a lot of these people. And she always talked about, you can go through anything if you're mission-focused. Once you figure out what your mission is and you focus on that, what your intention is, in my language, what it is you are trying to contribute to the world, to the organization,

Starting point is 00:13:17 to your community, however you're defining that, that that will give you the ability to power through. So I think I've come to believe that being mission-focused is, in general, very important for success in a way that breaks any new ground, because it's going to be tough. And again, I think a big portion when you're really are leading with your eyes open towards a mission and you really believe in the mission, you can start making decisions based on hope and dreams versus fear and doubt because it leads you towards it. But let me ask you something. So in Leap Academy, in our programs, we're basically seeing a mix of 50-50 men, women. They're all trying to fast track. They're all trying to make

Starting point is 00:14:11 a big impact in the world, financial impact. They're trying to build freedom, thought leadership, et cetera. Back in the 90s, the environments were very, very different. There's still some issues even today, but the environments in the 90s were very, very different. There's still some issues even today, but the environments in the 90s were very, very different. How do you see the difference between when you started this and the evolution of where the corporations are today and the place of women in corporations and in leadership overall?

Starting point is 00:14:39 What do you see? I see a tremendous evolution. And I hear people say, I can't believe it's 2024 and we're still have these problems. Yeah, we have problems. I mean, there are issues. Things aren't perfect. But you should have. I mean, you were there in the 90s. I was there in the 80s. I was there in the 70s. So I know what it was like. And it was a pretty challenging environment. And today, the difference is two things I would say. Number one, there's been an evolution in how we think about what constitutes good leadership, excellent leadership. It really has. Back then, in the 80s, for example, this was true in the 90s too, Jack Welch was on the cover of Fortune every other week. And he was known as Neutron Jack within that company, widely known because he loved firing people. He was pretty top down. And that was considered leadership at its absolute best. And that's questioned today. When you have a leader in a company who has that

Starting point is 00:15:50 attitude, they may have some success. They may get written about. You can imagine a couple people I'm thinking of. But they're not really considered an excellent leader. They're not the kind of leader that people are urged to aspire to be like. And that's an enormous change. And I think that women have had a key role in that. It's basically changed because of technology, the nature of the economy, the knowledge economy, the importance of human knowledge in terms of what creates value in organizations, but it's also changed because of women. who didn't necessarily feel that they had the mainstream, traditional, hierarchical leadership style, who had a different orientation, who had a different approach. And it has benefited men and women and people who choose to define themselves by a different gender, who come from diverse backgrounds and have diverse experiences,

Starting point is 00:17:09 racially, ethnically, in terms of family background and religion. And the workplace, the global workplace, is so diverse now. And that very top-down mode of leading doesn't help people who feel outside the mainstream to begin with, and it also doesn't help people who are concerned not only that they don't necessarily belong, but that what they contribute isn't going to be valued. So that's where we are. And the conditions have changed. And they've changed in a very positive way. And it benefits a big range of people, not just women. And one of the things that I think is really, really important that you talk about that I think was almost like a mirror that popped for me, Sally, is the unconscious bias. And everybody talks about unconscious bias. I think you bring it from the theory to the actual concrete, how do we fix it, which is a big difference. But if I may share a two-minute story, because I think it's actually important for the listeners, unconscious bias is something that will happen to all of us. It's not

Starting point is 00:18:23 men, it's not women. And if I may say, we actually had probably about almost 10 years ago, we had a big delegation or seven years ago, we had a big delegation of entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs, top of the line from Israel, visiting Silicon Valley. I opened a lot of my connections and we went to visit Microsoft and Intercapital and Microsoft Ventures, et cetera. And I met them in the lobby to take them up. And they were a group of 30 women, all dressed beautifully, all talking about shoes and their purses and whatever. And I held my head and I was like, what on earth did I do? How am I going to put my reputation on the line here? And the next day, we actually did a pitch competition with angel investors in the room.

Starting point is 00:19:13 So each woman basically presented her startup. And it was incredible, Sally. Incredible. The companies were spot on. The female founders were on point. One of them, I just had her on the show. Her company now is worth $4 billion. And I did not see it. That's unconscious bias. I did the same thing that they're all doing to us. And the reason I think it's so important to share that story, because we're usually embarrassed.

Starting point is 00:19:47 I am embarrassed that I did that. And I think it's super important to understand we all do this all the time. The question is, what do we do about it? Oh, I agree with what you said so strongly. I mean, women talking about clothes or what they're wearing or their shoes or their handbags is just like guys talking about sports. It's a way of bonding. It's a way of trading information.

Starting point is 00:20:09 And I doubt that a man who was showing up to take some entrepreneurs from Israel who were men around would feel as if, what have I done? I've blown it, if they were talking about sports. It is a perfect example. I may rip it off. It's so good. But I think that one of the reasons I've been able to make this work is that my emphasis has always been on how. I think it's partly because I don't come at this from the point of view of an academic. So I'm not looking at theory. And that makes me unpopular in certain countries. Because I say, well, what is your founding theory? Or what is your basic construct here? I don't have one. I'm just trying to practice. Exactly. I'm trying to look at what

Starting point is 00:20:57 has historically worked and what might work for other people. So that's been my focus. And even in the female advantage, that's why I wanted to do diary studies instead of talk about how people did things, go through their day. This is how she handled this meeting where she had to fire someone. This is how she made those decisions. So I think that's been a very important thing. And if anything, what impelled me to write my most recent book, which was published last year, Rising Together, was really the emphasis on simply identifying unconscious biases as a way to move past having organizational cultures where people felt excluded. I was looking at how do we create inclusive leaders. And I had heard so many leaders say, I understand the importance of

Starting point is 00:21:54 inclusive culture, but we don't know how to do it. We don't know how to build it. So wanted to provide hows. That's always been my goal. And I think that you provide hows by looking at behaviors and what behaviors serve your goals and what behaviors undermine it. And that that's so much more important than digging out unconscious biases and surfacing those, which is where a lot of diversity and inclusion, equity, the whole 10 yards programs have in fact gotten stuck on the what and the definitions rather than how we do this. So share with us a little bit, Sally, because we're all going to run into the same episode that I ran into.

Starting point is 00:22:44 And you talk a lot about addressing the resistance and the policies and the momentum and measuring the progress. What would you say to someone in my shoes? How do you start bridging the divides, as you call it? Well, I think, first of all, what you did was very important. You recognize when you have an unconscious bias. You don't need to sit around in a group for a three-day retreat off-site in order to have that happen. If we're honest with ourselves, we have seen that. I've witnessed it in myself. I know that there are certain things I have an unconscious bias about. So what I try to do, I'll talk about myself. When I try to do that, let's say I'm not crazy about, for example, neck tattoos. I have a little bit of a hard time with those. And I understand that's just a cultural thing when I grew up, all that. So when I am talking to somebody who's got that, who's got a neck tattoo, I'm focused on turning off the judgment part of my brain and listening to what they say and trying to listen wholeheartedly with really my whole heart and soul to what they're saying and then to identify places in which I have common ground with them. And there

Starting point is 00:24:07 are always many, many of them. So it's, you want to focus on what you have in common with people rather than what distinguishes you from them, or God forbid, what makes you a morally superior person to them. So that's just a really, really important step. And then you have to think, what can I do to give this person the benefit of my goodwill? Not the benefit of my doubt, because that's inherently negative, but the benefit of my goodwill.

Starting point is 00:24:41 How can I demonstrate that? I can say, you know, that's really interesting you bring that point up. I'm thinking of someone that might be of an advantage for you to be in touch with. I'd love to make that connection. Let me know if that works for you. That kind of thing, connecting people, trying to help them become more visible, more known for what they want to be known for. Those kind of career boosters, acting, we get out of our own way when we act, not when we think. So we want to think about how are we going to act here. Ooh, that's powerful.

Starting point is 00:25:19 And that's in your latest book. I think you talk a lot about it in Rising Together. And I do want to also go for a second back to a previous book from 2018, How Women Rise, because I think that's also really, really interesting because this is where you talk about some of the things that we do wrong. Yes, a lot of it is women, but honestly, I feel like a lot of this is both. I think it's really relevant to both genders. Let's talk a little bit about some of them, because I think there's a lot about your hard work will speak for itself. Let me just wait for the opportunities to come my way. Like there's a lot of things that I remember as I was going through this. I was like, check the box, check the box, right? So Sally, talk to us about how did you even come with How Women Rise? And let's talk a little bit about some of the important elements there, like the allies and others. I think there's some really, really important things that I think all our listeners have to hear. Well, thank you. With How Women Rise, I was inspired to write the

Starting point is 00:26:26 book by Marshall Goldsmith's really great book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And Marshall, in that book, based on his now 45 years of coaching experience, was talking about the habits and behaviors that are most likely to undermine successful people as they seek to move further in their careers. And he was very specific. He had 25 or something like that. So I'm reading the book. To me, it's very persuasive. His fundamental idea, I thought it was brilliant, that the same habits and behaviors that can serve us well early in our careers can be the exact same ones that undermine us as we become more successful. And yet we remain loyal to them because they got us here. They got us where we are.

Starting point is 00:27:19 So I was thinking back and I thought, this really reflects my experience. However, Marshall, a lot of the habits that he has in there seem to me to be common or more common among senior male executives. Now, I'm not going to say white male because both of us work all over the world, so talking about what white men do in Japan is pretty fruitless. But male executives who represent the mainstream culture, the mainstream culture in the organization. He had things like, learn to apologize. And I thought, whoa, women don't need to learn to apologize. They need to learn to stop. He had stuff like, don't always talk about how great you are. I thought, okay, I've been working with women at that point for 30 years.

Starting point is 00:28:13 I don't find that to be a problem. So I suggested to him that we collaborate on what started as a project to look at that concept in terms of what were the habits and behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women. And I felt like I knew what they were because I'd been doing workshops everywhere, all around the world, Japan, Kuala Lumpur, South Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Europe, Brazil, et cetera. And I felt like I had a pretty good sense of what they were. And a few of the Marshall completely agreed with a few. He said, wow, I never thought of that. And so we settled on a couple and created this book and it's been so

Starting point is 00:29:03 successful. The rights have been acquired in 24 languages. The most I ever had before was 13. And it has really been a phenomenon. And it has often struck me that I spent all those decades writing about women's strengths, and I never had a book that sold as well as the one time I write about white cats in women's way, you know, their challenges. Women really take it to heart. But it was a very interesting time to publish that book, too, because it came out right before the pandemic. So a lot of these issues got amplified because of the switch to virtual. That was a big deal. But also companies started having book clubs, virtual book clubs, as a way of doing development and training and How Women

Starting point is 00:29:56 Rise was just perfect for it. I even had people say, oh, you wrote 12 habits, one for each month. That was smart. That never occurred to me. So that, it's really been a very clear focus. What you say about women and men is absolutely true. In fact, the biggest shock I had was the first day that book came out, I was doing 16 radio interviews. And over and over, male hosts would say, I identify with some of these behaviors. One guy said, I identify with six of these 12. And I thought, wow, okay, it's not just women. And you're exactly right.

Starting point is 00:30:36 The challenge of visibility, the challenge of building networks when you feel like you're not part of the old boys network. These are things that are really putting your job before your career. That's more a female thing, I have to say. But some of these habits, overvaluing expertise, especially among men who are engineers or accountants or whatever, just, I want to keep my head down and be at my bench and assume I'll get promoted. So it's been very interesting, and especially diverse men.

Starting point is 00:31:09 I've had so many African-American men say, this has more to say to me than any leadership book I've ever read. Because again, it's that feeling of being to some degree an outsider. If I talk about my accomplishments, I'm going to get criticized. Well, you certainly seem to have a high opinion of yourself. That happens to a lot of different men as well. It's amazing because it almost looks like a commercial that I would write about Leap Academy because it's like, yeah, your hard work will not speak for itself. Yes, putting your job ahead of your career. You want to be really intentional, strategic about it. Yes, I know

Starting point is 00:31:44 there's other things. You can have it all, just not at the same time. So let's figure out your priorities, et cetera. The allies, enlisting the allies from day one. There's just so many really, really important points, relationships that I wish they were almost taught in school, which is, I think, a big part here. So here you are, you have these books, you do these speakings. I think to the outside, it looks like an incredible life, which I assume it is, otherwise you wouldn't have done it. But share something hard, because again, entrepreneurship is hard. You're doing it for a long time. And at least I can say that my husband hears me from time to time, like,

Starting point is 00:32:25 I can't do this anymore. And I still love it every single moment of it because it's the best thing that I've done in my life. But Sally, how do you keep on going? How do you motivate yourself? And I think a lot of it is a mission, but I want to go there for a second because I think people will need to hear it. You have to have a mission focus. And I think that is particularly important for entrepreneurs. Being an entrepreneur is lonely. Doing what I did, it's inherently lonely. You also are in the position of there's a lot of weight behind your decisions. Every decision you make determines the success or the rest of your life to some degree, how successful your business is going to be. Do you identify the correct market? Do you go at that market in the correct way? Now, yes, you have people who work for you who do those things, but you're ultimately the decision maker. So that's, to some degree, a lonely place to be, whether it's tech or steel production, whatever it is that you're doing, you do it alone. And that for me was very difficult to do because

Starting point is 00:34:06 I found very few women doing what I was doing. And again, that's where having a mission focus helped. And staying close to the male colleagues and allies who seemed to gravitate my way naturally was also a huge boost. It got easier as time went on. Feeling chronically and being chronically underpaid and not making enough money and knowing, whoa, if I were doing X or what I'd been doing before I quit, I would be in a very different financial position. And that was extremely difficult. During the recession, it became almost unbearable because anybody who made their living doing speaking during that recession in 2008, there was no work. Companies didn't want to land on the front page of the New York Times

Starting point is 00:35:06 the fact that they were having this fancy retreat out in Las Vegas for clients or for people in the company. That was really a no-no then, and the work just disappeared from the table. I remember I was in Morocco celebrating a big birthday with my college roommate, October 2008, and I saw what was happening and I thought, I wonder if this is going to affect my business. Whoa, well, I got home and every single thing I was doing the rest of the year and in 2009 had been canceled. Everything, everything. So that was extremely difficult to put a huge amount of financial pressure on both my husband and I. He had also lost his job in that period.

Starting point is 00:35:55 So it was really tough to get through, but I learned a lot about being tough. And I wouldn't say I was glad for what happened. Certainly I wasn't glad for the people who lost their houses, which happened right around me for sure. But for myself, I learned very important lessons about not being grandiose, about not assuming that because one thing had gone well, now it was all going to start going well and going my way. And now I'd hit the point of success and no return. I kind of had that because

Starting point is 00:36:32 you do to keep yourself going because it's hard. So I got rid of that. And I looked at everything I did. This may be the last time I make some money. So I got much more careful, much more deliberate, much more intentional. And I want to go back to that word intentional because you brought that up and it's one of my favorite words. It's one of the most important words anybody who's starting a new enterprise of any kind can have in their mind, which is to be intentional about what you do, about the path you choose, about the path you don't choose, about who you bring in as allies, about your attitude toward people who may disappoint you, whether they're clients or employees or whatever, how you're going to handle that? You want to be intentional in everything you do.

Starting point is 00:37:28 That's going to be, I think, the most helpful thing. I think it's really interesting that most people, this is where they would have stopped. 2008, 2009 was what you're describing, or probably a little earlier was the first naysayers. But I'm just saying, you know, this would be a big fear factor. What do you think is something maybe that people not necessarily know that built you to who you are today? Do you think there's something in the past that created this Sally? It's accepting that you can survive something bad. It's having some kind of, for me, historical perspective, knowing that people lived through the Great Depression. Maybe it was the fact that my parents had and their generation had. And then the men went off to war. And then a lot of them died or they came back with terrible illnesses or missing limbs, et cetera. We had men in our neighborhood. That was true of. So I think it was seeing that generation go through some really challenging times that helped keep it in perspective for me. This is the most greatest disaster that's ever

Starting point is 00:38:49 happened. It was very difficult. I never doubted that I could find a way to get through it. Because again, I felt that I was in the right place in terms of how organizations were changing, how leadership was changing, how technology was changing. I felt like I had that on my side. So I did not ultimately think I could fail. Now, did I have a plan B? No. Did I then quickly get a plan B and act on it? Yes. I knew I could write speeches for executives, so I started doing that. I called around. Do you know anybody who'd need a speech written? I worked for a couple consulting firms that needed someone to write speeches for executives. This was rather embarrassing because I'd been on the cover of magazines and a big hothot in some ways, but too bad. I had to get

Starting point is 00:39:47 through this and that's what I was doing and that's how I got through it. So I found ways of being a paid writer and that was not a writer of my own stuff that enabled me to get through it. And then I used that ability to survive to immediately write another book that I felt would be helpful, the book called The Female Vision, Women's Real Power at Work, which was not very successful, but made a fantastic workshop. And that really ended up being a part of the financial and mental and spiritual recovery that I went through. What you're also showing is how creative you get when you have to. And I think that's a big piece that entrepreneurs sometimes miss, that actually when we don't have capital, this is where we get really creative and that can actually launch a lot of great things. So I just love this example,

Starting point is 00:40:46 Sally. What would you say now that you're looking at your career and everything that you accomplished and I didn't even read all the accolades and the prizes and the awards and it's like, I mean, the list is pretty long, Sally. What would you say to your younger self? What do you think you should have listened to when you were starting? I would have said, and in a way I did this, trust your instincts. I did that. I would have also said, don't expect that just because you get into a good position, just because things seem like they're going well, that that means it's all gonna work from here on out.

Starting point is 00:41:34 And I think that was a misunderstanding that I had. I felt if I can just write a book that's a bestseller, if I can just get this client, be invited to speak at this forum where there are a lot of big shots, then I'll be fine. It doesn't work like that. That's what I didn't know. And so that would be advice to my younger self. Don't take anything for granted. Remain humble. That's important. When you talked about creativity, I think that's the other advantage, if you will, and having big setbacks, it can or at least should make you more humble and you will benefit from

Starting point is 00:42:12 that. That will make you a better friend. It'll make you a better colleague. It'll make you a better member of whatever community you're a part of. So those are very important things, but that's what I would have said. Trust your gut. And I did. And don't expect just because certain things are successful that it means everything is going to become successful from now on out. Oh, this is so powerful because one of the things that I think we do is we live our life with if, if then.

Starting point is 00:42:44 If I get this, then I will do this. If I will achieve this, then I will be happy. There's always an if. And in leadership, especially entrepreneurship, this is not how it goes. You first say yes, and then you figure out the how, and then you need to trust yourself that you'll figure this out. The order of things change, and you better be happy through the journey. Otherwise, you never get to the if because the carrot keeps on moving. That's exactly right. You never get to the if. You never get, if that's your orientation, you never get to the point. This is why people destroy themselves through greed. It's because

Starting point is 00:43:22 it's always the if. I remember when I was working on an earlier book, Everyday Revolutionaries, I was interviewing a woman who, I don't remember exactly what she did, but she was an advisor, a coach. She worked with physicians. And she also taught medical ethics. And I was watching her one day and she had a class, I think it was out in the Bay Area actually. And one of the students who was a medical student said, what is your best advice for not ending up making unethical decisions. And she said, don't buy too big a house. And I thought that was so sensible. And it's the kind of stuff we do when we have some success. I remember I had a big speech in Toronto. This kind of fits in with your Israeli female entrepreneurs, had a big

Starting point is 00:44:22 speech in Toronto. So I went into this unbelievably expensive store, and I kind of blew a big budget on all these clothes because now I was going to blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, they didn't work for me, and it was ridiculous. And no, I had some issues then. But it's that kind of you get dazzled and you think, this is how I'm going to demonstrate faith in myself by making a really foolish decision and by making a greedy decision.

Starting point is 00:44:51 This is how I'm going to commit to my career. And I think that's one of the ways in which we can go off track. So let's assume we don't want to be grid. But if you want to summarize it for the listeners, people who are driven, they want to achieve big things. Some of them are men, some of them are women, but they want to conquer the world. They want to feel unstoppable. What would you say?

Starting point is 00:45:17 Step by step, one thing at a time, really learn from your mistakes. People give that advice. How do we learn from your mistakes. People give that advice. How do we learn from our mistakes? We learn from our mistakes by accepting the emotional impact that making a really bad mistake will have on us, accepting the often financial or marketing impact that a bad mistake will have. So we want to accept that. We don't want to deny it. We don't want to soft pedal it. And that's going to take a moment. It's not going to be immediate. And then once we've done that, we need to go to our network of allies and colleagues and say,

Starting point is 00:45:59 this is what happened. This has been very hard. Has anything like this happened to you? How did you handle it? Has it happened to someone that you know, that you admired how they handle it? How do you do that? This is one thing Marshall has great research that shows, Marshall Goldsmith, that people who are able to correct mistakes, people who are able to make long-term positive improvements in their lives, their careers, their organizations, all have one thing in common. They do not do it alone. And this is one of my firmest beliefs. We can't do it alone. We need that network. We need to build that network from the very start. And it's really, really important because that's how we survive. We have that network. That network is key to resilience. We can't really develop sufficient resilience, especially today when everything's so fast changing. You can make a bet on an organization. You think this is going to be fantastic. Everything changes.

Starting point is 00:47:11 There's an issue in the world, in the technology, whatever it is, an economic shift, and it doesn't work. So you need that resilience. And that really comes from not trying to do it alone and also from having the ability to reflect where you may have made a mistake and to accept that you did. I many times say that I eat failures for breakfast. So what you need to have is that extreme ownership to look in the mirror and say, okay, so what do we change to be better? And I have my network that I'm leaning on. Our clients have the Leap Academy network that

Starting point is 00:47:52 they're leaning on. And I think just not being alone through this journey is just so, so, so important, Sally. So I just love this conversation. Thank you so much for all the insights and tips and inspiration and work that you've done for 35 years to enable people like me to get to those VP roles and to then become an entrepreneur that I am today. So thank you, Sally. Oh, it was wonderful. I really enjoyed talking to you. We have very thoughtful conversations.

Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - The Woman Who Transformed How We Think About Inclusive Leadership | Sally Helgesen

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