Women at Work - October 16, the Amys Are Back

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

In this ninth season of the show, these are some of the big questions they’ll explore: How do you recover from a failure? What’s it really like to serve on a board? Do our careers influence the decision to keep or change our last name? How does going through a divorce affect us at work? If we have a disability, how can we get the understanding and assistive technology we need to do our job? Amy G and Amy B will talk with women who’ve been there, bringing in advice, stories, and expertise.

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. Amy G, our show's back and you're back from your three-month sabbatical. That's right. After three years of writing and promoting my last book, I needed to mark the end of that exhausting chapter. So no work, no social media, no to-do list for three months. It was very restful. And I have to say, I also realized modern life is really busy, even when you take out all of those things. So I'd like to say I was like sitting in like Lotus yoga pose for three months, but I was running around. Yeah, but do you feel refreshed and restored?

Refreshed is maybe too strong. I do feel like things became clearer, like what mattered became clear, how I wanted to spend my time. And I just feel more excited to tackle things. I was at the point where anything came in my inbox or across my desk, my metaphorical desk, and I was like, no. And now I'm feeling like, oh, yeah, that'll be fun. You know, fall for me is sort of like a rebirth season. desk. And I was like, no. And now I'm feeling like, oh, yeah, that'll be fun. You know, fall for me is sort of like a rebirth season. And I feel I'm feeling ready and rested. And, you know, let's let's do this thing. Well, that's good because we have a ninth season coming out.

On Monday, October 16th. So let's go through the lineup a little bit. We just recorded an episode where we revisit our past professional failures. That was fun. Amanda, our producer, asked us to think about failures in advance of that recording, which it's a very humbling task. Oh, my gosh. I mean, and did you toy with the question of, you know, should I really talk about my failures or should I have, you know, a faux failure? Like, you know, I got a story in late last week. What's your greatest weakness? It's actually my greatest strength. Yeah. No, I did. And I did end up talking about a failure I

had not planned, which was very recent. And I have to say made my stomach turn a little bit. They always do. They're really cringy. But I enjoyed that conversation a lot. Yeah, me too. And I hope it'll encourage our listeners to revisit their own failures, like whether they're real or perceived, and put them into perspective. Right, because failure is part of any job. And learning to take responsibility, you know, but not more responsibility than you ought to. Not more than your fair share is really important. Yeah.

And then moving on, the most important thing. Yes, moving on, which clearly we are still doing. I'm excited to listen to the conversations you had with those two experts on adult ADHD. I haven't heard them yet, but you mentioned how enlightening they were. Well, first of all, I learned that ADHD is a serious problem. Someone first needs to have a very robust understanding of what it means to have ADHD. If I just think, oh, I just struggle to focus,

then I'm not going to understand that it actually affects every single aspect of every single minute of my life. Did you know that? I didn't. I really didn't. Yeah. And it shows up in a variety of ways that sounded painfully familiar to me. We only have so much bandwidth. And I have worked with women who have told me no one at work would ever guess I had ADHD. But because it's so exhausting for me to keep all that organized, the rest of my life is in chaos. So we will definitely talk about that.

Yeah. And you spoke with a couple of disability advocates, Amy. Oh, they were fantastic. has just been one of the most eye-opening in terms of understanding what it's like to navigate a workplace, what accommodations you need when you're living with a disability. And whether that disability is apparent, people can see it because you're perhaps in a wheelchair, or non-apparent and struggling with ADHD or even autism. Especially when it comes to behavioral things, people can be very judgmental. I have found a lot more willingness to accommodate my physical disabilities than my neurodivergence. I'm really looking forward to that conversation.

Oh, and I know we have a ton of perspectives and advice to share from women who've served on boards. When I look back, I could have never imagined that I would be providing input in this way. Four years ago, I was a student in that program. And now I'm contributing to the future of this program. And if you're worrying that you're not an expert in that particular field or in that particular area, consider that outside ignorance is a good thing to really test what's happening and why and whether that's the best way of doing things. I didn't realize the sense of satisfaction doing something like this would give me. It was only once I entered into it and the deep sense of purpose and meaning one gets from

contributing to things where you stretch yourself and you're not so sure, but you go there and you do it anyway. And that's only a sample of the collective wisdom that you'll hear. For anyone who's never considered joining a board or assume they weren't qualified, this episode is going to change your thinking. And then we've got one episode that will be an Ask the Amys, one of my favorite episodes we do, where you tell us, you listeners, not Amy B, tell us about your interpersonal managerial career problem. We think it over and then give you our take. If you want our advice

on something you're struggling with right now, email womenatwork at hbr.org to contribute. Again, Season 9 starts Monday, October 16th. More from us then. And don't forget to follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts.