EP70: Smile More? How To Dismantle Gender Bias At Work

Interview With The Band of Sisters / Advocates For Change

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

The Band of Sisters are six senior female executives who have seen it all and not all that they’ve seen has been good. They've written “You Should Smile More: How to Dismantle Gender Bias in the Workplace" - the title a phrase all six women were told in their careers. Listen to two of the sisters, Angelique Bellmer Krembs and Lori Tauber Marcus, give actionable ways to eliminate the lazy bias of corporate America.

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Transcript

00;00;05;17 - 00;00;29;06
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men with a go to parent aren't always accepted at work, among their friends, or in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week at the company that we have various features, including the lead dad of the week.

00;00;29;09 - 00;00;56;23
Paul Sullivan
We have our community online and in person, and of course we have podcasts like this. The one stop shop for all of it is our newsletter, The Dad. So sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash the death. That's the company of dads.com backslash the dad. Today my guests are Angelique Bellmer Krembs and Lori Talbot Marcus, the wildly accomplished executives in their own right and both married to lead dads.

00;00;56;25 - 00;01;20;15
Paul Sullivan
But they're also part of the Band of Sisters, a group of six change who have seen it all in corporate America, and at all that they've seen has been good at one time or another. Angelique, Lori and the other four all worked at PepsiCo. Each one went on to C-suite roles at companies including the NFL, Keurig Equinox, ESPN and Blackrock.

00;01;20;17 - 00;01;31;19
Paul Sullivan
Together, they've written a book, You Should Smile More How to Dismantle Gender Bias in the workplace. Welcome, Angelique and Lori to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;31;22 - 00;01;33;25
Lori Talbot Marcus
Thanks Paul so nice to be here.

00;01;33;27 - 00;01;50;20
Paul Sullivan
I gotta be honest, just saying the title of your book, it makes me squirm because I'm pretty sure it was a direct quote from someone that you worked for to one of you. So.

00;01;50;23 - 00;01;51;16
Lori Talbot Marcus


00;01;51;18 - 00;02;06;02
Paul Sullivan
Tell me the story. Tell me the story about how somebody in a position of power thought at some point in time that this was a perfectly acceptable thing to say to, soon to be senior female executive.

00;02;06;04 - 00;02;26;02
Lori Talbot Marcus
Happy to jump in. What I wish was that it only had happened once, that it was a story that happened once to one of us, and the reality of it is, I'll hold this up in case anyone. I know it's a podcast, so most of you can't see it, but the, the cover of the book, it's a little post-it note that says in a really helpful way, you should smile more.

00;02;26;08 - 00;02;46;01
Lori Talbot Marcus
And just parenthetically, when you show this to women, all women have the same reaction. They sort of do that, you know, from home alone, like where the kid puts his hands in space. Does that like, the Kevin I mean, women have that. They all sort of do the thing, which is, find a dollar for every time I was told to smile more, I wouldn't have to work anymore.

00;02;46;04 - 00;02;53;24
Lori Talbot Marcus
And then men, often, when they see the title, they say things like, oh, do you think people should smile more? That's actually. Really.

00;02;53;25 - 00;02;55;14
Paul Sullivan
Are you serious? Somebody says it.

00;02;55;14 - 00;02;59;27
Lori Talbot Marcus
You swear to you. And and again, I really encourage that.

00;02;59;27 - 00;03;03;07
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
You cringed when you saw the title. Yes. I mean, do you get it?

00;03;03;09 - 00;03;04;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
You get it, you get it.

00;03;04;19 - 00;03;24;23
Paul Sullivan
I'm a smiley guy because I'm generally happy with anything. I try to smile less, but I cannot. And like my wife is a senior, executive on Wall Street. I have three daughters. I don't understand, like so. And you worked for PepsiCo? It wasn't like, have a Coke and a smile. That's the slogan for a whole different beverage company.

00;03;24;26 - 00;03;45;01
Lori Talbot Marcus
We, I'll do the quick story, and then I'll let Angelique jump in. So this is an example of like, language that people it's something that people often say to women, both women and men, and they think it's super helpful. Like they think it's actually very thoughtful advice. And I believe in my heart of hearts. It is said from a place of goodness.

00;03;45;01 - 00;04;12;11
Lori Talbot Marcus
It is said from a place of like our mothers used to say, our grandmothers is prettier if you smiled more. Right. And so, and again, it was a little bit annoying when our parents or grandparents said it's certainly not something that is, necessary or appropriate in any way helpful in the workplace. So the quick story on on the particular title was, this is actually something that we said to Katie, one of our sisters, after she left PepsiCo.

00;04;12;13 - 00;04;25;22
Lori Talbot Marcus
She was told that she was a very senior executive SVP, C-suite level. She was told this in a performance review. So not just like in a curbside coaching moment, but written down in a performance review.

00;04;25;24 - 00;04;27;10
Paul Sullivan
Point seven.

00;04;27;12 - 00;04;55;27
Lori Talbot Marcus
Exactly. Smile more. Yes, in 12 point Helvetica that she should smile more. And the funny thing about it, that's not funny. Again, the person who wrote it was an excellent boss. They meant it in a really positive way, but it's a really good example. We'll talk more about sort of lazy, ambiguous language. And then just to sort of finish the thought is I actually was told, that I smile too much and I should smile less.

00;04;56;04 - 00;05;22;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
And I was also a senior vice president, got a pretty high level in the company and a different company than where Katie was. And I was told basically I needed to be a little bit less accessible, create space between my team, not be so warm and inviting. So while Katie was Intel that she should smile more, I was being told that I should smile less and we put it all under the banner of sort of, quote unquote.

00;05;22;13 - 00;05;25;20
Lori Talbot Marcus
Not very helpful. Suggestions?

00;05;25;22 - 00;05;43;29
Paul Sullivan
Angela. Angelic? Well, what's the response? I honestly, the serious part is, well, what is the is there a response? And if so, what is it for? You know, someone that you've all achieved a great thing, but for somebody who's, in her 30s coming up and some jerk says, smile, mama. What's the response?

00;05;44;01 - 00;06;02;23
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Well, I will tell you that, as Laurie said, each of us was either told to smile more, smile less in some form or another. And I'm pretty sure that every single time when we were when we heard that feedback, we didn't know what to say. So this is actually one of the hopefully useful things about the book is we can prepare people.

00;06;02;23 - 00;06;29;08
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
So when they hear that kind of vague feedback, smile more, smile less, that they can have a response in the moment because we didn't have this that. And yeah, the and the response is really a great framework that I'm going to give all the credit to Laurie for. But it's situation behavior impact. So when you get that kind of vague, style driven feedback they invite and we say is, can you tell me more about where you saw that happen?

00;06;29;14 - 00;06;38;17
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
What was the impact, what was the behavior? And most importantly, what was the impact? Because sometimes there's a real impact and you don't want to miss a blind spot.

00;06;38;20 - 00;06;43;16
Paul Sullivan
And it's an impact on the person who's taught to smile more. That impact that. Yeah.

00;06;43;22 - 00;07;10;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
Yeah. So I mean, if you were to say, oh, and we were in this in such meeting, you were presenting to the board and you probably don't realize it, but you're on the zoom. And as one of the board members was talking, you were kind of scowling and, and they say the impact of that was it makes the board feel like they can't give you direct feedback on your, you know, your programs, your creative, you know, the advertising campaign that you were presenting.

00;07;10;14 - 00;07;34;19
Paul Sullivan
Fair enough. But this is 2023. And when you were coming in because it said you were from the 80s, the 90s, 2000, nobody that zoom didn't exist. So this is kind of direct feedback around and in order to work from home exist. So this is direct feedback around the vast PepsiCo, you know, soda complex. And I just I struggle so much.

00;07;34;21 - 00;07;48;19
Paul Sullivan
But but let's use this as a way to pivot into the subtitle, because it's so absurd to me that I have trouble not, you know, like, is it Pepsi? They want to make sure everybody has has good teeth because it's a sugary beverage. I don't want to you like it's so absurd to me.

00;07;48;25 - 00;07;51;25
Lori Talbot Marcus
So I want to get a Pepsi thing, by the way. I know, I.

00;07;51;25 - 00;07;53;09
Paul Sullivan
Know it is. It is.

00;07;53;11 - 00;08;14;25
Lori Talbot Marcus
Every woman. And like every woman that we talk to, whether they work in government or whether they work in a law firm, whether they work in banking, whether they work in consumer products or retail, immediately when you show them the title of this book, they've all been told this in various way, shape or form, and other women will say they get it when they're walking down the street.

00;08;14;25 - 00;08;30;24
Lori Talbot Marcus
They'll get it in the subway. It's sort of like it's acceptable in our society for some reason, by the way. It's not. But for some reason, people think it's acceptable to give women all this incredibly subjective stylist feedback.

00;08;30;26 - 00;08;51;27
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, but I think like to get a subject. I mean, one of the things we do in our house is I said, you know, my wife's a senior executive. We have, three daughters is we model the behavior we want our girls to emulate independence, curiosity, no tolerance for gender stereotypes or or nonsense or honesty. My wife's always earned more than me.

00;08;51;27 - 00;09;16;22
Paul Sullivan
We're open about it. I'm better organized, more gregarious. And so I'm the the BPP. That's birthday party parent. But I'm sure you know that. But what happens? You know, those skills aren't modeled in every home. And then people get to the workplace and they they're saying stupid things like this, but surely they're not saying it because I want to be a jerk or I want to be offensive or I want I honestly think that this is helpful.

00;09;16;29 - 00;09;32;12
Paul Sullivan
So how did you get to that subtitle? How do we start dismantling gender bias at work? When I think in many cases, this gender bias has been ingrained since little boys and little girls were five six, seven, eight.

00;09;32;14 - 00;09;53;03
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Well, it one of the places to start that we realized when we got together and started talking about this is it's simple awareness because, as Laurie said, a lot of this, these little things, these little moments that we all experience that are the title of every chapter of the book, these little things men are often not aware of the impact that they're having when they say or do these things.

00;09;53;10 - 00;10;15;07
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And what we found is, is because there's a lot of well-intentioned men out there. When we bring a little light to the subject and people realize that, oh, gee, I shouldn't tell with a smile more because it is stylistic and not substantive. Or I shouldn't call women girls in the workplace because that makes them feel less respected and diminutive.

00;10;15;09 - 00;10;25;05
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Those light bulb goes off, and these are little actions that men will take immediately to be better, advocates and allies in the workplace. So we think awareness goes a long way.

00;10;25;07 - 00;10;45;04
Lori Talbot Marcus
Yeah. And I'll just add one thing to that, Paul, which is so it starts from a place of unconscious bias. And I think the most important word in that phrase is unconscious. So we don't believe yes, there's some people that are jerks, but we don't think that men are waking up in the morning saying, I'm going to ask the women to take all the notes in the meeting, and then I'm going to hold women back.

00;10;45;04 - 00;11;08;00
Lori Talbot Marcus
Like, I don't think men are saying, okay, I'm going to ask women to plan the baby showers or get the flowers for admin professional day. And I'm going to ask the men to be on the M&A task force. Like, I don't think people are consciously doing that. And so to Angelique point, part of it is it's making everyone not just men, men and women, because women, you know, women do some of these things as well.

00;11;08;00 - 00;11;33;04
Lori Talbot Marcus
It's not just like men bad, women good. And so the first thing, like Angelique said, is to make people aware and aware of a situation and then to give practical advice, whether you're the woman experiencing it, whether you're a bystander in the room, how to go from being a bystander to an ally, and then if you're the leader of any gender, is to be aware of that and then say, oh, what could I say or do instead?

00;11;33;06 - 00;11;52;06
Lori Talbot Marcus
And again, they're very simple things like, you're at a work event on a weekend, there's a senior, the, the man is in charge, and there's like a senior woman and a senior man who work for him. They both have small children, and the boss is about to turn to the woman and say, who's watching your kids this weekend?

00;11;52;09 - 00;12;08;23
Lori Talbot Marcus
Right? Oh, he's not doing that to hold women back in the workplace. But the simple awareness is a real story. That happened where he was about to say it, and then all of a sudden he said, I'm not interested in the guy, the guy who's two small children. Why am I going to other the woman by asking her?

00;12;08;29 - 00;12;30;27
Lori Talbot Marcus
And so he just so the whole thing is ask both of them, or if neither of them. But don't just ask the woman. And it's little things like that. They sound so minuscule. If somebody said to me, you wrote a book about men not taking the cellophane off a bagel platter, you know, for breakfast meetings, and it's like one by one, they don't sound like a big deal.

00;12;30;27 - 00;12;44;20
Lori Talbot Marcus
But like Angelique said, it's like brick by brick by brick. You've just had this wall. And then over time, it either serves to just exhaust women or worse yet, to kind of marginalize them.

00;12;44;22 - 00;13;02;29
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, I think we talk about at the Company of Dads that, you know, resentment isn't born, you know, fully formed, you know, overnight. And if you look at it in, in the home, people love, they get married, they have kids and resentment blooms, you know, ten, 15 years later, as I say, like dust bunnies under a couch can finally move.

00;13;02;29 - 00;13;18;03
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, like, how did it get there? And it gets there because we've never had these these conversation, as you say, it's an accretion of of little slights here and there. And but I think about this so often, and I don't know if it's people get nervous or people, you know, just fall back on hackneyed things.

00;13;18;03 - 00;13;37;26
Paul Sullivan
I was in that event a month or so ago with my wife, and, there was a, the senior female executive who had written a couple interesting books, and she was talking about that, and I was one of the few men in the room. And afterwards I don't even remember what it was exact, but she made one of those really stupid comments like, oh, well, you know, you have a good husband or, you know, hopefully he does the laundry.

00;13;37;26 - 00;13;53;17
Paul Sullivan
You know, something so stupid that to me I was like, man, you know, this is what the company does about how do we normalize the role and lead that go to parent. You still work, you do this. You just you're not following these general. But I wasn't going to say anything in that moment because this was this person's night were talking about, but I left.

00;13;53;19 - 00;13;56;22
Paul Sullivan
I was like, why? Like why is it even, you know, necessary.

00;13;56;22 - 00;13;57;11
Lori Talbot Marcus
So if that's.

00;13;57;11 - 00;14;16;01
Paul Sullivan
The starting point, how do you get to people, you know, in a company who are in a position of power and get them to start thinking differently and not putting them on their back foot, not being like, hey, you know, Bob, I can't believe you said that for the fourth time. Like, whoa, I didn't mean it. I'm a good guy, you know?

00;14;16;03 - 00;14;35;25
Paul Sullivan
How do you get them in a normal training so that they understand and and they become aware because you can't tick off the list of, like, okay, Bob, don't say these ten things, okay? All right. You like Bob? Become aware of what these ten things stand for and why they have it. So how do you how do you guys, you know, suggest doing that?

00;14;35;25 - 00;14;45;28
Paul Sullivan
The band of sisters, when you get together, how do you suggest doing that? So that as you said, you know, companies can ultimately do the right thing. They don't want to do the wrong thing. How do you help them do that?

00;14;46;00 - 00;15;02;29
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Well, I'll start out by saying one of the things that we've seen be very successful since our book came out is we're often asked to speak at a company, and it almost always comes from a woman who has noticed the book, who goes back to the company and says, we need to have these women come and speak. And the starting point is often great.

00;15;02;29 - 00;15;19;15
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
We'll have an event with the Women's Network and, you know, and what we've learned is that's where we make the ask for we want the audience to be mixed. We don't want it to be just the women's group that we're talking to, even though it'll be very cathartic and everyone will, you know, laugh and cry and all that stuff.

00;15;19;15 - 00;15;46;27
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
But it won't be progress unless we can get men in the room to equally feel that they're a part of this. And not only that, we say, and we want a man to introduce this, a senior man at the company to say why this is important, why it matters to this company, and by engaging the companies in that way, we can see the posture change, like the men are usually very appreciative and they're glad to be brought in in this way, because we have a real thesis that we're not calling men out, we're calling them in.

00;15;46;27 - 00;16;12;02
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
So we are tone is very specific about how we make it an inviting conversation. It's not a scolding one. And and we found time after time that the men come up afterwards because that was really helpful. That was really practical, inviting. And then they go talk about it to others. And so again, it's it's not going to be like a seismic change overnight, but it's still a little by little getting to the right people with the message.

00;16;12;05 - 00;16;13;27
Paul Sullivan
You know, it's him. Okay. Hello.

00;16;14;00 - 00;16;32;14
Lori Talbot Marcus
No I was just going to add that. So what's funny is when we first wrote the book, the first few events that we did, we did primarily in groups of women. And again, there's this thing that happens, you just see it on women's face. They have that sort of. It's like their shoulders, like they just relax and they go, oh, like, thank you.

00;16;32;14 - 00;16;54;06
Lori Talbot Marcus
I feel seen, like, thank you for putting words and clever pictures, if I might add. Like, thank you for bringing light to this subject. We try and you know, we're all marketers by background. So we sort of like name the situations like the cellophane stand off or lazy language or things like that. So it's a little bit like, remember the old Jerry Seinfeld, like the close talker?

00;16;54;06 - 00;17;15;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
Like if you have like simple language then people, you can say it and in a really succinct way, like people know what it is. And so women feel very much like I feel seen. Thank you for that. Thank you for giving words to that. We gave a lot of I thought I was the only one who fill in the blank like women will say.

00;17;15;20 - 00;17;33;14
Lori Talbot Marcus
I thought I was the only one who counted the room. You know, my joke is like, I'm very good at fractions. It's like, got seven people in there and 107, 14%, like one out of a 12.5%, like, I always know at any moment what percent of the room women are. And if you talk to women of color, they will tell you they know it for women.

00;17;33;20 - 00;17;54;09
Lori Talbot Marcus
They know it for people of color. They know it for women of color. I mean, everyone's doing it, but everyone thinks they're the only one who does it. So for women, we get it. You see it, you get, Thank you for saying it. Thank you for giving it language. I feel seen, and. Oh, by the way, thanks for the really good advice about the multiple ways that I could deal with it.

00;17;54;11 - 00;18;15;15
Lori Talbot Marcus
And because there's six of us that wrote the book, it's not just like this is what Sheryl Sandberg says to do. The answer is lean in, right? So there's six of us and we don't agree on everything, which is great. So there's often a, you know, a C sunny, and she's Midwestern and she and everyone likes her, so she can often use humor and kind of hit things direct on.

00;18;15;15 - 00;18;33;11
Lori Talbot Marcus
I'm snarky in new Jersey. So like if I try and hit things to work on, it doesn't work as well. So I try and be a little bit conceptual. Angelique is kind of the queen of the like pre meeting, chit chat and then sort of the curbside debrief afterwards. You know, she's been executive coaching for ten years or so.

00;18;33;11 - 00;18;54;21
Lori Talbot Marcus
She's very good at the power of questioning. Katie's a little bit more direct. She hits things very head on. So the point is women say that they they liked if they can meet us where they are, depending on their level of psychological safety, humor might work. A direct thing might work. Sometimes the meeting after the meeting is more appropriate.

00;18;54;24 - 00;19;25;16
Lori Talbot Marcus
So long winded way of saying I think women feel very much like it's very helpful for them. And then with men, there's this thing that happens once we realize we needed to start getting men in because we couldn't just leave it to women to solve this issue. So with men, it's it's this amazing thing that happens. And it happens like in a second where you'll see them and they'll look at you and they'll go, I didn't know that's the thing is that if they tell me what to do about that thing, so I don't do that thinking, wait, what other things am I doing that I didn't realize?

00;19;25;17 - 00;19;26;16
Paul Sullivan
I don't want to be that guy.

00;19;26;19 - 00;19;42;14
Lori Talbot Marcus
Yeah, I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that guy. And so you literally see them. I know this is an audio medium, so people can't see my little finger going around in a circle, but they're literally going through the journey, like in these little, like, spirals over the course of like a 45 minute presentation.

00;19;42;20 - 00;19;59;12
Lori Talbot Marcus
You see them just learning and learning and learning and learning. And interestingly, the people who take the most notes when we meet are the men because they're having these incredible learning moments. To use your words like, I don't want to be that guy. I want to be like, I want to be. I hate the word, but I want to be like a great guy.

00;19;59;12 - 00;20;16;09
Lori Talbot Marcus
I want to be a good guy. I want to be the kind of guy that my daughters, my wife, my sister, my mother would be proud of. And so what we feel like is we're seeing these men who just they don't want to be doing these kind of unconscious slights anymore. They want to be somebody who is doing the right thing.

00;20;16;12 - 00;20;21;27
Lori Talbot Marcus
So it's very gratifying for for both, you know, men, women, people of any gender.

00;20;21;29 - 00;20;39;24
Paul Sullivan
You know, obviously it's, you know, these are companies that are self-selecting that they want to do the right thing. So therefore they're bringing you in. And, you know, we talk a lot at the company of dads that that change starts in the middle. That's because kind of catchy. And what it would do may mean that emerging leaders are closer to their workers and managing more of them.

00;20;39;24 - 00;20;56;15
Paul Sullivan
And I obviously have a better read on what, you know, working parents need, what working moms and dads need. And I'm sure you've seen this. You know, I've found, you know, in my previous life, The New York Times. You know, top leaders can often suffer from, you know, confirmation bias. You know, we did it this way, and it worked.

00;20;56;15 - 00;21;28;11
Paul Sullivan
So why aren't you going to do it? Yes way yet? You know, you need buy in at the top level. So when you're trying to negotiate that both as a as a consultant going in and speaking, but also sort of empowering those people who are in the room that is emerging leaders to go back. What are some of the things you you help them, you know, realize so that when they get pushback from, you know, the CEO, be it a man or a woman, but that person got to that job, you know, starting in 1982 and had this, you know, this, this path to success.

00;21;28;11 - 00;21;36;23
Paul Sullivan
And at work, what do you tell them to say? Like, look, what worked in 1982 is not going to work, today or may work differently today.

00;21;36;26 - 00;21;57;17
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Well, one of the helpful things is there is a ton of data out there that we can point to. We didn't have to do quantitative research ourselves. We did a lot of qualitative research to make sure that things we experienced are still happening today. So we talked a lot of young women and young men, but there's a lot of data that you can point to that says this is what's happening in the workplace today.

00;21;57;20 - 00;22;19;05
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And and it's not just one study, it's dozens of studies. Occasionally you'll get someone will be like, don't just show me the same old McKinsey study. Well, good news or bad news is there's 12 other ones that you can point to across thousands of company. The business case has been so well made, but the thing that people keep spinning around is like so why is nothing changing?

00;22;19;05 - 00;22;45;11
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Like, why do we keep spinning? And I think some of it is that systemic. It's hard to get the message to the top and where real change can happen. But what we see is one of the trends in business today is the top having to pay more attention to what employees want. So right, because the employees have a lot more, agency than they ever had before, they're voting with their feet.

00;22;45;14 - 00;23;06;26
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And one of the more interesting things I found about the latest McKinsey study was they showed that women are leaving executives jobs at a higher rate than ever before. So, you know, and a lot of the reasons are some of the things that we're talking about, these little things, but the younger generation is looking at them and taking cues and they're so, so it's two generations at risk.

00;23;06;29 - 00;23;25;05
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
So it's not going to happen quickly. I think that's part of the problem. But it is going to happen over time. Where's the best talent both with their feet. And you're going to see an exodus, especially from the bigger companies who aren't able to be nimble. And they're, hopefully going to see they need to do something different to address those needs.

00;23;25;13 - 00;23;52;13
Paul Sullivan
It's it's because we've we've found that, you know, when we get, the dads who are senior executives in their firms and they parent, you know, loudly or parent on their calendar, that gives, sort of agency to all the people below them to say, okay, wow. If you know, John can go and put on his calendar, not, you know, we we try to send between a lead dad in an event that if John is not putting on his calendar, going to a soccer game, well, everybody can do that.

00;23;52;15 - 00;24;13;06
Paul Sullivan
If John is putting on his calendar, you know, pediatrician appointment or, you know, emergency, family emergency, even if it's, you know, whatever it may be that gives all those people below John Agency to do, but it also is we talked about it starts to remove the stigma that all parenting is at work is going to be done by women because.

00;24;13;09 - 00;24;32;05
Paul Sullivan
Right. It's sort of giving birth and breastfeeding. These are gender neutral roles any anybody can take a kid to. Yes, pediatrician. Anybody can take a kid for a walk and get ice cream when you know she's had a bad day. But at the same time. And look, you're speaking of the converted here. I think I get why you want to read those reports, and I want to believe what you're saying.

00;24;32;05 - 00;24;51;06
Paul Sullivan
But this is where I struggle, because a couple of weeks ago, you know, Jamie Diamond, one of the most revered CEOs in all of financial services, a problem happened. You know, they call in Jamie Dimon. Like you've got like, you know, it sounds like you you've created the A-Team here. Ocean's 11 and Jamie, you'll be the guy to come in, you know, to finish the casino.

00;24;51;09 - 00;25;13;25
Paul Sullivan
But what does he do? He issues this this order that all managing directors need to show up in the office five days a week. Now, two of his divisions, Asset Management and Chase, are run by women who have children. But let's forget that that's a gender bias way of looking at a lot of his managing directors are men who maybe want to be more involved parents.

00;25;13;25 - 00;25;32;21
Paul Sullivan
And guess what? Pre-pandemic, the managing director really in the office five days a week. What a loser. That person should have been on a plane traveling, you know, convincing somebody to give them money. Why does that? And there's no more revered CEO in financial services than Jamie Dimon. He's a father of three daughters. I've met Jamie several times.

00;25;32;23 - 00;25;53;14
Paul Sullivan
He says this and we move on. And so like whatever. And I don't know the inner workings. Jamie. More. Well enough. But whatever is going on, in the middle with those emerging leaders, if the message from the top is this right? It seems to me like the choice for for younger men and women is either adapt or leave.

00;25;53;16 - 00;26;04;28
Paul Sullivan
I mean, is there, is there a third, third option, you know, if particularly people who want to work in an environment without, you know, ingrained, you know, gender bias.

00;26;05;01 - 00;26;23;28
Lori Talbot Marcus
It's so interesting when you were saying, by the way, I know you're a writer, by background. So I'm not surprised that you have all these wonderful phrases. I love what I've been writing down. We've talked about like parent loudly and parenting with your calendar and event dad and all of that. They're all like, it's such good language.

00;26;24;00 - 00;26;42;03
Lori Talbot Marcus
I love it. It's interesting when you were saying a few minutes ago about blah blah blah, people who want to do things, the thing that came to my head is if my daughters are on the phone, they'd go like, okay, Boomer, you know that I hate that expression. But, you know, it's it's sort of there. And by the way, it's not just Jamie Dimon, it's women as well.

00;26;42;03 - 00;27;03;23
Lori Talbot Marcus
It's this sort of a bias. I would say it goes beyond gender bias, which is just that the way that we did, it must be the right way. And it takes a really, I think, a more evolved leader to say just because we did it that way and we were successful doesn't mean it was the right way to do it.

00;27;03;23 - 00;27;14;26
Lori Talbot Marcus
It doesn't mean it was the best way to do it. And I feel like I am. And by the way, I loved Paul that you took this on on your LinkedIn and talked about that you were going to be like criticizing Jamie.

00;27;15;00 - 00;27;17;20
Paul Sullivan
I'm making friends everywhere I go.

00;27;17;22 - 00;27;40;18
Lori Talbot Marcus
Exactly. And so, but what I think is interesting about it is so I'm a just sort of a rabid consumer of everything to do with hybrid work. Return to the office, all of that. I'm kind of obsessed with trying to find out who has the right answer, as though there's some magical answer, which there isn't. But like, I read everything, I listen to every podcast.

00;27;40;18 - 00;28;06;02
Lori Talbot Marcus
I'm really trying to find the insight. And I think in general, just like we talk about lazy language in the book, I think the lazy answer is the way we did it is the way. That's the best way to do it. I just think that's a lazy way of thinking. Right? And from everything that I've read, the answer is, you have to find a way to spread culture.

00;28;06;05 - 00;28;31;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
You have to find a way to have people have meaningful contact where they're in the same place. But that doesn't mean being in the office five days a week. And, and, you know, any person, especially young people, will tell you they just love commuting, like an hour and 45 minutes each way to get to lower Manhattan so they can sit on a zoom call with their colleagues in London, like.

00;28;31;13 - 00;28;34;24
Paul Sullivan
That lifts the spirit more than that we've done recently.

00;28;34;26 - 00;28;55;05
Lori Talbot Marcus
Time. So I just think it's I think it's sort of the workplace equivalent of kind of lazy thinking. I think it's sort of easy thinking to say that the way things were is the way they should be. And I love the book. I'm going to get the title wrong, but, you know, the Marshall Goldsmith book on coaching, which is what got you here, won't get you there.

00;28;55;05 - 00;29;11;26
Lori Talbot Marcus
Yeah. Or the skills that brought you here. Not necessarily the skills that are going to bring you forward. I think it's the same thing about this. I think for Jamie Dimon and everyone else, it's like, how about we take a creative problem solving approach, think about what we're trying to do, and then what's the best way to do it.

00;29;11;26 - 00;29;14;23
Lori Talbot Marcus
That also kind of keeps our employees engaged.

00;29;14;26 - 00;29;34;15
Paul Sullivan
Well, that, you know, Angelique, I want you to kind of pick up on something, that that Laurie said there. You know, she's a, you know, consumer of all information about hybrid working in different ways where he and you have this term, Angelique, that you use performance with purpose. And it sounds like the ultimate, so to 20, 23, you know, post-pandemic, you know, way of thinking.

00;29;34;15 - 00;29;50;25
Paul Sullivan
I'm, I'm not joking. It just sounds great. Like and and you also say, you know, great results start with with why. Which it's really heartening for my five year old because she's going to be amazing because that's what she says at the time. But but but that concept of, you know, I don't need to sit.

00;29;50;25 - 00;30;04;11
Paul Sullivan
And if I'm a 20 something year old, 30 something old, why the hell am I going to sit on a train to to do a zoom call? But when you talk about performance with purpose, it takes it, I believe, as I is a resonates in my head out of that realm of griping or complaining about what I have to do.

00;30;04;11 - 00;30;21;29
Paul Sullivan
And while I did that bubble and and puts it firmly on not about me, the worker, but about, you know, the company, the community, whatever it may be. Unpack that phrase for us, you know, where did it come from and how do you see it being used in this, this new world of work?

00;30;22;01 - 00;30;43;09
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Well, the genesis of the phrase came from Indra Nooyi years ago when she was chairman of PepsiCo, and she introduced this way of thinking that was performance with purpose, meaning that as a company, we were going to continue to deliver business performance, but we were going to be conscious of our purpose as a citizen, of the corporate world.

00;30;43;11 - 00;31;03;07
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And it was it was an idea that I think was a little ahead of its time at the time. It was good that the purpose was starting to be introduced, but it was still not common for decisions to actually be made that either gave equivalency or even, you know, put purpose ahead of performance. Performance was always king.

00;31;03;10 - 00;31;27;20
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
What I think has evolved and what I've seen in the last couple years is a shift from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism. And I believe this is where the future of business is going. I mean, the Business Roundtable two years ago declared that stakeholders should be the right, you know, skills that, you know, audience that we're thinking about as, as businesses and those stakeholders.

00;31;27;27 - 00;31;31;09
Paul Sullivan
Just to clarify, for the sake of including employees. Correct.

00;31;31;13 - 00;32;06;05
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Exactly, exactly. Employees being one of the critical, critical audiences that as a company, you need to care about in order to be successful and sustainably into the future. And these are knowable things. Your employee base is a group that you can talk to, you can survey, you can look at metrics like it's very measurable if you choose to do it, and it is proven that it is an indicator of business results when you can drive the right people, set up cultural and support wise.

00;32;06;12 - 00;32;32;22
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
So purpose for me then becomes like, why? Why are people showing up? Why are they choosing to stay at your company? You know what? Why are they going to give more than the minimal to to the jobs that they're doing? It's because they're motivated by something. Some reason why the company exists. And I think there are some critics that would say, you know, purpose marketing is, you know, B.S. and like, that's where lazy marketers go.

00;32;32;24 - 00;32;48;02
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
But I disagree because I don't think it's about marketing is it is that's the mistake. Purpose has to be what's driving the business. It's the strategy. It's the you know, how you measure success. So, I'm very passionate about how it should it should show up.

00;32;48;08 - 00;33;08;03
Paul Sullivan
And if I understand correctly, it's the risk of hypocrisy. If your slogan is, you know, we're the most caring company in the world and you're a bunch of jerks who make everybody go in the office five days a week, it doesn't quite hold up as opposed if you show that you're a very caring company and you want to drive a purpose, and then your message will come from that and that will be the marketing, is that the correct way to where one would.

00;33;08;03 - 00;33;28;12
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Say, yes, it's all about authenticity. It's right. What do you say has to show up in what you do? And as, you know, as a company, if you're putting out this is what we stand for, here's what you know. And then your employees can visibly say, that's not how I experience the work here. That's a big problem.

00;33;28;12 - 00;33;35;03
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
So you're recruiting for your retention. You're not going to get people to want to go through whatever it takes to get promoted. They're going to look elsewhere.

00;33;35;04 - 00;33;56;22
Paul Sullivan
You fire a couple of them and then everybody goes quiet. Don't worry about that. Oh boy, that's not the right way to look at it. Oh, God. It was my inner Jamie Diamond. I'm so sorry. Oh, God, I keep doing that. Tell me this. I got two more big questions over. The first one is, you know, you have, the two of you that the six of you total have this amazing amount of, experience.

00;33;56;22 - 00;34;21;12
Paul Sullivan
And you've, you've you've distilled a lot of that into this remarkable book. But if the 30 year old version of yourselves, of that young woman working really hard at XYZ company is listening to this, or the 30 year old woman's a boyfriend or spouse because it is a company of dads. If he's listening to this and that person is, you know, trying to make her way in the world, what is the advice?

00;34;21;12 - 00;34;35;10
Paul Sullivan
I'll let Laura go first and Angelique just mix it up. What's that advice that you would give to your 30 year old self who wants to one day be where you know the band of sisters are in their careers and in their lives?

00;34;35;12 - 00;34;58;16
Lori Talbot Marcus
Well, there's a lot on this topic specifically, what I would say is, is don't do what we did. So we just sort of like we kind of like we wince, we, you know, grin and bear it, all of that. And we just didn't say anything because we were trying to fit in. We worked in, you know, a world that was, you know, kind of corporate America run by, you know, white men in their 50s and 60s.

00;34;58;22 - 00;35;20;14
Lori Talbot Marcus
And so we were just trying to fit in and survive and then ultimately thrive. But we did it by sort of fitting in, and we didn't want to stand out for anything other than our work. And so some of these things, we just sort of we dealt with that and we probably coached a lot of women to sort of, you know, accommodate versus saying something.

00;35;20;16 - 00;35;37;19
Lori Talbot Marcus
And the, you know, I look at it and like, oh, good for us. We all made it like we all became C-suite executives who were on corporate boards, you know, but like, it didn't change fast enough because we didn't use our voice to change things. Which is why now we're using a lot of our voices to try and change things.

00;35;37;19 - 00;36;07;04
Lori Talbot Marcus
So my biggest piece of advice is, you know, pick your battles. Don't don't be one of those people that every day, every day you're just sitting around criticizing everything out of everyone's mouth. But being silent doesn't change things. And so I think people should be a little bit less accommodating. We were way too accommodating. And like I said in the book, because we have different styles, we try and give people language hacks of how to deal with it, and then different style ways that you can deal with it.

00;36;07;07 - 00;36;12;24
Lori Talbot Marcus
But not dealing with it means that 30 years from now, we'll be having the same conversation.

00;36;12;26 - 00;36;17;11
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Excellent. And, Angelique, anything that some of you add to that.

00;36;17;13 - 00;36;36;12
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Yeah. I mean, I will say freely that I did not know what I was thinking, you know, in my 30s. I wish I had this book to because I look back on, some of the things that we now talk about, I'm like, oh my gosh, like at sponsorship, like, why was I not paying attention to that? Like, I didn't know the difference between mentorship and sponsorship.

00;36;36;12 - 00;36;56;21
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And you know, some of these things. But I would also say that I, I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew how I was feeling, and I, I sort of followed that by learning from the managers I had at Pepsi. They were the ones that made me feel awesome. And there were many of those, and the ones that made me feel terrible, and I didn't want to be that kind of manager.

00;36;56;21 - 00;37;19;24
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
So I just tried to model the the people that made me feel awesome and try to be try and pay that forward. When, I got married in my, you know, 30s. So I was, I was not a young bride, and had children. My husband and I would talk often about how we saw this as a partnership, and shared, you know, shared work.

00;37;19;24 - 00;37;38;17
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And, the child, knowing what I didn't know was how hard it was going to be down the line when we actually made the decision for my husband to stay home and be the lead parent, the dad, and for me to gain the attitude to try to be the, the breadwinner, the in the executive. I didn't know what was going to be hard about that.

00;37;38;17 - 00;37;57;12
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
It seemed so like it was fine for us. So why was it going to be difficult? So, you know, you you live and learn, and you learn from others experiences. So I'm hopeful that through all the stories we tell, like it's paying it forward so somebody may benefit from not, you know, running into the same walls that, that we did.

00;37;57;15 - 00;38;19;15
Paul Sullivan
I just want to add a footnote to that because, you know, I'm sort of anti, you know, credentialing people to, to the nth degree on this podcast. But I mean, Andrew, like you went to Georgetown and got your MBA from Dartmouth, the Tuck School of Business. And Laura, you went to Wharton. You are not in, you know, wildly well educated, but it's almost like, you know, the business school back then.

00;38;19;16 - 00;38;37;23
Paul Sullivan
We're not preparing you for this. Right. Okay. You could do, you know, you know, marketing, business analysis, all the like or, you know, so, yeah, I hate this phrase as well as hard skills, but what about the socks? Well, they're all skills. You know how hard that you feel that get you through. And none of those were really taught in the those, you know.

00;38;37;27 - 00;38;42;04
Paul Sullivan
Yes. Business schools and yes, you sent out there. Yeah.

00;38;42;11 - 00;39;00;21
Lori Talbot Marcus
So can I just add one thing to that? So we've done a lot of the, a lot of the events that we've done since we, launched the book, a lot of them have been in major corporations and professional services firm. But, and those have been incredible. And again, trying to reach as many people as we can to become zealous about the topic, because we can't always be in the room.

00;39;00;26 - 00;39;21;09
Lori Talbot Marcus
But one of the things that we've done in addition to that which we love is speaking at business schools. Exactly. To your point. So we were up at talk with the great doctor Ella Bell, who had my favorite line of everything when we were talking about micro moments or microaggressions. And she said, they're not microaggressions when they happen to you.

00;39;21;12 - 00;39;21;24
Paul Sullivan


00;39;21;27 - 00;39;46;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
And meaning there is no such thing as a microaggression if it's if it's landing on you, it doesn't feel like a microaggression. And then we were up at MIT earlier this year, and I would say probably some of the most engaging Q&A that we've had is with these future leaders. And we think it's really important to educate those leaders because they are going to be running corporate America.

00;39;46;13 - 00;40;03;20
Lori Talbot Marcus
And, and, and in the next five, ten, 20, 30, 40 years or so, we think it's kind of a unique opportunity to start to impact the way that those future leaders are thinking while they're still in the relatively early stage of their careers.

00;40;03;23 - 00;40;23;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Good. This has been wonderful. Thank you for joining me. Last question. I can't let you off the hook without this one, since it is the Company of Dads podcast. And, I know Laura, your husband, James, is a lead dad. He became a dad. And, in and like you mentioned, your husband, you know, opt in to become the lead dad in your careers.

00;40;23;24 - 00;40;40;16
Paul Sullivan
Tell us, you know, because one of the things we're doing is we reach out to men, you know, hopefully embracing this role already in this role is is trying to tell them, you know, it's okay. It's normal. You were unlink masculinity and money. You're working as a partner if you want to keep it in masculine terms, a sports team, you know, whatever you know, whatever, get you out of bed in the morning.

00;40;40;19 - 00;40;58;17
Paul Sullivan
But when you think about the conversation, you know, and I'll go into like personally, the conversations that you had, with your spouses when, when you agreed as a family that, you know, your spouse would become the lead dad, what were those conversations? Yeah, like. And how did it go?

00;40;58;19 - 00;41;31;15
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Well, quick, quick story. My husband, left his job, so he was a senior executive, in, in the it space doing, electronic bond trading, software building, building systems. So, like super, heady stuff. He, decided to leave in 2014. And, and we'd always talked about having one of us home when the kids got old enough to, you know, need more emotional as well as physical support.

00;41;31;17 - 00;41;54;01
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
It was 2015 that the article came out from, Anne-Marie slaughter, husband, Andrew Moore. It's more like, talking about his role as the lead dad, and it it gave us language that we didn't have, like immediately. And we're like, yes, that's what we're trying to do. It's not stay at home, dad. It's not Mr. Mom.

00;41;54;01 - 00;41;54;25
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
You know, it's like.

00;41;55;01 - 00;41;57;01
Paul Sullivan
Retired is not house husband not.

00;41;57;01 - 00;42;22;07
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Retired. And my husband felt very strongly. He's like when people would ask him what he was doing, like he didn't want to say, I'm I'm retired. He didn't want to stay like he wanted to give us, you know, equal weight to what he was doing. And I think he was we were both a little surprised at how how hard it was, because you immediately lose the network, because the network of moms, is not very welcoming of the, you know, dad that shows up.

00;42;22;09 - 00;42;55;13
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And so, so you have to go about it differently and find your way. But I think it's been a fulfilling journey because, I think he's really relished the time that he's had to be, you know, in this role, our kids have benefited from it. I've obviously benefited from it. And I think, you know, the idea of role modeling a new way is, I don't know, gives us hope, you know, that done for both our daughter and our son, that they see me working him in, you know, the lead dad role, like it's, you know, it's good for both of them.

00;42;55;15 - 00;43;18;19
Paul Sullivan
And you should listen to that. The article, that angelic, reference. Anne-Marie slaughter was then the deputy US secretary of state senior role, and her husband was a professor at Princeton. It may still be wildly successful people. And now you know, Laura, I know a bit more about, your husband James, making me seem, like a slouch here since, you know, Angela, his husband is building complicated bond trading software.

00;43;18;19 - 00;43;24;05
Paul Sullivan
And your husband is a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.

00;43;24;08 - 00;43;50;06
Lori Talbot Marcus
Electrical engineer, has a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT. James, my slacker husband, only has a PhD in electrical engineering from Tufts University. Slacker that he is, so it's interesting. I'm loving is I mean, Angela, Angelique and I talked probably every day over the past four years, and I don't think it clicked until just now how important language is.

00;43;50;06 - 00;44;14;17
Lori Talbot Marcus
I mean, we know it's important. We're marketers by background. A lot of the commentary we get on the book, as I said earlier, is thank you for naming these things. And in bringing language to it. So I think our quick situation is earlier in, and my daughters are older, they're in their 20s now. And so when they were very little, James was a technology consultant, and then he was a part time college professor.

00;44;14;19 - 00;44;31;26
Lori Talbot Marcus
And, so we never made that decision that he was going to be a lead parent or lead dad. And we did it a little bit in a crisis moment. And I think I've told you this, Paul, I'll be forever grateful to him for this because it was a moment one of our daughters was struggling. Getting something done.

00;44;31;26 - 00;44;50;11
Lori Talbot Marcus
And James just came to me. I was working like crazy. I was going to Chicago every week, and he just said to me, we had we had had great nannies up until that point. Amazing nannies like, thank you, Lana, Wendy and Alicia. And then we had a nanny that was like, embarrassingly bad. Like, like really bad. Like, if I didn't.

00;44;50;14 - 00;44;51;08
Paul Sullivan
Name this or.

00;44;51;09 - 00;45;12;23
Lori Talbot Marcus
That name. Exactly. Because I don't want her to, like, throw things at my house. But she was, like, embarrassingly bad, and it was terrible, and we just needed help. And James came to me at a point where I was traveling all the time, and I was doing this, what I would consider sort of an epic opportunity. I was still at PepsiCo, kind of a job of a lifetime, while I was there.

00;45;12;29 - 00;45;24;12
Lori Talbot Marcus
And he came to me and he said, I think I can go with like, basically, I'm thinking about that. We're going to fire the nanny and I'm going to stay Voldemort.

00;45;24;13 - 00;45;27;23
Paul Sullivan
Okay. Yes, yes.

00;45;27;25 - 00;45;30;19
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
And so seizure, who shall not be named?

00;45;30;26 - 00;45;50;22
Lori Talbot Marcus
Yes. I think we should fire she who shall not be named. And I'm going to help our daughter get through this particular event that she was trying to get through, where she just needed kind of extra parenting, and I was it hadn't even occurred to me to ask him. And I'm going to get teary talking about this because it was so selfless on his part.

00;45;50;22 - 00;46;09;28
Lori Talbot Marcus
He was doing consulting. He, you know, he had a career. He had something that he was going to give up, but he just saw the greater need that our our needs had change. Our children needed us in a way they hadn't before. And so my point was, so I think he did it. Now granted, this was like just this is 2007.

00;46;09;28 - 00;46;35;09
Lori Talbot Marcus
So just before social media ruin the world and before we all had iPhones and all of that, but there wasn't language. He didn't have language to describe it. He didn't have language. When people said like, oh, James, what do you do? And I can just remember, I can feel it today. Him feeling that sort of awkward thing when you go to something in our little town and all the dads are like in our hedge fund guys and lawyers and investment bankers, whatever.

00;46;35;14 - 00;46;58;13
Lori Talbot Marcus
He didn't have the language, and I think that made it harder for him than it needed to be. And, you know, the emails were all to the moms. The phone calls went to the moms, all of that. And so I think it really reinforces something that Angelique and I know first as marketers and now as authors, is this power of language to name things.

00;46;58;15 - 00;47;10;03
Lori Talbot Marcus
I just think is really important. And in hindsight, like I said, I'm so grateful to James for having very selflessly done this, and I wish it could have been a little bit easier, for him at the time.

00;47;10;06 - 00;47;13;14
Paul Sullivan
Well, hopefully it is now with work.

00;47;13;20 - 00;47;14;11
Lori Talbot Marcus
Kids in their.

00;47;14;11 - 00;47;23;22
Paul Sullivan
20s. Latent plug. Yeah. So, Angelique. Lori, thank you again for being on the Company Dads podcast today. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with you.

00;47;23;24 - 00;47;24;28
Angelique Bellmer Krembs
Great fun. Paul.

00;47;25;00 - 00;47;52;10
Paul Sullivan
Thanks for thank you for listening to the Company of Dads podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do. The company of dads possible hell, Mira, who is our audio producer Lindsay Decker and is all of our social media, Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me.

00;47;52;10 - 00;48;10;03
Paul Sullivan
And many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads. It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.