Danielle Cobo  0:05  
The dream job with Danielle Cobo podcast is designed to empower women to turn life's biggest challenges into their greatest strength. To address the confidence gap and why women often struggle with visibility. Guests, I talk about how to find your voice, create your seat at the table, and how to be an amazing ally to other women in the workplace. I am a career coach, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, military spouse, and mom to young twin boys. I have experienced as a fortune 500 company leader who guided a team to number one in the nation. Having a thriving career and a balanced life is within every woman's reach, and the time is now. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of dream job with Danielle Cobo. I am your host, Danielle Cobo. And of course, like every week, I have another extraordinary woman that has joined us today we're gonna be talking a little bit about leadership because not only does she have an incredible background, a long history in medicine, she's also a leadership quote, a leadership coach. So our guest today is Laura Berenstein. So Laura, tell us a little bit about your career journey.

Laura Berenstein  1:20  
Well, Danielle, first of all, thank you for having me, I am so excited to get to do this. And my career journey started pretty traditionally, I was a kid who said, I want to be a doctor. And so I did all the things you had to do to be a doctor, I pass the tests, and I went to medical school, and I did a residency. And it turned out, I met some really influential mentors along the way. And so I ended up in a really very tiny, specific area of medicine. And I am a pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist, which is a person most people will never meet. But if you have someone in your family who has heart disease, congenital heart disease, then yeah, if they need surgery on their person. So we have so many children who have grown up with congenital heart disease, we now have so many adults with congenital heart disease. So for 26 years, that was my world, because there are not enough of us to take care of all the people that need taken care of. And it's exhilarating work, it's wonderful. But I started at a certain point to say, I have so many great colleagues coming behind me who are so good at taking care of these patients. What is it that I can do that actually leaves my specialty better leaves my world of medicine better? And I looked at my own life in medicine and what that had been like, and I have a daughter who's following in my footsteps. And I said, Okay, what would I like to have be different? And the answer is, I wanted to see more women as leaders. There were still, the proportion of women leaders, specifically in anesthesiology was no different last year than it was the year I started practicing. We've really not gained any ground. So that's what called to me. And so I, I started working with an organization within paediatric anaesthesia, specifically about empowering women for promotion, and how to create leadership opportunities for them. And that led to me going to coaching school. And deciding that I wanted to become a professional coach, I wanted to coach women, for what after a lot of thought I have decided is life, career and leadership simply because I don't believe there are clean lines between them. Our lives and our careers are intertwined. You want to succeed at both. So that's what I'm doing.

Danielle Cobo  3:53  
That's an incredible journey of going in from medicine to now being an influential leader and making an impact for women throughout their careers. Because the fact that you said that there had been no change in 30 years of women being in leadership roles and medicine goes to show you that we have a lot of movement that we get to make moving forward. And what you're doing now is going to set the stage and the tone for the future generations coming up from that from us.

Laura Berenstein  4:32  
That's what I hope because really what we need a system change. But at the same time, every day and every interaction matters, every single one and so I really want to embrace the idea that this is going to be long and slow. This is not going to happen overnight. But until we are dedicated to saying, Okay, we've gained ground there are now 50% of our medical students are women. But that has not translated into more women getting promoted and becoming leaders. So somewhere, we're still, we're still not playing on an even playing field there.

Danielle Cobo  5:10  
And you see that in medicine. And I also saw that in the corporate world, being in medical sales for 15 years, it was very similar. I worked for an organization where the consumer of our products was 90%, female majority of our sales force were women. However, the higher you go up the corporate ladder, the less the percentages of women in leadership roles. So whether you're in medicine, whether you're in corporate America, it's very similar. And it opens up the opportunity to start to have these discussions to start to have women like you like me, who are making a difference, and supporting women to be able to create their career that they want to thrive in their career, continue to climb up that corporate ladder, open up their business, whatever it is to thrive in their career.

Unknown Speaker  6:06  
We'll see you've just said something else that is so important to me. And that is whatever they want. Right? So I think another thing that I see in my world of academic medicine, is we arbitrarily define success. We define success as how many publications you have, or how many book chapters you've written, how many research grants you have, did you make professor, and those are all great, they're all valid, and they're all important. But they leave out a really important thing, which is, where are you in your life? And what do you want? How do you define success and what's important? And so I think the thing about women is we have transition points in life. We may have times right out of training, or right out of school, where we are consumed with young children in our life, right? That's not the moment we can go 110% in our career, but that doesn't mean that three or four years down the line, we won't be going 110%. And that's okay. So I love the idea of coaching women for the fact that success and leadership actually means being a leader in every phase of your life. Seeing what is most important to me right now, and embracing that with a view toward where would I like to be in five years? And what are the steps I need to get there.

Danielle Cobo  7:21  
I love how you say showing up as a leader in all areas of your life, because I'm a firm believer that leadership is not a title. It's how you show up at work. It's how you show up as a person in the world. So let's talk a little bit. Do you think that leadership skills are innate? Or do you think that they're learned?

Laura Berenstein  7:42  
Well, I think that, you know, a good test taker never says always or never. Right? So I think there's some of both. There are obviously people who were born with a gift for leadership. One of my favorite examples, I just read the book leadership, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and she highlights four US presidents there. But when you read about Lincoln, you think this man had no background for this, but he's self taught, right? So there is some innate skill there. But I think by and large, it's a learned thing. It's like anything else, I was not born, knowing how to do cardiac anesthesia. I went through this really patient process to learn skills to help me do that. And I think leadership is the same way. We may start with certain strengths all of us as humans, we each have different strengths. But even once you've taken your strengths into account, then you need to say what do I need to succeed in this arena I want to succeed in and how do I acquire the skills to do that thing.

Danielle Cobo  8:45  
It's interesting what you say about the innate and how there are some people who may not have the background in leadership, but they just have that natural innate ability. I have four year old twin boys, and they're vastly different. I always say they're two completely different kids that just happen to be born at the same time. I am already seeing one of my kids, as being a leader, I see him, he can walk into like a playground and all of a sudden, all the kids are following him as to whatever the game is going to be. While my other kid is a little bit more of a people pleaser. He's a little bit more kind of a follower in that sense, but he's also very mechanical and analytical. And so I'm already seeing those innate skills and differences between my voice at such an early age. And I also know that some of those conversations about teaching them leadership skills, goes beyond their innate abilities because we're constantly evolving and we're constantly learning new skills and how we communicate with each other. So what are the top three skills you believe are essential in a leader?

Laura Berenstein  9:55  
So you know, I've given a lot of thought to that. And I want to say the first is communication. Because communication to me, is a little bit of a catch all, I can lob lots of things in there, right? Communication really comes down, you know, how do you inspire your people? And what's the tone that you set? Because people watch. And this is another way in which we're all leaders, I tell women, I'm talking to this all the time. Look behind you, because you have no idea how many people are actually already watching you, seeing how you do this, right? So every time you communicate, how you choose to handle that thing, it matters, right? So can you communicate your vision? Can you communicate that you are true to yourself and your values? So I think that would be my first. I think, second after that self awareness. And that's one of the things I absolutely love about coaching, which, you know, life is a learning journey, right? So you go to school, you think I want to be a coach, and what you don't realize is that you are about to embark on the biggest learning journey of your own life. Because to be a good coach, you have to continually work on your own self awareness. And so it gives a huge appreciation for this. Not just what are you saying? Or what you think you're saying? How is it received? Right? What, how do I make people feel what is my impact, not just my intent, my impact. So I think self awareness is huge for women in particular, because we often fight with imposter syndrome, we have very fixed ideas in our mind of what we think our gaps are. And we kind of we live by that, right? I couldn't do that. But the reality is, if we stop and look at all the things we're doing in our life, and if a friend or another person were to analyze this things, we are so much more competent than we give ourselves credit for, right? We're doing amazing things, just juggling our lives. So I think self awareness and being able to think about how you impact others, and giving yourself fair credit, for your abilities and the things you're doing, and also knowing where you want to grow, having the awareness to know that. And lastly, I think, as a nod really to the last two years, agility, I think agility and just, I like agility. Because if you study different leadership styles, you You always hear people talk about, well, what is the best style right? The answer is there is no best style, because the best style is what you need at that moment in your situation. And so you have to be able to be agile, you have to be able to know a lot of different things and move rather fluidly. And one of my favorite questions from women I coach when we talk about communication or conflict management, and they say, Well, I don't know if that feels authentic to me, right to be that way. Well, when you think about it, not so much as are you being that way is are you able to learn a skill would you then employ selectively as you need to in order to accomplish the goals you want to accomplish? Well, yeah, absolutely, you can do that. So agility, learning lots of things and moving fluidly between them in order to do what you can do best.

Danielle Cobo  13:35  
We will be right back to today's episode. What do you want to get a promotion, find a new job or increase your sales performance. The feeling of clarity on how to accelerate your career is priceless. The risk of uncertainty is missing out on promotions getting passed over by another candidate, or in sales, leaving money on the table. You're left feeling stuck, frustrated and discouraged. 74% of employees feel like they are not achieving their full potential because of lack of development opportunities. It becomes a lot easier to get there when you know where you're going. How would you feel if you knew exactly where to go, and how to get there with 15 years of experience in corporate America, among the most recent seven years leading a team for Fortune 500 company to number one in the nation. I've experienced success firsthand, and have helped 1000s of others through keynote speaking corporate workshops and one on one coaching on how to achieve their goals without sacrificing their personal life. As a mom to four year old twins, business owner and military spouse, I believe everyone can have a thriving career and a balanced life. I invite you to go to my website, Danielle Cobo, that  cobo.com Daniellecobo.com and schedule your career discovery session with me, thanks for tuning in, and back to today's episode.

I can see how those skills can be applied in so many areas in your life and what you're saying I took a six month leadership course. And it was everything from overcoming the impostor syndrome, understanding the self awareness that you have communication skills, how you show up. And when you learn these skills, and we have a self awareness to know where your true authentic self is, it opens up the doors to have conversations you've never imagined before. And to create those connections and to deepen your relationships with people. And those skills that you said, I think are really essential, whether you're an individual contributor, and it's a matter of just leading as a team member and leading in your life, or whether you're leading a particular team, those skills are essential in all areas of your life. And like you've talked about, it's the whole person, it's how you show up at work and how you show up in life in your in your personal life. So what steps can women take to learn these skills?

Laura Berenstein  16:17  
You know, I, the two things that come to mind for me, right off the top of my head, are, first of all, whether it's Clifton Strengths, whether it's disk, whatever means you have even if you go online, to Via, values and action, right, that's free takes 15 minutes. So whatever resource is available to you do some self assessment, find out more about what your values are, what your strengths are, what your personality style is, what works best for you, what motivates you what stresses you figure out those things. And that will help inform not only what you feel comfortable doing, but what's a stretch for you, and where do you want to grow. So that will inform the skills you feel like you need to acquire in order to go to that next place. So the first thing I would say is, assess yourself and get ready to grow. And the second thing is as much as you can break out of your box or your silo. For us, one of the magic things about our women's empowerment initiative is it's let women from multiple academic institutions communicate with each other. Usually we're in this silo, the silo is called this is my department, this is my institution, this is my operating room. And that means we don't have the opportunity to really talk freely with a lot of other women to realize that they have the same challenges we do. And the very fact that that occurs means already you're depersonalizing things that you might view as obstacles. It's not your obstacle, it is an obstacle, it is an obstacle that can be overcome. Okay. So the second thing I would say to women is look for ways to either get involved with other women in other organizations, group coaching, anything you can just to try to find what's going on with other people? And how can I benefit from that?

Danielle Cobo  18:28  
You speak to what we called at the company that I worked at was like an individual development plan. And it first started with, where do you want your career to go? Where do you see your career trajectory for the next three to five years? What are your core strengths? Because those we want to continue to enhance? what are maybe some three areas that you want to develop? And then what does it look like to develop those skills? Is it listening to podcasts? Is it reading books? Is it aligning yourself with a career coach or a mentor? Is it getting involved in special projects. And then from there, it's creating SMART goals which are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound, so that you're holding yourself accountable to where you want to go in your career. And I like how you talked about values, because when you understand your why there's a book by Simon Sinek that you've made, I'm sure you've probably read it start with your why. And when you know your true core values, that is essential and knowing what you're passionate about. And to take that a step further. I liked how you talked about motivation, what motivates you, and there's a book called five languages of appreciation in the workplace by Gary Chapman. I mean, he's got the love languages what he's most most common for, but I really like those languages because it understands not only how you are motivated, how you feel when you're appreciated, if you're in if your listener and you're in a leadership role, I would invite you to take that assessment with your team. And like you said, it was understanding the different personalities to knowing the different personalities of everybody on your team and know what they're driven by what they're motivated by what they feel appreciated by, because it goes beyond the just how are you doing today? Leadership is truly understanding what your, what your team members vision is, what keeps them up at night, what they're passionate about, where do they want their career to go? It's essential that we are developing the people on our team.

Laura Berenstein  20:44  
I couldn't agree more when people feel that they matter. They want to be in that place.

Danielle Cobo  20:52  
So what three things do you want to listen to leave our listeners with because we talked about skills being innate? Or are they learned, we talked about showing up as a leader in all areas of your life, there's so much that we packed into this to this episode.

Laura Berenstein  21:09  
The are gonna sound so silly and so trite, but I think coming, I feel like I have the ability to say this simply because I spent so long, absolutely convinced that my place was in the operating room. And that was my career. Right? And I think there came a moment when, as one very wise person put it, you move from mastery to impact. And that to me speaks to what is your why, right, what at the end of the day is most important to you. And so I guess the thing that I would want to leave people with is never, never, ever give up. Ever, even when you think the story is written and you know how it's going? Nope, there's, there's another term, there's another path. There's always something and if you feel really stuck, get a coach, ask the questions. That's what happened for me. And that's finally, what helped me say, it seems like in my world, there's only one path. But that's not actually true. There is another path. And that's the path I'm on now. And the other thing I would say, is Dream big. Dream big. Because again, I thought I knew how the story was written. And I didn't, it did not know how this story was written. I decided three and a half years ago that there needed to be a textbook for pediatric cardiac anesthesia. And it hadn't been written yet. So somebody needed to write it that somebody needed to be made, because nobody else was doing it. And I did it. So if you had looked at me even five or six years ago and said, Do you think this is going to happen Laura I would have laughed. But the fact of it is the fact that had happened means obviously it could happen. So it was never about potential ever. It was about what I believed, and what I thought I could do. So never give up. Never think you know the story, ask more questions, be curious. And don't be afraid to say what do we really want? What is really important to me? Because this is it, this is your life. You get to do it the way you want to do it.

Danielle Cobo  23:22  
100% if I if you would have asked me two years ago where I'd be today, I would have said absolutely not I thought it was going to follow that. Living in corporate and just climbing the corporate ladder. And here I am owning a business being a leadership coach, a career coach, writing a TED Talk writing a book. I mean, there's, there's no way I would have said two years ago, I am at where I'm at today. So if you are a listener, I love what Laura is saying, which is really create the story, the story of where you've been, may not be where it always is tomorrow, be open to ideas, step and lean into that to that uncomfortable zone because that's when you grow the most.

Laura Berenstein  24:11  
Daniel, do you mind if I say one more thing, of course, in honor of the word burnout in medicine, which is a very real world word and a place I have been. Okay. I want to acknowledge that in saying what I just said, for everybody who's listening who is thinking, Yeah, but that couldn't be me. I want to tell you. I have had my face down in the mud. And I have thought I don't know how this story gets different. Okay. So I just I want to absolutely honor that your perseverance is important. And I'm that girl I do persevere. But I persevered even when I wasn't sure why I was persevering or what it was for. And sometimes things can be hard and I do not want to in any way minimize that, things can be hard. But we have what it takes. And with patience and asking the right questions, we can find that place that is right for us. And when you do it makes it that much sweeter. Because you know, it did not come easy. It came because you had the grit and the resilience. And you asked the questions, and you did what was important to you.

Danielle Cobo  25:22  
Words of wisdom to leave us with. Thank you so much for joining us today, Laura, you provided so much valuable advice for us and showing up as a leader in person and at work. And so many nuggets to take away I feel like there's there's a lot that I can take away from today's episode, which I know our listeners can as well. So thank you for joining.

Laura Berenstein  25:43  
Thank you so much for having me. It was great.

Danielle Cobo  25:47  
Well, for those of you that have tuned in and have enjoyed today's episode, I invite you to write a review comment we'd love to hear from you. With every review that you write, it continues to boost our podcasts that other women can be tuned in it creates exposure for it. So please write a review. And then if you do go ahead and tag me in it, send it to me, I will go ahead and send you a free workbook on how to accelerate your career. And I hope you have a fantastic day and create an intentional and impactful day. Thank you for tuning into today's episode. To receive your free career accelerator and crush your quota workbooks with actionable steps on how to accelerate your career. Go to Danielle cobo.com. To learn more about my services, including keynote speaking, corporate workshops and one on one coaching. I invite you to go to my website, Danielle cobo.com and schedule a call with me. And one last favor to ask. The best compliment is a review. Please take a quick minute to share on iTunes or Spotify why you enjoy tuning into the dream job within your Kobo podcast. Thanks for tuning in and create an intentional day