The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Raina Gandhi, Empowering Women to Overcome Self-Limiting Beliefs in Leadership Roles

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

Raina Gandhi, Empowering Women to Overcome Self-Limiting Beliefs in Leadership Roles Risingtideconsultingllc.com About the Guest(s): Raina Gandhi is the founder and CEO of Rising Tide Consulting. With over two decades of experience in various industries such as banking, consulting, nonprofit, and higher education, she took a break from her career to raise her daughters and later returned to face hidden internal and external barriers hindering women's career advancement. Episode Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, Raina Gandhi shares her journey of overcoming self-limiting beliefs to empower professional women. She dives into the importance of addressing internal and external barriers that impact career trajectories and offers insights on building confidence, navigating imposter syndrome, and achieving career clarity. Raina Gandhi's expertise in women's negotiations, conflict resolution, and leadership training shines in this enlightening conversation. Key Takeaways: Raina Gandhi helps professional women overcome internal barriers like imposter syndrome and external challenges such as negotiating their worth to advance in their careers. The importance of self-reflection and understanding the narrative we tell ourselves when overcoming career obstacles is highlighted in Reina's approach. Effective communication and collaboration are essential in leadership, with a focus on building trust, fostering psychological safety, and sharing a cohesive vision within organizations. Investing in professional development for employees can significantly impact morale, retention rates, and organizational success by honing leadership skills and empowering individuals. Reina emphasizes the significance of valuing diverse perspectives, creating inclusive environments, and promoting women's empowerment to drive innovation and success in the workplace. Notable Quotes: "People now don't wanna go into work just to go into work. They wanna believe in what they're doing." "It's really important for them to feel like they're doing something and it's working." "There's always drama. You can't avoid it, but how you respond to it is so important." "I think having that is really important because again, everyone wins." "You are going to be a better leader if you have some direction from someone who's objective and who has been down this path."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The Iron Lady shrill sings it. That means it makes it official. Welcome to Big Show.

For 16 years and over 2,000 episodes. 16 years this month in August of 2024. Wow, what a long journey it's been. Should I quit already? Nah, why not just keep going? Anyway, guys, we've got to get to year 20. I think that's the new milestone. Anyway, guys, as always, for the show to your family, friends, and relatives,

go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com,.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, linkedin.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, Chris Voss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. We're going to be talking to that amazing lady today who helps empower professional women to overcome self-limiting beliefs that are holding them back from flourishing and leading balanced, happier, and more purposeful lives. May help some guys, too, when it really comes down to it because human nature needs as much help as it can get. Today we have Raina Gandhi on the show with us today. She's the founder and CEO of Rising Tide Consulting and she has over two decades of experience in baking, consulting, non-profit, and higher education. She traded in a promising career in the financial industries, services industries, that is, to take an 11-year hiatus from the workforce to raise her daughters and serve as CEO of her growing household. When she relaunched her career, she experienced a path too often

traveled by women, hidden internal and external barriers that impacted her career trajectory and advancement. Welcome to the show, Raina. How are you? I'm great. First, happy anniversary for your show. That's awesome. We should throw a birthday party. I think it's on the 19th or something.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, someone had foresight 16 years ago. So welcome to the show. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Sure. So my Instagram is rising.tide.consulting. My website is www.risingtideconsultingllc.com.

And you can definitely find me on LinkedIn. I spend a good amount of time there. And that's R-A-I-N-A-G-A-N-D-H-I. LinkedIn is such a great place. That's where all the money's at really when it comes down to it. There's no money on Twitter. I don't know. Just throwing shade at Twitter. What can I say? I'm not even calling it right because I refuse to call it X. So there you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do there at Rising Tide Consulting. Yeah, sure.

Essentially, I help women who experience all different kinds of barriers, whether they're internal, like low confidence or imposter syndrome, or they're listening a little bit too much to that negative inner critic. So those kinds of internal barriers to external barriers, not being able to self-advocate and negotiate their worth or getting passed up for promotions and really helping them better understand where a lot of that is coming from internally and helping them work through a lot of that to make sure that they have great, fantastic careers if that's what they're looking to achieve. There you go. Women in negotiations, women-centered coaching, conflict resolution,

imposter syndrome. A lot of people go through that. Women's empowerment. So tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you grow up? What was your journey through life? And how did you kind of end up down this way in your words? Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking. So I'm a first generation American, which is a very big part of my identity. My parents, they immigrated from India in the late 1960s. I was born and brought up in New Jersey. And then I went to college in New York. After New York, I had my first job in investment banking, and I did that for a few years. Went to India for a year, did microfinance work there, came back, went into banking again, went for my MBA, went back into banking.

And then my husband, I just got married, and he's in medicine, and he got accepted to a fellowship program in Tennessee. So we knew we were going to be in Memphis for a year and then we knew we would be in Nashville for a year. And that's really when we decided that maybe it was time to build our family. And so instead of working for a year in New York and then a year in Memphis and then a year in Nashville, I thought, okay, maybe it made more sense for me to take the two years that I was going to be in Tennessee to raise my, I didn't know it then, but daughter. And so once my husband was done with his fellowship, we moved to North Carolina because that's where he got his first job.

And that's where we settled. And I just assumed that, you know, when I moved to wherever we were going to go permanently, that that's where I was going to start my career. But I think the university had the universe, the universe, excuse me, had other plans for our family. And after my husband's training, like I said, we moved to North Carolina. And then my younger daughter, my second daughter was born about five, six months afterwards. So then I was home with my daughters for several more years. I when my older one was about 11. And my younger one was eight, I decided it was time. It was time for me to go back to work. And we lived in Winston-Salem at the time. And it just so happened that I knew someone who worked at Wake Forest who knew that I was going to start

looking for jobs. And she said, hey, just talk to some of these people at the business school. I think it'd be something that you might be interested in pursuing. And I did. And that was really the one job that I applied for. And I was fortunate enough to get it after taking 11 years of being strong on PTAs and other organizations. I hadn't really worked for a living, for money, I should say. And they took a chance on me. And for that, I'll always, always be grateful. And I was there for about two years.

That's why I started my act two, I like to say, and did that for, yeah, did that for a couple of years. And then I went to, I wanted to do something that required a little bit more leadership. I wanted to build my management leadership skills. So I moved the family up to the Northeast a little bit, still below the Mason Dixon, but to the Washington DC area and worked at American University for four years in a more leadership role. Did that for a while and then decided that I wanted to be closer to home. I live in Baltimore. So just wanted my older daughter was going to be in her senior year and wanted to be

around a little bit more and decided that I would try something a little bit outside of the business school realm and worked at the School of Education at Johns Hopkins. So did that. Yeah, so did that. So I've done a lot of different things and did that for just under two years. And then my position was eliminated. And I can get into a little bit more of that later. But I then was at this crossroads and I didn't know

what I wanted to do I thought maybe I will continue looking at opportunities at at Hopkins and I looked for a little while and didn't have much luck and I started to really think about what was going on over the last 10-15 years of my career and having taken that time off and what that was like for me. And I came to the realization that the impact of losing my job was far greater than I'd given it thought. And what started happening is I started realizing that I just, I started experiencing some self-doubt and some uncertainty. And I just didn't understand where it was coming from. I mean, here's someone who had no issues taking 11 years off and getting back into the workforce and going zero to 60 overnight, literally, and who spent many years supporting emotionally and in many ways, her family, her dad, my dad was in very ill for some

time and just managing that process and taking him to India and making sure that things were settled there and doing all of that from here and from the US and just a lot of different things that I've been through in my life. And I just couldn't understand where this self-doubt was coming from. And I thought, you know, there are a number of times that I've had to fight for a seat at the table that I know that I rightfully deserve. The gatekeeping that was done, keeping information from me when I knew that I needed that to do my job well. There was just a lot of things that were going on in my career that I sort of brushed off and said, okay, this isn't the right fit for me, so I'm going to move on. Or this isn't how I conduct

myself, so I'm going to move on. But really being passed up for promotions and not being recognized, I think over time, it really impacted me and my self-doubt. Here's someone who taught negotiations. That's what I did. I was in career services. I taught how to gain career clarity. And there I was getting stuck. All these years of this work, and I just couldn't understand. And I think what it came down to was really trying to think about what the narrative was that I was telling myself. And I came to many self-realizations. I did a lot of self-reflecting. And that's when I realized I wanted to go deeper into what it is about so many women that these things happen to. I mean, after

losing my job, I talked to so many other women and so many of them have gone through something very, very similar. So it didn't matter where we started our careers. It didn't matter whether or not we took time off. It didn't matter whether we were in a prominently women-centered career or in a male-dominated career. It didn't matter. We were all experiencing a lot of the same things. And so I decided that I wanted to study that a bit deeper. And so I did. And I came to realize that there's a lot of limiting beliefs that we have and that there are ways to overcome

some of those. And that's what I help women do now. That's my very long-winded way of saying that's what I do. That's what you do. And that's the journey you've been on. That's what makes it so interesting is people's stories and the stories of the fabric of who they are. And, you do, and that's the journey you've been on. That's what makes it so interesting is people's stories, and the stories are the fabric of who they are. It's amazing how we go through all these twists and turns in life, and we learn different things, and then they end up being something we can utilize and help others with as we master what's going on with our life.

So that's pretty awesome. So tell us about what you do on your website. How do you coach people? Do you have like pre-programs or do you do a one-on-one? It looks like you do some speaking engagements. Tell us some of the offerings that you have on there. Sure. So I do a couple of different things. I do one-on-one as well and I do group coaching as well. Oftentimes with the group coaching, it is within one organization. One of the observations that I've made is back in the day when I started my career, for example, I could go over to somebody else's cubicle or I could go over to their office and say, hey, let's go for a drink later or let's

go catch a movie over the weekend or something like that. And now with the change in how things are done at work, the hybrids and the remote jobs and all of that, it's just a lot more difficult for women, especially to make these connections. And so I think there is something about uplifting each other. And I like to do group coaching, small groups within organizations, so they can get to know each other better, they can build a circle of trust. And then we go through a series of different topics. So it could be negotiations, it could be imposter syndrome, it could be gaining career clarity, I do a future self vision exercise, I do a let's look at where our careers have been and where we want them to go exercise.

So we do a lot of that together. And there's a lot of group learning that happens in that. But then there are also executives who need very specific support. So I help them with that as well. So sometimes it's just working with them. Sometimes it's working with them and their boss and some other people at the organization. So it really just depends. There you go. So a lot to do there. You do speaking as well. People that want to hire you for speaking engagements, things can do that. How do people reach out to you when they can have the option to do business with you or see if you maybe work together as a good fit? Yeah. So either on Instagram or on LinkedIn or through my website. Yeah. Any of those places. And you do leadership training. What do you find people, I don't know if you want to make it specific to women because that's what your focus is,

but either way, what do you find most people struggle with right now in leadership? So, that's a loaded question, Chris. I kind of threw you a curveball there. Let me think. You know, I think a lot of it is a lack of self-reflection. I think a lot of times people think they come off a certain way or that they're being really fair or they've got it, but they don't actually have it. And they don't have anyone telling them that they don't have it because people are afraid. So I've seen a lot of lack of psychological safety in the workplace.

And I think that leaders oftentimes have a really tough time building that. And it's very easy to destroy that. And it's very difficult to rebuild. And so a lot of times I have to sort of remind leaders, give them some tools and ways in which they can be a little bit more resourceful and from within themselves, use their own strengths to then take on better leadership in their organizations, really. There you go. Yeah, I like the self-reflection comment that you make. A lot of people, when I ask them what their leadership style is or some of the aspects of how they lead, they give me a blank.

They're just like, I don't know. I just do whatever I do and it works. Or it doesn't work. It doesn't work and I'm trying to figure out why. Yeah. as opposed to being self-reflective and thinking, okay, what are, what's going to make me the best leader that I can be? And where are my gaps? And the other thing that I think leaders don't often do very well is they don't build a team that fills their gaps, right? So we all have different strengths. And if you want to have a high functioning team, you have to learn to leverage

those strengths in each person. And I think that can be very difficult at times because they don't they're not they're so busy trying to figure out some of the big picture things. They're really not thinking about their leadership and sharing a vision and making sure people are feel bought into the vision and feel like they are part of that. You know, all the things people now don't want to go into work, just go into work and say, I'm working eight to five or nine to five. They want to believe in what they're doing. And especially women, we have so many things that we're managing all the time, right? So we really want to feel like when we're going to work that we're making a difference. And when we're presented with leaders who are not able to be inclusive and give us a seat at the table and make us feel like we are making a difference, even though we know we can and that we are perfectly capable, but we're just not able to get there. It actually hurts the organization, honestly, more than anybody else, because what's ending up happening is is let's say there's 10 people on a

leadership team and nine of them are men and so as it is the woman has to you know elbow a bunch of other women just to get that one seat and then they sit at the table and then they have to feel like they have to fit in so now they're going to bring that masculine energy in them instead of all of that feminine energy of fairness and empathy and all of the things that make women really solid in their lives. They're not bringing that to the table. And so ultimately, organizations are missing out because they're not getting that diverse perspective that they're looking for. Yeah. I learned a long time ago as a CEO that I don't have the corner on all the great ideas. I need help from my staff.

I need help from people that are around me. And, you know, and sometimes they have more insight than I do because they're either working the front line or they're working somewhere in the middle, you know, and they have a perspective of the reality or whatever is going on with my companies that I don't. And I have to be able to trust them, but I also have to be open to their ideas because some of the best ideas I've ever had were my ideas for my employees. My employees are like, hey, you know, you should do it that way. And I'm like, holy crap, that's it. That's the answer I've been looking for. And, you know, having that perspective, you know, really helps. Like you say, if you're not engaging all your people's hearts and minds to make them feel like they can contribute and be a part of everything, it makes a difference. When it comes to communication and collaboration, how can leaders maybe be better and improve that sort of leadership? So I think, you know, when people think about communication, they think, okay, let's get this information out to the stakeholders. What they don't realize is that different stakeholders are looking for different information.

And so sending out one format for everybody at an organization or sending out, sometimes that works. Sometimes there's just some announcements that you need to make and everyone just needs to be in the loop. But what people are looking for are going to be different. What people are privy to is going to be different. And really being able to navigate that and say, my leadership team knows this much and let's make sure that all of us

are sending the same same message out to our teams as well so not only do leaders sometimes forget to espouse their vision and and share it but they also sometimes are telling the leadership team one thing and then are telling other people something else and then other you know then the leaders are getting confused and they're not sharing the same information. And then that just causes chaos. And so I think a couple of things to remember with communication is not everybody receives it the same way you have to make sure that you're talking to the right stakeholders in with the information that they want to receive in the way that they need to receive it. And then also making

sure that the communication is consistent and it's as often as it needs to be because people do not like to feel uninformed. And that again is where a lot of times psychological unsafety starts to erupt. Yeah. If you feel uninformed, you don't understand what's going on. You don't understand the principles. This is one of the things that I used to do what i always used to explain to my employees why we did things the way they did and why sometimes the uh why sometimes the i mean just the process of what we put into it was the reason why we put into it and that seemed to really help people because it wasn't just barking at them to like just go there and do this you don't feel like you have much input or you don't feel very, you don't feel very part of the solution that way. And so by taking and

telling them, explaining the option of how things work and how to do them better and why we built it, sometimes they could come up with their own innovations and they would come to us and be like, Hey Chris, you know, you, you told me this is how you do stuff, but you know, there is a better way to do this. You could do it this way. And I'm like, Oh, okay. You're right. And so just empowering employees makes all the difference really. Yeah. And I also think, you know, I think that what you said is really important, that why piece, why are we doing it this way? But also, why aren't we doing it another way? Oftentimes, you'll hear people saying, I know that the CEO decided to do things this way, or the CFO said that we were going to do things this way, but why wouldn't we do it this way?

Isn't this way better? And so there are going to be a handful of isn't this way betters. And I think it's just as important for the leadership to address why those are not the right options at the right time, so that people understand that they've been heard, but these are the reasons that that's not practical. There's a huge difference between people who feel like they've been heard with their ideas and been made to understand why that may not be the best option right now. And that versus just being told we're doing it this way. And I see that a lot. And that's not, that doesn't help anybody because it just, again, makes people feel like they're not being heard

and that their ideas are not valued. But it may be that the CEO or the leadership knows has a lot more information. Let's say, you know, we work together and I have an idea and I've come to you with it and you've just said, no, we're not going to do it. I'm just going to walk away thinking, okay, Chris doesn't really listen. He's got, you know, he's, he's got tunnel vision. He's thinking about what he wants to do, but he's not really listening to what other people want,

as opposed to, Hey, you know what, man, these are the reasons that we can't do that now. Or, hey, I know why you're asking me to do it this way. And I think it makes a lot of sense. There's additional information that I have that I can't share with you right now. But I would, you know, so just I need you to trust me for now. That trust is not going to exist if you can't have those conversations. And if you haven't built that to begin with. So there's a lot of that as well. Yeah.

That's a really important factor. You know, it's, it's people feeling like they're part of the process more and more of this generations, you know, Gen Z is really into this. They want to know the why,

when, and how they want to know that they're having an impact. They want to know that they're making a difference. I mean, it's really important for them to feel like they're doing something and it's working. And it's, you know, I understand how important it is to them. What are some other aspects we should tease out to people to entice them

to give you a call, hook up with you for coaching services? Yeah, thanks for asking. So a couple of different things, right? I think if you are a manager, or a leader or a boss, supervisor, I think one of the things that unfortunately, right now, the market being as wonky as it is, we may not be able to increase our salaries for our employees as readily. And so another way to really boost morale is to invest in their professional development. And so I think companies, organizations that are interested in uplifting their women, uplifting their people and gaining retention and making sure that people are satisfied and working optimally, I think investing in a professional development is a great idea. And so they can reach out to me and we can talk about different ways that we might be able to working optimally. I think investing in the professional development is a great idea. And so they can reach out to me and we can talk about different ways that we might be able to collaborate

on that. I think people who are individually struggling, we spend, if you think about the amount of time people spend in the office, complaining to each other or just being negative because they're not understanding certain situations. If that amount of time was spent on doing the actual work, we'd be a lot more efficient and we'd probably get a lot more out of it. Our organizations would get a lot more out of it. There's nothing wrong with talking at the water cooler, but there's also a lot of, again, I feel like I keep bringing this word up, but there's a little bit less of psychological safety in counting on people who are in your organization and complaining to them and talking to them because you don't know what's being reported where and what's being discussed. And so having someone from the outside who your employees can trust, that you can trust, and advocating for yourself to have someone who is like that is really important.

Because again, everyone wins. You're going to be a better leader if you have some direction from someone who's objective and who has been down this path. And your organization is going to be better off because you're going to be expending your energy on the things that are going to move the organization forward and impact the bottom line as opposed to all the other that comes with the managing and the drama. The managing and the drama.

That's what I miss, the drama. Not really. But yeah, I mean, there's always drama. What do you need to do? There's always drama. You can't avoid it, but how you respond to it is so important. There you go. I love that.

How you respond to it makes all the difference. Irina, give us your dot coms as we go out. Tell people where they can find you on the interwebs and any final pitch to people to reach out to you. Yeah, sure. Thanks. Again, it's www.risingtideconsultingllc.com. I'm working on my website a little bit, so you can definitely reach out to me from there.

But if you'd like to, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. That's Reina Gandhi, R-A-I-N-A, last name is spelled G-A-N-D-H-I. Everybody wants to spell and put the G in the wrong place. So it's G-A-N-D-H-I. And then my Instagram is rising.tide.consulting. And I'd love to hear from you together. I think that we can really impact morale and retention and help everyone feel really satisfied with their careers. There you go. Tap into those resources. You're paying for them already. So utilize them. That's right. That's right. Imagine, you know what, Chris? Imagine if you're spending $5,000, $10,000 for someone to go to a conference for three days with the travel and everything else. The things that they're going to get are networking in places like that. But they're not necessarily going to hone their managerial skills or leadership skills.

It's a very different investment. Yeah. Sometimes they're just off partying at the night parties. I know that goes to CS. I don't know what you're talking about. I've never done that. Oh, yeah. No one's ever done that. Everyone just goes to the event and goes back to the hotel that goes to CS. I don't know what you're talking about. I've never done that. Oh, yeah. No one's ever done that. Everyone just goes to the event and goes back to the

hotel and goes to sleep. That's right. There's no partying in Vegas at all whatsoever. Absolutely not. So there you go. Thank you very much, Raina, for coming on the show. Thanks for joining us, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, 4ChanceCrispFast, LinkedIn.com, 4ChanceCrispFast, CrispFast1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much, Chris.