How to Overcome Self-Doubt with Jennifer McCollum

How do you become aware of that inner critic and how do you quiet it? You don't silence it. The inner critic is alive and well for all of us every single day. But if you can become aware of it and if you can pause and reflect long enough to see it for what it is. So that's step one and two. Become aware and pause. The third step is to become.

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the squad.

Hey friends, it's great to have you with Ashish and I as we host guests who are industry leaders and experts helping individuals and organizations increase their potential and flourishing at work. Are you ready to learn about the power of limiting beliefs, but how you can overcome them? Our next guest is a highly sought after consultant and speaker with a deep expertise in inclusive leadership and advancing women leaders. I'd love for you to meet Jennifer McCollum, CEO of Linkage, where she oversees the strategic direction and global operations of this leadership development firm. With the mission to change the face of leadership, Linkage has dedicated over 30 years to improving leadership, effectiveness and and equity in hundreds of organizations globally. Jennifer has recently released her own book, in her own Voice, A Women's Rise to CEO Overcoming Hurdles to Change the Face of Leadership. During this inspiring conversation, Ashish and Jennifer discussed several points. First, learn about the importance of investing in self and upskill you in your leadership journey as a team leader, to a leader of leaders, and maybe even to a CEO. Second, learn practical tips to quieten your inner critic and leverage their wisdom without ceding control and playing smaller. This area truly resonated for me. And finally, the triple double bind that many women leaders find themselves in which creates and exacts a huge toll on their flourishing and success. As you consider our nine Hardwired for Happiness practices or our Sunflower model, this episode truly delves into how you can both cultivate your self awareness and and fuel up with compassion to overcome and if anything at least become in terms with your Inner critic. We hope that these tips and practices that we share can help you as it was truly eye opening for me. So come join Ashish as he welcomes Jennifer to the Happiness Squad podcast.

Hi, Jennifer. It is so lovely to have you on our Happiness Squad podcast.

So nice to see you, Ashish. I have been looking forward to this.

So, look, we always start with this question. This is kind of in a long while, an episode just you and I are doing because my co host Anil, something had come up for him and he couldn't join. But I think we're gonna have a great conversation. We're gonna miss him. But we always start with this first question and usually it's Anil that asks the question. So I ask him, you know, keeping him in mind, and the question is the following. What is your definition of happiness and how has that changed Jennifer from your younger years?

Interestingly, I'm guessing, given that you're a happiness expert, is that you've heard of the Happiness Project out of Harvard and I happen to know Bob. I think his last name is Waldinger. And I love their research and I think it's been going on for 85 years. So I'm going to borrow that definition, but I think it's more important than to bridge into how I apply it to my own life. But I love their definition that they've surfaced after all of this study around how good relationships, human connections really lead to the greatest happiness and to health. So at the end of your life, looking back, if you have those strong relationships and you have health, physical, mental, emotional, that is probably what leads or I think definitely what leads to happiness. Now, what that means to me is and I think about when I have been the most happy in all aspects of my life. And sometimes we look at, you know, I'm really happy in my relationships, but maybe not my work. And so when I look at that, it's when my strengths, it could be as a mother, it could be as a CEO, it could be as a friend, align with my deepest passion and purpose. That's when I feel the most happy. But it has changed over the years, that definition of happiness. And I'll pause there for a moment.

Yeah, no, I love that. Right. And I think it's the consistent theme that we keep coming back to on this one. Right. Which is meaning is a big deal of it. And you mentioned when I'm doing something of meaning. Right. When I am in deep relationship relational health, which is, you know, Waldinger's study clearly highlights and physical. Well, Being. And we also talk a lot, you know, Jennifer, around happiness less as an emotion, because like all emotions, like all thoughts, like all body sensations, those things rise and fall, they change. But more the beauty of what you just, you know, those three to actually more cultivate a state, a way of being where we can live in joyfulness, even if joy as an emotion might be fleeting, and it's here today and it's not. So I'm beautiful. But tell me more about how. What was the definition early in your life versus how you got here?

I don't talk about this much on many, many podcasts, but I will say if I think back even to my childhood, and maybe I was born this way, maybe I was nurtured this way because of my family circumstances, but I was fiercely independent and fiercely ambitious and fiercely responsible. And I grew up with this belief. Maybe it was misguided, maybe it wasn't. It served me well when I was young that if I wanted to achieve something, I had to go after it myself. And for the most part, that worked really well to a certain point. But I realize now, looking back, that my happiness was defined as I'll be happy when or I'll be happy if I get that job when I get through this difficult period. And so happiness was always this elusive. I need to achieve something or I need to get through or do something. And that has really, really changed. And I think you said it beautifully, is if happiness is a state of being, it's really not dependent on a certain time or a certain achievement. It's that state of being regardless of what's happening.

Yeah. And it's beautiful. And it is so much about our own mental models. Right. And through practices that we integrate. That's what we focus so much on with Happiness Squad and the work we're doing and the programs we're building. Your response just triggered a thought from that I picked up from Professor Sri Kumar Rao. I love his work. I don't know if you've had a chance to meet him.

I do. I know him personally. He's in The Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches with you. Right.

So, you know, we had him on our podcast and, you know, I love it. And I think about always, you know, he talks about this mental model of, you know, you said you grew up with this thing around if I wanted to do something first, if then else. And that if then else is kind of a very faulty model of happiness. And we all have it. I had the same in my younger years. If I get this, then I'll Be happy. So I think that's the first kind of pitfall towards that, keeps us away from that state. Because once we get that, then we want the next thing, Then we want the next thing. And we can't control ourselves because that's how our brains are. There's the hedonic adaptation processes. But I also, you know, I think what you brought up is also the second point which is really, really interesting, right? Which is we can experience, we can choose to see the world from one of three mindsets. And you know, Professor Rao talks about it, which is one, I can see the world and assume that the universe is, you know, just. Life is randomness. Universe is not conscious. Things happen just because they do. And that's fine. In that case, you know, you can take a mindset, right, of hey, if I need to get something done, I got to get it done. It's not going to just happen. You know, in our coaching, I also work with a lot of other two people who show up. One is, they say actually universe is conscious. And you know what, Every time luck is involved, I lose. So it's actually against me. And, you know, I'm the one who misses the bus. Everybody else's things are okay, but mine are not okay. My team does deliver. Everybody else seems to get it and they never stop back to think why that would be. Right? So like the word universe is against me and so they also going to go with like, I'm going to make it happen. Or the third mental model, right? We could live our life assuming and seeing the world from a place that the universe is conscious and positively inclined towards us. So it's giving us whatever we need right now, even if that's not what we want sometimes. Broccoli, right?

I love, love, love what you're saying. May I interject for a moment, please? So you said two things. I'll start. The first thought that popped into my mind when we talked about the happiness if or when. And I actually write about this in my book, I had to evolve to my understanding. And actually Srikumara, who you just referenced and The Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches help and Marshall himself, who's a mentor and a coach of mine, had to help me see that happiness and achievement are completely independent variables. They are not dependent. I could achieve, achieve, achieve and never find happiness or I could find happiness without any achievement at all. And so that was a big awakening for me and I continue to learn that as I gain life experience and age. But the second thing, this whole like universal mental models as you as and I and I wasn't sure because I don't know Srikumar's work well enough to know those three different models. But as you walked through number one, I thought, no, no, the universe is definitely not random. I do not believe that. Number two, the universe is out to get me and I need to make sure that I try to fight against that and achieve what I achieve. I definitely don't agree with that either. The third mental model is so beautifully aligned with what I talk about in the book around clarity. And it's our job to help the universe help us. Right? So if we set that intention about what we aspire to, what our dreams are, what our purpose is without the expectation of how it's going to happen if we let it unfold, because we have set that intention into the universe. The, the phrase I love to use is the universe conspires to help us get exactly what we set our intentions at.

And I couldn't agree more. And I've been so blessed in so many ways with that. Right. Especially as we are and especially if you're leaning and doing something that is personally meaningful in the service of other. Right. So talk to me a little bit. Jennifer, I'm always curious about our guests. You made history and at linkage as the first female CEO, share with our listeners the two to three life events that really have shaped you into the leader that you are and helped you reach that pinnacle.

I love this question. I'm going to answer it with a few little stories about three different phases of my life. But first of all, even as a very young girl, so 6, 7, 8 years old, not necessarily consciously, but looking back, I can see that, you know, I came out of the womb as a leader. I love to instigate, I love to create vision, I love to drive change. But it wasn't until I was a first time formal leader of people. So in my first few leadership roles in my 20s that I had to really learn how to engage others. It wasn't enough for me to be, you know, this driver. It's how do I actually engage direct reports, people, peers, managers, versus trying to do it all myself. And I have to say, in my 20s and 30s, that was a really tough lesson because it was so antithetical to how I was successful maybe the first 20 years of my life. Right. So that was number one, how do you engage others? Not just your direct reports, but your peers and your managers as opposed to doing and doing. The second is when I became a leader of leaders. So now I'm in my 40s and I am at the corporate executive board. It was acquired by Gartner in around about 2017. I spent eight years there as the general manager of a business called the Leadership Academies. We as a professional services arm of ceb serving our large corporate clients globally. So now, not suddenly, it happened over time, slowly. I found myself as a general manager with leaders of leaders. And so I had the head of consulting and the head of operations and the head of research. And what I realized was it was in our collective best interest to hire people that were better than me at any one of those things and to ensure that they were leveraging their strength and their passion and felt like they. They could thrive and had enough autonomy with enough challenge. But they had my support as their leader. And that was another big shift in my leadership because I wasn't the expert, right? They were better at those things than me. And so instead of it being a humiliating type of thing, it was an empowering type of thing. And so that was in my 40s. And then I became a CEO. And in my 50s, I am still a CEO. And what I realized when I started at linkage as the CEO nearly six years ago was it's a completely different experience as the CEO. My only bosses are the board, and I don't engage with them day to day. So very suddenly I found myself looking around for peers, having none, and realizing that in this role it's, you know, you've probably heard, and you're a CEO yourself, so it can be lonely because you don't have those, you know, you have friends, but friends that are direct reports. And so it's a very different relationship in some ways. So in that role, my leadership role, I had to realize that I don't get a lot of direct feedback. And even though I have an incredible team with incredible support that we offer each other, I knew I needed to build my own support team outside of the organization, so. So that I could continue to grow and thrive. So you should see my own personal advisory board. I have a CEO coach and I have a speech coach, and I have advisors who were in private equity and I have other advisors who are fabulous leaders that I respect and admire. And I have Sri Kamara and the Hundred coaches. So I surrounded myself with people so I could become a better leader.

I love that and I love those transitions, right? And how what is powerful for me is one, you changed. You took charge and you recognized and you took charge to change and grow into the next role, to pick up the skills, knowing what Got you here, wasn't going to get you there. Right. So you consciously recognize that I need to operate differently to get best out of what the organization, the leaders, or my particular team needs. And you really invested to elevate your model, your operating model, your skills, your way of being. I love that.

And I loved your quote. It's not a quote. It's actually a book by Marshall Goldsmith. What Got yout Here, Won't get yout There. It's a very famous book. It's very consistent with. I don't know if you know Whitney Johnson's work. She was the podcaster that I recommended, but she talks about the S curve and the disruption and when you're in that sweet spot, and it may, you know, we could play with this, it may link to happiness where you feel like you're operating on purpose, things are easy, you're challenged, but not too challenged. When I'm in the sweet spot, which I would say I am right now as the CEO, and there are several mini disruptions. I mean, launching a book put me right back onto the launch curve, where I felt very uncomfortable being a global keynote speaker. I was not that a few years ago, so that was uncomfortable. But for me, I realized that happiness for me is also not only a state of being, but when I'm in a state of being. And this is what I try and do with my direct reports as well, of you could operate in your sweet spot, but also be looking at, if you're achieving mastery, what is that next level of challenge, of growth, of learning. And I want to make sure that we don't stay any one of us in the sweet spot for too long, including myself.

Yeah, we at trophy when we don't grow, right? That's beautiful. When we are not growing, we're dying. That's the reality. There is no static, because static results in atrophy, physically, mentally, learning. All the research is so clear. Adults who keep learning much later throughout their lives have much later. They're able to offset dementia. They're able to offset Alzheimer's much, much later. It's, do we keep learning? Do we keep growing and do we keep finding meaning? You know, I had a conversation just earlier today from somebody who said, you know, I always wanted to retire at 60. I'm now 63 and I am retiring. And I said, don't retire, just retire. Right? Retyre, retread, find your next thing, because you're going to live another 20, 30 years. Why stop growing? Why stop serving? Why stop? There is so much that you can offer. So rethink it. Rethink the role.

I love that you call it retire, then just rethread the tires. A dear friend of mine who also spoke on our Women in Leadership Institute stage just a few weeks ago is named Ann Chow. She would be fabulous for your podcast, by the way. She's the former CEO of AT&T's Business Services, a multibillion dollar organization by itself as a Fortune 15 company. And she was the CEO for many, many years. She left last year and she has it's. She is now even her website, it's called the Rewired CEO. So her rewirement now is keynote speaking, author, board work, and she just started a professorship at adjunct professor at Kellogg. And I just caught up with her. We text all the time. And she said, you know, Jennifer, this rewiring is so magical and it's giving me so much passion and so much fuel. And she's my age, maybe a few years older, and she's such an inspiration and role model for me as I look to my next 20 years.

I love that. I love that. You know, our core marquee program for individuals and for organizations on change, Jennifer, if you remember, is called Rewire. And we called it Rewire because it really came from my insight while I was at McKinsey and I was researching this world that, you know, at the heart of the deepening crisis that we face out there and at the heart of our own personal crisis of stress, anxiety, burnout, is a fundamental mismatch in the complexity of the world and ours. And our wiring for fear. Right, Our evolutionary wiring for fear that puts us in this fight, flight, freeze. Every time we find a threat, whether it's a physical threat or a psychological threat to our identity and who we are keeps us from operating from a scarcity mindset, from a self from here and now, versus the reality. You know, we forget the reality. We are more prosperous, we are living longer. We are more connected, and we can do more things in this generation in much less time than any other generation. And yet we operate as if we have less. We operate. We create our own illnesses, right? We operate. We are busier than ever. We're just. It's crazy when you look at it. And that's why we were like, listen, if we have to help leaders change, we have to help them rewire their brains away. It's an inner work, it's not an outer work.

Yeah, I'm actually glad you raised that. There's two things that you raised. One is this scarcity principle and fear. And the other is this busyness. And that is especially true. We know of women and women leaders, and we can talk about that later if you want. But in terms of the scarcity mindset, and I find people in my life operate this way very, very frequently, and I'll just use a very specific example. With the dramatic onset of Generative AI and ChatGPT. It's only been a year, but you can see this enormous amount of fear of, what is this going to do to my organization? What is this going to do to my team? What is this going to do to me and my job? And there's a whole slew of us who have said, I just don't want to play with it. I don't want to face it. And then there's the other extreme who fully embraced it. And we were actually talking as an executive team at SHRM yesterday of what is that neck? We've been playing with it in many of our functions, our editorial function as an example. But as of yesterday, we said, well, wait a minute, people are doing this anyway. The, you know, the early adopters are just, you know, paying for it themselves and playing. What if we were to enable everyone and just license it for everyone to say, this is here. We need to get smarter individually, collectively, as organizations. So let's all jump in and learn together. And instead of this fear mindset, let's look at it as an abundance and a curiosity mindset and see what we can learn.

It's beautiful. And it's this notion of embracing change. Right, you talked about. This is your connecting it back to, don't stay in our sweet zone, sweet spot. Here's an opportunity. Let's lean into it. Knowing it's going to be uncomfortable in the beginning, knowing there is actually fear associated. But if we lean into it with the right mindset and with the right intent, you know, not leaning too far to the edge of terror, but leaning enough for discomfort, discovery, the growth that becomes possible that we can tune into is amazing because it is gonna happen whether we lean in or not. Right? It is gonna make a difference.

No, that's exactly right. And that kind of leading with fear, you know, look, self awareness is right at the heart of your model. And I think sometimes many of us are leading with fear or a scarcity mindset, but we're not aware of it. And so one of the things we do in the world at linkage with all leaders, the center of our purposeful leadership model is called become. And the become is the commitment. It's that inner path to leadership. It's that commitment to become a better leader every day. And that takes courage, it takes curiosity, and it takes this evolving self awareness. Ideally it would be formally through, you know, anonymous or not, people willing to give you feedback. But it also could be informally through engaging with people like you, with coaches, with friends to say, I want to become more aware, I am committed to becoming better. And that openness to maybe I am leading with fear or a scarcity mindset and I'm not even aware of it. So we could also talk about the inner critic.

That's where I want to go there next. Right. So in your book you talk about so much and you have such powerful tips of working with the inner critic. Right? So you talk about awareness. That's at the heart. So share with our listeners a little bit around the inner critic, how it plays up and specifically tips and advice you have for leaders to work more effectively with it.

Perfect. So the reason I started with the become commitment as part of our purposeful leadership model is because that is the same what makes effective leaders, what the best leaders do, is the same across the entire spectrum of gender. Just like that. The inner critic also is alive and well across the entire spectrum of gender. We just know from our data, research and experience that it is louder for women and it prevents women from taking action on their aspirations and their dreams, perhaps more significantly than for men. So what is it? The inner critic is that voice in our heads. It is a relentless, critical, judging voice. Often it's pointed at ourselves. And when it's pointed at ourselves, it might sound like, I'm not worth it, I'm not good enough, I'm not ready. I shouldn't ask for that raise, that promotion, that flexibility, those resources, so that inner critic can be so loud that it can prevent us from achieving our dreams. And I tell the story in the book about me personally, Right before I agreed to interview for the CEO of Linkage Job, when the headhunter called, my inner critics spiked pretty intensely and it sounded like, you can't be a CEO until you are properly groomed. You can't be a CEO until you have a better understanding of the P and L all the way down to the net income line. You have not managed the operating expenses at a publicly traded company. You've only managed to the gross margin line. You don't know enough. Or my favorite, what kind of mother are you? You've got an elementary school, middle school, high school children and they need you and you're going to take a job where you have to commute from D.C. to Boston every week or two, you can't be the kind of mother you want to be. So that's what my inner critic sounded like. And so to answer your question, although everyone has one, we teach, especially women leaders, how do you become aware of that inner critic? And how do you quiet it? You don't silence it. The inner critic is alive and well for all of us every single day. But if you can become aware of it and if you can pause and reflect long enough to see it for what it is. So that's step one and two. Become aware and pause. The third step is to become compassionate with yourself if it's pointed at you or with others if it's pointed at them. Because the inner critic can also be equally judgmental and critical of other people, which of course impacts your relationships because you think people don't notice that you're quietly judging them, but of course they do. And so it can prevent relationships and the type of outcomes that you want. And then the fourth is to become curious. So for me, I was very fortunate that at that very moment, those days and weeks where I was considering putting my hat into the ring to be the CEO, I had a few allies who in this case happened to be men, and they were peers of mine at the publicly traded company that is now Gartner. And we had all been running business units there. And they sat me down, I'll never forget, at a cafe in Georgetown on the river here in Washington. And they said, jennifer, if we believe we're ready to be private equity backed CEOs in portfolio companies, why don't you think you're ready? If not now, when? And so that was the little bit of a wake up call. It was kind of an intervention that I needed to become aware. I'm not sure I was able to be aware on my own. Somebody else helped me and it caused me to pause and it caused me to become more compassionate. I'm scared. That's why I'm not putting my hat in the ring. And then I had to become curious. Am I able to be the kind of mom I want to be in a publicly traded company? Mostly, yes. So why do I think it's going to be different in a private equity backed company? So let me stop there and get your feedback.

Hi friends. We hope you're enjoying the tips discussed in this episode. If you're on the career treadmill, seeking the next promotion, experiencing stress and anxiety, or reach the top of your career and wondering if the sacrifices to get there were worth it. Ashish and I have been there and we're ready to support you. The happiness squad rewire program is designed to integrate the nine hardwired for happiness practices into your day. Within five minutes form proven habits to experience more success, resilience, satisfaction and creativity. You won't be alone in your journey. Check out the rewire link in the show notes. Make happiness your competitive edge to achieve your goals. Now back to the episode.

So look, I love it and I think it is a topic we circle around a lot, right? In my own work, I see it show up all over and there's a couple of things I want to invite our listeners to kind of pick up from what you're saying. The first, we all have it. Jennifer as a CEO, you had it. You had all the successes and yet you're like, I'm not enough. Am I worth it? Do I belong? Will they find out I have it, right? I've always had it. It always comes around. I haven't actually found a single person who doesn't have it. So if you have that voice of not enough, know that one, you are not alone. The second is if you have it, also recognize that it is not the truth. It is not the truth. That voice comes from a place to keep us safe, not to keep us happy. Right? It's like. And it's much harsh than any voice we use with others. And it's constantly on. It's constantly on. And so my invitation, friends, is just over the next two weeks, just notice. Just notice the following three things. Jennifer talks about becoming aware. Notice the following three things. Write it down. How often is it there? What is the tone of it? Just notice. And what is the effect of that on you? Just write it down. Just notice it. Because once you become aware, you recognize the need to change and how it's mostly negative, not positive. And it is often deprecating. And you know, it's often like defeating. Right. It's not actually helping you. So if something's not helping us, we can then say, hey, I need to do something with it. So that was really powerful. And I also love Jennifer, your point around, you cannot ignore it. You cannot silence it because if you silence it, it only gets stronger. But what you can do, you mentioned look quite it and the way I quite it. And something you might try is invite it to just sit in the passenger seat next to you and take its hand off the driver's seat. I respect you're trying to make a difference. You're trying to help me but let me drive, because there are other people, not just your voice, that is also here that's telling me all that's possible. So let me take the wisdom without the admonishment, if you will, that you're giving me.

I love what you're saying. And look, I think some of these things are easier to talk about than to actually practice. And so I also want to encourage people, and I have mostly women because my, you know, my work, a lot of our work at Linkage is advancing women leaders. But I love the fact that, you know, you're bringing your own experience into this. And I will acknowledge that, you know, you in some context, are also an underrepresented population. Right. And so I think the question is, as I engage, and maybe it's a question for you as I engage across the entire spectrum of gender, of race, of ethnicity, of sexuality, of disability, I find that I actually can learn a lot from either white men or who have been in the leadership majority forever, right. For our entire. At least in this country, in the United States, and for the entire existence of our country. I can learn a lot because while they have an inner critic, it doesn't tend to paralyze them or stop them as quickly as it will for a woman leader. And I actually tell a story. And so I invite you. The book that I wrote is called In Her Own Voice, A Woman's Rise to CEO. But I think the lessons equally apply to all leadership. Chapter three is on the Inner Critic. So we tell a lot of stories about how the inner critic manifests and what to do to quiet it. What I've gotten better at Ashish over the years is to shorten the time period of when the inner critic is so loud that it's clouding my own vision of what's possible, or it's paralyzing me, as I'd mentioned in my story about becoming a CEO. And I'm aware much faster. So I can almost see it as a friend. Oh, I see what's happening here. That's my inner critic. And I'm going to just detach it from myself, put it in the passenger seat, reflect for a moment, become compassionate to it and me, and then to become curious. And if I can fast cycle that from hours or days to minutes or seconds, then I can return more quickly to the core of who I am with that underlying principle of happiness that you talk so beautifully about.

I love that. I love that. So it's about creating space. And the more space we create, the more ability we have to respond the Way we want versus our habits out of our conditioned ways of being.

I would just add to that. It's creating space for sure, but it's creating space in a reduced time period.

In a reduced time instead of just.

Floundering or spiraling for days, weeks or months. And I have seen many people, including myself, perhaps do that. It's how do you acknowledge it much more quickly so that you can return to the core of who you really are?

I love that. So staying on awareness. The other topic you cover in your book, by the way, I read the book cover to cover. I found it incredibly helpful. I highly encourage our listeners to get a copy of it in her own voice. It is applicable the strategies for men as much as women. They are what Jennifer does talk about. And I want to draw this differentiation. You know, we think about men and women. That's gender, right. But that is way different than masculine and feminine energies. And the wisdom that is in Jennifer's book come from the feminine energies that we need so much more rather than the power control. It's a different way for us to be successful and achieve more versus the old ways. So I think there is so much wisdom there. And I always talk about when I work with leadership teams, I want to know where we are operating. What's the mix of masculine and feminine energy? Right. Are we all about let's crush it, let's drive it, or are we about nurturing and inspiring and bringing people along and bigger service? And there are so many of those that you talk about. So I want to go on the second topic that you cover in your book. You talk about internal biases and how big of a role they play. And you mentioned there were many deeply held beliefs that you had to let go in your journey and some ways in which you did that. So I would love to hear a bit about that.

I have so many connections as you talk, so I want to just make sure I focus on the one or two that I think your listeners would most benefit from. So first, you talked about this aspect of masculine and feminine energy as opposed to gender identity. And I love that in the book. It starts actually with the story, if you might remember, of what the articulation of the double bind for women. And that is having to fulfill the expectations of both the masculine stereotypes of what all of us perceive to be as a leader. And. And really this is again Harvard's implicit bias study that has proven all of us conjure up in our mind a ambitious, competitive, aggressive, handsome athletic white man that's by and large what we picture.

Yes.

And so the expectations. As a woman leader, we are supposed to somehow fulfill the stereotype of a leader while at the same time fulfilling the stereotype of a woman. And as you said, the feminine energy characteristics of kind and compassionate and cooperative. And the double bind, of course, is when we're expected to do both of those things at the same time, but we're only seen as one or the other. And there's this constant tension between, how do I show up? If I show up too masculine, I'm seen as too aggressive and too ambitious. If I show up too feminine, I'm too soft. That's the double bind. When you layer in other aspects of underrepresentation, whether it's race, ethnicity, LGBTQ or disability, then it's called the triple bind. And you're also expected to fulfill those stereotypes. So if you hear of the angry black woman as an example. Okay, so fast forward. I was called 27 years ago. I was described by a, you know, another leader, not at the Coca Cola company was a little bit of a competitive situation. I was described to my boss by this person as a cupcake with a razor blade inside. And I think that's a perfect example of the double bind. You know, I'm seen on this exterior as this soft, no, lovely, collaborative, kind, charming. But then on the inside, I'm this biting, aggressive, ambitious, competitive, wanting to win person. And of course, I am both of those things, but of course, we are all both of those things. And a lot of the work we do at linkage is, you know, to really dispel this notion that we can't all be operating with this combination of masculine and feminine energy. In fact, the second point I'll make is in our purposeful leadership work and the data that we surface every single year about what the best leaders do, what the most effective leadership is, we call it purposeful leadership. But what we've discovered over the last many years is that inclusive leadership and purposeful leadership are so inextricably linked that if you look at those inclusive leadership behaviors, women. And these are this. This is the feminine energy, right? It's the transparency, the openness, the vulnerability, the authenticity, the inclusion. Those are not words that would have been used five, 10 years ago, really, pre pandemic to describe effective leaders. That is what is expected of leaders today. So bringing in that feminine, not actually just literally bringing in more women leaders at all levels, but bringing in that energy and capability is something that we do a lot at linkage. But that's not your question. Your Question was about internal bias. So let me just pause there because I just wanted to make those two points because of what you said.

No, I love that. Let's talk a little bit and then we go to the internal bias. But this is important. It's about, as you said, it's not just about bringing in more women, but truly cultivating that feminine energy and making sure we have it. Which means it's a journey going back to. You said some of your mentors and some of the people you turned to when you were just interviewing for the CEO role were men, right? And so there is also this polar. One is good, other is bad. We need more of this. We need less of this. No, this invitation to cultivate the feminine energy is an invitation for everyone to grow. Right? And that is something that I think is so beautiful in your book, in your journey in the work. I love this notion that effective leadership is purposeful leadership and purposeful leadership is inclusive leadership. These are all kind of parts and parcel of the same.

You articulated that so beautifully that I have nothing to add.

So talk to us a little bit about this question of internal bias, because we all have it. Nobody's unbiased, right? Like that thing of like, oh, I'm completely unbiased. I'm like, I don't think you can ever be unbiased.

I don't think we should be. Right. Biases form to protect us. It's whether the biases are serving us. And so we have stopped at linkage altogether at trying to pound unconscious bias training into individuals we actually know from our research. Not only does it not work, it actually has the adverse effect. It could more deeply seed your own biases, especially for the leadership majority who may just walk away feeling shamed or blamed. And that doesn't help anybody. Instead we say, look, it's really important to become aware of the external bias. It's also important to become aware of your own beliefs, not to beat you out of those beliefs, but to help you see how that external bias is forming what we call internal bias now for women. And I'll just take this example because I think it's fabulous. The two men that came to me as my allies, they did not have the same depth or paralyzing inner critic that I did. That's why they said, why are you saying you're not ready for this? I'm not saying that. But I had to get in touch with not only the awareness of my inner critic, but was there a deep seated belief and that's what an internal bias is what have I internalized based on my experience of external bias in the world? And again, this is where women and underrepresented populations really have to reckon with this inside in a way that a lot of white men have not had to. Now, again, that just is. It's not. We could say it's bad, but it is. We can control our own internal beliefs if we can become aware of them. So just to fast forward, the example of the mom, right, that inner critic, you can't be the kind of mom you want to be. What are you thinking? It was deeply seated in this misguided belief that I couldn't be the kind of mom I wanted to be if I were a CEO. And I had to hold that belief up, create a lot of curiosity around it, talk to my kids and my spouse and say, you know, listen, I'm holding this belief, and it scares me. I have a picture of the kind of mom I want to be, but I also really am interested in aspiring to be a CEO. And so we processed it individually and collectively. And, you know, the inner critic still reared its head. After I took the job. And I write in the book about missing my son's 14th birthday. I was on a train to New York to give a keynote, and I was beating myself up by the inner critic of, see, you can't be the kind of mom you want to be. What kind of mother misses her kid's birthday? But when I actually, you know, overcompensated out of guilt and was texting and Snapchatting and emailing him all day, calling my husband and him at Benihana, they were there by themselves. And I was, no, I didn't want to miss the birthday song. It was my son who actually said, mom, I'm all good. I know you love me. You've contacted me like 10 times today. You can back down a little. I'm okay. And so those types of experience helped me realize that this is my belief. It's not the belief of others, right? And I can get over that.

I so love that story. I so love that story, right? And this is so true. It reminds me of this beautiful quote by Indra Nui, right? The former CEO of Pepsi, when she said, you can have it all. You just can't have it all at the same time. And it's okay. It's okay, right? You were like, if I'm not there right now for this moment, and I am doing that, like, all of a sudden I'm showing I don't love him. And I'm taking something away. And your son's affirmation, I love it to him to say, hey mom. As one of our friends daughters would say, chill out, it's all good.

Yeah, well, I love, I mean Indra Nooy is such an amazing icon as a woman, as a CEO, as a champion for diversity inclusion. So she's fabulous. I guess what I would say when women, including Indra say you can have it all, just not at the same time, I think a lot of us, as especially women would say would define that in terms of life stages. If you're staying at home for a period of time to raise your children, then you're choosing to be a full time mother. Then if you go into the work, you're choosing your work. And I would say, and I don't think Indra meant it this way, I would say it's actually almost a moment by moment choice. You can have it all, not all at the same time. Right now, this moment, I'm choosing to be with you, right? It's a commitment I made and I'm loving it. And because I'm loving it, I'm not at the p. I'm making this up. Cause my kids are older, but I'm not able to be at the PTA meeting or I'm not able to be at the staff party because I am choosing to be present with you. Which means there are trade offs in every moment, in every day, in every week, month, year where I might. I launched a book, I was shocked over a 90 day period to really focus on everything required to do that. And you know what, there were repercussions with the family. I did miss things I missed. My college age kids first dive me to the season of his junior year. But you know what, it was a conscious choice. And I talked to him about it and I said, I'm gonna miss your first one. But you know what? I'm gonna be at the second one. And then I made other choices. And so I like to tell women especially, you can have it all. Not at the same time, but it's a moment by moment choice, not a speed.

It absolutely is. It absolutely is. Because all we have is the present moment, right? Every moment a moment. And that is it. We can choose in that moment to commit and be where we are. But that's. It's so hard for people, right, because in that moment they're thinking, well I'm not there, I'm letting them die. Like once you choose, you commit, you be here and know that in the grand scheme, as Long as you have your clear North Star and what matters, you will optimize it and you will get there. And it's not about stages. Yeah. Because I think that is a mistake. And, you know, I think it does less harm, less good than harm.

It just occurred to me. But let me just finish that story. Cause it gets back to the universe conspires, right? So I missed that first meet, and my husband made it, and he came back and he said, who? That was a tough one. You know, Will missed first place for the. The Duke dive team by, like, less than one point. And I. I know he was disappointed because, you know, a freshman beat him. And now that was a really tough one. And I said, oh, gosh, too bad. I went to that second meet. He won every single board. It was the best score he had ever made. And I just went. Thank you, universe, for allowing me to be here and witness this exceptional family moment, this exceptional athletic moment. I got that one. I missed the bad one.

I love that. So, so amazing, right? So I have one last question before we go to a bit of a rapid fire. So my question is, look, you talked so much. Your book, your life, the company that you're at, right. You're doing so much work. And I want to let our listeners know you're doing so much work around the advancement of women and the acceleration of inclusion in the workplace. Talk to us a little bit about the nature of that work, some tips, and how folks can learn more because it's such an important topic right now in a world that is becoming more polarized than ever.

And thank you for opening that. I think the way linkage approaches our work in the world is two sides, and think about it as two sides to a coin. And they are equally important. And the first is, we've already talked a little bit about. We've given you little hints about. We know that women and other underrepresented populations face unique challenges. We call them hurdles. The book is designed to help build awareness of those hurdles, both for women who aspire to advance in their career and for organizations made up of leaders and executives who can really create the culture and the systems and the commitment to support them. Now, I want to make sure, when I say women, women are the largest underrepresented population, right. We're 50% of the workforce going in, but only 30% of the leaders going up. Right? So we focus there knowing that if we focus on women, it helps all other underrepresented populations rise. So the first part of our work is ensuring that we are supporting those populations themselves by helping them become aware of the hurdles and accelerating their ability to overcome them. We talked about a few. The inner critic is the foundational one, another one is internalized bias, and another one is proving your value, which is that busyness piece. We didn't talk a lot about that. There's seven more and the inner critic plus seven others, and they're all in the book. So that's the first part of our work. It's coaching, it's learning and development, it's assessments, it's our Women in Leadership Institute, it's consulting. But the second part of our work, which you asked about is the organizational piece. And to me, this is what allows the sustainability and the amplification to happen because we have to help organizations walk alongside the women and other underrepresented populations on their path to acceleration in their leadership ranks. And how do we do that? We do that through very tactically, we do it through measurement, assessments, organizational assessments, individual assessments at the leadership level, regardless of gender, helping create purposeful, inclusive leaders. And we've got development and coaching and consulting for all leaders. But here's what we have to do is we have to help those leaders shift the culture of their organization. Help them create a culture where all of us feel like we belong and we can contribute. We have to ensure equity in the talent systems, whether it's talent acquisition, succession, high potential pay that we call those kind of the formal talent or people systems and processes. The hardest one, honestly, is the executive action and commitment. And this is the work I love in the world that we do. It's called executive sponsorship. Now how do we develop the leaders and the executives themselves to be more effective sponsors, mentors, coaches and allies, with sponsorship being the most important because it's leveraging political capital and influence to help lift women leaders into positions of more seniority and ensure that they're successful. And then the last one is leadership development. How do you ensure the appropriate stretch assignments? Coaching, formal and informal development for women specifically. So I'll pause there.

Beautiful. And listen, we'll have all of this in the show. Notes for people to connect with. Because I think the work you personally are doing and the company is doing is really amazing. We need so much more of that, right? To create a more kinder, connected, caring, inclusive, purpose driven world. I think the outcomes would be better. And you know, as I was sharing with you, Jennifer, when we chatted, you know, for me, my shift out of McKinsey into this work truly came from a desire to do this at Scale and help a billion people rewire. Because otherwise, at the place where we are living and we are moving, we might not have a planet inhabitable for our kids. And so it's really personal. And I think it's a really call to action for every leader to look into that and start the journey themselves and with their organizations.

I love the work you're doing in the world, Ashish. It aligns so beautifully with the work that I'm doing in the world with Linkage now a shrm company. So thank you and thank you so much for having me. I know that you've got a final rapid round you alluded to.

Yes. So look, three or four questions, super fast. 1. What is your favorite exercise to de stress? What's the way you de stress?

So it depends on how much time I have. If I have time, I like to de stress by physically engaging in tennis, gym, skiing. I love to ski if I have less time. And often it just takes seconds in between meetings, especially when I'm back to back. It is the deepest breath. Three times if I have five minutes. It's a mini meditation to recenter. So yeah, that's what I do.

Beautiful physical. And breath. Breath is one of my favorites too. Right. So simple. We have it. We don't need a lot of time and we don't use it. Second, what's a book that has really, you know, if there was one book that you could take and you were gonna be on an island for a long while, what's that book you would take?

I guess I can't call out my own book. I don't think, you know, this is a little bit irreverent, but I love this book. It's called the Hard Things about Hard Things. And it was written by a CEO, I think his name is Ben Horowitz, who ended up in private equity. It's a hilarious book about a first time CEO realizing how hard it is. And I have gone back to that book again and again to get tips. But also it's just such a moment of comic relief. I don't know if it would help me on an island, to be honest, but I do.

But it's helped you? No, I love that book. I have that book and I think it was. I found it absolutely amazing. And the last one is, what's one of your favorite activities? What's one of the things you do that fills you with joy?

This is such a perfect ending to how we started with. How do you define happiness with that human connection and relationship being so important? So for me, there are a few things during the pandemic. My favorite day of the week was family fire pit Friday. And so we all went to the fire pit and we all, there was a meal on the green egg and we sat outside around the fire pit. We still do that. It's not every week. I have kids in college now. Second way I do that. And I did it last night. It's through really close girlfriend time. So we had our post Women in leadership from D.C. who goes every year to the institute. We have regular times in the year where we come together, we reflect, we help each other with our own aspirations and then the last is one on one husband time. I am so lucky to have been married for 25 years to my wonderful partner, Chip McCollum. And we sat in the hot tub last night and that's, you know, no phones, no technology in the water, where we just get to reflect on our day and our life.

Thank you. That is amazing. I think we're gonna, we, my wife and I have a date tomorrow night and I think we're gonna come back and sit in our hot tub. That's. I think that's a really, really great inspiration here. Jennifer. Thank you. Thank you. I know you've been on a whirlwind book tour in addition to running the company and everything else, so we so appreciate you taking the time to join me on this podcast. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you and the work you're doing in the world.

Ashish, take care.

We hope you enjoyed this episode on the Happiness Squad podcast. Make sure to hit subscribe on your chosen platform that you listen to us on. If you enjoyed that tips discussed looking to combat stress, burnout or seeking deeper fulfillment, or navigating life transitions, then our Rewire program is designed for you. Rewire is your key to unlock your full potential to experience more success. Resilience, satisfaction and creativity. Make happiness your competitive edge. Check out the show notes and learn more about how you can benefit by rewiring away from fear in between episodes. Follow along on Instagram at at my Happiness Squad for tons of tips, insights and short videos designed just for you. Until next time.