Courage: To Leap and Lead, with Amii Barnard-Bahn, Episode 82

Hello everybody. You know what? Like I'm telling you something you don't already know. It's Tuesday, and of course on Tuesdays now I'm here with you, and I'm so happy to be with you. Hey, you know what? I'm in Colorado, and we are expecting unusual blizzard. Today, and this is after a total dry spell. We thought we were not going to get any snow this year. So far we've had probably about 12 inches, not all on the same day, but today it's coming in strong. So I might have to fly back to New York or down to Florida or something right after this show today. So what have I got for you today? We have Very special woman. And you know, I have to disclose, she's part of my wonderful— not mine, Frank, you know, Marshall Goldsmith is going to kill me, and Frank Wagner. It's actually Marshall Goldsmith's MG100, which stands for Marshall Goldsmith 100, which is now, I think, 360 people.

I think so too.

Yeah, and called 100 coaches. So Amy was one of the first people to reach out to me, and so I'm so excited to have her. Secret, she's an attorney. So—

Recovering.

Watch our P's and Q's here. Ah, now you know that's not me. Hey, let's welcome Amy. Amy's just released a book. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about her, how she got to where she is, her daughters, You know, we're all gonna lay it out. So Amy, welcome.

Thank you. It's so fun to be here with you, CB.

Oh, it's great to have you. You know, Amy is one— has wanted to be— my English today is like down the tubes. Let me reach down and get it back out. Okay, let's try this again. Amy has been interested in being on the show for quite some time, and would you believe we have a backup list of guests. It must be your popularity that's bringing it on. And the newsletter. Yeah, and the newsletter. Now you could see if you go to CB Bowman, subscribe to the newsletter, you can see all the shows that are coming up for the month. So we're so happy to have Amy. Amy, listen, where should we start? Should we talk about you as a young gal, or should we talk about you as a woman, Or talk about you as an author, or talk about you as a coach, or talk about you as a lawyer? Where do we start?

You know, people would probably be most interested in how I got to— I had to pivot a lot in my career, which I think is fun for your show and people that are watching. I spent about 20 years working in Fortune Global 50 organizations in a variety of roles, in chief human resources officer, general counsel, ethics and compliance roles, and, and CAO roles. And so, you know, now I work on, as a coach and consultant, on teamwork and healthy one-on-one executive coaching for mainly for legal and compliance professionals as a specialty. And I also coach other leaders that are ambitious and, and really wanting to be the best they can be. So in between all that, I did a lot of different things, and I'm happy to go down any of those.

Well, let's start. So first of all, tell us, where did you grow up?

I grew up in Connecticut, born in Texas.

Oh, give a hand raise to Connecticut! I was in North White Plains. Shake hands with Connecticut.

Yeah, my dad was a salesperson for General Foods, so we traveled a lot before my memory even started. And so even though I was born in Texas, we bopped around, and then he earned his keep at the headquarters in White Plains, which was where, you know, GF was headquartered when I was 5. And so pretty much I consider growing up— my roots and my family and weddings and all that stuff were always in Texas.

Do you know that I worked for General Foods?

No, I didn't know that.

Yeah. And I will not tell this audience for how long, but it was a long All right, we'll have to talk about that sometime. So did you— did he work at the offices in Rye or White Plains?

White Plains.

Hot dog, we probably passed each other in the halls. Yeah, holy Toledo. What department was he in? Sales?

Good question. I was so young, I don't think I asked. It just seemed like a big blob to me.

Oh my gosh, I worked in Cereals, desserts, and for a short while, and coffee.

Okay, so we just got all the cool free, like Crystal Light, Maxwell House.

Oh yeah, beverages.

We get these big boxes of stuff and it was so fun and we thought it was the best. We were little, so we were like, oh my God, a free bag. You know, it was all the logo swag. So—

And did you shop at the store a lot?

I don't think so, 'cause we were in Connecticut. We were 45 minutes away, so we didn't go to the office that much.

The store was the best deal since Costco.

I wonder. Yeah, I wonder why. It's interesting.

Yeah, because we owned 90% of the grocery store shelf and all the things there you could get for less than 50% off. So every Friday people would go in, line up and go in and fill up your baskets and you're good for the week.

Yeah. I have to ask my mom. Maybe they did and I just didn't know.

Yeah, I really miss that. I really do. So, okay, so you grew up in that area. What part of Connecticut?

Ridgefield. Small, from my perspective, boring but safe, privileged white town.

Okay, is that northern, up near Greenwich?

Danbury in Connecticut. It's a commuter town to White Plains.

Okay, great.

No.

All right, so from there you went to school and you majored in I majored in creative writing, poetry, and my minor in Mandarin. What was that?

Minor in Chinese Mandarin.

Why? What drove you?

Because I liked the calligraphy. I was doing a lot of artwork, and I love languages to a point, although I'm fluent in none other than English. And, um, it was the artwork. I did that painting behind me in high school. I Done a lot of artwork, and I thought I was going to go into social justice and the arts as my career. And then the reality of needing to make money kind of hit, and I went to law school.

So, okay, here's another path crossing. I'm a graduate of Parsons School of Design.

Yeah.

And, uh, love the art field, but like you, I said, this is not a moneymaker. I was in interior design for a while, and then I said, Okay, kid, one day you're gonna have to support yourself. Yeah, your parents. And so better think of something you could do to make some money.

And so same, same. Yeah.

So that's when I went back to school and, and, uh, received a degree in marketing.

Okay.

So how exciting. Okay, what law school did you go to?

I went to Georgetown.

Good law school. Yeah, fantastic. What was your major in law?

You don't really major in anything, but I concentrated a lot of my classes in, in labor and employment law. I felt that that was because I'd done a lot of work in disability rights and battered women's shelters, and I really went to be able to know how to navigate the legal system and, and the power structure really in the United States.

So did you— you focused in women?

Um, well, disability crosses all genders, right? So, um, there was some focus on women, there was some focus on critical race theory, which I never knew anyone would know what it was. Um, I wrote—

For our audience, please explain. Yeah, a few people.

Yeah, I TA'd for a very famous critical race theorist and wrote a law review article on critical race feminism where I combined the concepts of being a Black woman and being, um, and being Black at the turn of the century when there was a huge early, very important, um, civil rights, peaceful civil rights movement, if you will, that was really fascinating to me at the end of the 1890s. Also realized that wasn't going to make a lot of money. Um, so I—

It didn't.

It was very fascinating to me and very important.

So for our audience, please explain critical race theory from your perspective.

It's looking— to put it simply, it's looking at events through a lens that's not usually used. Like, if you're looking at a feminist structure, you're going to try to see it from a woman's perspective. And is there a disparate impact And is— are the ways that society's organized serving their ability to do things in the same way? And similarly, I would say critical race theory in its simplest form— and I apologize to all the academics that are probably going to criticize this because it's a very basic way to put it— it's really thinking about not accepting the history you might have been given when you were taught 50 years ago and thinking about, well, how did the other person handle that and how did they navigate that? What was the power structure and why is it that way? And how do we allocate power and how does that change over time and what's effective? That's, that's what intrigued me. And, um, and so, uh, I worked as an ACLU law fellow, um, clerking under Chai Falbloom, who's a former EEOC commissioner. She's the first openly lesbian and disabled EEOC commissioner, worked, had a privilege working in lobbying through the Americans with Disabilities Act in Congress back in 1990 when I was at Georgetown. And then I had to go work for a law firm for a while.

Why do you think critical race theory is such an important subject right now? Why is it that schools are saying, certain schools and certain parents are saying no, No, I don't think they understand it. Mm-hmm.

I was— I was— I've almost reached out to my professor saying, can you believe this? Like, this was such an important, but yet among a tight set of scholars, and to hear it in the news is nothing but mind-blowing. And it's so distorted. It's so— it's so distorted. It'd be like Saying the word feminist is a bad word and trying to ban feminism. I, I don't understand it. I don't understand it. It's, it's having an open mind and thinking about things at its best. It's just, it's a way to think about things in a different way, show empathy, and think— and hopefully it changes you to be a little more open-minded and thinking about your experience through a different lens. In my— that's the way I would describe it in a very simple way.

So do you think that the concern is because, as you said, it's an opportunity to change?

I think it is an opportunity to change because I know even when I get exposed to great writing on a very simple topic like how to do something better, a time-saving strategy, right? I think, okay, I should try that. And then I try that. Well, It's the same with some deeper concepts around how to have better relationships with people, how to relate to people better, how to understand in a small way perhaps what someone's experiencing. And then maybe you ask better questions and maybe you feel more of a kinship and that you can, that you can take more risks in asking the right types of questions with curate, with an intent of learning and with curiosity and caring. That's my hope, and, and I think that was, that was a lot of the intent around any of these studies, whether it's disability studies or gender studies, is just let's, let's look at what's happening, what's the disparate impact, how did that happen, what social constructs and theories that may be subtle, but that permeate our society, stereotypes that are very powerful subliminally that drive behaviors like police, more greater police violence against Blacks, even Black-on-Black police violence, which I think you may have been with me when we had the privilege of hearing Fiona's husband talk about that on MG100. So it's a phenomenon.

And so you look at, you look deeper, like, what are the reasons for that?

Why should that be? Why would that be happening? Statistically, that actually shouldn't happen. So that's kind of where it starts.

So I want to take this out of the race framework and look at it from a courage perspective. Why do you think that we don't have the courage to change, be it race, being trying something new, be it Opening a new branch in our business, be it changing our business model, be it, as you've written about, careers.

Yeah, well, it's fear of change, right? We get set in our ways and we get a comfort zone, and many people are very content to be complacent. And, um, I'm not.

We know that. For those of you that are listening, She's not.

I think complacency is the death of creativity and innovation. And so I think there are ways to avoid that. And I think that there are many people that just are very comfortable with the status quo. And so they react if they hear something that sounds different or challenging. to the way things have been done. And it could be critical race theory, it could be the way their boss wants something done at work, whether they go into the office or not, right? It's so many things, and we've had many over the last 2 years to fret over and to disagree over, which has caused so much stress for, for my clients and other people that I coach that are managing and trying to show empathy and that are trying to lead People that have really had a lot of time to think about what they like, what they don't like, and it's very custom.

I want to throw something at you. In the interview that's come out in my last newsletter, which was released late last night, it's an interview with Dr. Tim Clark, who wrote— he is the guru on psychological safety. Is there a way that we can manage fear in abundance so that we can all change together and provide psychological safety for us to change as one?

I think that it would depend on people's sense of safety and how, how secure they feel in their lives right now. I think people who are very open are people who are centered and who are content with what they have, and they're curious about how it's going for others, or if they're civic-minded, or if they have a strong affiliation and, um, desire to help others. I think that not everyone is like that.

You know, he talks about COVID and other pandemics, but specifically we're talking about COVID being the great equalizer.

Yes.

And so how have you found that to be so in your work, or have you not found it to be so in your work?

I was part of a white paper. I'm a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Coaching, and we did a white paper interviewing clients the summer of 2020 when COVID was really hitting and there was much less known about it and not a vaccine. And, um, or it was very close to that time. And then, and then after we published it, it was around, at least in healthcare primarily, the increase in empathy of leaders towards their staff. As you can imagine, healthcare and frontline particularly was hit quite hard in COVID, both people taking personal risks for their own safety and treating other patients. As well as just an absolute overwhelm of many healthcare systems. So I think in that industry, there's been some significant change, and I'm watching with great curiosity to see if the empathy continues.

How have you seen it change in healthcare? What's the difference that you've seen?

I think there's greater empathy. I think that Doctors try to understand their nurses better. And I think that hospitals have been forced because of lack of staffing and attrition to work together more closely. In the past, that was not always the case. You had the surgeon in charge. He would bark out orders. Surgeons, men or women, but mostly men, were notorious about not— about there not always being psychological safety. And there's many, many business cases of of physicians demanding things that ultimately led to mistakes in the operating room because the nurses were not comfortable and did not feel psychological safety pushing back. I believe that's improved. I, my belief is that COVID was probably, my hope, um, based on the study that we did, is that, um, physicians learned to, to be a little more flat in their management style. And to understand that they might not always have the best answer in the room. And so that's healthcare. I mean, in tech and financial services, financial services, I think it's Goldman Sachs that's threatening to fire anyone who doesn't show up in their butt and seat in the work. So, no, some companies are going right back.

They're going further back, actually.

They want the money and they want to know that you're there and they don't trust that you're there working. And they want you to be with the clients. So I've spoken to NPR about this and on the window of negotiating, but what do you want because of the labor shortage? But I think that as the Fed interest rises increase, we may see some backsliding or back to normal depending on your personal view of power and capitalist markets. Interesting.

And so In your book on careers, tell us what you're advising. What are you talking about here?

Yeah, the Promotability Index.

You have the book to show everybody?

I do. Let me grab it. You may hear some things fall on my ground. I'll try not to make a smashing noise. Here is the book. It's the Promotability Index Guidebook. And what I did is I created a free self-assessment. It's 82 questions, and it divides Um, Promotability, and it reverse engineers promotability. I was in a lot of companies, and it basically is everything I wish I had known, CB, when I was working my way up as a little baby director or whatever in different corporations and different industries— financial services, healthcare, nonprofit. And it divides executive presence— it divides promotability into 5 elements: self-awareness, which is the baseline, just knowing Your why, when, and what. Why are you doing it? What are you good at? How do you do it? External awareness, which is how do people perceive you despite your best intentions? You still may not show up in your culture and what's effective for you, for what you want to achieve at that organization, what they want you to achieve. The third is executive presence. The fourth is strategic thinking. And the fifth is thought leadership. And so, and those become more and more important as you rise in your career. So you take the assessment and then the guidebook. I was asked by clients, they said, this assessment's great. Now what do we do? And I said, well, just do all the things that you said you didn't do as well. And they were like, well, we need help on that. And I can't coach everyone. So I wrote the book and that came out last May. And I've gotten feedback from coaches that are using it with their clients and companies that have adopted it as part of their career development. Especially during COVID where companies aren't getting together as much. It's a great way to— you fill out your assessment, send it to your boss, say, hey, this is my self-assessment. What do you agree or disagree with? And then they have a common language. The other thing which I know you'll appreciate and was kind of a secondary goal of this book was to demystify who gets promoted and why. And to level the playing field. bit because I don't think companies often do a good job. And many managers are not equipped to give good feedback on specifically why so-and-so was promoted and you were not. And I think that's a responsibility that a manager needs to take. And it's a skill to learn. But this is hopefully helpful. So, they can say, well, you think you're really good at presentation skills. Last week, I think you could have done a little better. So, let's work on that. I'm going to give you another chance in a couple weeks to present to the board. I want you to work on vocal tone, some physical tics that you had, and swaying back and forth when you were presenting. I'm making this up. Being more concise.

Good. It's good. I love it.

So things like that. So it really walks you through it. And my hope is that leaders will then use it and realize, oh, it's not enough for me to just say when someone asks me, when am I going to get promoted? And you say, oh, you're doing fine. Just keep doing what you're doing. Or my, my favorite that I get from my, my clients sometimes is, you're just not ready. Yeah, it's like, well, what the heck does that mean? That's not actionable. So that's not good. So from an individual's point, I wanted them to feel like a sense of control, which has been very difficult and demoralizing over the last couple years. So this is something that you can feel like you're still working on your career, even if you don't have a supportive boss. And if you are a supportive boss and you're wondering how to outreach to your employees, show them you care, give them direct feedback, help them help themselves, this will help do that. And you can say, hey, let's— these 2 things, let's work on these this year. I will support you. I'll give you feedback when you're doing it well. I'll give you feedback when I, when I think you're not doing it well. And it helps people also create their own plan. Too many times in HR, I was handed assessments or 360s or performance appraisals that no one likes their performance appraisals. You know, everyone was just like, just show me the money. Like, I know what I did last year. I know I can't be a 4. I know you only get one of those. You're gonna make me a 3. You know, no one's a 5. You have to walk on water for that. It was just a— and if you're a 2, you're almost out of there. So it was just You know, and it's about days for me. No one uses one because they're already gone. You know, it's just, it's just, that's not fun. And everybody has potential, and everybody's creative should be leveraged. And so in the book, because of my artistic background, I also highly designed it to be kind of a journal. And I wanted it, I wanted people to want to do it, not like homework. You know, you just pick, you can open it at any point. It does have a process. And if you want, and you're very methodical, you can go through the process. Or like I do sometimes, you can just start at the back. And I've got a— I don't have all the resources, the answers on this. So I also listed a number of our wonderful colleagues' resources divided in each of the areas of promotability. And that's been really fun.

So, so much I want to ask you about this. I haven't seen it. So I'm looking forward to receiving an autograph.

I'd be happy to send you one.

Yeah. But, you know, even not seeing it, here's what I love, love about the book is it gives you a chance to speak for yourself. And I hate to bring this back to race, but here's the reality. is that white people were raised— more white people were raised sitting at the dining table like in Blue Bloods, talking about your career and what's going on and how do you get promoted and what's getting in the way. Whereas Black families with 2 people at the head working, we really didn't have that opportunity. And parents at that time were not necessarily in the corporate space. So again, didn't have the language, didn't have the information. So, and of course I'm talking my generation, next generation down. I think that the new Gen Xers and Y generation have had that opportunity. But, but even if they haven't, it sort of levels the playing field of how other people go about getting promoted. And as you said, the statement of you're just not ready yet— what the hell does that mean?

It's the worst.

Let's put it on paper. I remember even trying that at General Foods, and they said, well, it's hard to put it on paper. You'll know it when you get there.

You know, I'll know it when I see it.

Yeah.

How's that? Okay, that's like porn. That's great. Not to quote the Supreme Court. So that's not helpful. And so my goal is to be helpful and like, let's put words on that. Okay, is it my executive presence? Is it my strategic— am I not demonstrating strategic thinking? Am I unaware? Do I have a blind spot? And no one likes me. No one wants to work with me. So you'd never give me a team. I need you to tell me so I can work on it. Now, look, people who are not going to work on it are not going to like this book. This book is for ambitious people who aren't afraid of the truth and who want to learn as they go. And so I understand that. But what I wanted to do is provide a pathway where the company's maybe not giving it to you or where I had one great story, CB, that you'll love. I had a friend who—

Wait, I want to tell you something before you go into that. Here's what I love about the book, that you, with your legal background, have given people the words to say and still be legal about it. And so that's a big fear that I'm seeing from leaders, is this whole cancel culture coming in.

Yeah.

Tied into the legal aspect. You can't say that. You know, you can't. So then you become stuck here. What can I say? Yeah, if I want to help this person to move forward and not be in trouble, and you're not of the age of CB, which gives you a grace, right?

I don't think we're that far, CB, but I am— I I read a very disturbing study recently too that you've probably read or not surprised by, is that after MeToo and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and a lot of the other horrible things that have happened over the last couple of years, that managers are actually less willing to give women and people of color the difficult feedback that they need to move forward.

Oh, sure.

And that, that plus proximity bias with being in the office and getting the plum assignments and getting reported simply because your body is there and the boss sees you is really something that leaders need to be careful of if they care and if they really want to have an equitable workforce. And so that's been a concern for me as well. And again, I hope that the book will provide a very neutral, very objective language that has nothing to do with race, that has nothing to do with gender. It's specifically skill and awareness-based. Tell—

you were going to tell us a story about a young lady.

Oh yeah. So a friend of mine adopted the book for her as the positive part of performance appraisal. As we know, there's always the look back. Are we going to give you a raise? What'd you do great? What'd you not do so great? And you get your rating usually at most companies. What I wanted to focus on was the go-forward. Okay, so now what? That's great. You got your thing and that's it. Let's look forward. What are you interested in? Like, what excites you? And what do you think you need to work on? Where do you want to go? Now, look, some people might want to be an individual contributor, and that's totally fine. I had a few people who are in my pilot program and they said, you know, I don't want to get promoted. Like, I'm very happy where I am. And I said, great, we need you. Like, not everyone can be a CEO, sorry. So that's, that's great. And let's talk about what will keep you interested, what will keep you up to speed in your technical specialty. You know, what do you need in your work environment? How else could we— you still want your technical specialty, but what if you also led an amazing, um, project? I mean, every company has needed a return to work and a COVID team. It's been a wonderful time for networking, getting a second sponsor, getting more mentorship, getting more visibility, and raising your hand. And those are the kinds of behaviors that if you do want to be in the C-suite, or you want to be a managing director or an EVP or whatever it is, those are the kind of skills that are expected once you're up there. So why not demonstrate them now? You know, start volunteering for work outside your area. And if you really want to stretch your comfort zone and learn faster and light up your brain, you will pick something that does not play to your strengths because we learn faster. And I personally think it makes us younger. I think it's—

Okay, stop right there. Um, stretch objectives, are they distributed fairly amongst all people?

I have not seen— I've seen people tiptoeing lately on stretch objectives, actually, because of burnout.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Subject.

Yeah. So, so there's pre-COVID and after COVID, right? I don't think I would have had the demographic data to really fully, fairly answer your first question. But in COVID, I can tell you what I'm seeing is in goal generation. People are, people are being more empathetic, and they're treading a little more lightly about what they assign to people because of the resignations, and the burnout and the remote cultures, which can make some type of, some types of change more challenging. What are you seeing?

So I'm seeing the same thing. And before, however, I can also speak to before.

Yeah.

And the answer to my question is no, they are not distributed equally. So again, you know, I'm from the Martin Luther King generation and this generation. What I saw a lot of was people who were smart enough to ask for stretch objectives, as we used to call it back in General Foods, who were people of color, were given those not happily. And when they would get— because, you know, the people that were signing them out knew what they were for, being promoted. And when they were given out, they were given out for the person to fail and not to succeed.

Okay, well, that's—

And so that's my question, is are they distributed equally? One, are enough people getting them, the full spectrum? And 2, the quality of it and the expectation from it. I have not seen that happen.

I'm seeing huge pressure on, on companies, and this may be geographic, but to promote and highlight and give opportunity to people of color and women specifically. I do see that in the companies that I coach, which is Bay Area, Silicon Valley. Some are international, but I have a pretty big concentration in Northern California. We're a pretty diverse state.

I was just going to say there's a big push for women on boards.

We've had a lot of— we've had a supportive governor and his wife is very, very much a feminist. So we may be the outliers, and I appreciate that. It's not so much in other areas of the state where all kinds of things are retrenching in women's rights specifically and people of color's rights as well. So—

But, you know, let's focus on the positive. I'm calling out the awareness of it. But let's focus on the positive. What can people do? And this is what I'm getting from your book, is that there is an opportunity. What can people do to ask for a stretch objective that would benefit them, to put them more, you know, in a promotable position? Excuse the coughing.

That's okay. If it was, if it was me, I would take the assessment. Get the book. I would go to my boss and I would say, hey, you know, this is how I scored myself. Do you agree or disagree? Let's have a really powerful, candid conversation. I'm open to all your feedback. Create a psychologically safe space for your boss. A lot of people forget about doing that. It's important. Bosses are just as terrified as you are, actually, and they're not treated like people usually. And sometimes there's a good reason. Sometimes there's a good reason for that. I get it.

But You went right down the road I wanted you to go.

Give them a shot. Give them a shot. Okay. And to get back to that one story, I'll make it real quick. My friend rolled this out. Young woman came into her office with her thing, had given it to my friend who was the chief marketing officer the night before to read it over, to mark up, you know. And my friend came in and said, thank you so much for sharing this with me. it's vulnerable, right? Because if you're honest, you say, I don't do this well, I don't do this well, I do this, I think I do this really well. But it's a very simple buy. I don't do a scale. I keep it— I don't want to, I don't want to over-engineer it, okay? I want— and it's free, again. I want people to get it and just be able to use it as they feel it fits them and customize it to them. So I didn't make it prescriptive. And so my friend said to this young woman, she said, you know, you rated yourself really low on a bunch of things that I think you do really well. And this young woman who has not gone to college, she's an immigrant, lacked confidence. She said, you're kidding. You know, she was just— she didn't even know what to say. And my friend said, yeah, she said, I think there's some areas you need to improve in, but they're not the ones that you Mark down. You do a great job at this. You do a great job at that. And she said, oh, and she said, thank you. And then she walked out. And then like a week later, she came back into my friend's office and knocked on the door and said, can I talk to you for a minute? And she said, sure. And she said, you know, I have to tell you, that was one of the most liberating conversations about my career I've ever had in my life. I never ever thought of getting promoted. Until we had that conversation, and now I realize maybe it's possible, and that really means a lot to me.

That's fantastic. Do you feel that your book is also, also applicable to people who have been successful already?

Oh yeah. What's Um, been a surprise to me is that a lot of people who are successful already, and there are exceptions, don't necessarily see themselves in the book when it's truly actually written for anyone at any stage in their life, including for me. There's stuff in there that I haven't done. It's impossible to get a pub— an honest, perfect score.

Um, it's rigged.

And that's intentional. I, I feel like life has always asked my— it fits my philosophy of life, which is You can always do better. You shouldn't make yourself miserable with that.

Right. But just—

but don't— but always have empathy and always have humility that, that, that you're going to make mistakes and there's going to be things to work on. And it might be this during this season of your life, and it might be this in this season of your life, um, or in this particular job or in this context, because context changes, CB, as you know that. And The power structure changes. And so, what's important in one job or role may be very different than when you're a young mother and you're only motivated to do like a few things because you're barely keeping it together. I mean, there's just, there's just so many things. So, the goal was to be kind of a choose-your-own-adventure.

Yeah.

Pop in at any time. It's around your whole life. You can take the assessment as many times as you want. You'll be— you'll find that in one job, you might get high in one area. In another job, you're like, oh my gosh, I need to double down on this because what worked for me here isn't working for me there.

Yeah, that sounds like a book from—

It does. Should we give him a plug?

Somebody called Marshall Goldsmith.

Got You Here Won't Get You There. And we love him, so we should give him— yeah, great book. It's a very similar principle. It's that What worked in one organization, you cannot assume it's a cookie cutter.

Right.

So yes, it should be revisited, like, you know, all the time. But most people are like, I've already gotten to SVP, you know, and the name throws them off, the promotability. And I think of promotability in a very, very broad context. And to me, it means having a growth mindset, being open to experience, to change your opinions. And to always be learning, you know.

So, so many people are lacking that courage and lacking the courage to applaud themselves for having done well and having moved from one level to the next level. As you know, my focus area is on courage, and I just see so many people who don't have the courage to accept how well they've done.

Yeah.

And they're so concerned with failure, and just failure is just part of courage. So I love your book. I love the fact that, um, you know, you're supporting people in stepping out and speaking up and giving them the roadmap to be able to do something like This— it sounds like your book is— I can't wait to get it because it sounds like it's also a good format for having your own business.

I have had people who— it was written for Fortune 500s, and so some of the questions may not apply, but I've had people who run their own business take it and say, yeah, you know, this still helped me. I got insights and realizations, and I recognized that some— I've had solopreneurs and And that kind of thing, or people who don't want to manage people and they just ignore those questions. And that's fine.

Yeah.

I don't want people to get caught up on the score. That's why it's purposely out of 82, because we have a mentally screwed up thing around the number 100, right, from grade school. So I purposely like picked a funky number. And, um, it would be very disappointing to me if people like focused on the number rather than the substance.

Well, here's what I'm loving about the fact that I'm just reaching for water here. Um, actually, it's juice. It's my combo of this, this year it's peach juice, flavored water, and orange juice.

Nice.

Um, look, one of the stumbling blocks that we see in the people that we hang out with is once you reach a certain point in business and you need to start hiring support, whether it's a VA or somebody that's working full-time or somebody that's just working on a project basis. And we forget that the principles that you're talking about apply.

Mm-hmm.

So I find myself, for example, I'm working with a young woman overseas who's working with me on my SEO work. And I said to her— she also has a full-time job— and I said to her, you know, you're really good at what you're doing. And she said, thank you. You know, very innocent culture that really focuses on the humanity part and the humbleness. And I said, but here's the reality. You can't possibly take on all the work that I have, and I would love to continue working with you. So what are we going to do about that? She said, CB, are you letting me go? And I said, I'm challenging you to expand. She said, but, but how could I do that when I have, you know, work from my regular job. And I said, how many people do you know that would like to have extra income, that work at— love to work at night or on the weekends and would love doing what you're doing?

Mm-hmm. Great.

And she said, I know a few from my church. Yeah. And I said, hire them. She said, me? I said, yeah.

That's great.

I said, you don't have to have them on your payroll, but have them as part of your cadre that you could reach out to, so that if you can't make a meeting or you're too tired or at night or you don't want to work on a Sunday, you have somebody to bring in. And she got so excited and she said, I never thought of myself in that way. Can you tell me more? I said, yeah. Let's start with a graphics guy. And so now she's added a graphics guy who is phenomenal. And I said, next we're gonna add maybe an Audiovisual guy, you know.

Yeah, for video.

A LinkedIn person, a Facebook person. You're gonna have a whole cadre, and you'll be able to afford that new Apple computer without blinking an eye. She's like, she's so excited. I, I had her on a call this morning with this new guy that she brought in, and she was like This is what CB means. This is what you need to do.

This—

I'm like, whoa, I'm so proud of her.

That's great, CB. Well, you've provided inspiration, that spark that you need, right? We always need someone to— we all need someone to give us a spark sometimes.

So yes, and I'm saying, you know what, a lot of what you have in your book would help me help her grow. So I'm— this is fantastic. And I think for all solopreneurs who are gonna be moving up the line in hiring, you know, as Marshall says, if you've got too many clients, you're not charging enough. So when you start charging enough and you need to add to your roster, this is perfect because I'm seeing, and I know you're seeing, that there are so many people now who say, I think I can work for myself. I like working from home. Ergo, the Great Resignation. Yeah. What else do you have to tell us?

Well, I should give people probably the free link to the assessment. We can link it in the show notes, but they can— in the United States, they can get it through texting the word PROMOTEME, all one word, To 44222, and it'll come right up on their phone, or it's maximized for phone and for computer. They can go to my website too. Um, yeah, I mean, I'd be happy to talk about—

Is it confidential when they fill it out?

Excuse me?

Is it confidential when they fill it out?

They just give their address, so they don't give their name. Um, and we do have a collection of the data. We've not used it But we want to be able to share at some point what are the top challenges that 30-something Black men have versus what are the challenges that 50-something white women have. Are they different? Be interesting because then we could create solutions around that.

I'm gonna bring you back, but I just want to say one other thing that occurred.

We don't share the data with anyone though, just to be clear.

Okay, good. Um, this book sounds like it would be a phenomenal book for mentors.

Yes, I have done a mentoring program. I was hired by, um, a consulting firm to create a mentoring program around it because they, they wanted to do mentoring but they didn't have like a core. They didn't have tools. And so this creates an easy tool because then the mentors can meet and say, okay, let's do section 1 together. Yes, talk about how, how, like, are we exhibiting executive presence? What opportunities do we have to improve that? Let's watch some TED Talks together. I give a ton of additional resources in the back of the book for people on each of the areas.

So I like that. Because oftentimes, you hear mentors say, I don't quite know how to help somebody.

Yeah. You know, which is good prompts if you really don't have an active issue that someone comes to you with.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and let's face it, the other side is that the mentee does not know what— it's that old thing, you don't know what you don't know until you ask, and you don't know what to ask because you don't know that you don't know.

I wanted to just skip that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the mentee can read it at the same time and say, hey, I need help understanding this, and can you help me understand how you got promoted and What are the steps that you take? What are the steps in this book that apply to you? What do you think applies to me? And what's some homework that I can do to start to prepare?

And from some of the younger folks, you know, 20, 30-somethings I've gotten, I have to tell you, I had— because I'll see it in the chat— I've done some master classes for clients and they'll say, I had no idea this was important. And I'll say, yeah, it's really important. And it's great that you know now. Because you'd learn eventually if you weren't getting that promotion, or if someone said, can I talk to you for a minute?

The dreaded words. Let's have a meeting.

Like 4:30 PM.

Come to—

can you come to my office?

Yes, absolutely. There are so many people— listen, Amy, there are people who get promoted and have no idea why.

They don't make the leadership compact as a colleague of mine, Vince Molinaro, has written about. They're a manager, they're not a leader.

Yeah. What I wanted to go back to is that you said Number 4 was about strategic thinking and the presence part. How do you learn executive presence? How do you learn strategic thinking?

Executive presence has been bandied about as a kind of fluffy, and I think it can be used as a covering phrase as well for a lot of behaviors. Right. So I researched it, and the best definition I found up— found that I loved, because it's all actionable, is breaks executive presence down into 3 qualities. And the first is gravitas. This is all in the book. So, and the second is presentation skills. And the third is appearance. And appearance, not meaning whether you're an attractive person or not, meaning whether you are appropriately groomed for the culture that you're in.

Okay. I love how you said that.

And so, um, yeah, because you can imagine there's quite a range and there's been a lot of discussion around that and everybody needing to fit one mold, and that's not true. So, um, that's important to me. So the first being gravitas, which is around being centered Being calm under pressure, being heard at the table, you know, not being afraid to carve out space for yourself, whether it's interrupting or not being interrupted in a meeting, if it's appropriate, and knowing it's an art rather than a science. It is having body language that, that indicates centeredness and, and a degree of control that, that make— that draw people to you. And then presentation skills is around reaching your audience and giving that your audience what you need. It's not about you. It's about, you know, being concise. It's about knowing who your audience is. It's about being good at presenting, asking, answering questions spontaneously, um, not fidgeting, knowing where to stand, having the right volume in the particular room, making sure that everyone feels included in the conversation. So these can all be learned. So the thing I love about— and Coqual, who is a women's and POC-based research and GQ+ organization, um, came up with this definition and I adopted it because it was the first I'd seen where it really broke it down and it made it hopeful for people. Because I think people get so like, I don't— I was told I don't have executive presence, and what does that mean? Um, you know, anyway, I'm assertive, you know, I talk in meetings and I dress well and I don't I dress like the newscasters and I don't, I don't know. So, you know, she's a young woman. And so, um, so that's that. And then strategic thinking is important. The way I define strategic thinking in purposes of promotability— strategic thinking is a way of thinking, and there are many courses on it and how it can be taught and, and how you think and that kind. What I find for promotions is not whether you are a strategic thinker. It's whether senior management perceives you to be a strategic thinker. And so, in the workbook, what I work on is indirectly I work on strategic thinking. But I really think about, are you publicly asking questions that indicate you've done your research and you are understanding your competitive landscape? You've done a SWOT analysis. You've done these things because there are some very strategic people who are quiet or introverted.

Oh yeah.

And no one will never ever know if they think strategically because unless you're putting ahead a strategy for some reason, you know, you just, so you have to be thinking ahead around Placement of questions and, and how you're showing up and how you're demonstrating interest. And are you involved? And this is where a lot of these cross over. Thought leadership can cross over into strategic thinking because if you are demonstrating thought leadership and you're well networked and you're contributing to your industry and you're writing articles or you're speaking at industry conferences, you can bring back that information. to your executive team and say, hey, I was recently on a panel with 2 of our biggest competitors. And some of the issues they're thinking about right now, I don't see on our strat plan that are coming for us. And here they are. Well, that's demonstrating thought leadership and strategic thinking at the same time, right? So, there are ways to do that.

I hate to keep saying I love what you're saying. But I do. And I, you know, I was thinking about some of the meetings that we've been in where executive presence, um, is something that needs to be paid attention to.

Yeah, because a lot of people think, oh, well, only men can have executive presence.

Well, that— and what I've noticed is that not just the meetings that we've been in particularly, is that women think that strategic thinking is about shining the light on themselves and just constantly promoting and promoting because they're concerned that the opposite happens, which is people thinking that women don't have anything to say. So they run in the other direction, which totally destroys their executive presence. So I think part of it is not only knowing, as you said, to ask the questions and to promote yourself, but when and how to do it.

There are ways to do it where you can simultaneously be the person bringing it forward. And what you're bringing forward is a clear demonstration of what's in the best interest of your group or organization. That's the way to be seen and heard.

And I think also, as Marshall said, too, we were working— a group of us were working on promoting a webinar he was doing, and we said to him, should we say what we're doing as a profession? Because we were doing this, you know, just to support Aldir Marshall. And Marshall said something— of course, he's always saying something wise— so he said, no, that's my job. Which, for the listeners, that means that having somebody else promote you is much stronger, much stronger than you promoting yourself, especially somebody with credibility.

No question. And one thing that I'll be writing about shortly is the impact of Peer relationships. One thing that I find when I do my 360s for clients is they underestimate the long-term value of having strong peer relationships. We've been taught to compete all our lives since school, right? Oh, only one person is going to get valedictorian. Only one person is going to get summa cum laude. They may be my best friend, but I kind of want it, right?

Yeah.

Then we get into an organization, and then the higher you get and The smaller the triangle gets at the top. You need to realize those are actually either going to be your boss, on your team, or move to another company you want to work for. And if you haven't been aware of your external awareness and how you're showing up, working competitively doesn't work anymore. You need to work collaboratively. And so I find that as well.

And also, I think the, the other thing that we miss, and I want to say, I don't know if this is culturally driven in terms of how you were raised or where you were raised, or whether it's part of your academic training or or what, but I think that people, especially before COVID— COVID has helped this— is we fail to balance the get and the give.

Hmm.

It's so very important. You know, I run a group called Women's Power Pack, and one of the women was presenting on how we dial up our sales ability. And she said, you know, I am considered the great connector. She said, even if somebody can't help me now, I will connect them with somebody who can help them. And she said, I keep this list close to my heart. Who can I connect you with? And I think that we are running so fast these days, we get into the mode of asking and not giving back. And that is so important in corporate America as it is outside of corporate America, because you never know who's going to be able to help you get promoted. Who are your sponsors going to be? And I'm not talking about your mentors, I'm talking about your sponsors.

Mm-hmm.

And you have to be prepared to give. The other thing is I encourage people to say thank you, not only to the person, but mention to the world that this person helped you, because we all know you can't get there by yourself.

No.

So don't even pretend, right? This is Miss CB talking. Don't pretend. Give people credit for helping you get to where you are. It gives you more credibility. And remember that in the workplace, it's going to help you get promoted too.

I agree.

So with that, Amy, it's been a pleasure. I encourage everybody to take the test.

Thank you. It will be fun. I think most people really find some exciting things and, and thought-provoking things to think about.

I want to ask you, have your daughters taken it? Because you've got some real kick-ass daughters.

That's great. I've had a ton of my— thousands of people have taken it now. Um, they probably haven't taken it.

They're not, they're not working yet, have they?

No, they're 16 and, and, you know, uh, 20. But, um, But they hear me talk all the time and they get all the coaching they, they don't want. Wait, I do want some of it, but you know.

See how she's kind of blushing? She has 2 of the best daughters who look like her, by the way. Incredibly smart. Well, what's not to be smart around this mom? And just very kind and sweet. You've done such a great job.

Thanks, thanks, CB.

Yeah, so okay, with that, um, we are gonna bounce off because we're running like 7 minutes late with you now, as typical CB fashion. That's okay, because I've got so much to ask and so much I want to know and so much to share. So audience, thank you for tuning in this week, and we look forward to you tuning in next Tuesday To see who my guest is, or you can cheat and read the newsletter. It's right in there. And this time I put in a little bio of people that are going to be in and what they're going to talk about. So let's all connect. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Let me know if I can help you. And reach out to Amy and take her assessment. and recommend her book. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, CB. Bye.