179 - Courage to Leap & Lead with Jennifer McCollum

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello everybody. It's Tuesday and it's CB and I'm sporting a new look. I don't think you've ever seen me in a shirt and a ponytail. But you know what? The older you get, the younger you get, right? Hey, I have a special guest. You know, all my guests are special, but this one is particularly special. Jennifer and I— I'm going to— I've got to tell you the story. First of all, welcome to Courage to Leap and Lead. Jennifer and I met Oh, 2 or 3 years ago. And I did not like this woman. One meeting and I said, oh, hell no. She's a problem. She's a case. Then she reached out to me to support her book. And I thought, oh, do I really want to do this? But Jennifer is one of those people you don't say no to, regardless.

Right?

And I said, all right, I'll do it. And lo and behold, we had an interview set up. And you know how things in life happen for a reason? I forgot to hit the record button. And so Jennifer and I spent over an hour just chatting it up. 2 businesswomen, 2 women, one white, one Black. I want to tell you guys, it was the richest conversation I've had in eons. It took me back to the days of chatting it up in Greenwich Village in New York at the coffee shop.

This—

you know what, how wrong can you be about a person? Real wrong. I'm here to tell you, she is Fascinating. Just not just fascinating. She she is a thing within her that is a trigger for knowledge, both sharing and giving. And how many people? And I'm talking about rich knowledge, not just how was your boyfriend blah blah blah. How's your husband? All that kind of stuff. Rich knowledge that we women need to be able to have. conversations about. We talked about so much that neither one of us remembered the entire conversation. But let me just introduce you to my new BFF, Jennifer. Jennifer, welcome.

Thank you, CB. It's so good to be here a second time. And thank you actually for sharing that story. I— it's fun to listen to your version of the story. And I know we'll keep talking about the continued Notice how she said my version.

So be prepared, this is a kick-ass woman. I love her. She sneaks those little things in, but I caught it. Hey everybody, before we really get into, you know, in-depth conversation, I just want to tell you, and I'm not supposed to do this about promoting books, but you must read her book In Her Own Voice. Because she, she walks the talk. You know, she, she, in her book, she tells you about difficulties that she's had as a businesswoman, et cetera, and how she solved these particular issues. It is a superior read. Jennifer, tell us first, how did you come up with the idea of writing this book?

So as the CEO of Linkage, which I am no longer— I left that job at the end of the year— but we've been looking at this.

Well, wait a second now. Now you— okay, so first of all, for our readers, our listeners and readers, what the heck is Linkage?

Uh, perfect. All right, Linkage is a 35-year-old leadership development firm, global, and the mission is to change the face of leadership. And we do that through this in-depth work to advance women leaders and to create inclusive leaders and inclusive cultures. So we've been studying the advancement of women for 25 years. And I went to my executive team about 2 years after COVID because we'd been looking at our data and we'd been tracking the experiences of women in the workplace. And I said, we have the next chapter of the story to tell based on COVID, based on the social injustice that had risen our awareness about what women and people of color face. We had evolving, an evolving understanding of the challenges women faced and how to overcome them. And I said, if we at Linkage don't tell this story, It's actually a disservice to women at all levels rising in life and career, and to the men, the allies, the executives who support them. So that's why we wrote it.

So, okay, are you saying that Linkage was not aware of their position, or not— better yet, not aware of the injustices by that were happening to people of color, whether it be government, medical, social, whatever.

We were, we were wildly aware of the challenges that, that women and the intersections that women have faced over decades. What shifted during COVID and I think you experienced it, I certainly experienced it, was the increase of both the challenge, the burnout, not only the first shift, but the increase in the second shift of the elder care, the house care, the childcare, and the increase of the third shift, what we call the staff care, the DEI work, the mental health work, a lot of that burden fell on women. And so as we and other large organizations like McKinsey were tracking things like burnout, we were also tracking things like the rise in awareness. And I think COVID helped really kind of open up the kimono on, hey, look what we're facing here and we can't do it anymore. And it led to the great resignation. It led to the great breakout— breakup. And it led to, in our perspective, what do we need to focus on at the systemic level and at the individual woman leader level to help make progress faster?

Well, I think there was a perfect storm that happened. One was the killing of Floyd. And quite frankly, I thought people had forgotten about it when COVID hit because COVID was— I hate to say the word more inclusive, but it was certainly— it was not prejudiced in terms of who it was going to hit. And that sort of brought us together in a weird kind of way. And the fact that we realized that skin color, religion, sexual persuasion, COVID was gonna hit. It didn't care. And then a lot of things that happened to me as a person of color is I'm really focused on the disparity of medical care.

CB, your audio just went out. Can you hear it?

No, I, I can't. I can hear you and me.

Okay, you're back. It sounded like a shuffling of papers and a strange noise, but I hear you now.

Okay, maybe I touched the mic. So where did I go out?

Um, so COVID was, was really a democratization of the experience no matter where you were, and then you were talking about the murder of George Floyd. Yeah.

So one of the things that struck me is, as a person of color, is I wasn't fully aware of the lack of care in terms of health for people of color. And that just sort of added a layer of complexity onto really what was happening. And I think it also that George Floyd triggered that knowledge and more attention to the fact that people of color weren't getting— didn't have parity.

Yeah.

Medical care. So it fascinates me that Linkage did this research to find out more about the scenarios that were happening.

Yeah. And to be fair, the, the research that Linkage has tracked over many years is more about the leadership lens. What does it take to be an effective leader? And in that evolving period through COVID and the Black Lives Matter, that we started tracking, what are the most effective leaders doing? And we've talked about this before, words that actually are typically more feminine in their stereotype. came to be the evolving expectations of leadership. And so things like openness, transparency, collaboration, authenticity, admitting that we don't know how to solve these problems and we need to bring people together to figure it out in the context of community— even language like that never would have been used pre-COVID to describe really effective leadership.

Yeah, I totally agree. And here's what I'm saying when I was talking before, is that We looked at the bottom line of people, whether people were getting care. We didn't look at the leadership level from organizations. Why were some organizations stand out in terms of the positive and some organizations did not?

Wow.

And what did that mean? And I think coming out of studies, inclusive studies, what we saw was that not enough women, not enough people at the top were supporting decisions that were made or were able to make those decisions to affect a change in our society.

Yeah.

And so I love the title of your book, In Her Own Voice, you know? And so, yeah, I'm— I was very skeptical Took up, you know the word I want, about whether or not the killing of Floyd would make a long-term impact. And what I'm saying is it not only made a long-term impact up until this day, but it also triggered us looking at leadership and all of the ramifications. You know, in this particular, we've had other situations. where we looked at racism, period. Now we're starting to look at where is it coming from? What's the responsibility from people at the top? Not only in terms of racism, but bringing women in, etc., etc. And I feel a lot more hopeful that there is—

Can we talk about that? Because you said something in a previous conversation about the pendulum swing. And you actually were more optimistic than me when we were talking about inclusion and DEI and the status of DEI today. So I was very hopeful in 2020 and in 2021 and even into 2022 when there was this surgence of awareness, this surging of investment, this surging of creating structures inside organizations to help all of us become more inclusive and have a deeper understanding. I mean, it was— It was an awakening for me too. I think I thought I was far more inclusive than I actually was, especially as I talked to friends who didn't look like me and didn't have the same experience as me.

But I'm gonna stop you there. It also helped me realize that I need to talk to more people about what I'm feeling, you know, in my mind, in my heart, you know. And what I found, which has been really interesting, is that I wasn't seeing the total picture in a lot of things. I can see a picture from my perspective. But because I wasn't having dialogue with people like you in depth, talking about how I felt, how it affected me, I was remaining silent, silent in my own emotions. That just doesn't work.

Yeah. And other— so let's, let's go back to the pendulum swing, because this is what was a big aha for me. So fast forward to last year and this year. So now we're in 2024, and I have been discouraged, not at the lack of investment in women. We can go back to that in a minute. That seems to have stayed, at least when I look at our business, that the interest level is still there. But the pendulum swing about this standalone DEI inclusion work, whether it's DEI positions and teams and resources Or, you know, the interest in things like inclusion awareness and training and development. So I said, I'm a little discouraged. And why don't you repeat what you said about the pendulum?

Well, if I remember. So the pendulum swings like this.

Okay.

But what happens when we have incidents like this is that the pendulum still swings, but it doesn't go as far as it did before. And so it won't get to the point where the pendulum stays perfectly still in my lifetime, sadly. But we are seeing some reduction in the circumference or the arc that the pendulum is making. And that brings some hope.

And why do you think that is? My hypothesis, and I'll speak for me personally, is that No, not everyone, but a lot of the people in, you know, in our communities that I hang about in kind of the executive-level communities, there were a subset of us that said, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, that said, I want to learn more. I want to lean in. I want support. And I think I, you know, I was a little surprised when, you know, people told me that they experienced me as either standoffish or experienced me as racist. And it was kind of like, I'm looking around going, what do you mean? Like, I'm here. I'm really trying and I'm doing the right thing. And I think I had to go through this whole year 2, 3, 4, continuing to this day, evolution of becoming a lot more self-aware. Now, I can't unhear, unsee, unlearn that because now I've taken a little swing. I've got a long way to go. What's your hypothesis?

I think you've come a long way, baby.

All right. Do you want to talk about women?

That's a commercial from way back.

I know. So anyway—

No, I, I hear what you're saying. Um, so I think there's several reasons that we have become more aware. Are we totally aware? No. And I don't think with life you can be because You'd have to be on 24/7. We have media now. And media takes no prisoners. Media like we've never experienced before. The, the, the cutting of cultures, the cutting of words, the, the slicing and the dicing of things that people say is more It's much stronger than what it used to be.

Hmm.

I mean, we would sit in coffee shops and have conversations that were meaningful to us, but now it's on a massive scale. Massive. I mean, you can go from being a number one hit to zoom down to zero in the— a New York minute now. So the pluses of that are is that we converse more, not necessarily face-to-face, but we are conversing more through social media. The negative is that because it's not face-to-face, you can't see the emotion, which is a great part of conversation. And so a slip of the tongue may be taken the wrong way. When in fact it wasn't meant to be like that. And so because you don't have the facial expression, you're not seeing that you need to immediately go in and correct.

Yeah, no, I hear you. I think it's also created— and we can get whether we're talking about race or gender, you know, I've heard many men in my circles say, you know, I'm afraid to have those conversations because what if I say the wrong thing or I'm unaware or, or, or. And then so it has also— one of the negatives has instilled a bit of fear.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I have to tell you, this is gonna sound weird. I'm glad that I'm the age that I am, because I can get away with actually saying what's on my mind, instead of, you know, making it nice and neat and in a package. And what I find surprisingly is people say, thank you. Thank you for saying it like it is. And, you know, so I've gotten that reputation. One of the things that's important in being able to say it like it is, is that you have to consider the feelings, the emotions of the person that you're saying it to. And I learned from my cousin who's passed that you can say it like it is in a way that's helpful, in the way that's warm, empathetic, funny, and people will totally respect you. As Maya Angelou said, you can say those same words in a way that feels like a knife.

Hmm.

I believe that we as Americans are learning more about saying it in an empathetic, warm way. One of my favorite shows is back on the air called What Would You Do? And I don't know if you've seen that, but you know what? I am so proud of what they're doing to help people become aware. of how words, body language, and emotions— I think everybody in America should watch the show. It's that powerful. So for example, last week they had a person of color who had a more natural hairdo going for a job interview. And the woman was a white woman. And she said, we love your background. And this was in a restaurant where other people could hear. And these were 2 actresses. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

But would you be willing to change your hairstyle? And the Black woman said, why? And she said— the white woman said, and I'm paraphrasing, well, it just doesn't quite fit in, and it could be construed as being a little unkempt, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. The Black woman was clearly offended. The white woman gets up and she goes to the bathroom. This is all planned. And the Black woman turns to the people next to her, and this was in, I think it was in Alabama, and says, and she stares at them until they say something. And she says, I don't know what to do. And the white people said, don't take the job. You're much better than that. And there's a cultural expert that's behind the scenes and he's going, yes, my Alabama has risen.

So, oh, I actually love, love, love that story. In 2021, 2022, and this is actually another of the reasons we wrote the book, we started to see how the challenges that women and the one, especially women of color, and you just told a beautiful story. One of the things that surfaced again, because we were all on virtual screens, we were all dressing differently than we did when we went into the office. We were all behaving differently.

Yes.

We all looked differently. We had makeup, we didn't, our hair was done or it wasn't. It allowed us, especially women, to say, well, wait a minute. I don't want to show up compromising and contorting myself any longer. We were taught in the, you know, '90s, 2000s to wear the shoulder pads and the suits and to have executive presence. Bow tie to the striped shirt. Yes. And like, that is BS. I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm going to show up with my hair the way it feels authentic to me. I'm going to speak in a way that feels true to me. And I'm not willing— the branding and presence hurdle is no longer about me assimilating to some other stereotype of leadership. It's about me coming, creating my brand and presence in a way that feels true to me. And I love your story because I experienced similar things. And then we, we had, um, Can I tell a quick story about Mary Lou?

Yes.

So her name is Mary Lou, um, Galvez, and she's the CEO. She was at our conference last year and spoke on the stage. She's the president of the Disney— of the ABC network in New York. And, um, she talked about on a webinar how she showed up, um, you know, all the way in her career. She felt like she had to keep her hair a certain way and straight and present a certain way and hide her Latin kind of personality. And then one day she showed up with all her curls and someone said, it looks like Mary Lou forgot to brush her hair this morning. And when she told that story, this again was a huge awakening for me. I was observing as my, one of my colleagues, my direct reports was, was, uh, leading the interview and I was watching it and I was watching the chat completely blow up. And it was women of all races, all ages, gray or no gray, curls or no curls, makeup or no makeup. And, you know, we're going gray. And it was just this liberating chat of like, God, do men ever have to have these conversations?

Yes, they do. And I will tell you quickly another story. When I was much younger, I was on— I was giving a speech, and on the panel with me was a psychologist. She told the story how a Black male was wearing an afro for a job interview. He wanted to go to Wall Street. And he said, I do not want to change my hair because when I go back into the hood, I'm going to be bullied and picked on and everything. And he said to her, I don't know what to do. Do I change to get this job or not? And she said, what if when you go to work, you've changed, and when you go home, you change back. This was at least 20 years ago. So we talk about the pendulum. We're now at the point where we say, hell no, it's my decision.

Yeah. Well, and you're actually raising an interesting point. And we struggled with this even at Linkage because all of our data is tracking the hurdles that women leaders face. Like, that's what we've studied for 25 years and the perceptions that women have about their organizations, the culture, the executive executives, the talent systems. We don't have that same dataset for men or women of color specifically. So if we applied the same amount of rigor to just choose race and ethnicity or any other intersection, would we find that the very hurdles that women face are similar? And so we've gotten that question, and the answer is, I think so. I just— we don't have the data.

It's similar, but not as weighty. So in, in, in my culture, it's known that it's easier for a Black woman to land a higher-paying job than it is for a Black male.

I did not know that. Yeah.

This goes back to white people hiring Black women as nannies. more acceptable, not as threatening. And so there is just a whole lot of stuff that can be shared and unraveled to bring us to a different reality. Yeah.

Well, the reason that that's shocking that you say that is because even the, you know, if you look at the pay equity gap just for women, white women versus Black women versus Latin women, who actually are— is even worse than Black women. And you look at the disparity You know, where do Black men fall, you know, after, after white women, before white women? I actually don't know, because I've only looked at the gender data.

They fall after white women.

But also after Black women? They do that?

That's— In many cases. I'm not saying in every single case. Again, it goes to appearance, it goes to build, you know, it's, it's the same thing. When I was hired at a company, I was hired because I was wearing the same suit from the same store as the guy that— who was interviewing me, which was a pinstripe suit from Brooks Brothers with the same shirt color and the same bow tie, except that he had a tie. And he said, I love how you look. And I said, thank you. And he said, same suit I'm wearing. Where did you shop? I said, Brooks Brothers. And he said, so do I. We have something in common. It had nothing to do with my qualifications for the job, which, by the way, I was totally not qualified.

So did you take it because you wore the same suit?

I did take it. I did take it. It was a mistake, but I did take it. Look, you know what? I know we only have a few minutes left, and I want to talk about you. Did you— I mean, you are so successful now. Um, you are a role model for women just in how you present, how you talk, the things that you go after. It's amazing. I think that your next book has to be in my own voice. I would like to know, did you experience any failure in your life?

The thing I actually love most about the book is the stories, they're mine and they're other C-suite women, but my stories specifically are pretty raw. And a lot of the stories were about how I kind of royally messed up in every, you know, in every decade I had different stories. And my My editor finally said, listen, you need to tell a lot more success stories because no one wants to read about some failed CEO.

No, that's not true, because we want to know how you got from A to B.

So it actually— it was, um, I tried to balance it, but I think the— if anything I'm really proud of, uh, with the book but also with my, with my leadership, it's that I'm not afraid, kind of like you, to just tell the truth. I, I kind of messed up here. And at this board meeting a year into my CEO job, when I didn't do a good job preceding the agenda and the presentation with my private equity board— by the way, it was entirely white men— and I, you know, as a first-time CEO grading myself and my team on my first-year performance, I was skewered by the private equity, one specifically who made me feel, and this was not his intention, but made me feel like I was on my way out and that I was surely going to be fired. And I, I literally, and it's the, it was in the context of the inner critic, which women's inner critics are very loud. And it was saying things like, I don't know what I'm doing. I've completely failed in this moment, in this role, in my life. I mean, it was just so loud I couldn't focus. And so I did what we actually teach people to do. I, I started to become aware, you know, this voice in my head is so loud, I cannot manage this meeting any longer. I paused, and you're gonna laugh. I literally said, um, gentlemen, do you mind if we take a break so that, um, I can use the restroom? I just, I had to get out of there. And then I went into the bathroom and I had a really good, very quick, just cry. I just had to release the emotion and the tension. And then I reframed. I thought, you know what, this is a moment. And I can go back in and say, you know, I think I actually could have done this differently. Instead of grading our objectives on an A through an F and we're debating what letter it is. Perhaps we could talk about where to go from here. I don't know if I said that. I hope I said that.

Whoa, whoa. Talk about flipping the switch. You used the word— I want to make sure that everybody knows— you said seeding. What does that mean for our audience? You didn't seed well.

Oh, that's a really good point. OK, so— and actually, I was just asked not too long ago, as I'm looking at my next CEO job, one of the people on the search committee who's a CEO of a Fortune 500 company said, I read your book and I want to talk about that failed meeting with the board. And I thought, so that was my opportunity. And she said, what would you do differently with this board? And so ceding to your question, I said, you know what I could have done differently and what I would do with this board would be to find a subset of the board that I would feel comfortable enough to test my thinking and assumptions with before completing the board deck, before sending out the board deck. And if I could seed my ideas, seed my thinking, seed my perspectives, and get your feedback, I think the board meetings would go a lot more smoothly.

So for audience, seeding means testing, just to see how it resonates with certain people. And also, seeding is really important when you want to bring somebody over to your side before a meeting. And you want to be sure they're going to be on your side. So yes.

And I would say for any important conversation— are you negotiating a raise? Are you having an important conversation with someone that you're having a challenge with? Like, testing and seeding even with other people. And that's why I appreciate you, CB, because I can test thinking with you, get your feedback, and go, oh, hell no, I'm not saying that.

Back at you. Hey, I know that as a mom you've got to go pick up your son. Will you promise us one thing? Will you come back so we can learn some more?

I love learning with you. I love, uh, teaching each other, and I love being on your podcast. Anytime.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. I'm so sorry. I hate to end this, but I know I know that she has to go and pick up her son, who is fabulous. So please stay tuned. Sometime after Jennifer gets her feet into the ground with her new position, she'll come back and talk to us some more. And hopefully she'll talk to us so that we can peek behind the curtain, you know, not all CEO-ish, so that, you know, you know what I'm saying, right? So with that, goodbye. Have a successful week, and I'll see you next week. And Jennifer is going to come back. Bye now.

See you, babe. Love you.

Love you too.