The #1 Career Trap Women Fall Into — And How to Avoid It - with Kweilin Ellingrud

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation. Quailan, thanks for joining us today.

My pleasure.

Yes, and it is a pleasure to have you, my friend. So how about we get started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Absolutely. I'm Kweilan Ellingrude. I'm a senior partner at McKinsey & Co author of the Broken Rung, a book to help women navigate their careers more effectively. And actually we just released about two weeks ago and found out that we made number four on the USA Today best bestseller list. So, very excited.

Congratulations. That's a massive accomplishment. And so for, for the listeners today, I want you to really set the stage. So if the people, for the person who's listening today, if they were to take what we're talking about and put it into action, what really changes in.

Their life, they will more proactively make career choices that help them in the near term, in the medium term, and in the long term. A few examples. They will pick companies that help them increase their lifetime earnings. They will make more bold career moves, and I can describe what that means. But they'll be stretching themselves in their day to day jobs, sometimes in uncomfortable ways, but in ways that push them to earn more over time. They'll be developing their networks more comfortably and using those to help them advance. And then maybe finally a topic that's close to my heart. They will be making their money work for them in terms of financial health and taking care of their physical health, including mental health as well.

Oh, this is incredible. And I love that we're having a holistic approach to success because a lot of times we can silo our success and we can be incredibly successful in one part of our life, but then really struggle in Another. So I'm glad to see that we're incorporating everything. And one word I want to zoom in on here is the word proactively. Because you didn't just say, make good, great career choices. You said proactively make those choices. What is the importance of that specific word in this specific context?

I think the proactive piece is knowing the data and peering around the corner in your career to know not just what am I faced with right now, but what will I likely come up against in the next two years, three years, five years, and then proactively guiding your career and making the best decisions for yourself so that you can move ahead and kind of prioritize the things that you care about. The proactive piece is, I think, the part that only you can take care of in your career of kind of taking, you know, clear action, but informed by the data.

Yeah, I agree. I think that's there's an element here of agency autonomy and essentially accountability and responsibility. Like, we have to start to make these moves for ourselves. And I feel like a lot of times people sit back and wait to be picked and hope that their exceptional performance would be enough. Like, the work speaks for itself. But what we've recognized is that for a lot of people, that's just simply not the case.

Absolutely. You know, putting your head down and working hard and waiting to be noticed is not a winning strategy for most.

Agreed. And I, I remember, for me, I came to that conclusion quite reluctantly. It took a long time to, to truly accept that. And I think it's, for me, when I look back on my, my history. So I'm a first generation Caribbean American, and work ethic is our major export. And, and so for us, it was just always work hard, get as many degrees as you can, get the titles that you can, and then everything will be fine. And so then I realized, okay, I did, I did the things, and then I'm not getting the results that I wanted until I started to have to make bigger, bolder moves.

Yeah, I love that, Kwame. And I think one of the lessons in the book is how do you make big and bold moves and actually quantify that A bold move, the way we describe it, is actually anything that stretches your skills by more than 25% in your new job. So on average, new jobs require about 25% new skills that you didn't use before. Anything more than 25% is a bold move. And to your point, if you're stretching yourself, jumping into new roles, maybe you're moving from finance to something more in analytics or even generative AI, then you are stretching yourself in a bold way. And that's, yes, going to feel uncomfortable, but that's going to help you increase what we call experience capital. And that's going to help you kind of grow both in your salary, but also across your career.

Let's go deeper into that concept, experience capital, because it's really powerful and central to this approach.

Absolutely. Experience capital is the knowledge, the wisdom, basically the experience that you learn on the job. And as we looked at a few different countries around the world, what we found is that the average person's life lifetime income is 50% due to experience capital. It's kind of 50, 50 on average, 50% what you learn on the job and 50% your education. You were talking about earning all of these degrees. So your first job, all of your income, all of your pay is due to the education and kind of the characteristics that you bring to that first job, because you don't even have experience capital yet. But then five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, more and more of your salary as that grows is due to that experience. Experience capital, that kind of experience on the job. And it differs. Experience capital on average, differs by country. It differs by occupation. Of course, it differs by individual. In countries where we've got higher average education levels, so in the US in Europe, for example, more of our lifetime earnings will be due to the education we bring to the first job. So that was great advice of getting more degrees. In India, for example, lower average education rates, more of the lifetime earnings will come from experience capital. Right, that wisdom that you learn on the job. Same thing with occupations. If you're a doctor, an engineer, and you've got more years of, you know, education going into your first job, more of your lifetime income will be coming from that education. If you're a plumber, if you're a waitress, more of your lifetime income will be from that experience capital. And kind of the skills and wisdom you learn on the job.

It's fascinating, and it's one of these things where once you explain it, you can understand it, but it's not top of mind for so many people, and especially not top of mind in terms of how to actually use it and operationalize it strategically. And so it sounds like when it comes to making these bold moves, our goal is to stretch ourselves, gather more experience capital, and we can use that experience capital down the road to leverage it for more opportunities.

That's exactly right, Kwame. It's how do you build more experience capital across your career and get paid for it. So we start kind of the book of the broken rung with the problem. And the broken rung problem is this gap in promotion levels. So for every hundred men who are promoted to that first manager role, only 81 women are promoted. So 19 missing managers there. And if we kind of split that out for women of color, it's 86 white women are promoted for every 100 men, but only 64 Latino women and 54 black women. So that kind of gap for women of color is even greater. So that's the problem. The solution is as we were just talking about experience capital. How do we build more experience capital? On average, women are building less experience capital for every 10 years that a man is building. A woman is building around 8.6 years. Because we have the majority of part time jobs, because we have more breaks and longer breaks that may be kind of the average. How do we though, in the time that we are on the job, build that experience capital at a faster rate? By picking the right company, by making these bold moves that we were talking about, by networking, by building technological but also social and emotional skills. All those things are different pivot points in a career that are going to help us build experience capital.

And so this, this brings up a challenge here and something that I love to talk about. And it's the reality of bias in the workpl and just in general. And in my last book I was how to have difficult conversations about race. I talked about how we think about bias as a strategic consideration, but also the dangers of over fixating on the bias that might be against us and then it turning into a self fulfilling prophecy. So I want to approach it from those two different angles. So first of all, how can we still feel empowered when we're making these big bold moves and avoid falling into that trap of turning this into a self fulfilling prophecy. But then also how strategically can we overcome those biases in order to get what we deserve?

Absolutely. And I think it's helpful to kind of deeply understand all the different types of bias because there's so many different flavors of this. There is unconscious bias, which we talk a lot about. There is conscious bias, there is external bias. What do you see and think when you see me? And I have very little control over that. But there's also internal bias. What have I internalized from society, from conversations about people like me? And sometimes the internal bias can be just as much of a barrier as some of these other types of bias. And so in the chapter around bias, we give just a Common vocabulary of all these different types of bias and give examples. I think some of the interesting things are that you can do the closest thing to a scientific experiment. Now, on bias, I can give you, Kwame, two identical resumes, John Doe and Jane Doe at the top. And on these resumes, I've written the exact same thing. Exact same bullet points, exact same font size, font type. All I change is the name at the top, John Doe versus Jane Doe. And men and women will ascribe greater leadership and higher future potential to this imaginary John Doe. Because we've been so socialized that leadership looks male in many cases, it also looks white and tall. Now, to your point, let me take John Doe versus Jamaldo or an African American name, those exactly identical resumes. That is worth an eight year experience penalty for that black candidate, 50% less likely to get called in for the interview. John Doe versus Mohammed Doe were a Muslim American name, four times less likely to get called in for the interview. So we can test this. We also see a parental bias, particularly for mothers, this motherhood penalty that we see in the data around the world versus the fatherhood bonus. If on that Jane Doe resume I just change one bullet point. Active parent teacher association member or some signal that she's an active parent. About 86% less likely to get called in for the interview because men and women think, ooh, she's a very active, devoted parent, she's going to prioritize being a mother, not being an employee. And so all these forms of bias, and this is primarily conscious and unconscious bias, but mostly external bias, both by gender, by race, by parental status, is alive and well. And so to your question, how do you strategically navigate it? I think step one is understand that there is bias. We are all biased. I'm biased, you're biased, all of our listeners are biased. It's important though to understand on what topics and to what degree. And so if you haven't taken the implicit association test online, please do. Right. It's just helpful to know I'm biased on these topics. And to this extent, if you associate, for example, women with family more strongly, you are very likely to not hire an equally qualified female candidate for the job as you are a man. And so just understanding how we're all biased is important. We are not responsible for our first reaction to things because unconscious bias and the way kind of evolution has happened will give us kind of split second reactions. But we are responsible for our second reaction to things, right? And how we react, what we say in that second moment. How do we kind of catch ourselves and ask tough questions. Would I have had the same reaction if that were a man? Would I've had the same reaction if that were an older white male. Right. Who is a prominent leader in my organization. Just catching ourselves in these moments to make sure that we ourselves are not propagating some of that bias. And then in terms of how to navigate it, if it's others, I think catching it in the moment, sometimes I address it through humor. That tends to be a good way, at least for me, to both recognize that it has happened. Address it in a way that gives them a little bit of space, but just tells them that I actually saw that and that was not okay, but give them a bit of room to kind of laugh it off, reflect, and then hopefully change their behavior going forward. But I do think being aware of this, catching it in the moment, being a really proactive ally, back to that proactive word, when you see it happen to others in a meeting, in a conversation, in an interaction, I think is so important.

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. This is a masterclass on bias. I really appreciate this because when you can get a better understanding of something that can seem, on its surface, so scary, then you feel more empowered to actually do something about it. And so it's important to recognize, like you said, there are going to be multiple biases against us and some of them will be working for us. We have to understand what works for us, what works against us, and then navigate effectively. But again, it does not give us permission to not try. We are still going to try and we're still going to make those bold moves. And so let's talk about this too, because we like to approach negotiation not just in terms of the external negotiation, the conversations we're having with other people, but we think about this in terms of a metacognitive approach as well when it comes to the internal negotiation we have with ourselves. And so when we consider the reality of bias. And then we consider the reality that we have to stretch ourselves and take these bold moves. How can we get ourselves to a position where we can take that leap even though we might be just riddled with fear? And that's been holding us back through our whole career.

Absolutely. It's such a great point, right, because there is that self negotiation, that self rationalization where you don't even try for the opportunity because you think you might not have all of the qualifications or you don't want to waste other people's time. And so just negotiating with yourself, but with that kind of strong foot forward of I do think I can do this or here's why I would be a good fit for this role or for this opportunity, I think is so important. You know, on negotiation, broadly, more external negotiation, some of the most interesting improvements happened when Cheryl Sandberg came out with her book Lean in and she did a national tour, was talking about how women are not advocating and negotiating for themselves in terms of their job title, their pay, kind of, you know, description, responsibilities, flexibility, for instance. And within a year we saw some of the numbers on women's negotiation close. Right. Those gaps were closed very, very rapidly. So all of a sudden women were much more aware and negotiating for jobs raises, you know, pay in a much, much more frequent way. What happened when, when they started to do this was both men and women did not react well. So when a woman negotiates for higher pay or a different, you know, different role, different job description, etc. She is much more likely to be perceived as bossy, demanding, sort of selfish versus a man negotiating for those same things may be viewed as very responsible. Right. Negotiating because he has to provide for his family, it's a very different perception of that negotiation. And so while I'm thrilled that some of those gender gaps on negotiation have closed reactions, both male and female reactions to that negotiation are not equal. And so we need to close those gaps and be more aware of them as well.

Yeah, I agree 100%. And it, you're right, it is encouraging to see more women negotiating for what they deserve. It's great to see. But they're also, like you said, we have to have the training and awareness for ourselves, whoever the person is on the other side of that negotiation, to recognize, hey, where is this resistance coming from? Is this legitimate? Is it not? And then just being able to have the self awareness to pause and be a little bit more skeptical of our initial responses can do wonders when it comes to addressing bias because it's for Me, I think philosophically, I think about this through the lens of the negotiation experts. So we'll say, okay, this is how you can navigate around this. But then at the same time you recognize, well, okay, so there's a messed up problem. And then the victims of the problem are the people who have to fix the the problem that's equally or if not more messed up. So we have to make sure that we are educating people like leaders when it comes to these tough conversations to check their biases. Because a lot of times it's not just that we are treating people unfairly, it's also that we are hurting our own organizations by not giving people opportunities.

EFFY Absolutely, KWAME and I think that's, to me, the importance of diversity. Right. We want talented people from all backgrounds because the research tell us that diverse teams do better. They solve tough problems better in the research, and they're also more open to this idea of continuous improvement, the idea that they didn't get the best solution the first time around. And so when we have diverse teams with very different backgrounds, cultural assumptions, etc. We're just going to get lots of different ways to approach the problem and a better solution, especially to those tougher problems.

And I think this is a great chance for us to talk about how you address negotiation and soft skills in this book, because we're entering a new era and we can't just use the strategies and tactics of yesteryear and assume that it applies now. So how are you approaching it and what has changed?

Absolutely. I think negotiation is such a critical part of what we call soft skills. And I think there's this misconception that soft skills are things you're either born with or you don't have them. Right. You can't really build them. And that is absolutely not true. As you know from negotiation. I think negotiation is one of those prime skills in this broader category of social and emotional skills and softer skills. But it would include negotiation, building empathy, building trust, building a team, kind of inspiring a greater aspiration. And when you think about what makes the difference between a good leader and an amazing leader, it is these softer skills. And we did a lot of research. We actually took 800 broad occupations de kind of composed them into the underlying activities. And for each of those activities, we asked two questions. Number one, can it be automated given technology today? And number two, given the salary of the people doing that work, does it make sense to automate it? And that would be different in the US versus India versus, you know, Germany, for example. And when we looked at all of that, what turns out is about a third of our activities collectively can be automated. Given, you know, what exists today and what the skills will need more of to replace what's going away is two things. Social and emotional skills. Negotiation, the trust building, the empathy and technological skills. And on the tech side, it's not, you know, can I code? Because, Kwame, you know, Gen AI is going to code better than you and I ever will. But can you and I interact with technology to do our jobs more effectively? Can we be open to how technology will change our worlds and transform groups and types of work? That's that side. On the social and emotional side, it's actually the number one skill increasing in kind of percentage of time that we'll need over the next five to 10 years in the United States, including negotiation. And I think that's largely because it's so complementary with generative AI. Right. The things that generative AI can do at scale, you know, in a moment, with, you know, consistent quality, are not the social and emotional things. It's not the building empathy, building, trust negotiating, legislating. It's. It's. Those are the quintessentially human elements, and they will become more and more valuable because they are complementary with things that automation and generative AI can do better.

I love this response because you confirmed that I will still have a job, so thank you.

At least for another 10 years. Yes, exactly.

I appreciate that, and I agree wholeheartedly. And it's really encouraging, too, because this gives folks who are willing to invest in those social and emotional skills, the soft skills, the negotiation skills, it gives them an outsized advantage over the competition. And the reality is, especially when you consider the deficit in communication skills that has been occurring for decades, but was exacerbated by the. By the COVID 19 pandemic, it is. We're in a situation where as technology continues to improve, our ability to communicate and resolve conflict starts to deteriorate exponentially. And so if you're able to invest in this way, then you're going to have a massive advantage. And I have this hypothesis, and it comes from my nerdy love of chess, where when you think back in the 90s when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, that was a major moment because we said, oh, my gosh, the computers are smarter than us. Now, it almost seems quaint at this point, but one of the things that they discovered was that, yes, a computer will always beat a human, but a computer paired with a human will always beat a computer alone. And so they call it centaur chess. And I think going forward, the best professionals and the best communicators are going to be centers. They're going to be able to have those empathy skills, those ability, the ability to communicate and resolve conflict and connect with people in a true level. But then they're also going to amplify it with generative AI to use it to prepare to recognize gaps and also recognize biases, too. Because now when I'm preparing for tough conversations, I'm going to. I have conversations with the AI, and I'll say, hey, tell me what I'm missing. What biases might be informing my belief. Challenge me to make sure that I'm seeing this clearly. And when you have something that has the infinite wisdom of the Internet calling you out for your humanity, it's very humbling. But also I say, okay, no, you're right. I can adjust. And it amplifies my ability to connect with other people. So I really appreciate the fact that you highlighted this because so many people are focusing on. Just on the tech, and we're completely forgetting about the humanity.

Absolutely. It's this kind of human in the loop. And I love the. The thought of that centaur chess of both, you know, the tech and the human combined being even more powerful. It's absolutely true.

Yes. No, this is great. And now let's. Let's talk about how we infuse everything that we're talking about strategically within this book with the negotiation skills. When somebody is saying to themselves, all right, cool, I'm going to start to make bold moves. I'm going to advance my career, and I'm going to put myself in a position where I have a lot more financial security. What are some really important points that we should be paying attention to when it comes to negotiating and directing our negotiation skills toward specific types of conversations?

Yeah. I think the biggest thing that you can do to increase your lifetime income and negotiate in that direction is, is pick the right company. And we make a big deal about picking the right company actually has a much bigger impact on your career than even finding the right boss. Now, ideally, you get both. You get a great boss at a great company. But if forced to choose between the two, the right company makes a huge difference. In fact, it's correlated with kind of 50% higher lifetime earnings, if you can believe it. And the companies that are these kinds of, what we call them, people and performance winners. But they do three things really well. One, they invest in learning and development of their employees that might be a certain percentage of time. That may be a very strong emphasis on learning and development or a feedback culture. Second, they emphasize a lot cross functional promotions. So you don't start in finance and then retire there 30 years later. You might start in finance, go over to the business and the sales side of things. You might go back over into another support function. But these cross functional promotions to the, to see the business, the industry from different angles is critical. And then third, these companies have a very clear strategy and you can see this in kind of their financial results relative to competitors. But companies that have those three characteristics are correlated with 50% higher lifetime earnings. We talked already about the bold moves in your career, kind of those stretching, really learning moments. But a third thing that you can do and point your kind of negotiation skills towards is what we call the power alley. And this is what some companies will say, you know, stay close to the cash register. How does your company, how does your industry make money? In some industries, that's in sales or distribution, ad sales, in consulting, that's being a consultant in tech, that would be in product management, either making the product or selling it. And if you are in the power alley, your lifetime earnings are likely to be 20% higher. Just over a third of men start in the power alley or these P and L roles, profit and loss opportunities. Just under a third of women start in the same roles. And you don't have to stay there your whole career. But if you have a couple of years in the power alley, understanding how your company and industry makes money and makes profit, that will give you the perspective for all of your other cross functional roles and really accelerate your experience, capital and therefore your lifetime earnings. Earnings. So those are a few of the choices I would kind of point my negotiation skills at. What's the company, what are the right bold moves? And then how do I get into the power alley, at least for part of my career?

This is mind boggling. I've never heard the term power alley or the just the concept described in this way. But you're absolutely right. Tell me if I'm thinking about this. Right. It's almost like if you're swimming in the ocean and you kind of unwittingly find yourself in a current and then it becomes a lot easier to take your head. Is that a kind of a good metaphor for this?

Yeah, absolutely. It kind of sweeps you along, right? Because it's, it's in the kind of lifeblood of the, of the company. Absolutely. The other way I think about it is, you know, is the wind at your back. Are you in a growing industry, or are you in kind of the power alley, where every, you know, so many things matter in your company, or are you supporting kind of where the action happens?

Incredible. No, that's in. That's. I love the visual, and you're absolutely right. And again, bringing my chest nerdiness to the table here, it's about finding yourself putting yourself in the right position. A lot of times you don't know when or where the next opportunity is going to come, but if you position yourself well within the chess game of life that you're playing, you're going to be in a better position to take advantage of those opportunities when they do come. And then I also recognize that when it comes to utilizing the negotiation skill, again, we define negotiation very broadly. So anytime you're in a conversation and somebody wants something, that's a negotiation. And if we have our. We. If we're able to widen our aperture and recognize that one of the most important negotiations we have to have is for information, then we can direct ourselves to make sure that we are picking the right company and putting ourselves in the power alley. Right. What. Where is the power alley in this company? How do I get there? That's information that people might have within the organization. You might have. Have to have several conversations in order to triangulate what the right answer is in order for you to make that bold move into the power alley. And then also, when it comes to picking the right company, we have to remember we need to come to these conversations with a little bit more swag and confidence and recognize, hey, I'm not begging for an opportunity here. They have an opportunity to work with me. And so we focus so much on selling ourselves that we don't recognize that we need to be vetting the company to see whether or not it is the right company, too. Right. So we can use the. The. Our negotiation skills to gather important information so we can make better decisions.

Absolutely. And I love all your chess analogies. I was a competitive chess player for many years. Yes. Yes.

That's so cool.

To your point, though, I think it's. It's a negotiation in so many different directions. One of the biggest kind of lifelong negotiations is in networking. And what we find is that women systematically have more narrow and more junior sponsorship networks than men. I think the same is true for people of color. And the question is, how do we strengthen those networks? How do we get more comfortable activating those networks? And it could be activating the network to connect two people, not for your benefit, but for their own mutual benefit. But we have to kind of build these sponsorship Networks. Something like 70% of jobs that are filled are not even posted. And if you are not in the know, if you don't have that information as you're describing, you're not even going to know about these opportunities before they're filled. So how do we really strengthen those networks is a constant negotiation, a constant kind of building piece of that, both for information but also to deepen the relationship.

So one last question I want to ask is in your book, in one of the last chapters, we talk about the importance of physical health and financial health. And I think especially the physical health portion of it. People might be shocked to see that as a focus in a book with this goal. So can you tell us a little bit about the synergies between those concepts and everything else that's in the book?

Absolutely. And physical health is so critical, Right. If you're not physically healthy, how can you work? How can you kind of fulfill all of the career kind of pivotal points that we were talking about? Well, what's interesting is people are often surprised that women spend 25% more years in poor health. We all think, oh, women live longer than men, isn't that great? Yes, that's great. But 25% more years in poor health, 11 years in poor health is quite scary. We also spend more, more money on health care. No surprise since we're living longer and more years in poor health. But if that health care cost is both quite intimidating but also higher, and women have lower average retirement savings, this is true for people of color and black people as well. Lower retirement savings. Women have the majority of part time jobs working fewer hours, lower retirement savings that then need to stretch for more years and higher health care costs. That is not a winning financial combination. And so what we advocate for in this last chapter of the book is two things. Number one, on the health side, be aware of what will likely or at least on average you may encounter, know how to advocate for yourself in terms of health. And this is true for women. This is true for people of color. Right. Doctors are not necessarily trained on, for example, what a heart attack looks like. For women, it looks more like indigestion, not really like a tightness in the chest. And so we're often misdiagnosed, diagnosed later, and then have higher death rates as a result of it. So advocating for yourself, negotiating for yourself in those situations, taking care of your mental health, which is so critical, and then on the other side, make your money work for you. Right. Part of this is maximizing your lifetime earnings, or if you want to trade that off for things that are closer to your values or have more flexibility, great. But while you're working, also make your money work for you. And I was surprised by the data because there's not a huge benefit to being an expert in financial topics. You just have to get to moderate levels of knowledge. The benefit from, you know, not very knowledgeable, not very involved, to moderately knowledgeable and somewhat involved, that kind of benefit is immense. So just get yourself to kind of moderate levels of knowledge and get more involved in your financial decisions. A lot of women will say, I'm not sure. I don't want to make a decision. I don't have enough information yet. In your financial life, and frankly, everywhere else, but particularly in your financial life, not making a decision is making a decision. And we have to make our money work for us and be aware of what that money is doing, whether it's, you know, compounding interest. I think about your career also as kind of compound interest. Right. You're making all these decisions to kind of grow that interest over time, but your financial life also needs to kind of compound that interest and grow. And so how do you just become more involved and more aware of that so that it can fund retirement, but also higher healthcare costs over time?

Now, when you say, when you break it down like that, it seems obvious and it seems almost like malpractice that it wasn't involved in many of these other books that talk about career advancement too, because these, this is, it's not just very scary, but it is also substantiated by research and data. It's a fact and it's. These are facts that people don't fully appreciate or understand. And so you're right. When we're having these tough conversations and we're thinking about how we can focus our negotiation efforts, making sure that we're taking care of our health is going to be important. Right. When we're talking about how to pick your company, what are, what are the healthcare benefits, but also how do they support healthy lifestyles for their team. And then when with the financial health as well, just again, it gets us a better understanding of what our real target should be, Especially when you consider gender and race. When you layer that on, it becomes a lot more complex and a little bit scarier. And then lastly to my coming in, before I started the American Negotiation Institute, I did some civil rights work, but focused on, on health inequity. And then my wife also, she's a doctor and she told me the. The other day, it's only 2.9% of all physicians are. Are black female doctors. So representation isn't very high. But then we recognize that not everybody is treated the same in the healthcare industry. So we have to know, understand, and understand that we can and should negotiate and advocate for ourselves in our healthcare when it comes to our interactions with our doctors and the healthcare complex in general. So this, this is a very important addition and I'm really glad that you shared that with us today, too. This. This is. See, this is one of those times, or again, where I need to utilize a little bit of restraint, Qualen, because I just want to keep. I want to keep on going. But I also want to respect your time because. Because the timing of this book is so important because again, sometimes people are feeling very disempowered. They're afraid of what the future holds. And right now, with this book, you're giving them an opportunity to regain control and feel more autonomy and agency when it comes to figuring out what's next. So I just appreciate you writing this and I appreciate you coming on the show today to talk about it. And just again, before you go, remind the listeners about the book, how they can get in touch and connect.

Absolutely. So the Broken Rung Book, you can actually go online broken rung book.com and find out more about the book. We've got some videos, a link to order it or go to your local bookstore or online. But thank you so much for having me today.

It's my pleasure. Great. Any questions came to mind for you during the episode, Simon? I have a question about resumes because, for instance, I studied, I went to the university, but in South America, so here it's not that important. But I consider myself that I am better at my soft skills that. That any other skills that I have. But it's very difficult to show those soft skills in a resume. Yes. So how can I use that resume to show my soft skills? Because. Because people usually don't care about the soft skills in the resumes. Or am I wrong?

Yeah, I think they actually do really care. And to your point, I think we under signal soft skills on a resume. Right. You might say I have these technical skills or I speak these languages, but you don't talk about leadership or being able to kind of inspire a team to aim higher. So I think we did some of the research in about 25% of the required skills for job jobs. Our soft skills, we're not signaling them on resumes. We're also not actually really talking about them that much in the interviews themselves. So when we talk about leadership, when we talk about all these things, and sometimes it's more these active verbs, right back to this agency piece of, you know, instigated an initiative to do this or led a team to achieve this really complicated objective. It's those kinds of stories, I think, to your point, that just demonstrates the soft skills and what you can achieve through them. But they're under signaled.

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