This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Lead Bigger with Anne Chow | 253

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Leadership is no longer just about who sits at the head of the table—it’s about making sure everyone has a seat at the table. In this episode, I’m joined by a groundbreaking leader who embodies this philosophy. Anne Chow, the first woman and the first woman of color to become CEO at AT&T Business, shares her insights on leading outside the traditional mold and embracing inclusion as a transformative leadership tool. During her time at AT&T Business, Anne led over 35,000 employees, serving 3 million business customers globally. Today, she continues to lead as the Lead Director on the board of Franklin Covey, as a board member for 3M and CSX, and as a faculty member at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her book, Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion, offers actionable strategies for leading with authenticity and challenging the status quo—my kind of leadership! Anne Chow’s no-nonsense approach challenges us to rethink leadership—not just as a title or a position, but as an inclusive practice. Because when we lead inclusively, we lead bigger—and we bring out the best in everyone. So LEAD well and lead BIG! Connect with Our Guest: Anne Chow  Website:https://www.theannechow.com/  Book: https://www.theannechow.com/lead-bigger/  IG: https://www.instagram.com/theannechow/  LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annehchow  Related Podcast Episodes: The Sixth Level Of Leadership with Dr. Stacy Feiner Who’s Entitled Now?! with Dr. Jessica Kriegel 4 Truths of Radiant Change with Kristen Lisanti Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil, and you are listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast, where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. From kitchens to boardrooms, coding dens to art studios, we're exploring the multifaceted experiences of today's woman, confirming that the new definition of woman's work is whatever feels authentic, true, and right for you. You are the decider. And for many women, woman's work includes stepping into some sort of leadership role. Whether that be a leader in your community or your family, in your company or in your own business, whether leading one or

leading millions, women are leading in very powerful ways. While I'd argue that women have been leading in unrecognized ways for centuries, most of what we know today about what it means to lead a corporation or a country, much of what we traditionally understand about leadership from books and courses has been shaped by a masculine perspective. As the world changes, so does our understanding of what it means to lead. The pace of change from technological advancements to social norms demands a new kind of leadership, one that is adaptable, empathetic, and inclusive. The old playbook with its rigid hierarchies and command and control strategies just don't

cut it anymore. Leadership is no longer just about authority or position. It's about influence, collaboration, and the ability to inspire others. It's about leading with both the head and the heart and understanding that the most successful leaders are those who create environments where everyone feels valued and able to contribute, which makes leadership a significantly harder skill to learn today. It requires us to be open and curious, committed to continuous learning and growth, and to have a willingness to make mistakes and navigate complexity with

some measure of grace. At least we hope, right? We get to lead bigger. So whether you're a season leader or an aspiring one, or somebody who just wants to make a difference in your corner of the world, this episode is for you. Our guest is Ann Chow, the first woman and first woman of color to hold the position of CEO at AT&T, overseeing more than 35,000 employees who collectively served 3 million business customers worldwide during her time there. She is currently the lead director on the board of FranklinCovey, serves on the board of 3M and CSX, and teaches at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Her book, Lead Bigger, The Transformative Power of Inclusion, offers a no-nonsense approach, which, by the way, is my favorite kind of approach, to leading outside the traditional parameters. So, Anne, thank you for joining us to talk about leading bigger. And I want to make sure in my introduction, if I missed anything or got anything wrong, by asking you what you mean when

you say leading bigger. Yeah, thank you so much, Nicole. And I'm thrilled to be here with you and your listeners. So for me, leading bigger is all about the evolution of leadership into the modern times. You know, when we think about any of the dimensions, many of which you talked about in your introduction, whether it's technological, social, political, environmental, everything evolves, right? Humanity evolves. And so why would it not make sense that leadership should evolve with the times? And that really, for me, was one of the driving forces behind why I wrote this book. You know, I'm often asked, I suppose, just given the kind of background that I've had

in the roles that I play today, how did you do it, right? How did you do this leadership thing on such a big scale when others had not? And the answers are in this book. I learned to lead bigger and I wanted to share that with the world. I love that you did or that you have. Thank you for doing that. And I guess give us some insights into what you learned from your very unique experience about what that takes from you and maybe even some of the challenges you faced in growing as a leader. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe it would help just to touch on where did the origins of this start, right? I'm a proud second generation American. I grew up in a time when there were not a lot

of people like me, right? Whether it was in elementary school and high school, even entering college as an engineer. And so I always had this feeling of, quite frankly, not being included. I never really fit anywhere, quite frankly. You know, was I a nerd? You know, was I what? You know, it just kind of plagued me my whole life. And so I was always attuned to this idea of inclusion and belonging and connection because it's something that I lacked heavily when I was growing up. And as a result, when I entered the professional workforce, I realized that the ability to connect truly with people wherever they were could become a superpower. I worked hard at it because I didn't fit in, right? So I worked hard to try to belong, if you will. And through those experiences, as my roles evolved, I realized that leading bigger is really quite simply all about widening your perspective to have greater performance and impact, right? And I have come to, since the word has become a thing, I think it was really in the early 2000s,

use leading bigger synonymously with inclusive leadership. And I wholeheartedly believe, Nicole, that inclusion is a core leadership competency of the modern world. And if you do not lead inclusively, you will lose to somebody who does. And I believe that in every ounce of my being. I couldn't agree more. And yet I see often this sort of attempt to delegate it out. You know, we see diversity, equity, inclusion councils or affinity groups or even consultants or what have you. And it kind of feels, or even to the others in the organization, like whether it be women or people of color, it's like, it's now become your responsibility to sort of figure this out for us. How do we make the shift from having it be something we delegate, given our already busy

schedules and so much already on our plate, to something we learn and develop within ourselves as leaders? Yeah, it's such a great question. I think, Nicole, in order for me to answer it, I have to ground us in my view of DEI, right? You almost can't listen to the news, read the paper without something being commented upon with respect to DEI. So I actually am not a fan of the acronym because I think it oversimplifies three incredibly important, albeit interconnected, but separate topics, okay? DEI has somehow been relegated to issues

of representation for gender and race. Diversity is so much more. Diversity is just simply a reality. With every generation that comes, I'm the proud mom of two Gen Z daughters, every generation becomes more and more diverse. We are learning about many aspects of diversity as they evolve, right? Who would have thought that whether you wore a mask or not would have been an element of diversity? So I actually believe that a lot of the effort, using your words, to delegate, you know, inclusion, have been bounded almost mistakenly, inadvertently, right? Nobody's doing this because they intend to do something less effective than it could be. But they're doing it with this eye on gender and race representation. Representation is not enough, right? When we

think about equity, when we think about inclusion, it is about having the best talent. It is about connecting with the market, the whole market, whether it's customers, future customers, whether it's investors, future investors, whoever your stakeholders are, you need to connect with your stakeholders in meaningful ways. And the opposite of inclusion is exclusion. So in my book, the way that I attempt to reframe the responsibility of every leader is I have a lead bigger framework, which consists of the work, workforce, and workplace. And you're absolutely right. Today, leaders tend to focus on the work, let's get the job done. And they delegate the workforce initiatives and the workplace initiatives to organizations such as HR,

maybe even real estate, and certainly to various councils. I believe that a bigger leader equally prioritizes a focus of inclusion on their work, workforce, and workplace. And I start with the work because, hey, that's why we're together, right? I mean, you're choosing to lead over some domain of work, right? So it is ultimately about getting the work done. And somehow, DEI and that acronym has diluted the discussion about having the best talent, having the best access to the customers you want, the investors, right? Diversity and inclusion in a much broader strategic sense, which quite frankly, is both a timely and timeless leadership imperative. That was incredibly well said. And I want to dive a little into the work, workforce, workplace.

What might be some examples of leading bigger in each of those areas. Absolutely. So on work, and this is very similar to how the book is laid out. So this is a little bit of a teaser to those listening. So in the work, right, I have always felt that it is a leader's job to make it clear for their people what the purpose of the work is. And the purpose is not simply your deliverable. It's not simply your metric. It's about the outcomes. It's about, you know, why do you exist? What would happen if

you didn't exist, right? And purpose is critical, not only for us as individuals, but for every team, no matter what context, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, small business owners, big corporations and organizations, purpose underlies everything around the work. Another example within the context of work would be your values. We all have personal values. Some of mine are integrity, authenticity, courage, trust, and caring. I can tell you, even as an old Gen Xer, I want to work in an environment whose professional values align with my personal values. This becomes even more true, right? So those are two examples of applying inclusion to work. In the workplace, you know, and some of these topics may be familiar to those out there. Increasing focus on well-being, right, to really care about your team members' well-being, not just, you know, physically, but emotionally and mentally, and perhaps, yes, if this is Nicole, because I was a woman, I'm a woman or not.

But I always knew that if I was not at my best, I could not be my best at work, right? It's so, so, so simple, right? If I was super stressed at home, or if I had a really significant deliverable at work, it would absolutely affect either my office or my home. Right. And so we are one person, right? You cannot bifurcate those aspects of who we are in our different roles. So well-being is a critical, critical topic for us to understand and to lead inclusively. Another one I touched on, but I didn't use the word, and that is, this is the word that I use in the book, and that is dimensionality. Inclusion goes far beyond issues of gender and race. Each of us are different from each other. There's no two of us that are the same.

Even if we look exactly identical twins, right, genetically, while they may be similar, you know, the same, they do not have the same experiences, the same way of learning the same personality types, all of those things, right. So we need to expand our aperture of what dimensionality actually is. And we're always seeking, you know, that which is the best, most competitive, most differentiated, right? The talent we have today is different than the talent we had yesterday. We'll be different than the best talent we seek for tomorrow. So having a much more attuned, broad view, widened view of dimensions of people can help us lead inclusively. In the workplace, as an example, I use the word workplace to refer to the overall work environment. I use the word workspaces to refer to like your home office, my home office, if I work in my car because I'm in a mobile role,

if I'm in a corporate office in a manufacturing plant, now those are the workspaces, right? All of which roll up to an overall workplace, which includes physical places, but also the broader environment. So here, you know, a really emerging and critical topic for inclusive leaders, for bigger leaders to embrace is that of psychological safety. You know, I come from an industry where, you know, and I serve in various industries now where it's clearly safety first, safety first, safety first.

That once was referred to as physical safety, right? We think about all of the traditional things. If you're working with hazardous materials, if you're outdoors, right, where lots of things can affect you. But now psychological safety is a must to create a work environment that is truly bigger, that is truly better, that is truly inclusive and can bring out the best in your people and those important to you and your, you know, talent and human ecosystem. Another dimension of leading bigger in the workplace would be how you think about boundaries. Boundaries were once pre-pandemic, you know, you go to work and then you go home, you know, whether that was physically, you know, literally or whatever, digitally or whatnot.

We have evolved to a place in human society, right, catalyzed by the pandemic where boundaries are very, very different now, right? And I used to work in an industry that actually enabled those boundaries to blur, right, that of telecommunications and communications, right? You know, most people now value their phone more importantly than they value their wallet because their wallet is in their phone. So rethinking boundaries and having them

and realizing, quite frankly, that not one size fits all is absolutely a critical aspect of leading bigger. So those are just a couple of examples of applying bigger leadership in the context just a couple of examples of applying bigger leadership in the context of work, workplace, and workforce. And like super solid examples. I think I was nodding my head a lot as you were talking, and I think about what we hear about what people are looking for in a career opportunity or what has them stay

versus what has them leave. And a lot of times it's what you said, values, well-being. I love the word dimensionality. I'd never heard it that way, but that's what we're hearing about. Psychological safety, boundaries. I mean, these are key components and what people are looking for in a leader and in a work opportunity. So I guess my next question is how do we as leaders or organizations measure these things, these feelings of belonging, these widening perspectives, these dimensionalities. There are so many things here, and they feel less simple to measure. Like a goal, we've got lead indicators and lag indicators and metrics and spreadsheets and all this stuff. How do we as leaders check that people are actually experiencing these things and our leadership is coming across as

intended or desired? Yeah, yeah. Well, this is where I think the, I don't know if it's a debate, but the discussion of, oh, these kinds of things are soft. They're soft skills. They're not hardened, right? This is not what shareholders pay us to do, right? And I have such a strong belief, you know, having worked for a public company my whole life, be serving on several public company boards. No, no, no. What shareholders want, what investors want is a return on their investment. They want a return on their, you know, on their capital and, you know, return on their equity. And so how do you do that, right? One of my foundational leadership beliefs is that

every business is a people business. Okay? You're a leader, because you're leading people, right? People are the critical ingredient to getting anything done since the beginning of time. So these are not soft things. These are human things. And so to the extent that you recognize that your business, your team, your organization is comprised of humans, you use your human measurements, right? That you are, if you're an organization that has a pulse on culture or that even at least uses that word, whether it's performative or not, you look at employee engagement. You look at employee productivity. You look at employee engagement, you look at employee productivity, you look at

employee retention, right? You look at your ability to recruit great talent, you look at the turnover of talent by demographic, right? Are you keeping talent that has been there forever? And are you riding the wave of a demographic shift of no longer do people come into jobs thinking they're going to be there for 20 or 30 years. Is your workforce agile? You know, there are employee engagement surveys. There are trust surveys that you can run across your organization. And ultimately, it is measured in your performance.

You know, there are so many. This is what I think is one of the ironic things about DEI. There have been many business cases done on the business case for diversity, the business case for inclusion. And it has been proven with data and numbers of organizations that more inclusive organizations, more diverse organizations are more diverse. They deliver greater return. They grow faster. And it really makes sense, right? When you think about it, widening your perspectives to have greater performance and impact. Isn't that something that we should all want to do? So the measures aren't kind of crazy. They kind of are what you're already measuring. And then some, depending on where you are in your leading bigger journey, because ultimately it is about the work, right?

And if you are not delivering those results in a sustained way, my guess is that the diagnosis can be traced to some dimension of people opportunity, of human opportunity. And that is why I wrote the book. Another reason why I wrote the book. So I love that you said that people are the key ingredient. Leadership is a human interaction thing. So then that leads to the question, what are your thoughts on how AI and the emergence of so many different technologies are impacting leadership specifically? Is this something we should be worried about? Does it change our leadership style altogether? What are your thoughts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're speaking with someone who went to school for electrical engineering, so I love technology. I am a geek. I think I actually used that word earlier in one of the questions that you asked me. So look, technology can be a great enabler or a great disabler, okay? So I happen to be one that believes that technology plays a vital role in the advancement of society, okay? So I believe that technology helps us more than hurts us. However, with AI specifically, you know, the risks are greater, right? With every new technology, with every new innovation idea, there comes risk. And it takes bigger leaders to develop a better understanding of what those risks may be, right?

The more perspectives you get, the more you'll be prepared for as many scenarios as possible. And, you know, I think it was the World Economic Forum that said that one of the greatest risks in the next five years is going to be misinformation and disinformation, right? Because the AI is becoming so good that the layperson cannot distinguish between what's real and what's false, right? And this is a real risk. I happen to believe that AI is more, is more akin to, say, like the calculator, as an example. Oh, my gosh, this is going to stop us from thinking blah, blah, blah, blah, right? All the calculator did was help us take away some of the more menial thought processes and tasks, so we could move on as humans, right? And advance our minds and advance our creativity

and advance the value we add in a much more strategic way that only humans can. I believe the same is true for AI. So I do believe that bigger leaders are all about creating a trusted, agile workplace, right? You have to be agile in today's world. You know, it goes back to my comments earlier about the talent today is not the same talent that succeeded yesterday, won't be the same talent that is needed next year, right? Or the year after, or a decade from now.

So agility, organizational agility and personal agility, I think are very much characteristics of bigger leaders and the organizations that they create and develop and grow. Okay, Anne, I cannot have you on a podcast called This is Woman's Work and not ask about what you see when it comes to leading bigger and women in the C-suite, women on corporate boards, women starting and leading bigger businesses. What do we need to know about leading bigger as women? Yes, it's a wonderful question. And I believe that all work, any work is women's work, by the way, work, you know, our definition of work is simply limited, limited by whatever is in our dreams and whatever our aspiration is,

right. And I can tell you, and I know you've lived this way. That has been true for me. And I know it's true for you. And I know it's true for so many other women out there, right. And I hope it's true for my daughters and their generation of women as well, and those that come after them. So what do we as women need to know about leading bigger? I think it's true for my daughters and their generation of women as well and those that come after them. So what do we as women need to know about leading bigger? I think it's this. The reality is, is that so much of society today, all around the globe, was built with a masculine perspective, was built by men, for men, not necessarily intentionally, but this has to do with systems, practices, and policies.

So a lot of the work that I've done around inclusion and leading bigger has focused on the individuals. But that is not enough, right? That is not enough. We must be aware of those systems that are holding us back. And I think that it takes incredible courage as a woman to recognize that you have to affect change in both. And I think one of the sort of grown-up things that I evolved to, I'll tell you, in my early

career, I did not do this very well. But I thought that a lot of what I was experiencing, the origin was malicious intent. The reality is, it's actually not. 95% of people who say something, who do something, they do so because they thought it was the right way. They don't know that it's not the wrong way. And if you don't make the effort to gracefully, candidly teach them, they'll keep doing it. And so I have found, and this is something that I've said to virtually every team that I've led, which is take the high road. It's always the right road, right? Do not assume malicious intent. Understand that everyone came from a place,

right? We all are a big iceberg. Someone only sees the very, very tip of us, there's so much more to who we are in our story. And I do think that we as women are uniquely qualified to be bigger leaders, right? Because we've, we've consciously thought about these things, you know, I loved your intro about how, you know, whether you know it or not, you're a leader, right? There's this, there's this stat that I used to quote, it was on a global basis, but how, you know, 80% of women around the globe run their household. Now, some may rebel against the use of the word household. Household couldn't And so many women, yourself know, there is some truth to men are from Mars and women are from Venus thing. And I do think women are uniquely qualified to really embrace and lead bigger. And the data shows it. I couldn't agree more. And I often say, you know, I don't advocate for women at the expense of men. I think it's really about what you were talking

about earlier. It's that dimensionality. It's about getting to know people and learning from each other and that widening perspective. I mean, so much of what you said, I think speaks to this here, but we are leading as women and often we're not giving ourselves the credit or, or seeing it that way. And I think it's so important. You gave a laundry list. We're also often the chief purchasing officer for our homes. We manage so much and we lead in so many ways. And it is inspiring to me that we absolutely can step into this in a bigger way. So my last question is for anyone listening, which I'm sure is everyone listening that wants to take a first step into leading bigger in their

lives or their jobs or in some way, what would you recommend? I would recommend, I was actually, Nicole, at a recent gathering of women executives. And this is exactly what I told them from all different companies all around the world. And I got this question, right? So I'm going to share the same answer. And that is intentionally and thoughtfully consider and embrace what is your personal purpose, right? Like, why do you think you were given this incredible gift of life? What are the gifts that you uniquely bring to the table? You know, I've always felt, you know, as I became a leader, I really realized that for each of us, our greatest superpower is ourselves because there is no other person like us.

Right. So we should spend less time trying to become someone else than really living into whatever our fullest potential is. But it goes back to values and purpose, right, both professionally and personally, the more you can get them to align, the more joy and impact you will experience, right? You know, one of the, I'll just use a quick follow-on question that I was asked in that group. One of the women was probably comparable to my age and said, how do you know, how did you know that after 32 years, you wanted to leave full-time corporate and go do this other stuff, right? It was something I call my rewirements, not my retirements. Because I don't believe in retirement. I believe humans were made to work, right? It just looks very, very different.

So in my rewirement, what I said to her was, I realized that I had accomplished everything that I wanted in that environment. And I actually viscerally knew that if I was not bound to one company, I could greater realize my purpose and help other people even more broadly, right? I'd given 32 plus years to an industry, to a company. It was time to give to other groups, other businesses, other communities, right? And that sort of explains the portfolio, the cacophony of things that I'm doing now in my rewirement. It's actually very, very intentional, even more aligned with my personal purpose. It's interesting as you were saying that, I think it aligns with something I believe, which is the universe or God or whatever

it is you believe in leaves us breadcrumbs. And at the beginning of our conversation, you talked about how you didn't experience belonging and connection. And now, you know, you literally are writing a book about leading from the basis of belonging and connection. And so just that reminder for you, the listener, that there are breadcrumbs and you can pay attention and they might not be, you know, if you look at historically your most positive breadcrumbs, it might be sometimes your pain that leads you towards your purpose or what you didn't get, but there's always clues. And if we listen and trust ourselves, there's such a great opportunity to live into those purposes

or that purpose, even as it evolves. And I love, by the way, the term rewirement. I'm stealing that from this point forward. Please do, please do. Yeah, and Nicole, if I could just, I want to build on that point

just for one last thing. And that is, I have learned, and this is something that I very much preach now, there is no such thing as failure. There's only success and learning. And so to your point about those painful breadcrumbs, there is no such thing as failure because

we as women, we always get up and keep going, right? And as horrible as that outcome may have seemed, it is not a failure because you got up, you're going to learn from it and you're going to get better. You're going to pivot. You're going to transform. You're going to do whatever it takes to do that thing, to become that, you know, that whatever that you aspire and know you should be. Right. And so there really isn't there. There's only two outcomes. It's success and learning. Right. Amen. Amen. And thank you. And I'm going to tell people to go to your website, theannchow.com. But more importantly, get your hands on the book. It's Lead Bigger. Buy it for yourself, for all the leaders in your organization,

all the aspiring leaders. And you can find and follow Ann on LinkedIn at Ann Chow. Ann, thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, let me wrap us up by reiterating that the opportunity to lead bigger, to create inclusive environments is not just women's work. It's all of our work, regardless of gender, because leadership is no longer

just about who's sitting at the head of the table. It's about valuing different perspectives and contributions so everybody gets a seat at the table. It's about valuing different perspectives and contributions so everybody gets a seat at the table. Challenging the status quo, breaking down barriers, leading inclusively and authentically, using your gifts, your talents, and your superpowers. Hey, it turns out that leadership and women's work aren't all that different. So lead well and lead big, because that is women's work.