Finding Brave Ep 52: How To Reduce Your Stress and Ask For Help, with Andrea Goeglein

Hello, everybody. This is. Whoops, we need my pop filter. Hello, this is Kathy Caprino, and welcome to Finding Brave. I am so first of all, please excuse me. I'm a little stuffy from my head cold that hasn't completely gone away, but it's a lot better than last week. And I am so excited to welcome my wonderful guest, Andrea Gigline. Yay. Pronounced it correctly, I think, right, Andrea? You did. Thank you. Yay. All right, I just want to share with you. You know, I'd love to tell you why I love my guests and why it's such an honor for me to share their brilliance. And in Andrea's case, we met about 10 years ago. Andrea, right?

Yes, that's right.

And I was a very new author at Barrett Kohler. And you, I think, had had several books with them already, right, Andrea?

Well, I actually don't have a book with them. What I had been doing for them without any knowledge was I was promoting their books and their authors because I am a knowledge champion and they had a catalog while I was getting my doctorate. They were the publisher I was going to because they had some of the most progressive topics. And, you know, if you remember, your book at that time, was was right on target. Women had come through 25 to 30 years in the workplace. The concept of conflict within the individual was males because the system was not respecting what women brought. Completely aligned. And that's how we met. I had been bringing barricolar authors on my Books that Matter TV show in Arizona.

Oh, my gosh. And you helped me get speaking gigs and. Wonderful. I can't thank you enough. And I want to tell you, I just want to hug you up. That book, Breakdown breakthrough came out 10 years ago, Andrea. People wouldn't believe it, but you couldn't get a conversation about women's challenges in the national conversation to save your life. I mean, that my book came out when it was Obama and Sarah Palin, and that's what people cared about. What a difference in our world 10 years later. It's so amazing.

And you know, Kathy, I've been in various forms of this conversation since I was a child because I was sexually abused and started talking at 10 years old. And because I. Yes. So asking for help as a topic for me has been a natural iteration. And so I've gone through many different phases. And I did my first masters on women using the disc profile, whether or not this was in 1988, whether or not they had to shift their behavior from home to work. So I acknowledge that it was a Tough conversation to have because every. Everything was so new. We weren't even aware of what we were experiencing.

The world is so different. Wow. And what a pioneer you are. I didn't realize you didn't speak till 10. Holy cow. All right, everyone, hang on to. Hang on to your hat.

At 10 years old, I finally told my parents what was happening. That had started years before. So my ability to stand up for myself, and admittedly as a young Italian girl in Queens, it looked incredibly arrogant. I grew up in a house with boys, and it looked a little arrogant. I have learned to do it differently. And that's what I want us to talk about and share today. Because I have walked this path the hard way, both academically and in life.

Oh, man. And you've really turned your mess into a message. That thing that personally resonate most with authors and speakers and influencers and thought leaders who have lived something so deeply that what they share is not just an academic researched look at something. It's from the soul. And that's you. All right, everyone, let me read Andrea's bio. You're going to love it. And we have. Even within this bio, there's an hour we can talk about. Dr. Giglein altered the truth of her age and got a job at a Wall street brokerage firm at age 14. By 24, she opened her first operating business, a Haagen Dazs ice cream store in Reno, Nevada, many businesses and a PhD in organizational psychology. Later, she felt she had experienced enough stress and anxiety to be an expert. Today, she is a success catalyst known as Dr. Success. I love it. Andrea is the founder, curator, and author of Don't Die, the self development collection of books. Her latest book is Don't Die Waiting to be Brave. Love that. As we're on finding brave today as an expert in applied positive psychology, she is your success Sherpa, guiding you as you climb the mountain of success. Oh, Andrea. All right, let us dig in. And again, we're talking about how to ask for, for and get the help you need. And I want to frame this in two ways. We're going to be talking about every person's challenge in asking for help. Well, maybe not everyone on the planet, but almost every woman I've ever worked with is a perfectionistic over functioner. And that means we're doing more than is healthy, appropriate, necessary, trying to get an A. And asking for help is not part of the program. So we're talking to every person who struggles. But we're also going to touch on when you're In a culture, you know, in shedding light on the me Too movement. When you're in a culture, as we both have been, where there's harassment, discrimination, suppression, how do you ask for help within a culture that doesn't encourage that? So we're going to talk about that. But before we do, Andrea, I gotta talk about. When I read your bio, we were chatting about this, you know, when we started out with. I altered the truth of my. My age. You know what that says to me and got this amazing job. One, you're a warrior and a survivor and you're going to do what's required. Number two, you're brilliant. Because at age 14, most of us were looking at our acne and trying to get a boyfriend or whatever. My gosh. But I'm really interested. Talking about finding brave and speaking brave, what was it like to get to start yourself through a lie? I'm interested in that.

You know, at 14 years old, I will tell you that one. It was the job as a filing clerk after school and it was in summers. And honestly, because of things that had happened to me as a younger person, altering the truth versus outright lying to you about something, just doing enough to get by, you know, let me just get by. It's a little bit like to be doing. You feel you're 100 hours behind it and they say, how are you doing? And you say, oh, I'm doing just fine. Meanwhile, you are dying. It was a little bit like, I see. I wanted this because from a very early age, work was my salvation. It gave me an identity to move away from. And I have spent my entire life helping myself and others appreciate what achievement within business can do for them as part of their healthy self image.

I'm really. Wow. So really what you did was survival. It was life or death to you in a way.

Correct. And what I didn't know at that time and what is part of what I teach today that I learned through positive psychology and my training in that is that if I guided my entire life by my five strengths, if I made every decision that way, I would.

Andrew, say that again because you paused.

Where I would be flourishing and thriving.

I'm sorry, you paused for a minute and I mean, you were stalled for a minute. Can you say that again? What you learned is.

What I learned in positive psychology is the exact thing that I teach everyone. If I use you, if I. Or you use your top strengths in order to make every decision about where you are, the thriving that you're after, those brave moments that you talk about that's exactly how you get to them because you're being powered by your strength. That now the reverse of that is altering the truth. I happen to have honesty and authenticity. It kind of always rubbed me the wrong way. Altering. Having to hold the secrets of my childhood rubbed me the wrong way. So I tended to have things come up. I want you to know that I actually told the employer after I got the job about my age.

I was going to ask you, do you think they would have hired you if you came in and sent them towards you?

What they. What they told me.

Oh.

So I went to them after they offered me the job. I then went to them and said, they said to me if I could get working papers, they would hire me anyway. And I have those working papers dated April 1970. My birthday is in December. And so I would turn 15, December of 70. And yeah, so I have those working because I am very proud. I mean, I had a fess up, but I got the job first.

I love it. What I just want to punctuate there is I talk a lot about when people have what they feel is a dirty little secret. And what I find most of all is energetically that dirty little secret keeps us from thriving. Because I do believe that our baseline in our soul is that we want to be authentic and we want to be truthful. So wherever you can reveal your dirty little secret and air it, because it will probably hold you back. I'm so glad to hear you did that.

I love it.

All right, let us talk about. Go ahead, go ahead.

Oh, and that speaks to, you know, what you invited me to talk about and why we talk about this asking for help. Every one of those, that, that progression, every time you take a step towards that authenticity, somehow or other you have asked for help.

Well, that's so beautiful. Let's just dive in here. Now, first of all, why do you think we, so many of us struggle to ask for help? What are the real reasons?

Well, there's a long history in industrialized management science that we were trained to believe we had to be independent problem solvers, which means that we have to constantly be creating problems to solve. That's the first part. Okay. The second part is, if I have these problems and can't solve them myself, am I good enough to move up? Should I be leading you? If I'm actually, there was a time the decision making process was not honored. It is honored more today. And I perceive the next 20 to 25 years because of the shift from a work life balance to a Work life integration, which is the demand of the millennials on we're going to have some really beautiful things happen in the workplace.

I love it. And in our Forbes interview, which we just published very recently. I'll link to it below, I do want to say this. You mentioned. Yeah, sometimes it's not safe to ask for help. And, you know, the research shows there are so many differences in perceived competence between the genders. So, for instance, what you'll see in communication with men in a meeting is they don't ask as many questions as women. And what has happened is when women say, you know, I'd love to ask a little more about this. Sometimes the perception is, why? Why are they asking that they don't know enough, when in fact they know more than most of the people in the room. They just want to dig deeper or they have a question about a particular thing. So we're not imagining it, that sometimes we're perceived as weak or unknowledgeable to ask a question. So how do we get around that, Andrea? How do we make sure we're asking in a way that isn't going to damage the perception of our competence?

Everything for me starts with me being aware of how I sense and relate to people in conversation. And I believe that we have used.

Other.

Criteria, such as your job may lead me to believe that I should trust you. Maybe not, maybe not. I have to take responsibility in each interaction to see if the words you use. How do you treat other people? I have to become an observer of those I work with. And one of the things that's really important we not looking for. You know, if you work for a company with a thousand people, you're not looking for 1,000 people to trust. You're looking for three or four people who you admire, the way they work and their work disciplines and how they have treated others when there have been problems. And those are the people that you seek out, you make an intentional effort to seek out and have conversations and create a relationship with. And I always suggest you do it prior to a crisis. But it's amazing how much crisis does bring that type of stuff up.

Quite motivating, isn't it?

You know, so you're really cheap.

Oh, you've got. There's so much here. You. You're talking about finding mentors and sponsors before you actually need them. Well, you need them at all stages, but you're adding a different layer, which is look at not only who has clout and who can open doors, look at the process of their living and engaging? Do they uplift people? Do they welcome honesty and integrity? And can I say one more thing, Andrea, and we can riff on this. Another thing you're saying, I think, is, look, people, you have got to read the room. You've got to read the room of the ecosystem. In other words, if you see around you that everyone's backstabbing and no one's actually encouraging honesty, well, first of all, you're probably in the wrong company. Secondly. Right. I mean, why do you want to be there? But secondly, no, it's probably not safe for you to admit you need help. So what I love is it's in your hands. Not every culture is the same. Not every boss is the same. Oh, good Lord. Right. So use your head, use your heart, use your energy to sense what is right and see. Seek out the people that have risen above this nonsense and are people that would love to help you and uplift you in the right way.

Absolutely.

Am I getting it?

That's a very critical aspect.

All right, good, Wonderful. So, yes, you also talk about how.

If you start with the one thing you control the most, yourself.

I love that. I love that. And I want to touch on a piece that we talk about, which is, if you think about how much stress you feel, and you know, again, I work primarily with women, many of whom have children, and what they're balancing and integrating is crushing. Isn't asking for help a way to reduce and address our stress? Andrea, let's just talk about that for one minute.

Exactly. I will give you an example from my work of recent vintage. A director level female. She's really accomplished, both in degrees and in achievement in the workplace. Very high in a good, strong marital relationship with a young child. We realized that part of her feeling of overwhelm had to do with things that needed to get done. Mundane tasks of maintaining a healthy home, laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping. And there was a barrier to asking for that help. And in that situation, the economics were there to actually be able to hire someone to do it. But having the conversation with her spouse.

To say, I need. Wow. Right?

And what I changed. You just said, I need. I. The conversation that we worked on, because as I said before, everything starts with our language. What I helped her to do was sculpt the conversation of how do we have the happiest life together? What things would make it better for us both. This is what I know would make it better for me if it came off my plate. And this is how much it would cost for us. The investment would be for us to do it. And then you come to agreement. You do it the exact same way when you have a new line item in your budget and you want cooperation. We've all been in those conversations. And another one came to mind when asking for. And it was the director of a nonprofit who needed desperately another individual on their staff. And at one point in the negotiations with the founder of the nonprofit, this young woman said, I'd be willing not to take a pay raise in order to get that. And I went ballistic. No, you haven't made the argument. You have not made the argument of what the organization will gain when you have that additional person, which is the conversation you have to have.

We have. Let me ask this, though, Andrea. I've got to ask. I have a client who I adore. Who? Her. Her in treatment. Her pleading for a new person falls on deaf ears. Okay. And they absolutely won't. Yet when she puts her foot down and says, no, this huge international project, I will not be doing it if there isn't another person. They don't care. They don't. They don't care. What would you do when it becomes that there's such a disconnect between what they want accomplished and what they will pay for? What do you do then, do you think?

Well, the first thing I would do is ask the question, are we solving the right problem? Is the problem that she needs more staff or is the problem her values and her leadership model and her strategy does not align with the corporation she's with?

I mean, in this case, they love her. She loves it. But they want. She's already stretch too thin, but now they want to add a project that probably could have three people dedicated to it, and they don't want to add people and they want her to run it.

And what do they say she did not. When she says, I will not take this project unless this happens.

In this case, she will be out of the office on maternity leave and, you know, in three shortly. And she knows they're going to bring it in while she's gone so that when she comes back, she'll have to manage it.

But again, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to. Kathy, I'm going to go. Tell me the original thing that I put out there. What problem are we solving? We teach people how to treat us. That's the same conversation I will have with you about asking for help, as I will about this. She may love this organization, however, the organization says that they support and value her, but their actions are not in alignment. So she has to make a different decision. And that's the hard part. They are clear about who they are, and I respect that. They are not pretending to be something else. She's having a hard time accepting. They are.

How would you. How would you articulate who they are? Cheap. I don't respect it, to be honest, Andrea. You know why I don't respect it? They're not listening to their top people.

Or strategically, they're not smart enough. I mean, that's.

Yeah. So am I right in what you're saying, that if this is a chronic situation for anyone listening and it's. It's thousands of people, no matter what, they promote you, they love your work, they say you're a valued partner. But when you come to the table saying there's no way to achieve this project and they do not listen, I think you have to decide. And, you know, I hope the answer isn't, well, I'm just going to suck it up. I think you suck it up for a short period of time if the benefit outweighs the negative. But I don't think that should be the way you live your life. Let me give them more than I am able to give and I'll just do it for the rest of my life. Do you understand what I mean?

I very much understand. Although I am not a clinician. Many times conversations that came out of abuse situations when you studied, particularly females in abuse and particularly emotional abuse situation situations, they hold out the hope that you can live to be who they know you should be versus who you are showing up at that moment. Okay? Organizations do that all the time. That's why it is so critical for us to continue to hold the line. And if they value her as much as they say they will, she has to not cross that line and take on that project. She goes on maternity leave. She comes back. If the project is on her plate, she reminds them of what she said. Because one of the things all humans do is make a threat or a proposal and then allow it to go back. That comes directly out of abuse research where you say, I'm not going to allow you to treat me that way ever again. I'm going to divorce you. And then they come back pleading and begging that only you could be this wonderful and get this done. Well, no, only I could be so stupid as to believe you one more time. Corporations are human beings. They are a collection of human beings. So we bring the same attributes. And that's why it's so important for us to bring the better attributes. You say it until you are heard, okay.

And, you know, there's a corollary to that. Why is this? People will be nodding, people will be saying yes, but people will be pushing back, as we do when we find it hard to do what. What is the right thing? I think for this to be integrated into a person's life, they have to know a number of things. One of them is, while jobs may seem scarce, while you may feel like I'm a director and there are very few director positions in my city, what you've got to know, whether you want to look at it or not, is what you put up with is what you will get.

And that's.

I mean, how clear can we be, right?

You know, the same way I had your book on that Books that matter segment, I had one of Phil McGraw's Dr. Phil's first books. And I can't remember. I can't remember the name of the book at the moment, but I do remember it was the 10 things that you do. And the very first one was that you teach people how to treat you. And I will say that that one piece of wisdom transcends all human relationships, whether it is at work, at home, in your community, where you have given someone permission, where you stop asking for help or stop asking for the respect that you know you should have, it is no longer about the other person. I had a magnificent thing happen just in the last two weeks with a young woman that came to one of my workshops. And after we would visiting about, she was in between jobs and she was really somewhat desperate. And given our economy at this moment in time, that's an odd thing. She's a young woman, but she said things that made me know she was going to make it. And what she initially said was, I had this job, I was being paid really well, and I took the job because the money was so good, but I allowed the boss to treat me in a way that was not good. And because of that, and I stopped her and I said, would you repeat that? And she said, yes, I allowed the boss too. And I said, you have reframed yourself into the way you're going to not do that again because you have taken responsibility that. Oh, you know, and that doesn't mean that the first, the second or the third time we are allowed to get surprised that someone acts in a dumb way. You know, like, we may be a little busy and the last thing we have time to do, we really do have to get that report out. I can't be worried about your personal development at this Moment. However, once the pattern is set, you have to be brave enough to your speaking, brave enough to continually have a respectful conversation. And what I teach is you never do it in a loud voice, you always do it in a low voice. The lower I speak, the greater the ability for you to try to hear me.

Oh gosh, I love it. And I want to say, the research shows that when women appear emotional, all validity goes out. People perceive them as having lost control and you've lost it. You've lost the potential gain you could have. Love it. Alright, I'm aware.

Well, let's talk about that for a moment because let's give people, you know, we've all heard that, you know, oh, she's, she's so emotional. I've seen it with men also. He's so emotional. The minute they are focusing on your behavior or your emotion, you've lost the game. So one of the things you have to know, again, it's self evaluation. What are my trigger points? What's my level? When you get to that point, have a. Create a statement. Say, I need to take a moment to reflect on this. I need to get back to my office. Whatever. Your statement is comfortable within your culture. And I always suggest, put up your hand and say, wait, I need to take a moment to go back to my office and reflect on what you've just said. Like you literally put a stop to the situation and you actually save yourself from the emotion in front of an individual who at that moment you cannot trust. So that's a technique and it has to be practiced long before it occurs. Once you know there's a potential for damage, set a statement that's no more than a few words. Put your hand up. Practice calmly saying it, walking away. You have broken enough of the. There are not the neurological goings on at that moment that you're gonna calm down. They'll be in shock.

I gotta give you an example of this. And it didn't go well. But it was very telling. I was a pro. I was the VP of a set of products worth millions of dollars. But there was a sales team that thought they ran everything. And the head of sales was the most powerful guy. And it was all male dominated. And they would come in three salespeople to tell me to sign this deal worth millions of dollars that minute.

Yep.

And they thought my job was to better the product by selling to whatever. And I didn't feel that was my job. I felt my job was to protect the value of the product. And I needed to look at this Contract, and they stormed me, sign it. And they weren't hearing me, that I needed time. So I finally kind of did what you said. I said, wait a minute. I need time to look at this. And no matter what you say, I will not sign this. In this moment, I need you to leave my office. And to your point, when people are used to bullying you into something, they flipped their lid and they went and complained about me. But the president said to them, I hired her to be the gatekeeper of this product. But, you know, if you find that you're getting bullied and you have to say stop at five times a day, you're in a very toxic culture. Think about it. But I love that. The other thing I love is research has shown that when you add a value statement before a forceful comment, they can hear you in a way, you're making a value statement. Wait, I need time to reflect on this. And I'm going back to my office. I will get back to you in three hours or whatever. You're also adding a value statement of what you value, which is rational thinking, before you make a decision and before you engage your mouth.

I love it. You have to be respectful of what the work of work is to promote whatever the mission of that organization is. So we are hired down to the janitor for a very strategic reason for that organization. We have agreed. We've made a social contract to come into this organization. However, contracts can be broken, and whichever direction it gets broken, we have to take responsibility and either take care of ourselves and get out of it or. Or help fix it. There's really very little in between. We're not supposed to see how much crap we can take. Oh, gosh, I love it.

I can see why you're such a fantastic coach. All right, two things I'd love to touch on. Can you give us some specific wording for how you know, the ways you see your clients need help? What are the best ways to ask? Five different examples. Maybe they want to explore getting a raise. Maybe they want help with a particular project. What are the best tips you have for how to phrase that? And secondly, I do want to talk about when you're in a culture where there's sexual harassment, what do we do to ask for help in a culture that is damaging? How's that?

Okay, so some of the examples, some of the things, the top things that people have, obviously compensation, whether it's stock options, pay parity. The first thing you must always do is have your facts really straight, build.

A good case.

So you know Some of the things that are the most critical. Let's talk about something like pay stock options. How do you ask? You ask the same way you would if you were presenting a major project. You make sure your facts are straight, you make sure that you know what the impact is and you make sure you know what the costs are of those around you. You're presenting a case as to why you are the best value and why you have been undervalued and why that is no longer acceptable to you. What you don't is threatened. You present a business case for it. And I have worked with someone over the last few years where we did that very, very successfully. Just shifting the language of how you ask. One of the other things that's very critical, which we touched on a lot with your client. How do you get the support, the physical support, the additional bodies, manpower, knowledge that you need? Sometimes it's paying for the technological advances that you need in order to do your job better. You do it in a way that you know the mission of your company and you compare it to what competitors are doing. That's just an example. But every time you move yourself away from the injured party and to the fact that my interest and your interest as the organization are the same and my perception is that I can get us there better and with an investment it will actually be more efficient and make us more in the end, the next.

Can I add one thing for one second? You know, when I think about my own client in this particular situation, here's what I think is also essentially required. You have to be unemotional about this. You have to not play the victim in woe is me. And you have to present it with a case about what you have done with metrics that it isn't just I'm great at my job, it can't be that. But more importantly, you've got to know what you're going to do if they're going to say no.

Exactly.

That's it. There you go. Same with a spouse who, who hurts you, same as a child who disrespects you. You've got to get help to understand what you're going to do when they say no. And then you're going to come from a place of power. Would you agree with that?

I agree with that wholeheartedly. Especially because you said and get help. We think we must do these things alone. What we must do is observe the tension in us, the self created stress from the environment. Then think about who can I trust to have this particular kind of conversation. And sometimes you have to say, I want to have the raw conversation. I do want to have the victim conversation. I let everyone have that conversation at least once.

And that's what coaches allow. We create a safe space for you to say what you feel, not pretend. However, we have to work you through that so that that is not what you're venting. Right. The victim. Right.

Because language leads everything for me that hearing what you truly feel, how it really is hitting you, is as important for my ability to help you recraft as anything else in a corporation. However, you have to be very selective. You have to make the intentional effort to build strong relationships, just a few, so that you know who to go to, that it doesn't become this cycle of complaining. But in fact, you set a parameter. You walk into someone's office, you close the door and say, I need five minutes to just say the worst things I could possibly think of saying. And I don't want to be held accountable.

Oh, I love it. Imagine if we had just a bevy of wonderful supporters who could be there for you. Oh, I love it. Now, the final thing is when we're in a culture that is toxic, is dangerous, how do we handle that? Andrea, what do you think? What do we ask for?

You know, the New Yorker in me is going to say, what are you doing there? That's the first thing. But honestly, there are many good reasons why we end up in these organizations. And sometimes, as all of us have experienced massive change, sometimes. Where I am on December 31st was so far away from where I started on January 1st, and the people I'm working with, the number of people who come in and out of your work life and again, year could be enormous. So it may not have started out that way. You kind of got lulled into the affair and then lo and behold, you found out they were married a million times. Well, that happens in organizations. So what you do is again, be willing to be flexible enough to continually self assess all of everything we're talking about. Being able to be heard is about being able to start again and start again and start again. Always assessing and asking the question, do I still feel the same way I did? What do I have to do now? We will never have the perfect place forever. It changes. We change. And that's the thing that has to come to the forefront for all of us, that we are responsible and can make a change. We aren't wrong if it goes bad, that happens. We are wrong to ourselves. We are doing damage to ourselves. If we stay so Once we recognize it, the process remains the same. How do I get others to see what I'm seeing in a way to make it better, not to tear it down? How do we correct, how do we articulate that? What we are really trying to do is work towards the same process. Because I joined this organization because I believed in what you were selling, buying, whatever.

So you have a situation like I did where the boss became the president and I do believe had a stream extreme gender bias against women and you know, surrounded himself with men and undermined and suppressed women. And in, in fact I went to the head of HR and the president, the current president, this other guy became the president later after he fired this guy. But I stated my case very calmly and they said we absolutely see what you're talking about. What we need you to do is go talk to him and state your case to him so that we have that on record. Well, the man was a narcissist and as you know, you can't challenge a narcissist. So it went very, very badly. But if you are being treated badly by a boss and you want to approach it that. I don't want to just talk about my victimization. I want to talk about this is what's going on in our culture and this is the damaging effect of it. Who would you seek out? Would it be hr? Would it be one of those top sponsors that you know what would. What do you advise your clients?

I would go to the top sponsors first and then you always have to know how far you're going to be willing. Are you willing to walk away from this organization? Are you willing if it is truly that bad because you have to be making an assessment. Where do I want to put my human energy? Is it worth it? Is the organization and the culture so ingrained that that I will lose more by trying to change it than I would if I found another great place to flourish?

I love it. I call that do you really want to try to turn the Titanic around? And in my situation that's what I was bloodying my head against the wall. Forget it. It's one little person you're not going to make bypass the glacier. I love that. I would also say this. The very first person you should talk to is a lawyer. The very first person.

See, I don't. I would actually not agree with that. Tell me why I would I do. You know, this may sound a little conflicting before you. I always have people start taking avid notes and collecting, documenting.

Well, that's what I would tell you. I Don't mean pay. I don't mean sue Andrea. I mean get out of your culture and talk to someone who's not in it and present what you've got. And he or she will give you amazing advice.

Yeah.

Like in my case, you're probably not going to win in court, but there's something wrong here and I got a very big settlement. Never had I tried to work it out on my own, would that have happened ever?

Right. I mean, to.

So I have a conversation with someone who's not embedded in the organization for perspective. What do you think? I'm not trying to convince you.

Well, I never go to the legal. It depends on what my outcome. If I know that it will, it's a lost cause. I always want to make sure that I'm documenting from the get go so that I can have the facts. Because what it's going to be based on is not how hurt my feelings are true, how clear the pattern of behavior is, because that's what's damaging to the organization. That's what goes against the policies. That's what goes against the mission. I've got proof that you're in conflict with your own mission. It's not about me. It's about you're in conflict. So I always would. Would recommend an attorney once you were clear where you wanted to go there. An attorney is not going to resolve your hurt feelings.

No, you're so right. I mean, in my case, my attorney said something's very wrong.

Right.

And you know, when you are in an abusive situation, you often or women are so confused about the degree to which things are wrong. And they're often. Some women I've seen who are brave enough to speak up don't understand that in many cases, HR is not your friend. They're not. Sometimes they can be advocates for you, but in general they're not. So I think what you and I are agreeing on is this is this case where you do need help. You can't solve this on your own and get the help. That. That suits you best here. Yeah.

At this moment in time, we are at a pinnacle of evolution in how corporations are behaving, how HR organizations are looking at themselves and saying, am I enabling the behavior? I live in a place where, in fact, the board of directors enable the CEO's behavior by approving settlements. HR was part of that process. Today, all of those people are no longer with the organization. From the founder on down, things will continue to progress. We are human beings. We do progress. If we stay in the conversation and not make it about us, but about the greater good of what we are creating.

I love it. Andrea. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So where can people learn more about you?

Well, please always, always go to my website, servingsuccess.com S E R V I N G S U C C-E S S.com and on there, I do actually have a free online program because one of the things we didn't get to talk about, the basis of all this, getting to know yourself, starts with reading, writing and reflection, which any great therapist, which I know you are trained to be, knows. And so I have online programs. I've got lots of free ebooks. I've got lots of these TV shows and books that matter that I've talked about. I've got your book.

Oh, Andrea, I so know that. Thank you. Oh, thank you. And of course, I'll link to all of this underneath the show, I think, you know, to wrap up. Andrea, what I get from you is in life, life delivers a lot of things that we may or may not feel prepared for, but it really does start with our clearer understanding of who we are and what we have to offer and what a good life is and what we can do to be accountable, to craft that life and that career in a powerful, joyful, meaningful way. And I think when we approach it that way, we protect ourselves from feeling like the victim and we're more the author of our lives. Would that sum it up?

I would say that if we could remember, to use your terminology, that we will find brave when we know how much choice we really have.

Oh, there's a tweetable. I gotta chill. Thank you so much for joining me, Andrea. You're always so inspiring. Thank you. And everyone, I really hope this helps you find brave and ask for help. You know, I would even take a half hour today in private time and take a blank piece of paper and write down what would I most like help for this coming year. And who, might I ask, who are the angels in my life waiting to offer help? Give that a try and let us know how you find that exercise. And thanks again. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time. Thanks, Andrea. Bye now.

Bye.