Women at Work - Leaders to Learn From

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

In leading their teams and organizations through a crisis, women have repeatedly stepped up to the plate. We celebrate four of these women and highlight the ways they’ve been resetting priorities, demonstrating resilience and agility, and communicating effectively. Then, leadership coach Muriel Wilkins gives advice for taking care of yourself while taking care of the people you manage.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Amy Gallo. Throughout the crises we've been living through, women leaders have repeatedly stepped up to the plate. Their initiative doesn't surprise us, of course. We've seen it ourselves throughout our careers. And more recently, we've seen corporate research findings that show precisely how competent women are as leaders. Zanger Folkman, the leadership development consultancy, has conducted tens of thousands of 360-degree reviews

that assess how effective leaders are. In 2019, based on their data at the time, they noted that women scored higher than men in most leadership skills. The consultants' conclusion? Women are better leaders. And with further research during the pandemic, they found that this was especially true in a crisis. Plus, people who reported to a woman during the pandemic were more committed to and satisfied with their jobs. The consultants attributed that satisfaction and commitment to women's standout interpersonal skills. In a crisis, employees ranked those skills as critical. They needed and valued bosses who were sensitive to their stress, who kept them informed, and who took initiative. That's the

type of leader we're showcasing here. We want to celebrate these women and learn from them. We'll hear from four leaders, each of whom will be introduced by the colleagues who nominated them to be in this episode. Let's get started. This is Erin Herrera-Sott and Sarah Martin, and we're attorneys at the women-owned law firm College RV, choosing Newman & Fitch in Washington, D.C. Our boss, Celine Fitch, has led with compassion and respect during the pandemic. She understands each employee is a whole person with a life outside of the office, and she starts problem solving from there. I'm Elaine Fitch.

You know, my firm has been a women-owned firm for its entire existence since 1975. And it has always stressed work-life balance, family. So there've always been lots of women in the firm too. And I see part of what I can do for them is giving them opportunities. It's important to me to know that they can be successful in the ways that they choose. Elaine's flexibility and trying to understand where her employees are at and not setting a hard and fast date by which people need to start coming back or come back full time was one less anxiety during a very uncertain time. So we work in employment law. We're dealing with employees who are calling saying, do I have to go back into work? My employer's requiring it. Can they fire me?

Can I continue to telework full time? And those questions just never came up for me because I knew that Elaine would allow you the flexibility in whatever that looked like for you. I found out I was pregnant exactly a month before the world shut down. But I found out I was pregnant because I got very sick. So I had to go to Elaine and be like, I am in a tremendous amount of pain. I don't know if this pregnancy is going to last. And she was very understanding and worked with me and figuring out what my disability and what my restrictions were and only giving me as much as I could handle for the

duration of my pregnancy. You hear about all the women who are forced to leave the workplace because the job isn't willing to meet them where they are. I don't want to lose my good people. And then I went out on maternity leave and came back with the pandemic still raging and having to keep my child at home because I'm immunocompromised. And that meant he was immunocompromised at the beginning of his life. And so there was no way that we could consider having care outside of the home. So I sat down, put him in the baby seat next to me and started to work. And some women can do it. I am just not one of those women that I was able to take care of a, at that time, four

month old and lawyer at the level that I wanted to lawyer. And I called up Elaine on the last day of January, and I said, I can't do this. I'm sorry. Thank you for everything you've done. It pains me, but I'm going to have to leave. And she went, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no. Let's figure this out. Okay, what do you need? Do you need an extended leave of absence? Do you need part-time hours?

I kept going back being like, I've thought all this through, Elaine. I can't give you anything definitive. Like I can't tell you how many hours a week I can work. I can't tell you how long this is going to last. So it just seemed to me that there had to be a way that we could try to make this work. And I didn't know if it would work. I didn't know if it would work for the firm or if it would work for her. But it just made sense to me to try. You know, if you're in the office and somebody's

stressed out and their door's shut all the time, you can tell. You know, you can tell what's going on, but you have no idea when they're remote. And so I was just clear. I the time, you can tell. You can tell what's going on, but you have no idea when they're remote. And so I was just clear. I'm like, you have to talk to me. If you hit that wall and you can't take any more work, you can't talk to potential clients, you can't meet deadlines that we need to shift your workload around, tell me. We figured it out and we're just taking it a day at a time, a month at a time. But I went to her hat in hand and I tried to quit like millions of women around the country because of this pandemic. And instead of accepting it, worked with me to figure out what I needed.

It's worked out beautifully. The teamwork in the firm, we support each other. So we all have each other's back in that respect. And I'm willing to be as flexible as possible and be honest with people like, let's try to make this work. If it doesn't work, then we'll discuss it. But that hasn't really happened. I know that I want kids one day. I want to keep working. I love what I do. And striking that balance, I mean, that's the age-old question, right? Can women really have it all? And I think Elaine has made it clear that at KCNF, at least, we can.

So that's very reassuring to me. We've all been in places where it's a good place in your life or it's a bad place, or maybe you need some flexibility. Just understanding humanity and what's required of us sometimes, whether it's caring for an elderly parent or a child or a disabled spouse or, you know, whatever it may be. We're all people and we just all need what we need at that moment. What I love that Elaine did was that she just shattered the myth of the ideal worker. That, you know, the person who is always available is willing to work as many hours. And she said, no, the ideal worker is someone who is committed to this job,

has other things to take care of. We can accommodate them in a way that makes it possible for them to show up and do their job in the time that they can do it. Yeah, I love where she said we have to meet people where they are. So we're hearing Elaine be so flexible. And I'm wondering if for managers there is a line where they have to draw and they have to say we can no longer be flexible in this way or we can't bend in this way. So that's a really, really interesting question. heard in this vignette was a high degree of trust coupled with a great sense of appreciation that went both ways. And so I don't know that there is a line because if you as the manager

trust your colleague, part of that trust is knowing that they won't abuse this kind of request, this kind of, this kind of, I don't want to say privilege, because I think that what we learned is that flexibility isn't a privilege anymore. It's an absolute requirement. But the people won't abuse the flexibility, that they won't go over the line. They'll ask for what they need. And that's all a manager really wants is to be able to accommodate the needs within reason. I think that depends entirely on the context.

Yes. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Thank you. Business School professor, Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from

setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your Want to listen to the next one? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. I'm Olivia Liu. I'm the Director of International Students at Pasadena City College. Candice Jones is our Chief Technology Officer.

She's someone that I aspire to be in a future leadership role in higher education. I'm Candace Jones. I am the Assistant Superintendent Vice President of Business and Administrative Services at Pasadena City College. I oversee facilities and business services and campus police in addition to our IT, our technology portions of the college. During COVID, she managed to transform our college for the better by pivoting really quickly and innovating very fast and by bringing folks together in a very collaborative way. It's important for me to be ethical and transparent in my professional interactions. When that is the focus, then it's easy to collaborate with others around the institution because they understand what you're

trying to accomplish. When we all had to move to online work, She had to secure technology for everyone on campus, and that's approximately 30,000 students and 1,500 staff. I remember the very long lines of people and the chaos of having to distribute laptops, and she was in the weeds. She's the CTO of the entire college, but she was there with her team, issuing laptops and checking them out and just talking to people and ensuring people had access to technology. If you're not sort of ground level, you can't see where there are potholes, right? And so we had originally had a policy where you had to show a college ID to get the laptop. Well, guess what? We weren't giving out college IDs to all of our new students because those stations didn't exist. So then very quickly I'd say, we'll take your high

school ID. We'll take whatever IDs that you need. So you have to be in the trenches in order to understand and anticipate. And so really, for me, it's like rolling up my sleeves and figuring out what's the next step. When I came to this college, Candice was actually one of the very first people that took me out to lunch. And I had no idea who she was at that time. She's like, oh, yeah, sure. I'll go to lunch with you. And later on to come to find out she's the CTO. Oh, my gosh. And to be so personable to someone that she had no connections with and someone that was not her direct report, I think it highlights her personality of being super personable, but also understanding that in order to do business at this college or at any college or any industry, you need to meet

people and you need to collaborate. My superpower is connecting people and helping people understand the context by which we need to make decisions. I think if I can connect people, I have all of the right people at the table helping to inform the best possible outcome. At the same time, though, I think it's also important that decisions need to be made and they can be unmade. They can be changed. And allowing people to understand that they're not going to be stuck with the decision or they're not going to get in trouble because today we thought this, and tomorrow we receive new information and we need to go in a different direction. That's what people need comfort in. That's what makes people courageous. I don't know how she finds enough time in her 24 hours to do everything

and still be a mom and still be a wife. Because I'm a mom, and I also have a partner, and I also lead a team. But my team is small. I only lead four people. But she leads an entire IT department, and on top of that, she serves another interim role now where she manages the budget, payroll, grants, custodians, facilities. I don't know how she does it all, and also having time for her own family

and raising a child. You know, I wake up every day and sort of feel re-energized. At the end of the day, I feel depleted. It's a lot of emotional energy that it takes to manage decisions and people and process. But I just try to check out in the evenings to be with my families and let them feel me back up and take a good night's sleep and have some mental sort of adjustment. I read a lot and then I go to sleep and I come in the morning

and I just like, I'm ready to go again. My energy helps to lead others around me. And so it's important to me that I bring that every day, even when I'm having a bad day. If I am, I own it. You know, wow, my tank is really, it's really empty today. And then my colleagues are like, I've got you. It's okay. Let me take the lead today. I think it's important as leaders for us to show our vulnerabilities. You know, we're human beings too.

I have the same feelings and my feelings get hurt and I get upset, you know, about a decision or maybe there's a really challenging interaction. And so I'm going to be honest when those moments happen. And most people around, they can really appreciate that. They appreciate that I own any mistakes that I make, that I ask for help when I need it. They appreciate that because they feel like then they can see themselves in my role at a later point as well because I'm just like them. So I noticed that she said that she can make a decision and then she can make a different decision later once more information becomes available. Yes. I think that's the sign of a really great leader.

That's courage and grace, right? Yeah. To me, that is the new hallmark of good leadership is that I can take initiative, I can drive for change, I can be assertive that this is what needs to happen. And when new information comes up, I'm willing to unmake that decision. And it does feel that we're shifting what we think of as good leadership. I mean, this is what we saw. There's this most recent report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org, the Women in the Workplace report that they just published. And they do talk about how women are setting a new standard for what leadership is. And that is about being compassionate, empathetic, leaning into a lot of

the things that are unrecognized, like DEI work, for example. And I think we're seeing in these vignettes, this new standard being played out. And that Zenger-Folkman research data shows this is what people want. This is what people see as good leadership. And now I think we have to sort of line up and figure out, okay, how do we recognize this? And I'll add that this is what keeps organizations together. Yeah. Which is a very good segue to our next vignette about keeping organizations together.

My name is Jolene Anderson. I am Vice President of Client Success at OC Tender. Mindy Cox is a gifted communicator who really led our company through a difficult and uncertain time by not only showing how much she cares, but also showing how much our executive leadership team cares by staying connected with us every day. OCTAN, we're a global company, but we're tight. Everybody knows everybody, even across the globe. And when the pandemic started, the daily interactions that we were used to having with each other just changed. And Mindy immediately saw a need to keep us connected. She started a daily email that went out to every employee. My name is Mindy Cox, and I am the Senior Vice President of People and Great Work at the O.C. Tanner Company. So the daily company email that we ended up doing throughout the pandemic was not an idea as much as it was an accident.

It started as just an update. Okay, today this is what we know. Today this is what we need. Today this is what happened. It wasn't just about the business or how we were doing or what to expect next. But it was education and information. And then as time went by, she shared stories about people. I do remember the day that it shifted,

and it was a day in Salt Lake City where we had an earthquake that was traumatic for a lot of our people and just felt on top of. We had all changed the way we work. We were wondering how long this thing was going to last. We were paying attention to what was going on with our families and our kids' situations. Everything seemed very chaotic. And then on top of that, we had this earthquake which made us feel additionally physically threatened. And we thought, what else could happen? And personally, I just had a moment of overwhelm. And I just cried. It was an early morning in my kitchen. I just remember exactly

where I was standing. And I thought, what are we going to say today? Like, how do I fix this? Everything has felt so beyond our control. And this is clearly beyond our control. And I don't know how to help people feel better about it. And so I just asked for permission to be honest with people. And I just said, hey, this email is going to be a little bit different today. I just need to let you know. I cried. I am overwhelmed. I didn't know what to do. And then in response to that, I started getting texts and emails back that were just these messages of support. And so my email was really about the reciprocation that we felt that day, what a difficult situation it felt like to me personally, but how buoyed up I was by the

support that the people in our organization were giving back. Leadership isn't something we do, and work isn't something we just have. This is a place where we go to be in relationship with each other. And so from that day forward, it felt like more of an exchange than an announcement. There was one where she shared a picture of a team member, and he's sitting in his kitchen working at his laptop, and his two-year-old daughter is sitting there with him working with her little toy laptop. People had families at home. They had school schedules interrupted. They had people that they were worried about

and that they needed to protect or care for, and sometimes when you're not seeing that, it's not top of mind. It was a good reminder of how hard our people were working, even in really difficult circumstances. For a long time, companies and certainly ours, we've been talking about work-life balance and, you know, work and life. And is it just work life? And how does it all mash up together? But now it was just life. People were working and living and experiencing everything from the same place. And we were asking people to let the world into their homes and into their families. And so there was all of this intimacy that was almost immediate. And for us not to acknowledge that or talk about it seemed strange.

You know, I think as Mindy shared stories, and there were a lot of hard stories for every happy photo, there were difficult photos. This was an opportunity for me to help my team members understand that while work challenges can be very real and very draining and very taxing, what we do, while important, we're not saving lives. We have to keep our priorities straight. We have to put people first. And I think that's something that has changed the way I view work. Because like many women in business, I put in the long hours. I fought hard to get to where I want to be.

I'm constantly working to prove myself. But as these stories were shared and these hardships were shared, it also helped me identify what my priorities were. And I probably work a little bit differently. So this is a book that they put together of all the emails. And it just has this little note on it from our CTO. It says, what a true labor of love. This is a treasure to just get these all together. Because when you're doing something every day, I don't think that you realize the

cumulative impact of it. But even just to look through our naivete at the beginning of the pandemic and how short-lived we thought it was going to be, the kind of like minute details we were paying attention to, to when this thing lasts as long as it has lasted, naturally the conversation is going to change and deepen. The relationship changes and deepens, and you can just feel that reflected in the evolution of those messages. Didn't her optimism, her realistic optimism, just bowl you over? Yeah. It was a deep-seated determination to engage people, to keep them informed in the beginning,

to share human stories over time, to make sure people felt reassured, connected. And I found it so interesting the day that they had that earthquake was the day where everybody got honest and it became a conversation rather than just kind of like informing people of what's going on. And that was a really interesting pivotal moment. And it happened because she was vulnerable. Yes, exactly. And she showed it. She showed it.

Yes. Everybody's going through something or everybody's been going through something or went through something during this crisis. And I think at some point it becomes too much effort to try to put up a facade or try to keep things from each other. So like Mindy talking about writing that email where she's like, I'm crying, everybody. That seemed like the most natural and least effortful way to go forward. Yes. Let's listen to the last one. I'm Audrey Abakan, the head of SME banking at

Absa Bank Ghana Limited. My boss, Abna Oseipoku, has shown an incredible commitment to the well-being of employees and the growth of the bank. Abna Oseipoku, I think it's important to mention that I had been 18 months in the role as CEO when COVID happened. So I had to immediately think out of the box around what do I do to keep the business surviving? But more importantly, for the business to thrive after COVID, I didn't have a clue how long it will take, just like everybody else. So I re-evaluated possible options very quickly. And it dawned on me that COVID perhaps was a human problem. And so if I took care of my people first, ensured they were healthy, ensured they were safe, then they would also be in a state of mind to give up their best

regardless of what was going on. Flexible work arrangements was one of the interventions that was introduced to contain the spread of COVID in the workplace. I quickly took advantage of this to connect deeply with my family, a desire I had longed for many years. I had built my life around my career and will leave home very early in the morning around 6 a.m. to beat traffic and would return sometimes at 8 p.m. I had minimum connection with my children. One day I cried when my children asked if I had traveled a whole week because they had not seen me. With FlexiWork, I could now wake up my children, prepare them for school, prepare their breakfast and drop them at school.

I could prepare supper and dine with them in the evening, as well as help them with their homework. The fulfillment I derived from this is inexplicable. Hearing individuals, you know, sort of testify of what it did for them, for me was very fulfilling. I have teenage children and so they obviously can do things on their own, but majority of the people that I work with, they have much younger children. So anything I can do to help my colleagues make the best of a rather unfortunate situation was my priority. We had actually launched FlexiWork a year ago, but there was no uptake. You know, but COVID, I think, gave the opportunity for colleagues to also reassess what was important

in their lives. It sure did for me as well, because I was always on the go. Early morning, you know, by six, I'm out of the house, have meetings upon meetings, and then get back home late. The pandemic made me realize that I could have a lot more flexi time and still be very effective, very efficient, very productive by playing to my strengths. She models excellence, empathy, resilience, humility and confidence. Her regular COVID updates and inspirational messages put my heart to rest. I think I communicate honestly and transparently, but I learned during the pandemic to also communicate

timely because I wanted to ensure there was no miscommunication or at least reduce miscommunication. I wanted to make sure there was no misinformation. I wanted to continuously provide calm and stability. I wanted to reassure those who had been ill that they had our support. I wanted to assure those who had had maybe spouses or family members lose their jobs or, you know, lost loved ones to know that we're still there for them. And it didn't feel like work. It's very interesting, but I think I changed my focus, perhaps is what I should say. So I did cut out a lot of the things that were not necessary. You know, so I could go on a call with zero makeup and I'm talking to my team.

And that's more important, right? Actually, it was only during the pandemic that I realized that I could still be the MD of a bank or a CEO without wearing a suit. Because, you know, it's not about that. But, you know, I actually realized that for myself as an individual, my ability to absorb pressure and deliver clarity, even in a chaotic situation, you know, was very useful. And if there was one lesson that I learned, I know that I'm resilient, but I didn't realize how much pressure I could absorb personally, because it wasn't as if I was okay, you know. I also had family members, not in my home, but who had also gotten COVID, or in different countries, we couldn't see each other,

but I had to be strong for the broader community. You know, I tried to also, you know, increase even my exercise time, you know, things that, but sometimes during the week before COVID, I'm like, okay, I'll exercise tomorrow. You go a week and you haven't done that, but that can't be right. If I was going to be strong for the team, I had to live what I was saying. So it was a period of continuous learning. When Audrey said, she said things that put my heart at rest, right? That is not something we expected, explicitly expected from managers prior to the pandemic. And yet when you hear that, you're like, that's what I want. Right. As a manager, does it feel oppressive? No. No, if you think it's oppressive, then you shouldn't be doing it.

Did you hear? Emily said she doesn't believe you. I don't believe you. Really? Well, it just sounds, all these jobs sound so hard. So being a manager during the pandemic, during this series of crises we've all been dealing with, yeah, that would wear anyone down. Yeah. Going back to the Women in the Workplace report, the McKinseyLeanIn.org report, they talk about how much extra work, all this compassion, caring for people, the DEI work, right? And it is really

causing women to burn out. There's one way in which you could see it as this bottomless pit of need. So many people going through so much, so much change, so much uncertainty. I do think, and we didn't hear from these women about this, but I do wonder, how do you build in the boundary so that you don't start to feel like a failure for not meeting all those needs? Well, Abhinav pointed out that she needed to exercise, right? Yes. Figuring out what you need is so important. And I wonder at what point Avinash figured that out, because if I had to go out on a limb on this, I'm going to say it wasn't in March of 2020. Right. It's when you feel yourself, I'll just speak for myself, it's when you feel yourself falling apart.

You haven't exercised the way you used to. You're not eating well. Maybe you're drinking more. You're waking up with headaches, whatever it is. And you just know you're drinking more. You're waking up with headaches, whatever it is, and you just know you're falling apart. You're exhibiting all the symptoms of burnout. Well, who's going to take care of that if not you? And you see the email from that employee that has a lot of needs,

and you think, oh, gosh. Well, you take a breath. Actually, you take a breath. You walk your dog around the block, and you center yourself. You ground yourself the way that Candice did, right? You remind yourself of what's important. And of course, you have to do that. I mean, you asked if it's oppressive, not overall, but there are moments where you feel like, oh my God, I'm not sure I can care right now. And then you have to do it. You have to find the source of your genuine care and you need to tap into it. When you see people struggling, you have to be

able to say, you know what, let's move that deadline. And then you have to make the deadline move. Right. You do all the negotiation. Right. You fly air cover. There's a lot of that. To me, what makes these four women such standouts is that they were so caring and so intentional about their organizations, about the people in their organizations, about taking care of them, making them feel safe and secure. And at the same time, they got the work done. The laptops went out. The students were able to log in. Candice got it done. Abana was getting it done. And the next step is figuring out how leaders like these four can do it without burning out. Without burning out.

Oh, so important. I mean, I think this is something Muriel Magnum Wilkins can help us figure out. How do the women that she coaches, who are excellent leaders, who are doing all the things that these four leaders do, how do they do that without burning out? What safeguards, what boundaries do they put in place? Oh my gosh, I can't wait to hear what she says. Yeah. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform.

With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash womenatwork. That's netsuite.com slash womenatwork. Muriel Wilkins helps senior executives develop into more effective leaders. She does that through her coaching practice, Paravis Partners, and through her podcast, Coaching Real Leaders. So Muriel, you've listened to the vignettes. Yeah, which I think are so relatable. So many of these women who are shifting priorities around and caring proactively about their teams, they're burning out. All that caring

takes an enormous emotional toll. How are you coaching women to manage their energy in these moments? Yeah, yeah. And I love the way you talked about managing their energy, right? Because that's exactly what it is. It's not about adding and then trying to increase the level of energy you have to match the demands that you now have to respond to. And so when I work with my clients, some of the things that we look at or that we try to really hone in on is, number one, prioritizing. That is probably the biggest, biggest thing. It's the look at what is most critical right now. And by right now, I don't mean it has to be urgent. But what are you trying to accomplish? And what are the non-negotiables that need to happen? And let's prioritize what's most important to the organization,

for your team, and for you. Going through the exercise. You know, as hard as it might be, making choices is always hard. And I always say, when you prioritize, what you're doing is making a trade-off, right? And so what trade-offs are you willing to make and make that trade-off? And if it's not the right trade-off, then you change it down the road. One of the nominees talked about, you have to be able to make decisions, but you also have to be willing to change the decision if the decision doesn't go the right path. And I love that. When you prioritize, you are making a decision for now. It doesn't mean that that decision can't change. So number one is prioritizing. The second, as hokey as this sounds, it's about helping them find purpose. Why are you doing what you're doing?

And the reason why you need purpose, particularly when you have a lot on your plate, is because a lot of the stuff you might be doing is not necessarily stuff you'll want to do. But when you start injecting purpose in it and you know why you're doing it, that's what brings meaning to it. And so I find that when my clients are able to be connected to the meaning of what they're doing, they get re-energized or it brings them more energy to the work. And then the last piece is really around them figuring out how to replenish their energy. So again, managing energy is not about it staying stable the whole time. It's noticing when it dips and it's noticing when it's high. And what's most

important is when it dips or when it starts to dip, what do you do to replenish your energy? And that is different for everyone. I mean, there's a lot out there around like exercise, sleep, do this, do that, whatever it might be. And quite frankly, I literally just asked my clients, what energizes you? What do you need to feel like you are re-energized, right? That is in your control, not things that are outside your control. So for some of them, it is the exercise sleep. And for others, it's, you know, I just need an hour where I can just be by myself. And for others, it's I need to go connect with my friends or whatever it may be. But it has to be something that's in their control that helps them get re-energized.

And no judgment on what that is. Thinking about prioritizing, we know that many of these women prioritized taking care of the people in their organization. There was that commonality. As you work with leaders, are you noticing that many are deprioritizing in a particular area? Because the hard thing about prioritizing is you have to say this, not this right now. So what are people saying not this right now about? Yeah, I can't say that it was immediate for them to push this to the back burner. But what I eventually saw them do after, you know, some coaching and some of their own self-reflection is they deprioritized change, additional change.

Interesting. Right? So it was a recognition that the question that they would sit with is, how much capacity does my organization have currently for change, knowing that we were already undergoing it? Not change that we brought on ourselves, but we're going through change. And so then it became how much additional change can they take on right now? And what we want leaders to continue to do is to take really good care of employees, to help them navigate all the competing demands, et cetera, and if leaders were eventually saying, maybe we don't need to do that strategic change

initiative right now, how are we going to balance these two things as we move into the future? How do we make the new model of leadership sustainable in a world that demands innovation and change? Yeah. So, I mean, I think like anything, what's happening right now is we have magnified or over-indexed or trying to over-index on this caring piece, right? Caring for your employees and their wellbeing because it's necessary. It was necessary during this time to keep moving. And so as a result, we've deprioritized

or what I've seen is sometimes deprioritizing some of the organizational change. My sense is that things will come back into balance. It's not to say that we're never going to go back to an era where we are moving things forward quickly, and there's a higher acceleration and velocity, but it will have to be done with keeping in mind employees' well-being, whether we like it or not. Because as you said, you know, the world is demanding that, that, hey, you need to pay attention to this stuff. So the question for leaders will be, how do I hold both? It's an and. They do not need to be mutually exclusive, right? How do I continue to progress towards my business outcomes and

take care of my employees' well-being? So given that women tend to over index on the caring piece, are they being expected, women in leadership positions, are they expected to be extra accommodating on flexibility around work arrangements? I haven't seen that, to be honest. What does come up is the women leaders themselves have high expectations of themselves, right, about how accommodating or understanding they need to be. They see it as sort of, I need to be at 100. And everybody else is like, oh, no, 80 is really good. It's good enough. It's like what we haven't gotten before.

So I think it's actually more self-inflicted. So how can women in leadership positions know that they are overdoing it, being a little too accommodating. How do you know? Yeah, I mean, I think it's like everything else that when they don't know, they should ask, right? They should ask. First of all, this is when you really want to ask employees, what do you need, right? And be reacting off of that rather than projecting what you think they need. So asking employees and then asking others around you, running scenarios by people,

hey, this has come up, like, do you think it's too much? Do you think it's too little? What do you think? How you would handle it and do a little bit of peer coaching is a good practice to be in. But when in doubt, ask, run it by somebody,

use others as a sounding board. I think as in any crisis, right, whether it's workplace or life place, having a community of support, or we call it structures of support, is incredibly important, whether that be a mentor or friends or colleagues or a trusted advisor or a coach, you know, that you can run things by is really helpful so that you don't feel like you're handling this crisis totally on your own. And so that would be a place where I would bring those types of questions to just to kind of calibrate and triangulate, you know, am I reacting or am I approaching this in a way that not only serves others, but also serves me?

Muriel, I'm a huge fan of Coaching Real Leaders, your podcast. Oh, thank you. I get to do a long drive every couple of weeks. And that is number one on my playlist. So tantalize us. What's coming up on season two? Oh, my gosh, so much. This season, we have just a complete different cast of characters still really representing a cross breadth of leadership from manager positions all the way up to the C-suite.

We have questions that people face every day. Questions like, how do I know if it's time to leave my job? To, can I really have it all? And that comes up for one of the female leaders that I coach on the show. And so all areas that really resonate with leadership today and questions and conversations that people typically wouldn't have openly,

but we have them on the show, and I'm excited to share them with everyone. Well, I can't wait to hear these conversations, and I want to thank you for this conversation. As usual, you really opened my eyes. No, thank you. Always, always a pleasure talking to you. That's our show.

I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, Tina Tobey-Mack, and Eleni Mata. Robin Moore composed the theme music. Email us at womenatworkathbr.org and subscribe to at womenatwork at hbr.org and subscribe to our newsletter by going to hbr.org slash newsletters. Thanks for listening.