#48: Leadership, Inclusion, and the Great Resignation Era

You get good at whatever you put your mind to, but you're not necessarily making the most of your own values and your own strengths and your own kind of skills or things that bring you joy.

Hey, coach, my name is Lindsay and I'm here to help heart-centered women like you build the money-making coaching business of their dreams. I've been coaching since 2019 and this pod is about so much more than building your business. It's about using your gifts to build a life and business you're 100% obsessed with. I went from working 50+ hours a week as a first grade teacher to building a sustainable business that replaced my job salary and gave me back 30+ hours a week of my time. Tune in to join the ride and learn from other coaches and experts along the way. All right, welcome everyone back to the Aligned Coach Podcast. This is your host, Lindsay Bodeo. I'm so excited to be here with you all. If you're a new listener, I can't wait to see what you take away from this. If you're a returning returning listener, welcome back. Of course, I have an amazing guest on today. Her name is Susan. She is a coach and trainer for corporate leaders and online business owners. Uh, Susan, welcome on. I'm so excited for today's conversation.

Thank you so much for having me, Lindsay. As your listeners will hear, I'm not in America.

Yeah, we actually have had several guests and experts come on that were, you know, international. So I think that that's what makes our podcast so special is that we really have a diverse mix of people on here. So welcome on. Where are you from?

So I'm from the UK and I've actually lived in the States as well, um, on the West Coast and got married in the States, weirdly enough, by Elvis, a young Elvis.

Oh, I love it.

Many, many, many years ago.

That's like America to the core right there.

Yeah, that was fun times. That was fun times. So I'm based— I'm from the UK. I still live in the UK. So I live on the south coast of England in a city called Brighton that is kind of like San Francisco in terms of hills and industry with creative media. Not in terms of San Francisco in terms of kind of Yeah, there's lots of differences. We're a lot smaller. Okay, a lot smaller. And the weather's probably just as changeable at the moment as over on the West Coast. Yeah, yeah, cool.

Well, thank you for joining us. I know it's like evening there, right?

Yeah, and it's not too bad. We've had, you know, a pretty sunny day today, so it's kind of like easing into early evening at the moment.

Okay, okay, good. Awesome, Sue. So let's go ahead and jump in. Tell our audience, tell our listeners a little bit about what it is that you do. I'm super intrigued about, you know, we were chatting before we hit record and I'm super intrigued about team leadership and some of those skills that we were going into and boundary building. So tell our, tell our listeners a little bit about what it is that you do and how do you serve these corporate leaders and business owners?

So I am a qualified and accredited coach. I'm also a trainer for public speaking public speaking and sales skills and business skills. So with my coaching, I mainly work with women, but I'm kind of all-inclusive as well. So certainly don't say no to people. It tends to be who vibes well with me, who resonates with me, and if I resonate with them as well. So I think at the moment, a large part of my work at the moment is around the, the crazy year that we have all had in the past 18 months, and certainly here in the UK at the moment, lots of companies are changing into kind of hybrid working, so there's a fair few companies certainly in finance and tech that are trying to find their way through how can they look after their teams best and be financially viable at the same time in terms of when you've got some people homeworking, some people in 1 or 2 days a week. So there's lots of work out there kind of around that style of kind of team thinking. How can we figure out with our teams what's best for everyone? Because what we've seen from the pandemic as well is that Employees want more from their employer, otherwise, you know, we've got the great resignation era, certainly started here in the UK and in the States. People will leave. What the pandemic has done for a lot of people who had mainly office-based roles was realise that a lot of them are quite happy without a 3-4 hour commute every day and finding so much more of a kind of like work-life balance They also therefore want more from their employers in terms of well-being, clarity of communication, so there's lots of thinking going on at the moment around that, and the companies that will get through this year and do well this year and keep their staff and continue to be inclusive as well are the ones that are listening to their staff and taking care of their staff.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that those are, those are needs that are valid, right? Like those wants are good. Those are good things, right?

Absolutely. And it's kind of like, I think if you're quite adaptable to change, then you might have been able to kind of deal with the roller coaster of the pandemic a bit easier. But we know certainly in terms of like, there's, there's some massive global corporations that have come out this side of the pandemic— I mean, the pandemic is still absolutely going on— but have come out this side in terms of, right, no, we hate homeworking, you're not going to be able to do that anymore, we want everybody back in the office. So it instantly goes back to that kind of very exclusionary, top-down way of working, and we know that diversity inclusion is good for business financially, so why would you then kind of start excluding people again? And it'll particularly be affecting people from underrepresented groups who've also had a really tough time, extra tough time during the pandemic. So yeah, we'll see, because like one of my visions, well my main vision for my business is around one particular underrepresented group and all the intersectionality with it, which is around eradicating gender inequality in the workplace, because it's still ridiculous that we're in this situation where— I saw a headline this morning where European countries were celebrating the fact that they now have one woman on their boards.

Wow.

I was like, oh, whoop, wow, I'm so pleased for you, gosh.

One woman, and now she's expected to be the voice of all women.

Yeah, and then what happens often is they end up certainly kind of taking on responsibilities where it's kind of like, well, you're just gonna— we kind of expect you to fail. It's not the glass ceiling, it's the glass cliff. You come in to do a job as a woman, having a ridiculous situation to kind of out at that top level, lots of companies will be like, oh well, oh well, we tried, right? Yeah, we had a woman, we tried, it didn't work out, let's go back to, you know, male, pale, and stale. How's that working for us?

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay, okay. So where does your role in all of that fall? So if you're working with a corporate company or if you are working with even entrepreneurs and startups, freelancers maybe, where does your work within that realm help? Like, what do you go in and do?

For both kind of corporates and for kind of individual business owners, especially freelancers, it's so much around confidence, around that you know what you're doing, you just don't necessarily feel confident to be able to speak up for yourself or, you know, champion other people as well within companies. So it's about confidence and it's about getting really clear, and a lot of honesty with yourself in terms of what your strengths are, what your values are, and what, certainly within corporates, what other people within your team, no matter what level it is, can bring as well. You know, the basis of a coach is that you pretty much think the best of everyone. That's part of person-centred coaching. We know that everybody's got it within themselves to be the best that they can be, but so much of life's beliefs, stories, and then kind of how you deal with things on a personal level, and then how the system deals with you as well. All interfere. So with corporates, with fintech, creative media, I mainly work with team leaders and project managers, that kind of middle manager level. That's often where you start seeing the fall-off point in terms of women rising within larger companies, and an age point as well, as well, so they often concentrate on women 40+. Within tech, women will leave, women will tend to leave a sector completely after 12 years. They'll hit that point and find they can't get any higher, and that's to do with things beyond their control, so if, always, you know, if we can all do our one little small bit it all adds up to big bits, and I'm aware that sounds really optimistic, and I don't really care because what I want to see is these team leaders succeeding in their role, or these team leaders having an effective team, having a high-value, you know, a high-performing team that works for everybody within that team, and for them to feel confident about what they're doing. So for corporates, I offer all-inclusive kind of Wellbeing Wednesdays, which is a series of themed workshops kind of every couple of weeks where I could be looking at, for example, confidence or emotional resilience, emotional agility, communication skills, difficult conversations, self-promotion, public speaking, depending on what the sponsor's looking for. And then I have group coaching programs specifically for women team leaders, Because what you'll find that comes out of group coaching, if you get people together from the same level who don't often get to have these kind of action learning conversations, they're all off doing their own little bit with their own teams, it's so organic in terms of kind of going, oh yeah, I've had that problem too, or I've had that, I've had that situation, this is how I dealt with it., and that only happens, that catalyst of having them together, whether it's online or in a room. And then also one-to-one coaching for team leaders, and that's kind of looking at everything: confidence, clarity, communication skills, whatever kind of goals that they want to move forward with in their role. Yeah, and then similar for business owners and freelancers, But it's, I mean, obviously it's more personal because it's all one-to-one coaching at the moment. I don't do group coaching for freelancers. But again, it's around confidence and clarity. And for me, what I do with my clients is we go through— my most popular program is a 90-day coaching journey. So 3 months is a nice amount of time to kind of really dig into stuff that people have got going on and come out of it with kind of actually sustainable action. So we really look at kind of identifying your values and your strengths, and for me, certainly kind of in my work pattern and my experience, where I have least enjoyed a job— this is only looking back in hindsight— it's because there's been a complete mix, like, wrong dynamic of values. So you don't necessarily have to have the same values as the company you're working for, but there needs to be some resonance within there. And if there isn't, you're just not gonna enjoy your job. So then it's a case of, like, okay, As I said, at the moment we've got the great resignation era, and certainly that even applies to freelancers. There's lots of freelancers that we said just before this that are pivoting in terms of what they do. Might have been freelancing for kind of 10-15 years, and the pandemic has wiped out what they were doing, for example, in events management, prime example, and then really having to think about how to figure out what they want to do next, what they want to do instead. And, you know, life's short, man. It's just— life's short. I've not had the best pandemic. I'm not sure most people have. But certainly in terms of when I've lost someone, it just gets you instantly reminded of, like, life's really short. What do you want to be doing with it?

Wow, wow. And that comes down to your values, right? It comes back, it's so full circle because then I'm sure you've reassessed your own values and reassessed what's been important to you in life and in the work that you do.

Yeah, and I think, I think for me, I mean, I've always had a very portfolio career and it's always kept coming back to what— just because you're good at something doesn't mean you're necessarily going to enjoy it. And if you're a hard worker, in inverted commas, you get good at whatever you put your mind to, but you're not necessarily making the most of your own values and your own strengths and your own kind of skills or things that bring you joy. So for me, I mean, I only discovered coaching 14, and I'd been in lots of kind of information, advice, and guidance different roles within different sectors for quite a few years. So coaching was just a revelation for me, and it came at a time just as I was getting into pretty awful perimenopausal symptoms— not that I knew that's what they were at the time at all. So for me, that chance at that point to kind of take a step back and kind of go, oh, this is what coaching is— because to be a coach and to be trained as a coach, you need to be coached as well. You know, it's very similar to counseling therapy in that way. That's probably the only similarity. And it was a revelation for me. So I did my certificate back in 2015, got my diploma a couple of years later. And all the time, you know, I started my freelance business back in 2011 as a copywriter and was really quickly miserable with it and really quickly went back to some form of part-time employment. And looking again, it's the hindsight thing, it's the personal reflection thing, looking back. It's like, because I didn't I knew how to run a business from experience of running somebody else's business, also that my own dad started a business in his 50s. So I knew all the practicalities, but what I didn't have set at that point was my mindset, just around what I wanted to be doing with the business, who I wanted to work with and why, you know, the Simon Sinek thing, the big why. So that was a kind of massive change. Now I restarted my business at the beginning of 2020. What time? Just before the pandemic hit, certainly in the UK. We had a major lockdown in the UK that March, but I'd been planning for it and I'd sat down and kind of gone, right, what are my values? So one of the exercises I do with clients is around identifying your top 10 values. Once you have those, it becomes part of your kind of grounding and your firm basis to kind of start saying, this is who I want to work with, this is who I don't want to work with, and also this is who I don't mind working with if it came up, for example.

Right, right.

What are your values? What are your top 5?

Um, we've got in there— now you're asking a midlife woman to remember 10 things.

Well, give me a few. What comes up for you now? I think that mine are kind of like loose, sort of like they change change kind of depending on the season that I'm in. So what's like, what are the top 3 or so that are, that are really good for you?

So at the moment, because yeah, I completely agree with you, they do change over time. So at the moment, integrity is a big one for me. Honesty. Over the pandemic, collaboration has been, you know, for me, my absolute savior in terms of just suddenly being completely online, not meeting anybody in person, and finding, you know, my tribe has just been wonderful and continues to be wonderful. So honesty, integrity, collaboration, and curiosity. I would certainly, with my coaching, I always come back to curiosity. I'm—

it's—

well, my other half would probably say is that I'm nosy, but I want to know about other people. I'm really interested in other people. I'm really interested in what they stand for. We have now, with certainly with lots of different aspects of social media, kind of very— you either believe in this or believe in that. And life's not like that. There's lots of shades in between that going on. And that's what I'm really, you know, I'm happy to agree to disagree with people. We've had Brexit in the UK for the last few years, and myself and, you know, certainly at least one of my very good friends, we completely disagree about Brexit. But it's like, we're still mates, we're still friends, we just agree to disagree, or we'll have a conversation about it. So That curiosity thing. It's just I'm always kind of intrigued in kind of what makes people tick and what they want to change as well, and then how I can help them.

I relate with that.

I relate that so much. I am very curious. I love to get to know people, to see how people operate, how they think. Um, and sometimes it's hard for me to choose a side, you know, quote unquote, right? Like sometimes it's hard for me to choose what I think is right versus wrong, or what I want to do versus not do, because I like, I can see it both ways, you know, because I'm curious and I like that we have a very open mind around it. And we're like, well, I can understand this, but I can also understand this, you know. So I think that those are both really good values of being a Coach and someone that's helping leaders. And, you know, because we have to be unbiased about a lot of stuff, wherever we're at, whenever we're helping other people. In life and in business and within their relationships and stuff, within professional relationships and, and the relationship with themselves. So yeah, definitely relate to that. So if you could let our listeners, because most of the listeners now are starting their business or they're getting momentum in their business, whether they're coaches or service-based providers, and the word leadership, is like super hot right now in the online space, you know, and everybody wants to be a leader and everyone wants to lead a team. And, you know, and we do, like, I think that it's great. Like, we have to stand in our leadership. But what does that mean? As someone who actually does this as an expert in this, what does that really mean?

You're asking me?

Yeah. Yeah.

What do you— what would you— what would you say to that? Like, you know, for the woman that's really stepping into her own as a business owner, what would you tell her about being a leader?? And I think it comes back to kind of what we were talking about before the show. But what would you say?

What would you say to her?

I think leadership, certainly now, for me as a woman, has always been recognized as this in terms of it's not just kind of like hard skills versus soft skills, because actually that's a very gendered debate, frankly. Soft skills gets— have traditionally been known as caring and 'You know, so it's going to be women, isn't it, because they're all nurses,' or that kind of nonsense, whereas the hard skills is like the knowledge, so it's got to be the men, and usually the white men who just kind of very firm in how they lead, telling people exactly what they have to do. And I think certainly what the pandemic has shown is that hard style of leadership does not work it doesn't work. If you look at the fantastic example of the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and I'm not going to pronounce the name because I always pronounce it wrong, so I'm going to save myself from doing that. She brings, I think it's lots of different qualities. I don't think there's one magic pill, one magic button to how to be a good leader. I think what she brings are the different qualities that are now needed, so emotional intelligence, So being able to really understand yourself, being able to really understand others, being really good at communication with other people as well, having a sense of your own privilege, so recognizing that you need to step up for underrepresented groups, empathy. You know, it comes back to a lot of my values, like empathy, Honesty, listening. A good leader will listen more than they tell, and I'm sure there's probably lots of leaders who will turn around and go, 'No, that's not what I do.' Well, yeah, what do you do for you? You know, we know that this is kind of the future of leadership that employees want, and they want to feel included. They want to feel there's a sense of collaboration there. So it's all of those— I'm not going to call them soft skills, they're just skills, they're human skills.

Human skills, yeah, they're people first, right? Like, it's like putting the person first.

Absolutely, and within that always comes the kind of dichotomy of, well, we can't put our people first because it's got to be all about the money. It's like, well, So many studies have been done over the last 10, 20, 30 years in terms of actually, you look after your employees, if you listen to your employees, if you include them, if you create a sense of psychological safety in terms of their workplace and how they interact with each other and with you, there will be financial gains.

Hmm, absolutely.

Yeah, I think, and that is true with building your businesses as well, right? That's why we talk about community so much and building rapport and trust with their audiences. And even if they've never paid you before, and you've never worked with them before, if they can trust you, right, that's someone that will, that will follow you to the moon and back, right? And whenever you put the offer out that fits them that they need, like, they're going to be the first ones to jump on it. So I think that that's a beautiful definition of leadership, and how it's transferable into both like the corporate world and then also into entrepreneurship. So thank you for that. Thank you, Sue, so much for this chat. Where can our listeners connect with you? Where can they learn more from you, where's the best place for them to get into contact with you?

So the easiest way to keep in touch with me is through my Scaredy Cat Crew mailing list, and that's literally susanbbentley.com/scaredycatcrew. Scaredy Cat Crew. And I'll make sure that I send you that link as well by email so that your listeners have it. Through that link, they can sign up to the Scaredy Cat CAT mailing list, they'll be kept up to date and kind of different tips and articles and podcasts I'm on as well, and things around time management, entrepreneurship, innovation, team leadership, all that juicy stuff. So that's probably the easiest way. I'm on LinkedIn in terms of social media now. I'm on LinkedIn mostly, and you can, you can find me as Susan B. Bentley.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you so much, Susan. This was amazing. Thank you for coming on. And we have enjoyed this. Our listeners, please go and connect with Susan.

Go say hello.

The links to connect with her will be in the show notes. So you can just tap that little button down there and see where to connect with her. Thank you all. And we will see you in the next episode.

Thank you, Susan. Thanks, Lindy. Bye, everyone.