Courage to Leap & Lead with Marva Sadler, part 1 - Episode 125

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. 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 courageconsulting.com where you can find all of the episodes and lots of other excellent resources. That's courageconsulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello everybody! It is your favorite podcaster back. We have a fantastic guest. So you all know this is Courage to Leap and Lead with CB Bowman. And what we like to focus on is failure. And you're gonna say, what the heck? No, we focus on how do you turn failure into success? So I am so excited to present my guest today, and I'm gonna ask her a question I haven't asked anyone else, which is, Why did she want to do this show? So without further ado, let me introduce my dear friend, Marva Sandler. Marva, welcome to our show.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here.

So tell us, why did you want to be on the show today?

2 things. Number one, I actually enjoy being on podcasts, being a guest, because I learned so much. about myself and about the topic that the individual cares about. And the second reason was, I am particularly interested in your topic. The idea of finding the nuggets out of failure and finding ways to have courage in our everyday lives really appeals to me.

Thank you. You know, so many of us, including myself, when we fail at something, we go, oh, Crap. And then the woe is me starts. And I had that experience this past week with my computer going down, my main Mac computer. And you know, you feel so hopeless and you keep saying to yourself, listen, there are people that are sick out there. There are people that have so much more than just a little old computer going down. But I could not stop. And even when I got to the Mac store, which is usually my comfort zone, I was like, did I lose everything? What's gonna happen? Will I need to invest in a new Mac computer? You know, the rhetoric that goes on in your head. And finally I just said, you know what? This is an opportunity to buy a new Mac. And it's an opportunity to applaud that your 2008 Mac is still running.

Oh my goodness, 2008!

2008 upgrade time!

How exciting!

Well, well, I have a— the one that went out was the 2014 one.

So a long time. That's a long time for a computer.

So I had 2008, 2014, and now I have 2022. And so I feel like— but, but at the same time, my Mac Air went out and my tablet went out, and I thought, am I on a— under a technology cloud here, or what's, what's going on? Shift the winds. So it just—

I have a partial solution for that.

What is it, please?

I have 2 sons who are very technically savvy, and whenever I have anything go wrong with my computer, I call them and say, walk me through how I'm going to clean this up.

And you are spoiled.

Oh, I am absolutely spoiled.

Absolutely. We had to make a trip all the way down to Boulder because Apple refuses to open a store, and I don't know why, in Northern Colorado. So, so it's an hour and a half trip each way for us. So long story short, I've learned have a backup Mac in your house.

Absolutely.

And a backup monitor. So I, I am getting prepared.

Good for you. This is, this is your version of preparation for the apocalypse.

And it is, it is, and the courage to spend the money on a new Mac.

So if you've held on to a computer since 2014, you're doing very well.

Oh, you know what? I decided a long time ago it was worth the investment to get a Mac because, you know, certain fields that you're in, when you rely on your computer, you just cannot afford to have it go down. That's just bottom line, you know. It's like having toothpaste. You must have it. That's the way I came up with that one. I'll remember that.

Having a computer is like having toothpaste.

So, Marva, tell us a little bit about your beginnings. Tell us about your parents. Where— how did you get to where you are?

Oh, my goodness! I come from a family of 8 children. I was number 6. My mother had me when she was 38 and my father was 45. My 2 younger sisters, everybody thought were grandchildren.

Wow.

I grew up really, believe it or not, in a family of 8 children all by myself. My next older sister was 5 years older than I was. And my next younger sister was 6 years younger than I was. And so I just— I was like this little island in the middle of this, you know, ocean of children.

Now that explains a lot. Okay, so you've learned to fend for yourself.

Especially because when I was about 2, my dad got very ill and couldn't work, and so my mom went to work. And so I got dropped off at the babysitter every day, um, from, from the time I was 2 till the time I was about 4 or 5. And so yeah, I did really have to fend for myself. In fact, one of my first stories of kind of fending for myself was, um, it started because my mother was in a hurry and she put me in the car to take me to the babysitter and I didn't want to go. I just really hated the babysitter. And I opened the door and fell out when my mom took off, and she ran over me.

No!

And so I ended up with a cast on my arm. I was very fortunate. My arm was like this. She ran over this part of my arm. And so I got to stay home from the babysitter for a couple of days. And when I went back to the babysitter, the, the person who really was kind of my nemesis would beat up on me. He would come and hit me on the arm, which was really, really sore. And, you know, I must have understood that revenge is best served cold because I just waited till that cast got really hard and my arm got better, and he would try to bother me and I would just whack him up the side of the head with that, with that cast until he quit beating up on me.

Good for you! I love it.

So that's kind of been my approach to life since I was very young, is that I Pretty much take care of my own problems.

Wow. That's a tough road, though. That is a tough road. But, you know, it's one that, sadly saying, we women have to get used to doing. It's easier to learn to take care of yourself and then relinquish some of that when you meet the person of your life than it is to do the reverse.

It is. That's true. And if that doesn't happen for you, or the person doesn't become that person, then you've got some pretty good survival skills.

Exactly. Exactly. I'm a military brat, so I get it. And my dad would always challenge me, but not in a good way, I think, because he always came at it from a perspective of You don't have the capabilities of doing that. And of course, I'm the kind of person that says, really? Watch me.

I had a different experience. My mother grew up on a cattle ranch, and she was very independent. And she didn't really love being a mother, to be honest.

But— With 8 children?

With 8 children, she did not really love being a mother. But, you know, we grew up in Utah. We're Mormons. We believe in big families. And apparently she was violently allergic to birth control that was available at the time.

Wow.

And, and so when I got to be a, you know, teenager, young teenager, she sat me down at one point and she looked at me and she said, and, you know, much like your father, you know, it may have not been the right approach, but it was helpful. She said to me, you know, Marva, you are just too ornery. and bad-tempered for anybody to ever want to marry you. And you are going to need some skills because you are going to have to support yourself. Your father and I are not going to support you, so you need to develop some skills. I am enrolling you in a business machines class for the summer so that you can learn to type and program and, you know, do things like that. And, um, at the time I thought she was really harsh. But it really just freed me because it was like, oh, my purpose in life is not to get married and have children. My purpose in life is to— which I found very difficult anyway, this idea that I needed to subsume everything to this purpose of being married and not being my own person. And so she just freed me from all of that. And I, every day when I sit down and I'm typing a letter to a client or a prospect or whatever, and I'm typing 120 words a minute, I'm just like, thank you, Mom. I really, you know, you really helped me out. Not in the way that you knew, that you thought you were going to. I didn't grow up to be a secretary, but it was so freeing that she just released me to say, what do I really want to do?

Wow.

And so I pursued things I really wanted to do because I was passionate about them instead of trying to, you know, bottle myself into this, I'm going to be a good little mom and wife.

Isn't it strange how— I don't know if strange is the right word, but how parents challenge you in ways that they think will help drive you in one direction, and actually you're driven in a completely different direction, but you're using that challenge for Ammunition, support, inspiration, whatever it is that you want to call it, to get there. Because I'm like, you know, the movie line, nobody tells baby what to do. Well, you know, regret it.

I was very resentful for a really long time that my mother had said that because I just thought it was just unkind. And Whitney Johnson, who is just a lovely person and is, you know, really well known in the coaching world, I had lunch with her one day and we were getting to know each other and I told her this story and she said, she just looked at me and she said, what a great gift your mother gave you. She saw you. Even if she maybe got it a little wrong, she saw you and she helped you in a way that, really gave you opportunities. And it was such a change of the narrative for me. And I realized, oh, you know, I'm not sure she realized she was giving me a gift, but it was a gift all the same.

Yeah.

That she gave me, she gave me the respect of understanding who I was and understanding I wasn't going to be happy just living a really small life.

Mm-hmm.

And so I, you know, I've realized how grateful I am to her. And then it also gave me the opportunity to really think about how do I communicate those things to my children who are all adults now? So I did actually get married and have children, but they weren't— I didn't act like a typical Utah mom. And so, and my children are just amazing human beings. Because I really tried to tell them, you can be anything you want to be.

I was just going to ask you, how did you give that gift to your children? How did you pass it along?

And that's— I really try to see them for who they are. That's— that, I think, is the link to my mother. I try to see my kid for who they are and reflect that back to them, but in a positive way.

So how do you do that? How do you see— how many children do you have?

I have 5.

Oh my gosh. How do you see each child differently?

Oh, children are so different. So, so I really, I try to watch, I try to see the patterns. And then I, then I try to just listen to what they say and what they do. And really, when they were young, I really tried to encourage them to explore a lot. Probably the most recent and kind of most telling experience. My youngest son, for some reason, I think it was because he wanted to be with his big brother, he went to Montana State to study math when he graduated from high school. And he thought his big brother was going to be there in graduate school. So he was going to have somebody with him. And he ended up all alone because big brother went to Missouri instead. And, um, he really hated being in, you know, being in Montana all by himself. It was just— it was hard. Um, it was cold, it was dark, it was lonely. He got very, very depressed, and he dropped out of school. Only he didn't tell me until he came home to visit at Christmas time. And the day before he was supposed to go back to school, he told me the truth. And he said, I dropped out. I was flunking. I'm going to go back because I've, I've got a contract to pay rent in the apartment, and I'm going to get a job, and I'm going to, you know, try to straighten out my life. And I just looked at him and I said, oh, sweetheart, sunk costs are sunk. You know, yeah, go ahead and pay the rent, but don't go back to Montana. It's dark, it's cold, it's lonely. You don't want to be there. If you want a job, stay here. You can live in my house. You can live rent-free. You can explore what it is you really want to do. You can have an opportunity to get back on your feet. You need to be where people love you and care about you if you're depressed. And so he lived with me for about a year. And for a while, he worked as a barista at a coffee shop and learned how to make beautiful coffee. Because what he really wanted to do with his life was he said he wanted to be a professional StarCraft player, which is a online computer game. And, and the people who are professionals make millions of dollars. And he was, he was ranked at that time in the top 100 in the United States. So it wasn't just a foolish belief like a kid who's 5'5 who wants to be a professional football player. He, he was actually capable of becoming a professional player. And I just said to him, hey, if you're going to do something crazy, do it now. because you don't have any obligations and you don't have any expenses. So he worked in this coffee shop and he played video games and was in tournaments for about a year and a half and finally decided he didn't really want to be a professional game player. But it was good for him and it was good for us because it reestablished our relationship and it gave him time to kind of get his feet under him and— figure out what was making him, um, depressed. And in that journey, he found out he had ADHD that had never been diagnosed and never been treated.

How did you find that out?

He was visiting a therapist, and he— I mean, he was going to see a therapist because he was really— he had been at one point suicidal. And she just looked at him one day and she said, these things you're talking about, I think you have ADHD. You need to be tested. And he was so bright. He's just, he's so smart that it never got picked up because he was able to get really good grades and take Advanced Placement courses and do really well, even though he actually turned out to have really severe ADHD.

Nope. Timeout. Just so that our audience can relate to this, what are some of the things that the therapist picked up on? That triggered that he might or that he had ADHD?

You know, I'm not going to be fully informed about it. But she picked up on the fact that he started telling her he was having a really hard time remembering simple things to do. That he— and that he was very frustrated because he kept trying to discipline himself with very rigid goals and timetables, and he could never stick to those. And so what she picked up on was that he had created coping mechanisms for himself that were all built around control, and that he, he didn't have the control to do it. And then she picked up on the fact that he, he wavered very dramatically from being very isolated to being almost hyperactive. And that the hyperactivity tended to be he bounced a lot in his conversation from one topic to another without really realizing that he couldn't seem to keep a steady train of thought in his head. And, you know, she's a therapist.

I'm—

I was just an untrained mother. And I just thought it was the exuberance of youth when he was doing it. But I have since realized that I probably have 2 or 3 kids with ADHD. And, and they masked it because they're just very bright. The other one who I think has ADHD is getting her PhD in physics.

So will the, the physics part— does that help or hinder her in recognizing that she may have ADHD?

Well, she's not admitted that she has ADHD, but she has a lot of the same issues.

That's why my question. Yeah.

And she has decided she's not going to go get tested until after she's finished her program, because for her right now, she feels like it would be a distraction.

But I understand that. I understand.

I think that knowing that there might be something out there That is actually— that it's not just that she's disorganized has, has really helped to settle her.

Is that something you understand?

Being disorganized? No.

I'm really passionate about the ADHD possibility has helped settle her. Is that something you understand?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I come from a family of, you know, 8 kids, of which I think 5 of my sisters either have long-term taken antidepressants or still do. And I've never gone that route because I tried once and it— I just really responded badly to the medication. And I just thought, instead of masking my problems, I think I'll take care of my problem. And I got divorced. But knowing that I—

Right.

Knowing that I have this tendency, this genetic family tendency to depression, has been extremely helpful to me so that when I have those moments of feeling depressed, I use my other skill sets, which are about really kind of driving for answers and organizing my thoughts and so forth. I use those skill sets to remind myself, you know, this is something that you're going to have to battle with all the time, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person or that you're a failure. It means there is this tendency that you need to find ways to cope with. And then I go and find ways to cope. And the funny thing is, when I'm in the middle of it, I have to remind myself all over again, even though I've been, you know, I've been experiencing this for probably 30 years. I still, when I'm in the middle of one of those cycles, I have to stop and go back to the basics.

How do you know you're in the middle of one of these cycles?

When I'm really paying attention, I realize that I am withdrawing from interacting with other people and that I am Over-focusing on work and trying to find satisfaction and justification by working harder. And I usually am pretty deep into that, into the withdrawing and the not talking to people and the working harder before I'll pull the brake and go, oh, wait a minute, I've seen this pattern before. What do I need to do about that?

Are you naturally introverted or extroverted?

Oh, I am very introverted. I mean, I'm like 3 standard deviations from the norm introverted.

So how do you know if it's introversion or if it's depression?

Um, it feels different. It's, it's about if it's introversion and it's just I need to kind of kind of withdraw a little bit and recharge my batteries. That is a calm feeling, and that is a— I'm perfectly happy being by myself. And I am, I am a person who is really happy being by myself most of the time. I'll read a book and I'll enjoy it. I'll cook for myself and I'll enjoy it. I'll watch something on the television and I'll enjoy it. When it's depression, I can't get myself to do any of those things.

Mm-hmm.

I just keep pushing myself harder to do work and being frustrated that the work quality seems to be lacking and my love of the work seems to be missing. So it's, it's that thing. It's the calm and the love of what I'm doing versus I'm doing it out of frustration and I'm not enjoying it, or I just can't bring myself to do it.

Marva, you know, I can't thank you enough for your honesty, your transparency, and your willingness to share. This conversation is so— I didn't see it coming, first of all.

I didn't either. So it's a surprise to both of us.

I've been known for this. I don't know where it comes from. But the fact that you've shared this especially that explanation, I know is going to be so helpful to so many people. And I was asking the question, first of all, to support people who are going through this decision, which is it? But also because, uh, I don't know if you know, I'm highly dyslexic. And, and I'm highly introverted. And so This is gonna sound terrible, but I tend not to like other introverted people.

Because, because 2 introverts have difficulty making the effort to get along.

Exactly. Exactly. And I thought, and I said to my husband today, I said, I'm interviewing, interviewing Marva today, and I really don't want to. I really don't want to. And something said to me, Inside. No, you have to. There's something, something that you need to find out, right? And because I remember us sitting at the table in London opposite each other, and we barely had anything to say. And I'm thinking, gosh, this woman just like— I'm not connecting, right? And for me, it's an effort to connect. So between that and my dyslexia, I thought, this is just not going to be a good interview. And it is really one of my best. Notice I took credit for it.

Well, I'm so glad to hear that. I'm glad that you're getting something out of it. Because I also remember, I also remember sitting at that table in London and being so miserable. I really hate crowds. I'm better at them than I used to be. Believe it or not, I've created coping mechanisms. I'll set myself a target that's like, Marva, you need to go meet 10 people you haven't met. You need to go talk to these 5 people. I'll target specific people because left on my own, I would never be in a crowd. When I was much younger, before I created the coping mechanisms, I would have responsibilities as an executive of a large organization. We had these client conferences where 1,000 clients would come, and as an executive, I was responsible to go mingle. And at every break, I would go in the ladies' room and lock myself in a stall and cry for 15 minutes. And then I would take a deep breath and I'd clean up my face and I'd go back out there and I, you know, I'd try to be friendly. But left to my own, I would never go to one of those things.

I I am so with you. It's not even funny. 100%.

Because that is— That is my idea of hell.

Yeah, exactly. And I've learned that. And, but you just, you've gotta get out of it. And, um, it, it's funny when I read, I was reading a book on MBTI and, uh, it said that, um, 90% of the CEOs in the United States are introverts.

And I said, Well, introverts tend to also maybe be a little more thoughtful.

We are. Of course we are, right? And it actually helped me in events because I thought, I'm not alone in this, right? And if they can make it to CEO level and think like I do, I'm in good company.

So, you know, one of the, one of the backstories of that is that the individual that I was working for at the time that we were at that dinner, right, the next day he reamed me because he said, you know, I brought you all this way and you didn't, you didn't mingle the way I expected you to. And I said, oh, I mingled very intentionally. I met the people I needed to meet. I got a lot of contacts. I can follow up with those contacts. He said, but you should have been, you know, you should have been partying and you should— and I was just like, you hired me to do the work. You didn't hire me to party. And you hired me to do what I know how to do. And so I did that. And that's all that I can do. I can't become you.

Well, first of all, First of all, the person we're speaking of wasn't exactly mingling himself.

So, you know, that I don't know. But—

I remember that. And I said, that's interesting, because I'm always comparing and contrasting people that have been successful in business versus what I'm about to do or what I've done before. And I'm always looking for those tips. And I thought, wow, this is very interesting. So perception. But I love, I love how you responded. That is power. Pure power. Right?

Well, and, and that standing in my own power is something I continue to work on. But in that particular relationship was something I really needed to learn to do.

You did good. And I think that's a book in itself.

Probably. I have all kinds of books in my head that I'll read— I'll, I'll write one day when I'm, when I'm retired. Because, you know, I actually started my career as a journalist.

No way.

Yeah. And I love writing. And I do literally have a whole library of books that I would love to write.

But I just, I tend to be very focused. Well, but you've got to get—

And I tend to be very dedicated.

You have got to get started. That's it. Because there's just, that conversation that we just had about that particular person, the way that you stood your ground and your purpose is really, it sort of reminds me of our friend Sally, right?

Yes.

Just stand your ground, right? And I love when we're in meetings with Sally where she is— she makes a statement that's completely, completely opposite of what everyone else is saying. And she just openly and without any concern says what she has to say. And she doesn't care about anyone's response. Or what they think of her. And it's just, it's a beautiful thing to watch. It's given me so much courage.

I so admire people who can do that because so many people hide what they truly know needs to be said because they're worried that the individual they work for or the group that they're with is going to disagree with them. And rather than see that as a healthy opportunity to have a conversation, they, they won't say anything. Yeah.

Or worse yet, agree with everybody else. And so, and it's funny because how I met Sally was my association gave her an award. Talk about not particularly warming up to somebody. She was very clear that she was not gonna wear the appropriate attire and that she would only be there for a certain period. And I'm like, who the heck is this woman? Right? And she comes in and I was like, okay, listen, this could be a battle royale. But it turned out we became the best friends. I'm thinking, so CB, Learn to take it when a woman is just like you.

Oh, good insight.

Yeah. Mirror image, right?

Yes.

So powerful. And I so much respect her now.