Ep. 87: The Journey of Inclusive Leadership with Guest Sally Helgesen

Tune in to our interesting discussion with Sally Helgesen, acclaimed international author and the world's leading authority on women's leadership. Be prepared to gain profound insights from Sally's latest book that navigates the intricacies of creating an inclusive workplace. Together, we unpack how the corporate environment functions for women, and how to effectively incorporate them into it. From our conversation, you will learn how to confront commonly faced challenges, such as fairness and networking.

In a deep dive into Sally's innovative ideas, we explore how to reframe narratives and foster more productive relationships. Understand how being genuinely curious and courageous can help handle difficult conversations without feeling defensive.  The potency of an inclusive workspace is underscored, revealing how it can fuel the transformation of professional environments.

Sally Helgesen, cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s
leadership, is an internationally best-selling author, speaker and leadership
coach. She has been inducted into the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame, which
honors those whose ideas have shaped the field of leadership worldwide. She
is also ranked number 3 among the world’s thought leaders by Global Gurus.

Sally’s latest book, Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create
a More Inclusive Workplace, offers practical ways to build more inclusive
relationships, teams, and workplaces. It soared to Amazon’s number one top-
seller in its field in the first week of publication.

Rising Together builds on Sally’s remarkable success with How Women Rise,
co-authored with legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, which
examines the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women as
they move forward in their careers. Rights have been sold in 23 languages.

Other books include The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership,
hailed as the classic in its field and continuously in print since 1990, and The
Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, cited
in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time
and credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business.

For over 30 years, Sally has delivered workshops and keynotes for
companies, partnership firms and associations, working in 37 countries
around the world. She can be reached at sally@sallyhelgesen.com

Transcript

Sally Helgesen: 0:00

My dream is that this fantastic younger generation, gen Z, is really going to transform how we view leadership. I see evidence of it. I follow a lot of sort of Gen Z perspectives on Twitter. Very, very young people who are really political activists in the mainstream not way out on the fringes, but political activists on the mainstream who are very, very intelligent, very dedicated, very, you know a lot of it is the whole global warming issue. How are we going to deal with global warming? It is a live issue for very young people. Their lives are going to be around in 2050, when, for example, we were talking about Singapore, when we signed on in Singapore.

Sally Helgesen: 0:55

I just got back from Singapore, a fantastic place I was seeing on the front page of the New York Post that in 2050, singapore will have 200, believe it was and 67 days a year of extremely dangerous heat. That's in 2050. Now, I probably aren't going to be around then, but these younger people will definitely be around there. So these issues they are passionate about. They are deeply engaged. They see them as life and death issues. So my dream for the future is that we will learn from them what leadership looks like, and I see that happen.

Kyla Cofer: 1:44

Welcome to the Leadership School Podcast. I'm your host leadership and self-care coach, Kyla Cofer. Here at the Leadership School, you'll hear leaders from around the world sharing their stories and expertise on how to lead with balance and integrity. Our goal: teach you how to be an extraordinary leader. Welcome back, leaders. I am thrilled today to bring Sally Helgesen to the podcast. If you don't know, Sally, it is my absolute privilege to introduce you to the world's premier expert on women's leadership.

Kyla Cofer: 2:23

Sally is an international bestselling author, speaker, leadership coach. She has been inducted into the Thinker's 50 Hall of Fame. She is ranked number three among the world's thought leaders by Global Gurus. She knows what she's talking about, has the history and the experience and the wisdom to prove it; not that she needed to prove it, but she can. In her conversation we're going to talk about her latest book, which gets into not just why and actually she doesn't really cover the why. We kind of already know the why it's important to create an inclusive workplace. She talks about once you know you need it, how do you actually do that? And the answer is based on her 30 years of experience in the field of leadership around the world. Make sure you stick around to the end, when we get into the culture of leadership and how that has shifted and changed over the span of her career, and where she dreams that we're headed and where she sees us going in the future.

Kyla Cofer: 3:17

Thanks so much for listening, for joining me for this episode. Please like, subscribe, leave comments and share. We really appreciate those reviews and are just so privileged to share this space with you. And thank you so much, Sally, for joining me for this episode of the Leadership School Podcast. Sally, it really is an honor and a pleasure to have you here on the podcast. You have been traveling all over the world, very literally, of talking and speaking on leadership and I'm just so honored to have you here. Thanks for joining me. It's a great pleasure, Kyla, to be with you. Sally, why don't you go ahead and start us off by telling us a little bit about your story, who you are and kind of your journey that's got you to traveling all over the world?

Sally Helgesen: 3:58

Certainly. For the last 35 years I have been with, a little more right now, I think it's about 37. I have been writing about, speaking about and gathering information on women's leadership and inclusive leadership. So that's basically what I've been doing. It's a career that I kind of backed into.

Sally Helgesen: 4:18

I was working in corporate communications in the 1980s and I saw that the companies I worked for, which were excellent, had no idea how to really understand what their women had to contribute. So I decided I was going to interview a bunch of women who were at the very tops of their fields, there weren't that many back there in the late 80s, but try to see what they had in common so that I could describe the strengths women brought to leadership. And that book was the Female Advantage Women's Ways of Leadership, which published 1990. I'm proud to say it is still, continuously, has been in print since then and it was the first in its field. So people started asking me, viewing me as an expert and having me in to speak to their women, and I thought, well, I'd rather do this than my speeches for corporate executives. So I picked up the ball and eight books later and hundreds of articles and thousands of workshops and keynotes, here I am.

Kyla Cofer: 5:23

Wow, you know a lot of things struck strike me about your story. But right at the very beginning you said you started noticing about people didn't know how to handle women in leadership. I'm actually just really impressed and curious about how you began to notice that, because, as a woman yourself, sometimes we're blind to those things and I know for myself. I did not even realize things like that were happening to me until other women started to point the bat. So but you started noticing what brought this up for you, that you were able to notice that women were treated differently a little bit in leadership.

Sally Helgesen: 5:57

There were two things. One happened to me and the other happened I saw it, with other women. The thing that happened with other women is I remember one company I was working with had run out this enormously expensive strategic survey trying to get ideas about various directions the organization could be going into, and I was charged with going through that and then finding some talking points for the CEO of the company. It's a big company and so I was doing that. But I would find that in the ladies lounge now this is a real giveaway to the era the ladies bathroom used to have a lounge and it was where people with women would go to smoke.

Sally Helgesen: 6:41

I didn't smoke, but there were a lot of women in there smoking and I found that some of the best ideas I heard were from those women and they never made it through into any of these surveys. So the executives never heard it and I thought there has to be a way of getting this information, because this is really good, these observations are really astute, and there has to be a way of getting notice for that. So that was the first thing. The second thing was something that happened to me, can I tell you.

Sally Helgesen: 7:14

I would love to hear a story. One of the organizations I was working with was one of the big phone operating companies at that time, one of the biggest in the country, and this will definitely date the story. They were trying to look to hire a lot of telephone operators from the high schools in New York City, there was a shortage. So I was again tasked with working with the CEO on this. Now, the night before the big meeting about it, where I was going to be sitting with the CEO and the head of corporate communications, I had a conversation with my sister, who is a high school teacher in Milwaukee. She was telling me about how some of the local corporate entities, some of the local companies, were partnering with the schools to develop specific skills that those companies would need among students. So I thought this sounded like a great idea and during the meeting that we had the next day, at which I was the only woman and probably the most junior person in the room, there were lots of ideas batted back and forth and I suggested that we consider this idea and I thought I phrased it pretty well. I fortunately avoided saying you know, I was talking to my sister as a high school teacher. I just presented it as an idea, but no one absolutely no one responded, looked at me, said anything. They just kept the meeting going. It was like it had never happened. Now what did I take from that as you know, late 30s something trying to find my way? I took from it that it was a bad idea and that I should probably have never raised my hand. So what was interesting, though, was about six months later, well-known nonprofit in New York made this suggestion to our CEO and he said wow, that is a fantastic idea, let's run with it.

Sally Helgesen: 9:19

Now what I learned from that was actually my idea was very, very good, but I backed off immediately the minute I said it, and I didn't get a response. I just decided it was not a good idea, and I thought women need more confidence in their ideas, because I'd seen guys raise ideas and they'd gotten batted down and they would just keep coming back and they'd say you know that idea, let me reframe it for you. Let me tell you why I think it would work, and I didn't do that, and I didn't see women doing that. So I felt like we need more confidence in the value of our ideas and our ability to contribute strategically and as leaders, and that's what I was trying to do with The Female Advantage.

Sally Helgesen: 10:08

The one thing I will say I thought that the response to this book would be organizations would say, oh my goodness, women have so much to contribute. That was not the response. The response was women identified with it tremendously themselves. I kept hearing from women who said of course you get letters in those days from women who said I never knew I have a leadership style. I thought I didn't. I had no confidence in how I did things, but this describes what I do. So it was very, very helpful to women and they loved it and things went from there.

Kyla Cofer: 10:47

Wow, thanks so much for sharing that. It's just really impressive to me because I've also been in situations like that, but I just didn't notice it. So I'm just really grateful that you did, because that work has paved the way for so many women who have been able to rise into leadership positions because of your noticing that. So thank you for that. But one thing you kind of mentioned in that first book you do allude to a lot in your most recent book. Tell us about your most recent book, because I'm noticing kind of a theme that I want to get to. But I would love to hear about your book and kind of the ideas around your book, and maybe we can just briefly talk about that.

Sally Helgesen: 11:27

Well, my latest book, which came out in the mid spring, is Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divide and Create a More Inclusive Workplace.

Sally Helgesen: 11:39

So you are exact, and this book looks at the how, not the why, but the how of how we create a more inclusive workplace.

Sally Helgesen: 11:49

I think we have been talking about the reasons that it is important for you know at least 15 years, but we have rarely looked at what are the specific practices, the behaviors that create an inclusive workplace, one in which people have comfortable and effective working relationships with those they may perceive as being different than themselves, across barriers of gender, of course, but also age, race, ethnicity, sexual identification and values and experience basis. So how do we do that? What are the behaviors most likely to create that? And then, what are the triggers or the that are most likely to undermine our ability to build those relationships? I think this is a more effective path than doing what organizations have been doing for the past, however long, which is just looking at a search for unconscious biases, because really people perceive us based on our behavior, not whatever thoughts are running through our mind. So that's why I'm trying to switch the approach there, get a very practical approach toward creating inclusive cultures, and a very broad one.

Kyla Cofer: 13:17

I've really appreciated that in your book because your book really focuses, like you said, on the how and not as much on the why, which is what I appreciated, because a lot of times we have looked at the why and then just felt really lost. Okay, we know something needs to be different, but now we're going to start doing it and then we're just all kind of fumbling along and what your book is doing and I haven't been able to read all of your books, but I'm assuming that's what you're kind of the story that you're building here is that you're really unlocking how the system works for women. You're giving women this insight into kind of how this corporate system functions, but you're also giving men the insight in how to bring women and include them in that.

Sally Helgesen: 14:02

Well, that's exactly true, and in How Women Rise, I focus on that, which is the book before Rising Together. But Rising Together is really very much aimed at both diversity in general, so it's not just on women. In fact, the genesis of how this book came to be is useful to understand it. I was doing I was still asked to deliver a women's leadership program at get ready, the Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, the Construction Super Conference. So this was construction from all over, construction companies from all over North America, so it's about 6,000 men who were there. And so I asked the conference organizers who do you anticipate will attend my workshop? Because it was going to be a breakout, it wasn't going to be a full session thing, and they said, well, we would expect about 100, 150 women who want to learn how to become more effective and make their voices heard in such a male dominated sector. And I said, fine, I can do that.

Sally Helgesen: 15:12

So this was after how Women Rise came out. I think it was in 1918. I mean 2018. I'm like Sally, come on, I had that all. So I went down and there were almost 300 people there, and at least half of them more than half were men, and so I.

Sally Helgesen: 15:36

What I prepared was completely, you know, I didn't have any use for it because I was directed very much at women and here I had a bunch of men sitting there in front of me as well. So I began by asking the men why they came and they talked unsurprisingly about they need their firms needed to get better at understanding how to attract and engage and retain especially talented women, or they would not really be competitive. And then one executive stood up and said you know, please don't tell us why this is important. Don't waste your time telling us why it is important. We know we get that, but we don't have a clue how to do it. So I thought that's what we need. We need a how and that's what I set myself to do in Rising Together. So I see it as all my books connect with one another, but I see it as building on How Women Rise and taking it more to the level of the whole organization, in the same way I had happened with a connection to earlier book.

Kyla Cofer: 16:46

Well, and then you did that. You really did that. In the first half of your book you're talking about, kind of, you mentioned triggers, and that's your word triggers that you use and you set up different triggers, that that things that we can be aware of, and then but you're not just be aware this is how you work through them. And then in your last half of your book, you're really kind of breaking that down and talking about okay, now we're aware, now we know how to work through those, but now this is how you take the action to do those, instead of just sitting and thinking about them. Tell us a little bit more about those two little pieces.

Sally Helgesen: 17:18

Well, yes, exactly the triggers I wanted to look, I thought it was important because you can present a lot of, you know, here are some behaviors that build inclusive organizations and I've had a lot of experience watching what works and what doesn't work. So I, you know, had some pretty good ideas about that and I did a lot of interviews about it as well. But I knew that it's not just knowing how to do things, it's also being able to first address what holds us back. You know we may feel this uncomfortable.

Sally Helgesen: 17:52

For example, one of the triggers in the book is fairness, and I hear a lot about this. You know, we feel we have an emotional response when we feel we're in a situation where we're not being treated fairly. And I hear it from women. You know these guys they can't hear a thing a woman says, you know that it's very difficult for a woman to get promoted around here. But I hear it from men as well. You know women are getting all the good jobs now We've got 50%, so a lot of guys are not getting, you know, promoted. I don't feel like my work is being acknowledged. So now you have men saying it. You certainly have this across race in different countries. You have it across ethnicities in India play out. So there are a wide variety of triggers. So that's an emotional response that we have that makes it difficult to say, okay, here's an inclusive behavior, let me practice this. Well, we can't do that.

Sally Helgesen: 18:55

When we're emotionally responding, when we're stewing, we may feel that other people are getting more visibility than we are and we have, that's a trigger in the book, and that we have trouble get bringing notice to what our achievements are. We're uncomfortable doing that because and we decide these other people are showboats. Networking, how we build networks is an important trigger that I talk about in the book. Do we feel that we have access to the networks in the organization that really lead people to career development and getting right mentors and sponsors, or do we feel shut out of those? And if we feel shut out of those, how do we take action? That can be useful.

Sally Helgesen: 19:41

So, again, the idea is you know what gets in the way, what causes an emotional response. Communication style can't stand to listen to that person the way she talks. That woman is all over the place. That guy, you know he can't let anybody else get a word in edgewise. Those things are triggers that make it hard for us to behave in ways that create inclusive cultures. So I thought let's deal with those first. They're never talked about, they're never acknowledged, and then we can set forth some inclusive behaviors that once people are sort of have the emotional balance to be able to make a decision, I'm going to behave this way, they can do that.

Kyla Cofer: 20:22

One thing I was having a little bit of trouble understanding is I feel like in the beginning of your book you were talking about kind of changing the narratives that we're telling ourselves, changing our stories, and kind of the way we're thinking about different situations and our emotional triggers, so in the way that we notice and the way we think about them. And then the last half it was changing the actions, and maybe you can clarify for me about how those two work together, because I come from a psychology background of cognitive behavioral therapy, where your thoughts and beliefs lead to your actions and I kind of feel like you were changing that up a little bit.

Sally Helgesen: 20:56

I was changing it up a little bit and I'm a big fan. I'm not a psychologist, but I'm a big fan of cognitive behavioral therapy and have in fact benefited from it myself. Going back to Dr David Burns and some of his popularization of the original work that was done, I think Martin Seligman, I don't remember the names, but yeah. So I believe in that. But I think in personal therapy it's really important to get these insights into our behavior and then thoroughly adjust to that and digest that information in order to move forward In organizations. As you're trying to develop your career, as you're trying to develop your leadership skills, as leaders are trying to put together effective teams, there isn't often the learning curve or the patience to wait for people to go through the whole psychological process of being able to change their thinking so they can change their acting. So what I'm trying to do in the book is show ways that you can change how you act and that can shift how you think. Now my understanding of cognitive behavioral therapy is that it also takes that point, that point of view. If you change how you're acting, then that can begin to change how you're thinking. But I think it works really well in the whole space of diversity and inclusion, because often we'll have an idea that, well, I've had a bad experience with this kind of person. We hear people say that all the time. People aren't bigots, but just say I've had a couple of bad experiences with that kind of person. So I'm a little suspicious of this kind of person. But then if we act in a way by giving them what I call giving them the benefit of our goodwill and we don't get invested in a narrative about why we think they are a showboat, why we think they don't speak up and don't really contribute, aren't really carrying their weight, whatever that is, as long as we don't get too overly invested in that narrative, we can leave space for ourselves to act in a slightly different way. That maximizes the chance that we'll develop a better relationship with that person.

Sally Helgesen: 23:20

The result of that often is that not only do we side I thought I didn't like Kyla based on the fact that she reminded me of X, y and Z, but now that I've gotten to know her, I really really do like her. Therefore, we'll become, for example, thinking if I like Kyla, that may mean that I should be more open to cognitive behavioral psychologists who are female in general. You see what I'm saying. This is kind of something that I think is underrated, and we've gotten overly invested, to some degree at least, in organization and the whole idea of you've got to change the mindset first. In my personal experience, it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. That's what I'm proposing here, because otherwise we can get stuck in trying to change our thinking and not really figure out how to begin to create a broader range of relationships.

Kyla Cofer: 24:28

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Kyla Cofer: 26:10

And really it sounds like we're just telling ourselves a different story. You mentioned this right off in chapter one, telling yourself a different narrative about what you're experiencing. So, yeah, maybe all of the people that I've worked for in this category of people have been terrible bosses, but that doesn't mean that every person in this category in the entire world is a terrible boss. You don't have to create that narrative in your mind. So it's allowing myself the opportunity to have a different story and to take action on those stories. So to say, okay, if A is true, it doesn't mean B is true, so I can still follow B and try again, and try in that different way.

Sally Helgesen: 26:51

That's exactly right and it especially works well in very specific instances. For example, you know I've been talking a little bit about dancing around this issue of visibility. This is a huge trigger in the workplace. This person always gets noticed when I speak up, no one ever notices. I notice that they don't pick up on what women say. So what do we do? Typically if we're in that situation, we talk to another woman and say can you believe the guys here? They can't listen to anything a woman says. So that becomes our narrative. So if we can rewrite that story in very kind of specific terms, okay, that was interesting.

Sally Helgesen: 27:33

I thought that Jim or Lou, Ellen or Muhammad would pick up on what I said in that meeting. He completely ignored it. I'm wondering if perhaps he didn't hear me. I'm wondering if perhaps the way I framed it, he didn't really resonate with it. I think I'll give him a call or write him an email or go up to him if we're in person and ask him and say you know I had made this observation in that meeting. It seemed very aligned with some of the observations that you had made and I'm wondering if you noticed, if you had any thoughts that you could share, because I'd like to really understand how it could work effectively together and I'd love to get your thoughts there. So there, what you're doing is you're opening up, you're questioning your own narrative. You know, maybe he didn't hear me, Maybe I sounded all over the place, maybe how I phrased it was boring or unclear. You're opening that space and then you're giving him again the benefit of your good wealth. Maybe, you know, maybe it was me, maybe it wasn't him, and then, based on that, you are taking an action to potentially engage him as an ally, rather than simply, you know, dismissing him like guys don't get it, whatever. So this is a mini example, but to me, this is how the rewriting of the script or rewriting the narrative works.

Sally Helgesen: 29:06

A lot of people don't like it. First of all, you know they question the whole concept that your acting can change your thinking. It's sort of mindset first, so it's not the most popular point of view, Even though I see it work all the time. It's also a little controversial because you know people who have been outside the leadership mainstream, especially the mainstream in an organization in the United States, African Americans, many Latinos, for example, in you know, in India, people who are of a lower caste, for example, or you know this is true all over the world. There are groups; Japan, my goodness Japan. If you're not a Japanese male, you know who are you in the organization, you're a newcomer.

Sally Helgesen: 29:53

We had to work hard to be able to feel like we could speak up, and part of what we want is to be authentic and feel authentic. So the biggest pushback I get on rewriting the script is I don't think that would be authentic to me. That's not really what I'm seeing. What I'm seeing is this guy is obnoxious, he's trying to suck up all the air. He doesn't give other people credit for their ideas. That's authentic to me. So that's another kind of barrier there. I think it's more important. I think it's important to be authentic. But we need to question what is really most authentic in us, at our core, and often those kinds of ways of dismissing people are not.

Kyla Cofer: 30:37

To question what's really authentic to us at our core. That one will leave me thinking for a minute, but one thing that I really enjoyed through hearing you talk now and hearing about this is, you know, at first I was thinking this theme I was hearing was boldness, because I'm thinking man to be able to have that to show up you shared, you said it was a mini example, but it's not a mini example. To me it's a major example of when you go up to someone and say, tell me more about what just happened in this meeting or tell me about this idea that you brushed off of mine and like asking about it to me to approach that difficult conversation, that potentially very awkward conversation, seems very, very bold, and so a lot of what I'm hearing through the way that you talk about noticing these triggers is having an opportunity to be bold and persistent, and I wonder if it's just more of being exceptionally curious.

Sally Helgesen: 31:30

Well, I think being exceptionally curious is a great, great way to frame it, and I heard somebody say this weekend somewhere, you know be curious instead of furious. So when your idea is brushed off like that, get curious about why that happened and really understanding it. And the one thing that I think is the most important in this is when you go up to a person or, you know, say let's, I don't want to be one tiny bit defensive, so I think let me understand what just happened comes off as defensive and it also says I'm invested in my narrative that something important just happened right there. Now that other person might not even have noticed anything happen. So if you go up to them and say I need to understand what just happened, and they're gonna say you know who is this person who's so over sensitive and taking offense, at everything. So I think that the way out of that is exactly what you say getting curious. You know I'm curious, I may. I thought that I'd phrase this idea in a compelling way, but it didn't get much notice. What was your impression did did? What were your thoughts did? Did you notice? What did you know? What did you hear when I said that? I'm very curious about that.

Sally Helgesen: 32:47

I'd love to have your opinion. That's more inviting than anything that's even the slightest bit defensive or putting it in the frame of a difficult conversation. I don't think it is a difficult conversation. Does it require a certain degree of being direct? Yeah, sure. But I don't think it's really difficult conversation. It's a conversation about you know, I'm trying to get better, I value your opinion. Would you take the time to share that with me? I think that's, in essence, what that is. So I don't think that this really is a difficult conversation.

Kyla Cofer: 33:24

Well, it did two things. When you phrase it the way you did, it allowed the other person to feel good about themselves because you're engaging their opinion, so they're feel they're contributing to your growth. But also it's showing the other person that you're committed to growth and you want to improve yourself and go forward in your career in the position. You got it.

Sally Helgesen: 33:45

Those are the two things. You know I'm committed to growth. You know I'm really curious about your thoughts because I believe that you can be helpful to me. I really value what you think. Who's gonna say oh, you value what I think, forget it, brush you off. You know, the more, the more open you are and the more, as you say, curious you are, I think the more positive responses you're going to get, and the person may not have a thought in a minute. They might say you know, I really thought about it. You say I love it, if you give a little attention, I can come back to you and ask if that's more convenient. And then if they say, yeah, not really, you know, I don't have time, it's fine, that's fine. You know, maybe they've got something going on.

Sally Helgesen: 34:27

Can I tell you, when I started rewriting the script might for myself and it was in the early, it was probably, it was in the early nineties I was suddenly doing a lot of speaking, which I hadn't done in the past because the female advantage and followed by that, the web of inclusion, with both very successful box, nineteen ninety and ninety five, nineteen, ninety five. So I was doing a lot of speaking and I found myself very distracted by people who didn't seem to be paying attention when I was up on stage. And you know, I look at someone I was pretty much pre cell phone. But I look at somebody and they be writing something, that look like they were doing some work, or they be talking to their neighbor, or whatever. They were looking around, are they bored, or whatever. I get focused on that person and I think, oh, am I bombing? Am I dull? What's gone wrong here? Is this a mismatched audience? You know, I could really go down the rabbit hole.

Sally Helgesen: 35:23

I realize this was not working for me at all because it made it very difficult to be present for what was, for what I was saying, because it was focused on my perception of what somebody might be thinking of me. So I decided that what I was going to do was, as soon as I saw someone who look like they weren't engaged, paying attention, etc. I was going to quickly tell myself the story. Oh, you probably had a fight with his wife this morning. Oh, maybe she found out one of her kids is having problems in school. Oh, maybe the boss who sent them here, they heard that boss is not happy with the job they're doing, whatever it is.

Sally Helgesen: 36:03

I would make up on the spot super quick story to explain to myself, based on basically nothing, why that person wasn't fascinated by every word that was coming out of my mouth. And then I would move around and I would just look and try to find somebody who look very engaged now and focus on them. It was so effective it just let me let that go. I don't find, you know, I have colleagues say you know, just let it go, let it go, let it go. I don't find that terribly helpful. How do I let it go? To me, re writing the narrative, even in the very small things like that was the most helpful technique or how for letting go that I've ever discovered. So I've used it and developed it through the years in lots of different work that I do, but the first time I've shared it so explicitly and and used in the workshops that I do is doing workshops and rising together when I was over in Asia last week.

Kyla Cofer: 37:02

It's a very effective exercise to teach people, so I've been focused on. It's such a great coaching tool too, and what's really noticeable to me in that is that we were writing a narrative anyways, like the story that you were telling yourself that that person out there didn't care about you and want to hear what you had to say. You didn't know, they weren't telling you that, you were making up that narrative anyways, so you just made a new story, and whether the story is true or not does it matter, cuz you didn't know if it was true in the first place. Anyways, the way that you respond is different, because we realize that it wasn't about you in the first place, exactly exactly and you really.

Sally Helgesen: 37:41

That's. That's the point. It doesn't matter whether the story you tell yourself is true or not. You don't have all the details, you don't have all the information. It's just is the new story that you write, is the narrative you write. It gives the other person the benefit of your good will. I don't want to say benefit of the doubt, but you know, I want to come out and positive way benefit of your good will.

Sally Helgesen: 38:11

All that matters is that that serves you and it helps you let go of a negative presumption and it gives you a path, this is most important, a path to on which to take positive action; an action that tries to engage them as an ally, and action that tells them you value what they have to say, so will they share that with you. All those things are actions, and that's what we want to be. We don't want to just be stuck in our minds, because then we're never really gonna make progress on this. So very, very important point that you made, it doesn't matter whether the story is true. How does it serve us? Does it give us a path to action?

Kyla Cofer: 38:53

Yeah, absolutely Well, thank you. Well, let me ask you this. You've been in this, the field of leadership, for 30 something years now. How have you seen some really positive changes over your career? And then, with that, what's your dream about the future of leadership?

Sally Helgesen: 39:09

Okay, that's two questions. I'll start with the first and you may have to remind me of the second, but I've watched tremendous change. I think it is very unbalanced, very, very positive. Do we see some horrific leaders today, both in the private and public sector? Oh, absolutely, but I was around when there was some pretty egregious behavior in the past too, so it's not all positive.

Sally Helgesen: 39:37

But I do think that both women and and in the United States, for example, people of color and people from ethnic backgrounds that have not been heavily represented at the leadership level, number one expect acceptance in a way that they did not before, that they have more confidence in their own ability to make a contribution in as leaders or as experts. They have more confidence in what they have to contribute. They have much greater solidarity with one another, and this is very, very important. You know used to be difficult to get senior women in an organization to support junior women or women coming up, because they would feel like, well, I don't want to get known as you know, someone who just cares about women. I want to be a leader, I want to be respected. So it was very difficult to do that. I don't see that hardly at all anymore. I see women in senior positions eager to step up and support women coming up same across Ethnic lines, racial lines and certainly in terms of age as well and sexual identity. So all those things are positive. Much more solidarity, the internal networks, you know the employee resource groups or business resource groups, they call them that. Sometimes they are a manifestation of that. They're much stronger, they're better funded and they really foment solidarity, a spirit of solidarity t hat is very, very positive. I think also that and there's more there's more recognition that all of us need allies broadly and a determination to develop the skills that will enable us to enlist allies across a range of borders, one of the things I'm trying to do in Rising Together. But overall the big deal is, I think how we define excellence in leadership has been revolutionized in the 37 years that I've been in this field.

Sally Helgesen: 41:49

It used to be the toughest top-down boss you could imagine. He was a great leader. You know you. You know you got to break some eggs to make an omelet, that sort of approach, and you saw it. You know really, in the way that Jack Welch of GE was lionized, neutron Jack as he was known, and a lot of other top leaders. You know Bob Crandall at American Airlines, etc. etc.

Sally Helgesen: 42:18

I'm not necessarily picking on them, but they, you know they exemplified what organizations aspired to in leadership back then. You didn't hear about empathy and leadership level ever. You didn't hear about the importance of building relationships. You didn't hear about the value of direct communication. You heard about top-down, he's tough, he makes the tough decisions. You know, people don't like it, too bad my way or the highway. So I think that that's really gotten re defined. Now are there some leaders who don't exemplify it? Absolutely. But I don't think organizations are saying you know, we're looking for the toughest guy out there and we don't care, you know, if he's has poor relationships, skill of building skills, etc. That's. That's not what I see, certainly in global organizations around the world.

Kyla Cofer: 43:13

Yeah, I've actually seen the opposite, that that we don't want somebody who's like that. Exactly, that's what I mean.

Sally Helgesen: 43:18

It's been redefined. What does excellence in leadership look like? How do we define it? That has changed, and it has changed tremendously for the good. You know, I started my career early in the advertising business back in 1968, and it really was the madman era. It was extraordinary. What was tolerated back then and that's not tolerated anymore. And it doesn't happen, of course, because are there bad people? Of course the bad people, but I think the system is much better at leaving them out.

Kyla Cofer: 43:55

So tell me more about your. What's your dream, then, for the future of leadership? Where do you want to see us go? Where do you see us going from here with as much as the United States and I talk about the United States was, as much as the United States has grown in Leadership development over the last 35 years? Where do you see us going and in what place?

Sally Helgesen: 44:12

do you?

Kyla Cofer: 44:12

dream seeing us in.

Sally Helgesen: 44:14

My dream is that this fantastic younger generation, gen Z, is really going to transform how we view leadership. I see evidence of it. I follow a lot of sort of Gen Z perspectives on Twitter, very, very young people who are really political activists in the mainstream not, you know, way out on the fringes, but political activists on the mainstream who are very, very intelligent, very dedicated. Very you know a lot of it is the whole global warming issue. How are we going to deal with global warming? It is a live issue for very young people. Their lives are good. They're going to be around in 2051.

Sally Helgesen: 45:04

For example, we were talking about Singapore when we signed on, in Singapore, I just got back from Singapore, a fantastic place. I was seeing on the front page of the New York Post that in 2050, Singapore will have 200 believe it was and 67 days a year of extremely dangerous heat. That's in 2050. Now, probably not going to be around them, but these younger people will definitely be around there. So these issues they are passionate about. They are deeply engaged. They see them as life and death issues. So my dream for the future is that we will learn from them what leadership looks like, and I see that happen.

Kyla Cofer: 45:52

Wow, Sally, I want to wrap up with asking you my two questions I ask every guest, and the first one is what does the word integrity mean to you?

Sally Helgesen: 46:00

Integrity means a willingness to tell the truth, even when there's a cost to it, and to speak that truth. That's why I so advocate, advocate being direct about what you see, what you notice, what you value and what your story is, how you connect the dots. I think that's where integrity really lives.

Kyla Cofer: 46:23

Hmm, my last question is the word balance. It can be kind of a controversial word and so I have to change the use of the word there, but I want to know how you personally find balance, and what does balance look like to you? You know you have this busy life, you travel over the world speaking all these things, but what does it look like for you to have balance?

Sally Helgesen: 46:43

Balance, for one thing means to me that I am able and I am comfortable and I am willing to assert what my boundaries are to say no, I can do this, but I don't think I can do that. If I'm going to come and do this work, here are the couple things that I need and here is what I most hope to accomplish. This is what will make this successful for me. I'm not laying down the law. I'm open to listening to people, but the ability to assert our own boundaries and say what's important to us is really it's key to balance, and I think that, especially for women, but also for many people who are outside the leadership mainstream, there is often a tendency to try to manage other people's expectations and privilege what everybody else is going to think about you rather than say this is what I need to make sure I do the most effective job.

Kyla Cofer: 47:45

I'm so glad you had mentioned the word boundaries because if there's anybody else listening whose favorite word is boundaries, like me, we've been talking about it quite a bit without actually using the word, and your book just really discusses a lot of it. You I don't know if you even actually mentioned the word boundaries in your book, but you are your. That's what you're bringing up. You're saying it's about having healthy boundaries and about knowing what you need and and pursuing those things, and in a healthy, positive way. And so just thank you for setting that example for us. And, sally, thanks so much for joining me on this podcast. It's like I said before, it's just such an honor to have you here and learn from you, and I just appreciate all the noticing that you've done and the wisdom that you've shared.

Sally Helgesen: 48:23

Thank you, Kyla, I really enjoyed it.

Kyla Cofer: 48:28

So I started this podcast because I wanted to learn and grow in my leadership journey and I have been so incredibly inspired by the guests and the conversations. So once the interview ends, I actually keep the conversation going because I have found that sometimes the richest part of the conversation is when we feel like the interviews over and we can just kind of have a relaxed, more casual conversation. Also, if you've noticed, if you've been following this podcast for some time, I used to ask every guest two questions what does integrity mean to them and what does balance look like to them? Well, I haven't stopped asking those questions. We're just putting those over on our patreon page. So go check it out at patreon. com/ leadership school and for six dollars and fifty cents a month you can support this podcast.

Kyla Cofer: 49:15

It takes a lot to produce every single episode and, honestly, I could use a little bit of support. So anything that you're able to contribute would really mean a lot to me and would able to help me to continue to bring these high caliber guests in to have conversations on what does it look like to be an extraordinary leader and how do we practically do that. So those conversations are continuing over at patreon. com/le adership school, where I'm asking guests some extra questions, some bonus questions. You'll get some bonus content over there, so be sure to go check it out. Thanks so much for your support and thanks so much for subscribing, listening and sharing this podcast. It really does mean a lot and I'm so honored to show up here in your podcast feed. Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you've liked what you heard and you want some more tools and resources to help you on your journey, go check out kyla cofer. com/ free stuff.