243: Reaching Senior Leadership Essential Strategies To Help You Rise with Alex D. Tremble

You have to be willing to invest in yourself. Yes, absolutely. Take advantage of any training opportunity that your company's providing to you if they're willing to support this initiative or pay for that, whatever it may be. But you got to pay for yourself sometimes. That's why you got a budget. You got to put some money aside for your own personal development.

Hello, everyone. This is Kathy Caprino, and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created this show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week, I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts, and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of Finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful, and meaningful life, business, and career. Hello, everybody. Kathy Caprino here, and welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. Now that we're going bi weekly, I feel so excited. Like, even more excited. I'm levitating to have the guests such as mine today. Alex Tremble. Oh, Alex, thank you for joining me in the middle of an incredibly hot summer. Busy, busy time. Our heads are exploding with what's going on. Right?

Oh, well, first, thank you so much for having me. Kathy. You are awesome. I'm excited to be here today. So thank you for having me. And I'm winning right now because I'm inside with the ac, so let's just keep it that way for.

Let's do that. We're not going outside for another three weeks. All right. I want you to know, everybody. I love to share how I know my guests, and sometimes they're longtime friends, sometimes they're really good friends from three weeks ago. And often they are people who have been recommended to me from my mentors, my sponsors. And you are one of those, Alex. It was Michael Stallard, who is just. I cry just to even mention his name. Mike. I hope you're listening. He was a mentor of mine when I first began coaching 16 years ago. Alex. And he said, sure, I live in Greenwich. I'm in Stanford. Come, let's have coffee. The most generous, wise, you know, what a spirit and what work. And he said, you gotta know, Alex. So there we are. And then we had a chat, and I was blown away by Alex's experience and wisdom. And we are talking today about reaching senior leadership, essential growth strategies to help you rise. Thank you again. All right, let me tell you everyone a little bit about Alex. Alex D. Trimble is an award winning speaker, author, executive and leadership expert who advises some of the nation's most senior level leaders on how to shape their company's culture to attract, retain and develop diverse and highly effective leaders. So important, in addition to speaking, coaching and consulting, Alex is the host of the great podcast, the Executive Appeal. What a great title. Which is focused on providing ambitious leaders with the leadership and career advancement skills required to excel as senior and executive leaders. And we could go on forever More about what you're doing. You also have a full time role, you know. Wow, you're doing so much. So again, thank you for being here. But let us dive in here again. You are doing so much. Your podcast, your YouTube channel, you're. You're doing so many interviews and, and what I really have to ask you here, let's just start with what I think a lot of people believe, which is if I simply work hard and do what I'm asked to do and do it well, I get a little bit of a chill because especially for women, which, you know, is my sweet spot. Focus, we will be recognized, we will move up the ladder and we will become leaders. So I have a feeling you have a lot to say about that. Can you tell us is that wrong or is that right? Or anywhere in between? Can you talk about that?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely right. I mean, look, I need everyone right now to be thinking right now, are you where you want to be? Are you working hard? First of all, if you're working hard, then great. Are you where you want to be? If the answer is no, then I guess maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, maybe it's not the hard work. Maybe that's what we've been fed. That's maybe what we've been told by our friends, mentors, colleagues, parents, supervisors and so on and so forth. But to be completely honest, Kathy, you and I both know that is not the case.

I got scared for a minute when you said, yeah, that's right. I thought, oh, we're going somewhere. I didn't expect. It is not the case. Can you lay this out for us? Why? Why isn't it so?

Look, I'm be real with everyone. Look, hard work is required. Look, Kathy, she's a hard worker. There's no way she could have accomplished what she's accomplished without hard working. But you know what? There's a whole lot of other hard workers all across this country, all across this world who are not where they want to be and they're not where Kathy is. So there's definitely something different that she does that makes her stand out from the crowd. And so my master's in. My master's in industrial or my master's in industrial and organizational psychology. And so I did some research on what is the differentiating factors between people who work hard and reach their goals and people who work hard and don't get where they want to be. And really came down to four different facets. The first is mentorship, right? And this is something you and I consistently talk about is having effective mentors. The second is leadership skills. You got to be able to motivate, guide, and move people to get things done, because no one accomplishes anything of significance by themselves. The third is strategic relationships, Having the ability to develop networks and doing it strategically. And then fourth is political savvy. Again, I love this one. Because it doesn't matter who you know, how you know them, how smart you are. If you cross the wrong person at the wrong time, your head ends up on the chopping block. So what you're talking about initially is, is that hard work? Does it take, you stop? Absolutely not. But when you talk specifically about those leadership skills, there are 10 that I've called out in the book Reaching Senior Leadership that we really want to lay out for everyone to understand. What are those key leadership qualities, key leadership behaviors, things that you got to know to differentiate yourself from the rest of the group, from the rest of the pack? Because if you're not remembered, you're not selected. So you got to be remembered.

I wish we could have you on for, like, seven hours. I want. I want to ask some kind of pointed questions, and then I want to hear you talk about the most important skills. But, you know, when I listen to a guest who's an expert, I split my brain in half. Half of me is thinking, what does the audience need? The other half is thinking, what do I wish I had known? Or what do I need to know today? And when you were reading Those, there are four things, right? Mentorship, leadership skills, and there's 10 of them. Strategic relationships, political savvy. I don't think I've once talked about political savvy on this podcast. And shame on me. And that's where I want to start. But I want to start with a question. I think I had some of these other skills somehow, naturally, like, I was a writer in my early years, so I communicated pretty well. I had a therapeutic ear, so I knew how to have some empathy and build. I was pretty good with some of that. The thing I stunk at Horrible was political savvy. And part of that was, I mean, anyone who's listened to this podcast knows for 18 years I struggled with so many corporate environments that to me had no transparency, no integrity, you know, terrible. Some didn't. Some of my jobs were awesome. But what I found really hard politically was I wanted to tell the truth. And I remember one of my first bosses said, I just remembered this, that I was pathologically authentic. Have you ever heard that term? I was 24. I'm like, what the heck does that mean? But I think he's right. I was pathologically authentic. Can you tease out now again, this could be a five year class. How do we be politically savvy and also tell the truth? Do you understand what I'm getting at?

I love the question. And just off the top of my head, the first thing I'd say is the first thing you have to know and you have to realize and you have to believe in your hearts of hearts if you want to be effective at being politically savvy is you have to understand the world is not fair, Period. There is, there's a lot of things that, that, yeah, it is real talk. There's a lot of things we wish were not the case and people should care about me because I work harder. I know what I'm talking about, or this is the right way, it's going to help the right people. So what I mean, the reality is that the world is not fair. And there, if you don't understand that, you're going to be operating in, you're going to basically operating with faulty data, right? So you have to understand what data you're working with. So once you understand the world isn't fair, the next thing you want to do is understand that everyone doesn't value the same thing that you value. This is a great example. I was watching a show last, last night, My Wife, the New Resident Evil show on Netflix. And this doctor, he really, really thinks that, oh, I don't get to tell everyone, but he, he really wants to stop something from happening. I want to ruin the show for him. You want to stop something from happening, but the CEO of the company wants to make it happen because it's going to make a whole lot of money. And telling the CEO this is going to hurt people, this is going to hurt people, this is going to hurt people. Then he says, you know what? Actually the reason why you should go on this other path is because if you create a vaccine, imagine if something goes wrong and you're the only Company that had access to it. How much money are you going to make? That's what she valued, money. She didn't value people's lives. She valued money. So if you change your delivery of the information to a way that's going to appeal to the person that you're trying to influence, you can still get to do the right thing. You're just using a different value. You're identifying what they value and going that direction.

And that's political savvy, madam.

Yeah, and I always love to talk about, you know, when we were kids, they taught us the. The what, when, where, who, why. Right. How. That's the same exact thing we should be thinking about when we're talking about political savvy. What information needs to be communicated? Right. You need to understand that first. Who. Not only who does the information be connected to or communicated to, but who should be the communicating? I spoke at a conference one time, and a woman stood up and said, you know, what do I do? Like my bosses, I'm the only woman in the office. No one listens to me, and I need to communicate this information. Like, you know what? Maybe you shouldn't communicate. Do you have someone else you can talk to who can get the message to the boss and they'll actually take it on? She's like, yeah, I actually. I'm really close to the chief of staff. Share it to the chief of staff. Chief of staff. Did it communicated to the boss? It was accepted. The program went. The program went exactly as planned. She ultimately got the recognition because it's her program. She still won. So we have to understand who needs the communication, because sometimes it's not you. When does the information need to be communicated? Sometimes right now, it's just not the right time. There's things going on in the organization. Someone just got fired. Whatever it may be, right now might not be the right time, but maybe if you wait a week, maybe you wait a month, maybe that's a better time to communicate. And then sometimes you know what you're going to do in a month, but right now, you got to do it. This is the opportunity to slip this information in and have change happen while there's confusion in the air. So you got to understand who, what, when, where. Where does this information need to be communicated in person, via zoom, via phone. You know, sometimes it is just so much easier just to meet someone over a cup of coffee or a drink after work when things are more relaxed and say, hey, look, you know, I don't know if you know what this going On. But have you heard about this? Like, all these things matter when you're communicating. And that's what physical savvy is, is really understanding how, what, when, where and who to communicate with.

Oh, gosh darn it, I wish I'd spoken to you 20 years ago. And I would add this because what. What runs across like a ticker tape when you're talking. Tell me what you think. I think there are certain cultures that no matter how you try to be savvy, you're drowning in the misery of it. You're drowning in the clash of values. You know, for instance, I was sexually harassed, and I knew if I go tell anyone, I'll be fired because this guy was in. Well, you're not going to stay and try to be politically savvy there, I don't think. I mean, I don't want to work for a company that hurts people like that, but it's up to each of us to decide. Right. But I think if you feel too conflicted that in order to be politically savvy, I have to go underground and hurt myself, then it's time to leave. Would you agree with that?

I would agree that everyone has their own breaking point. You know, I was. This is an answer that is not always politically correct, and people don't always like me for this answer. I was at a. I was at a panel discussion, and they asked me about. They're asking the panel about Glass Ceiling. Oh, should we, you know, should we use glassdoors.com or glass ceiling.com, whatever? See if this is a great organization for people of color and. Or for women or whatever it might be. And my other panelists, they were like, yeah, I use it all the time. If they're not supportive, they're not doing this. I'm not going to be there. And my answer is, well, if someone doesn't come, then who? There'll never be anyone there. Right. The reality is I'm being real talk right now. I was definitely put into some positions or allowed some opportunities because I was a token. I was a black guy who they could check off the box that we have diversity here. That's just. Again, this is part of being real with the real world. This is reality. Yes, I was put in that position or at that opportunity because someone thought they could write me off. But then I kicked ass. And I'm not sure if I can use that word here, but I kicked and I leveraged that opportunity in those relationships and networks to keep moving forward. So I think, again, for everyone has to make that assessment for themselves. Because if there is an organization that is, just to use your example, if it's super sexist, there's maybe some women who say, you know what? I'm not going to deal with this, and I don't have to deal with this, and I have great skills that someone else can pay me a lot more money to deal with. And there are other women who may say, you know what? This is wrong. And I'm not. I'm going to stay here and change the culture. I'm a fight. I'm a report if I have to. I'm going to do what I got to do to change the system. Neither is right and neither is wrong. It's based on what you and your. What's best for you and your life.

Can I ask this so I can understand you say that you were a token. Did you know that from day one?

I have been in a position since day one that I'm generally the only person of color? Especially because I. So I started my career off overseeing, creating the Executive Leadership Development program for the U.S. department of the Interior when I was 23. That means I was always the youngest person in the room. I was almost always the only person of color. I was that. That was my life. And I learned some things very quickly in those situations, like how I needed to dress, how I need to speak. And I was blessed because I have been very intentional throughout my life to find mentors, many mentors who look like me, but many, many, many mentors who don't look like me, who are able to say, hey, Alex, look, this is how you work this room. One of my mentors, to this day, what he would do in order to teach me political savvy is I would go to every single executive leadership meeting with him, and I would. I wouldn't participate. I just sit in the back of the room and listen. And then we would come back to the office and he'd say, okay, so now what happened? And we talk about, okay, yeah, no, not the decisions that were made. Like, everyone could hear that.

The dynamics.

Why were those decisions. Why were those decisions made? Oh, well. Oh, actually, because this person doesn't like this person. That's why they didn't support this initiative, even though it would have been in their interest. He's like, exactly. Oh, how about this? And we just talked through the politics of how decisions were being made. And that is how I personally, that's how I like to work with the organization I work with is creating these spaces where leaders can mentor those up and coming leaders and leaders who are, who don't have necessarily a mentor. They understand which questions to ask their leadership so they can start learning the political savvy components.

Aren't you a gift to the world? What struck me is I always say it's impossible to turn the Titanic around with one person. Forget it, you're going to hit the iceberg. But what I love is your bravery and forthrightness and frankness that, yeah, I'm walking into an organization that has a prejudice against people of color or women or young people, and darn it, I'm getting in there and I'm making a difference.

I think that, I mean, again, being real with everyone and this is the way I like, I like to present myself all the time is. I think we, we have to, we have to admit these things. I mean, again, as a woman, you know, and you be, you know that males have certain opportunities and have certain quote unquote privileges that women just don't have.

Yes.

And the reality is that we can soak and we can say, okay, well, they have this opportunity. I don't. I'm just gonna. Let me just give up. Let me just, let me just do what I do right now. Be regulated to what I'm doing. Or we can say that's wrong. Absolutely. I don't agree with it, but how else can I get to my goal? How else can I influence the tide to make sure that I am able to be successful? And that's one thing I've always told myself from day one is I don't care what anyone thinks about me. You can like me or not like me. I'm going to find a way to be successful for me and my family, because giving up is not an option.

How beautiful. And sometimes it'll happen. Like me. I'm tired of all the energy going out to fight this. I'm going to start my own business.

Exactly.

Let me run it the way I. And let me be the leader that I say I want to be. And let me fall down and learn from that. But it's no one pushing me down.

Yep. Yep.

Oh, my gosh. So helpful. All right, now talk about. You talked about mentorship, but then strategic relationships are a different category. Can you explain to people your view of strategic relationships? What they are, how we form them, what gets in the way of them.

So strategic relationships. Another way of saying that is networking. And I'll be completely honest, Everything. All those four things I listed, they're all contingent on your relationship building skills. You can't Be a leader. Unless you know how to build relationships, especially strategic relationships, I.e. intentional relationships with individuals who can help you reach your goal and you their goals. You can have a mentor, but how do you get a mentor? By building a relationship. Right. You can have political savvy, but political savvy is really nothing more than you got to have a relationship with them so you know what to say, when to say, how to say. So to your point, relationship building and networking and is crucial for any of those things if we're going to be a successful leader. But what I would say is the hardest thing that most people deal with when talking about relationship building is feeling like they don't have to. You know, what if I just work hard, if I just keep my head down, if my work speaks for itself, you know what other side, those other people who I don't like, those people are sleazy. Those people don't know what they're doing. They're mean and they lazy.

They're in it lazy.

I know better if they're using network. I definitely don't want to do that. No, that's not, that's not how the world works. If you know that what they're doing works, then you do it in an ethical way. But then you put yourself in these leadership positions. You put yourself in these positions of influence so you can do things the right way versus complaining that someone else is not doing it the right way. I like to tell people again in one of my talks, I love to make the point that you also have to be able to prioritize. You got to be able to prioritize. The world teaches us a lot of flowery BS about everyone is valuable, everyone is valuable at the same level, and you should care about everyone. And if you go talk to this person, not that person, you only care about their title. That's bs. The reality is we have to prioritize. I can promise you, I've been with my wife 15 years and if I didn't prioritize time with her over someone else, we would not be together. There is absolutely nothing wrong with prioritizing. What we have to do is do that, but not disrespect anyone else, not think less of someone else. But right now, that person over here, this specific person, can help me, my organization and my family reach our goals. And so let me build a relationship over here. And then also understanding that if you want to build real relationships, it's not about taking, it's about giving. You and I were just talking about before we got started. You have to be able to provide value to others.

Oh, my gosh. Can I amplify a few things and see if I'm getting it? And you, I love it. You and I see things. The concept is the same, but we approach it a little differently, which I adore. So one thing that I would say here is, you know, I, first of all, one of the worst leaders I ever had, narcissist, looked me in the face and said, you know, it's. It's not what you do that brings you success in your career. It's who you know and who likes you. And I was like, what an ass. And what I, you know, I wanted to live in a meritocracy. It's not who I know. He couldn't have been more right, but not with his spin on it. What I would say is nothing that you can. That you want to do that's big is achievable without other people. Zero. You can't do it alone and in a vacuum. Everything that, that I've done that I'm most proud of, someone helped me with it, and lots of people helped me with it. Two books, et cetera, podcasts. And. And when you talk about mentorship, you know, I often help people differentiate. There's mentors. And some research studies show that women have three times as many mentors, but men have twice as many sponsors. Sponsors, Those are mentors who have clout, who open doors for you that you can't open. But. So we want to be mindful. But I love what I'm hearing you say, Alex, tell me if I'm getting it. So many people, particularly women, feel like networking is sleazy. Why? Like, let's take me for an example. I have the course the Most Powerful you. There's a new audience that is not in my 800,000 following on LinkedIn. And that's DEI people, that's HR people at companies that care about supporting the advancement of women and underrepresented groups. Well, I have to reach out to them.

Yeah.

I mean, they don't know who I am, probably. So I am learning, you know, I'm using Sales Navigator and being very transparent people finding my number one connections who are at Google, who are at Apple, but you can't just come with your hand out. We all know what it is to be pitched today. And sadly, those of us who have big followings, we're getting pitched probably 100 times a week, and you can smell it a mile away. Oh, I even got, you know, kind of duped. It's automated. Hi, you're doing such great work. And I was like, it's an automation that went out to 100 people that day. The point is, don't think of it as sleazy. Think of it as, I have a mission and it's a heartfelt mission, and it's doing good in the world or doing good in this workplace, and I need other people. So surely I'm going to create a relationship. But it's going to be mutually beneficial. I'm committed to that. And if you do that, I don't think you're going to feel it's sleazy, awkward, horrible that so many people do. Would you agree with that?

100% agree. And I would press anyone to right now literally think about their best friend or who have someone who's close to them right now. Why are they close to you? Because you and that person give of each other. You provide value to each other, whether it is an ear, a shoulder to cry on, just time to talk to every once in a while. You are both providing value to each other. That is the foundation of your relationship. That's the foundation of any healthy relationship. And to your point, Kathy, when you're talking about women, this is exactly why organizations generally bring me in is to. I work with pipelines. All of the work we're doing with DEI work about teaching people the importance that different isn't wrong. Teaching people to understand different cultures and cultural sensitivity. And so those things are really important. And 80% of jobs are filled via relationships. If we are not teaching our people who are underrepresented, we're not teaching them how to build intentional strategic relationships with those individuals who are the selecting officials, who are. Who generally are, let's just say it, males, white males in power. If we're not teach them how to navigate those relationships, then we're giving them a disservice. And we can. Everyone could be kumbaya all day thinking about each other's cult, how great each other's cultures are, but we'll still have the same exact number of women and people of color lower in the organization and the same makeup at the higher end. It's just being real.

I love the reality and. But I love that to me, there's a spiritual aspect of it which is, you know, and I love. Let's do it this way. You know how you say prioritize? Look at the people you've choosing to give of your time. You've prioritized them. You know, I have a group of 10 friends not 500. I prioritized. And they're not at all a carbon copy of me. In fact, who would want that? Well, a lot of people think they would because it doesn't challenge them. You know what I mean?

And those other 500 people that you're not, or 490 people that you're not prioritizing, do you think they're bad?

Not at all.

Do you think they're lesser than?

Not at all. No.

No. It's not a zero sum game. That again. But society pushes us to think that everyone has to be the same, and that's just not the reality. And we only have so much time, only so much resources, energy to feed into these relationships. So you need to know who you're putting your time into. And so again, that's why I work with those organizations on those. On, you know, talking about relationship building. And what I have this called the. I have the Executive Pill podcast, but the Executive Appeal workshop where we actually bring in leaders to help them mentor individuals who are. Who are seen as high performers or. But in that program, it's not just about who are the quote, unquote, high performers. You can't just ask that question because generally there's a bias tied to it. Right. So to make sure that that list of individuals who are quote, unquote, high performers is diverse as well, and how we provide them some support before they go into this workshop and then after they go into. Out of the workshop.

Gosh darn it. You're doing good work. All right. I'm aware of our time. We got maybe seven more minutes. Can you. We can't have you talk. I'm a singer. I love to sing. You want to sing? Want to do a duet? 10 skills. We can't go through the 10. Can you tell us the three that you think are the most. I know I didn't prep you for this. So here we go. Wing. The most underrepresented, the most under discussed. I mean, in a way, Alex, are you as bored as I am with the way leadership is talked about?

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, gosh. You know, to me, we're not talking about it in the way that we need to talk about it, where it's such platitudinal nonsense. Can you give us three skills that we probably don't know we should be developing?

The first, I'm spend my time with the one, because the one is so important, is so, so, so, so important. I believe it's the second to last chapter, and it's investment. Investment. Kathy, you Know what? I'm. You know where I'm going with this? You have to be willing to invest in yourself. I can't tell you how many people say, alex, I want to get to the next level. Great. What do you want to do? I want to be a leader here. I want to be an executive here. I want to do this. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay, we're ready. Yeah, we're going to do this. Okay. Okay. So what are you doing to invest in yourself? Well, my company is supposed to pay for this program for me, but they didn't pay for it, so I can't do anything right now. Hold up, Wait. What you're saying is you want something to make you better and help you grow, but you're only willing to do that if someone else pays for it who may not be looking out for your best interest. They looking out for their own interest. That's what an organization's role is to do anyways. So what I'm telling people is you have to be willing to invest in yourself. Yes, absolutely. Take advantage of any training opportunity that your company's providing to you if they're willing to support this initiative or pay for that, whatever it may be. But you got to pay for yourself sometimes. That's why you got a budget. You got to put some money aside for your own personal development and then buy that book, take that course, you know, get it, get into a coaching arrangement. You got to be willing to invest in yourself. You can't say, I want to invest zero, but I want a million dollars. That doesn't happen like that. Even the lottery costs you a dollar. To play the lottery, you've got to be willing to put the money in and the time and energy effort, but you got to be able to put money up for yourself if you want something more.

I want to tell you, this one makes my head explode. I'm going to be really honest and tell you something. Over 16 years of working with women, I can't tell you how many women I've. They've reached out, I need some coaching. You're the one. Then we talk fees, and they say, I have to ask my husband. And half of them are the primary breadwinner. And I want to tell you, not one man that I have spoken to, he might say, I have to look at the budget, but he does not say, I have to ask my wife. What am I angry about? Of course you have budgets. Of course you have to be responsible. But this idea that I need to get permission, it's exactly what you're talking about sock away your own money for your own personal and professional growth. And women are so typically I don't need to paint every woman with the same brush. They're so, so resistant to invest in themselves. Do you see that in a little bit of a difference between men, women or maybe people of color and not. Do you see any differences in groups?

I would say women and this and this is not to put to paint anyone with a large brush. I know we're talking about generalities right now. A lot of them really care about their teams and well, if I spend resources on myself then that's not resources that go into my team or that's not resources that's going to my family. But we don't realize that if you invest in yourself then you can be a better person and you can consistently provide better, better support for your family or for your team. Yeah, I love that. If you had a water, water freaking bottle, you know, water thing, you know, pitcher. Yes, get a water pitcher. You only have so much water in it. Every time you pour the water into another cup for someone else, yes, you're filling their cup. But what happens after you poured so much water? There's nothing else. You can't give anything now you, you've ruined. I don't think ruined but yeah, you kind of ruined their situation.

You spent the opportunity to spend the.

Energy I want to stairs real quickly falling on your sword. I literally think about this this morning. I've met so many people who think it's best to fall on your sword. I'm going to be the martyr. Everyone else. I'm going to fight for everyone else's well being, everyone else's success. I'm going to leave. I'm going to let myself fall on my sword because that's what type of leader I am. But you know what that leaves when, when, when, when the leader falls in the sword, it leads everyone without a leader. If the leader falls in the sword, it leaves everyone else without a leader. And is that helping them? I would say not. So we have to be willing to invest in ourselves.

You know what I love that you've done and that's why I hear a spiritual kind of. I don't mean religious, I mean of the soul. What you're talking about. You took my snarkiness of come on ladies, don't ask permission. Make this happen for yourself. But you explained it, which is women and others have been programmed and particularly women to put other people first. That's what feminine has meant. Masculine isn't that masculine is getting it done. Being assertive, not being vulnerable, not being emotional, feminine is pleasing, accommodating, putting other people first. I get that, and I have had that all my life. But now we're asking for a paradigm shift that everyone understand you're important, you're valuable, and the more growth you have, the more growth you can help others achieve. Yeah. And even in your own businesses, the more money you make, the more you can spend that money in ways that uplift others. Yeah.

I was interviewing the. One of the VPs at Coca Cola the other day, and we were talking about people needing to make money. And it's just funny because there is this belief sometimes, like, money is bad. But let's, you know, think about the vaccine, think about the giving. Homeless people who are experiencing homelessness, Food, giving up, looking for housing. Think about, you know, services provided for. For kids. Those things all cost money.

Cost some money. You know what this reminds me of? I have been so floored, Alex, by when the book came out, the Most Powerful you. And we titled it because that way, because we tested other titles. One was Closure Power Gaps, which I loved. Nobody understood what that meant, so we went with the most powerful you can you believe, Alex? Women in general shun the word power, and they shun the idea. It's the same as money. And when I say, why don't you want it? They say, I want impact. I want influence. But power is abusive and manipulative. Now I know why. Because we've been abused and manipulated by power. Many people have. But in and of itself, Shakespeare said, you know, what is it? What is it? The word doesn't make it so. Thinking that, what is it? I Forget it. Oh, it's beautiful. But the point is, just the term power isn't in and of itself abusive. Just the concept of money isn't of. In and of itself dirty. Gross. Yeah. My goodness. We need it. But we need it to help others and to help ourselves.

And that's why I love the work that you and I do, is because, like I said, whether it's your book or the. Your podcast or the Executive Hill podcast or the Reaching Senior Leadership book, they're all focused on helping people have the skills required to do good.

Do good. We're not saying run out and hurt people.

Exactly. This is to do good, to help people, to help you, help your family, help your organization. Yes. There are bad actors in this world. Absolutely. And they do learn these skills, too. But you know how you fight against that? By you learning these skills and you get into those positions of influence and those positions of power and get into.

The arena with them and vanquish. Falling on the sword. No.

Like we're playing some Dungeons and Dragons now.

Vanquish. Wow. Alex, I could talk to you all day and I've learned so much. Where do people soak in all of that delicious wisdom? Where do we go? Where do we send them?

Look, please, Please, please visit AlexTremble.com A L E X T R E M b l e.com and you can find my stuff on the executive pill podcast on YouTube. But AlexTremble.com that's the hub. I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you. And again, Kathy, you are magnificent. I love being here with you. I can't wait to talk to you again.

Thank you. I can't wait to have you back. People, if you're not inspired, motivated by this, I think I'm throwing in the towel. I don't mean to be snarky, you know, you are watching Alex. He's so helpful. Wherever you see this LinkedIn, Instagram, please follow. Follow me there, too. I'm starting there to share more reels. Wherever you see this, will you share a question? And look, we're getting very real world here. We're not speaking platitudes. What is your leadership challenge? What are you facing? But I would ask you to do this if you can look at. Not that you are a victim without a way to shape your reality. If you could say for a minute, yes, this is coming at me and I don't want it. But what can I do to take accountability? I need help. I think we can answer you in a deeper way. Would you agree with that, Alex?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

All right, then we'll see you out there. Wherever you see this podcast, did you want to say something else?

I was going to tell your crowd, please remember to stay strong, stay positive, and definitely stay moving.

Love it. Love it. All right, everyone, hope you love the show and let's hear from you and have a wonderful Finding Brave week. Thanks again, Alex.

See ya.

Hi, folks. Kathy here. I wanted to share some exciting news. My book, the Most Powerful you, which is being translated into Arabic, Chinese and Polish, has now been published in paperback. And it's being featured in a cool app called Uptime that offers five minute summaries, or hacks, as they call them, with key insights and powerful action steps from the world's best books. I hope you'll check out the most powerful you paperback and you can find that on Amazon and wherever books are sold. And do check out the app uptime on your phone or via the link bit Lybit ly uptime Most powerfulyou links are also listed in the show notes below. Thanks again for tuning in today. Thanks so much for joining us today. And please don't forget to check out finding brave.org for more programs, resources and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of Finding Brave.