Gloria Feldt, Co-Founder/President Of Take The Lead | Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone's) Good

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Today, my guest is Gloria Felt. She is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker commentator and feminist leader who has gained national recognition as a social and political advocate of women's rights. In 2013, she co-founded Take the Lead, which is a non-profit initiative with a goal to propel women to leadership parity by 2025. She is a former CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America directing the organization from 1996 to 2005. She has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Times, NBC, Fast Company, Vanity Fair and many more publications. We spoke about some lessons from her book, some of the things she teaches over when she speaks on women leadership and empowerment and I'm going to get to those in a second, but most importantly, we spoke about our present day situation. Take the lead, the goal and the initiative of Take the Lead was to get women to leadership parity by 2025. We spoke about where we're at right now, what COVID did for women leadership? Did it push it forward? Set it back. And then we also spoke about what organizations can actually do to foster women leadership and to help women progress into leadership positions. And then we spoke about some things that you can do. If you are in a position and you want to move up in your career, some great leadership mindset things. Now, of course, she helps women move into leadership positions. The mindset topics that she speaks about are just great for anybody who wants to level up in their career, but she specifically teaches women how to leverage some of these techniques. So a few things that she teaches over that she goes into further detail in the show, preparing yourself to lead, preparing yourself to lead and not just lead organizations, but lead change. So she uses a framework called VCA vision, courage, action. What is that? How does that impact your peers and yourself? She spoke about the consequences of actions when things don't go right, how to navigate that, how to navigate the ups and downs in an organization, how to flex as needed. We spoke about improving your impact and meetings and presentations. We spoke about proactive practices that you can deploy in your life that will allow you to build habits that help you sustain your leadership journey. And it filters out the railers or what she calls power demons as you try to progress in your career. We spoke about turning your obstacles into assets and then lastly, we spoke about tapping into your power and your energy using ambition as fuel to achieve your intentions. And at a high level, it does sound like there's a lot of mindset things, but then she goes into detail about how to actually action it in your day to day. So let's jump right into this. We have a lot of great leadership lessons, some reality, some some tough conversations, but where we are at in terms of women leadership parity in 2022. This is Gloria felt best-selling author, executive speaker, commentator, and feminist leader. Okay, so it's been a long and rocky road, but I will shorten it up for you. So Scott, I was actually born and raised in small Texas towns, which surprises people as I'm sitting right now of a couple of blocks from Columbus Circle in New York and feel very happy about that. But I, you know, I was a group in a culture where women weren't given aspirations for careers. They said if you went to college, it was to get your MRS. And that your job was to be a support system for everyone else. And I totally drank that gulade. I just want to tell you, I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be exactly what the culture was telling me I should be. And that was why I married my high school sweetheart. I had three kids by the time I was 20, just a few days after my 20th birthday. And then I woke up. I woke up. It was like a light bulb went off. My son, David, who is my youngest, calls himself mom's light bulb because he's heard the story so many times. But I don't know whether it was maybe a little maternity. Maybe it was simply, well, I will say I believe that the advent of the birth control pill helped. It helped me know that I could actually plan and space my children. And, and therefore be more intentional in general about my life to kind of connect it with what I'm writing about right now. And I realized also that if I had to support three children, I didn't have any employable skills. So I started to a community college. I was living in Odessa, Texas at the time. Anybody's a Friday night lights fan out there. I mean, just tell you it's a true story. My kids all graduated from Permian High School. Yeah, we're mighty mojo. It's, it's, it's for real. And so there was only a community college in Odessa at the time. And it took me there for 12 years to finally get my bachelor's degree. And during that time, I had an opportunity to get involved in a lot of community service work. I became involved in a civil rights movement, for example. And that taught me one of the most important lessons that has guided me ever since, which is that people working together can change anything. And I, I value that lesson so much. And I, it repeats itself over and over again in everything that I do. I also noticed that the women were doing all the frontline work and the men were getting all the leadership positions and all the credit. And that also gave me another aha, which is, whoa, if there are civil rights, women must have them too. And so it was, that was pretty much the moment where I decided that I would focus my life on women's equality in a very, in a variety of different forms. And I, I, I serendipitously was offered a position as the executive director of the small new Planned Parenthood affiliate in West Texas a few years after that. And I, I had planned on being a high school social study teacher, which was an appropriate job for a woman at that time. But I did the inappropriate thing. And I, I, I didn't know how to, I had never run an organization. I, honestly, I was totally unqualified. But I said, yes, don't ask me why it's kind of become the mantra of my life. It's like to say yes, because if you have these opportunities, give it a try. You never know what will happen. And I think that's good advice for a lot of people today, who sometimes I think young people overthink what they want to do with their careers. And you need to have, you need to have two things. You need to have that intentionality. But it's also good to be open to fortuity and to be willing to say yes, if something interesting comes your way. Well, anyway, as I say, the rest is history. I ended up as the national president 30, 20 years later. And, and left that job at the 30-year mark, thinking 30 was a good round number. And I needed to go write the books I had been wanting to write for my entire life. The last book that I wrote before intentioning was a study of why women hadn't reached parity in leadership positions in any sector. We were about 18% of the top leadership positions at that time across every single sector, from politics to corporate to entrepreneurship. It didn't matter what it was. Can I ask you the timestamp that too? So I can understand like, because when you say 18%, how many years ago was that? Yeah, that was 10 years ago. That's 10 years ago. Not that long ago. Not that long ago. No, no. Yeah, right. So I had to find out why, because on my life, I'd been opening doors and changing laws and thinking, you know, we have every opportunity. We've seen a woman first almost everything. Why were we still that far from parity? And what I found in my own research was that it's not women, not that women lack ambition, which a lot of the research says. It is that we're socialized differently around power and intention from men. And we learn from the historical narrative, an idea about power that is about fighting and wars and scarce resources. And that's not really even functional in today's world, because this is an economy based on brains, not brawn now. And so it's really about how can you innovate? How can you create? How can you make a bigger pie, as opposed to thinking that there are, you have to fight over the crumbs. And women are pretty good at those things. And I found that once I would suggest to women, well, shift your thinking about power, quit thinking about it as being the power over, because I know you've had the negative aspects of that power, but think about it as being a generative power to, power to, it's the power to make life better for yourself, your family, the world, whatever innovate, create. And I would see masks fall off of women's spaces, not the real masks worrying now, but asking their true feelings. And they would say, well, I want that. I want that kind of power. And so that was where I started. And people started asking me to teach workshops using what I had written in this book, No Excuses, where I laid out what the problem was and what to do about it. I saw women have big breakthroughs in their ideas about themselves and what they could do, their careers, their aspirations. And I quickly realized that, again, from what I have learned from the civil rights movement, people working together can change things, but when you try to do it by yourself, it's not usually a winning strategy. So I co-founded my nonprofit organization, Take the Lead. And our mission is to prepare that's train, develop, coach, inspire role model programs and propel through thought leadership, women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across every sector by 2025. That's 70 to 150 years faster than they say we can do it in the United States. That's, I really do believe this is a moment when we can move faster, even with the pandemic, which I'm sure we'll talk about. So enter the pandemic. And at that, at the point of, as we enter 2020, we had increased women in top leadership positions from 18% to 25%. And then the pandemic came. And so here we are now. And then I wrote the book Intentioning to pick up from there. So I want to unpack a few things. So that's, that's incredible. I appreciate the research you put into this as well. So when we're even moving from 18 to 25%, obviously we're not at parity. We were trying to hit 50 or above, right? That's, that's, we're trying to aim towards that. But when you're saying that when you first of this research, you said that women were socialized different and there was more of a scarcity mindset and a combative, that's how we move forward versus now when there's literally more resources and many people know what to do with. Like in all seriousness, it'd be abundance mindset where everybody can literally have a piece of the pie. Everybody can have the job, the money that life that they would like. If, of course, if they're, you know, if they want to go go after it. So when you're socialized differently, does that mean that women weren't applying, like what's the practical implication of that? Are women not applying for the jobs? Is it, like what is the actual thing that stops them? Because that's the theory and it makes sense. And it's not, not, not just theory. So that's like the actual cause. But then what does that actually manifest as in somebody's career? Yeah. Well, it's, it, it does manifest itself in very concrete ways. For example, if a man sees one or two things in a job description that he can do, he will apply. If a woman sees one or two things she can't do, she'll think she's not ready. And she will not apply. There are other very concrete manifestations when the website zip recruiter crunched the numbers in, you know, they looked at comparable requests for salaries between men and women. Same job, same qualifications. They found that on average, women asked $11,000 plus less than men for the same job with the same qualifications. So when I saw that, I had this like, oh my goodness, now I get what this different socialization and frankly the implicit bias that has been in our, our culture for so long. That's what it does to our heads. If you are a member of any underrepresented group and you have been judged differently than the predominant culture, it, it causes you to step back. It causes you not to feel as entitled, not to feel as secure in your own capabilities. And it really sets you back. I mean, just literally physically and mentally sets you back. And so what I work to overcome in women is to understand that there's no reason to be set back by this. And in fact, the very characteristics that have been acculturated into us. And I want to say at the outset, I don't believe for one minute that men and women are hardwired differently. I don't believe that any of this is, is inevitable. I don't believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But the culture has treated us a little differently. And, and the result of that is that women are acculturated more from birth to, to respond to how they look. And that takes the locus of power outside of yourself to think first about what other people think about them. And, and I tell you, I mean, it's a really big difference as opposed to, you know, little boys just go be noisy, go be messy, go be snotty, what's fine? You know, and, and it just, it, it imprets you for the rest of your life. And so the, the good news is that many of the characteristics that have been acculturated into women have become our superpowers. Which is why I made this one of my leadership intensioning tools for women. Like, take this implicit bias and understand how it's become your superpower because now the business case is very clear that companies with more women in their leadership are more profitable. Well, you know, use that. That is the huge strength. Why does that happen? It happens because women have been taught, have been taught from birth to, to be empathetic to read, so you learn to read the room. And I think that's true also of people of color. If you have not been the group in power, you have to develop the capacity to read the room, to understand what's going on with people, the emotional underpinnings as well as what they're saying. So you have to, but you have to consciously use that as a, as a strength. So I say put on your cape and, and use those things as superpowers. It's a comment. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, CrowdHealth. Now, as we all know, open enrollment is ending soon. It's time to think about the best healthcare option for you and your family. And I know a lot of people are still trying to figure out what to do. And when it comes to healthcare, it's important that you're getting your money's worth. CrowdHealth helps you with covering medical expenses. It's a more flexible and affordable healthcare option without the hassle of insurance. So while you're shopping around, don't forget to head to join crowdhealth.com slash 99. 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And they put together a special offer just for success story podcasts listeners. So get your first six months at just 99 dollars per month. That's a savings of almost 50% off their standard pricing and a lot less than one of those crappy, high deductible plan. Just go to join crowdhealth.com slash 99 and enter code success story at sign up. That's join crowdhealth.com slash 99 and promo code is success story. Enter that when you sign up. Remember, crowd health is not health insurance. It's a community powered alternative. Terms and conditions do apply to a few things, right? Because like under underrepresented groups do have all of these incredible leadership skills. It's just about unlocking it and enabling and like pushing them, pushing them or enabling them, whatever it may be so that they can actually use them in an environment where that's going to like quite honestly impact positively in that positive for that bottom line of that business. And I want I want to unpack what has happened with leadership during COVID and where and because I've seen a lot of things that have sort of spoken to women leadership during COVID. I've seen it at a government level, but I want to I don't know all the use cases. I'm sure you have some examples of at an organizational level or a business level, how women leadership did quite well during the pandemic. It's interesting because it is true that we've seen that countries led by women have fared much better with the pandemic than than other countries. Now, of course, it's a fairly small sample still, but yeah, but nevertheless, it is a sample and we can see that. And again, I think that has to do with the conditioning, social conditioning to be to to be effective and to because like it was just in the art, art, that's the one I always kept on like the Prime Minister New Zealand. That was like the she was just killing it like in such a good way at the beginning of the pandemic. And that was like the model globally. I think there was others examples, but that was the one that I remember. Yes. And one of the quotes that I use of hers in my book is that she says something like that people say that being empathetic makes you look weak, but I say it's just the opposite. I say it's actually a strength. And that's a really good example of what I'm talking about. And when I say that we can take these ways that we've been acculturated and we can use them as superpowers and their things that men can learn from as well. And male leaders who are doing a better job tend to take on some of those characteristics as well. So it's not that only women can do it. It's that that's just you know, that's how we have been acculturated. So they do say that the data says that women have been set back 10 to maybe 30 years from the pandemic in terms of their career trajectories. But and I don't want to understate it all. The pain, the suffering, I mean, people have endured so much during the pandemic. I don't understate that at all. But from a leadership perspective and from an organizational perspective, a business perspective and a government perspective too, it's in those times of great disruption that you also have the opportunity for rebirth that you have the opportunity to rethink because when things are disrupted and your society society is disrupted, it forces it literally forces boundaries to become permeable. And structures that have been there forever have to loosen up, open up. There's not a company now that doesn't know that you could people can work from home very productively. They know that you can actually find ways to take care of your family responsibilities and caregiving and do your work. So I foresee that again, people working together can make this happen. If we really work together, we can usher in an era where our organizations and the leaders of organizations are much more flexible, which is what women have been asking for for quite some time to enable both men and women to attend to their family responsibilities and and and do their work. So you'll see more family leave, you'll see more child care opportunities. We're talking, I mean in Congress right now, believe me, I never thought I would hear these two words together, infrastructure and child care. And they're now talking about caregiving in general and child care in particular as being a part of a necessary social infrastructure. I think that's just amazing. And if we really value children, that's exactly what we will make happen. But my question, so I'm curious as to why the pandemic set set when I'm back 10 to 30 years, because I actually thought when I was going, I just mentioned a very positive result. Like it was like showing like a prime example of how women in a leadership position like just did absolutely incredible things. But you're saying that at a at a global level, women are set back 10 to 30 years. So what happened? Why is that? I thought that that would have. Oh, it's good. Sorry. No, no, no. It's absolutely right. Follow on question. But it also points up exactly what I'm saying, which is that disruptions are both opportunities. And you know, they're opportunity, but it's also can they can also set you back. It depends on what we decide to do with it. The reason that that women have been set back is it's kind of there are multiple things. Number one, women were in more of the low paying and particularly women of color were in more of the low paying direct customer facing jobs. So that means they were in retail. That means they were in caregiving. That means childcare in a lot of different jobs that close down. I mean, they just weren't there anymore. So that was part of it. The other part of it was that they the responsibilities for caregiving are still falling more on women's shoulders than on men's shoulders. And women are assuming more of that responsibility. And you could argue that women need to just say no, but you know, I mean, you're not going to not let your children have their schooling and women are homeschooling and men are doing some of it. And I will say I do think the pandemic has taught a lot of men who have children that it's not that easy to be home with kids all day. I think men have definitely seen that. And I was just I just did another podcast where the the host said that his brother was the single parent of two boys and he was like going crazy. It's not easy. Yeah, it's like no, this is not easy. And also caregiving for elderly parents, for example, and people didn't want their their elders to have to go into group homes or nursing homes because the the incidence of COVID was so high. So you know, like we were doing things and look, I bought a mop, you know, I was saying my own housekeeping for the first time in a long time. So we we this these are the kinds of things that set women back. The third reason I think is that and I think this is probably true somewhat for men. I'd love to know your opinion about as well as women. I think that this disruption has caused many people to rethink what am I doing with my life? Is this what I want to be doing? Is this you know, is this what I want my life to be about? And so women who have the option and this obviously is a first world privileged woman option. Some of them are just saying I am taking I'm taking myself out of the workforce for a while because I need to rethink my whole life. I think that I have no I have no data points or statistics is purely purely just my opinion. But I know that people are quitting in droves and I think men, women, everybody is just realizing why would I why would I commit to a company that I've put 30 years into they can furlough me or lay me off instantly. And now that permanent full-time job that you know my parents had and my grandparents had before that's no longer the way you have to structure your career. Now you have to upscale now you have to be very flexible now you have to have multiple sources of income people start the side hustles people you know they work one job two jobs or they just make they jump ship every two years so they can get a better job a better title more money at another place but I think people are focusing on themselves more than ever. I'm not putting as much faith in that business or that company that hired you. I think that's men and women. Yeah and I think that some are even saying well maybe I don't need to make that much money. I need to make enough money. That's true. They have a decent life but I don't need the stress and that's I mean it's we all have to make judgments like that throughout our lives and I you know I people you know this whole narrative that people have been laying on women for years about you can't have it all. So you nobody has it all. Everybody has to make a series of choices every single day about what you're going to do with that 24 hours that you have for the 18 waking hours or however many hours you're awake. And I I think we're just paying more attention to that now and understanding that it is a series of choices but we have to make our own choices about how we're going to spend these precious days that we have. So let's say let's let's speak about intentioning. Let's speak about moving the needle forward because pandemic maybe brought us back a couple years so that's okay so we have to that that is what it is. It's not good but it is what it is. So how do we go back in the right direction? So what is intentioning? I want to even explain what that means from somebody who is just trying to push themselves in their career in their life getting a raise getting a you know anything that's moving in the right direction and then I'm assuming that intentioning also has a whole bunch of like very practical like actionable things that you can think about in your career to move you in the right direction. I want to uncover those as well. So let's let's break down. What is intentioning? Because you're writing this as a pandemic hit so it's probably even more valuable now. Yes well I had started writing it before the pandemic a couple of years I started interviewing women before the pandemic and in all of my books I always include very actionable skills tools techniques that that people can use to to do whatever they want to do in their life in their leadership in their business whatever it might be and as I was you know practical practical person and I like actually somebody has asked me what is it that that keeps driving you and in truth it's when that when I somebody says to me I read this in your book or I heard you talk about this in one of your speeches and I did it and now I got a better job and now I got more pay and I'm like oh yeah yes that is what keeps me going it's that it's that so I I like the practical part I have started interviewing women intending to do exactly what I did which was to build nine leadership intentioning tools around the stories of women who exemplify that particular skill or tool and that's the case that you use case right yes exactly and then the pandemic came and then I had to change a lot about the book because I realized it actually became a better and richer book I think because I needed to first of all put the pandemic in perspective and exactly what we've been talking about that disruption is is is you know it's it's an ending but it's also a beginning it's also a rebirth an opportunity for rebirth for rethinking for retooling and so that was one part of it and then of course there was also the recognition of deeply seated racial injustices that have been part of this country since it began but with the murder of George Floyd more people were recognizing this and becoming activists as a result of it so I felt that I needed to put those things into the perspective those are things that leaders have to understand deeply and utilize in their leadership and that I wanted to make the point also that racism sexism homophobia all of these things are joined at the head and they basically come from fear they come from a belief in scarcity they come from concern that if you know if if there's a pie and I take a piece there's less for you when in truth we can all make more pies and and we will not solve any of these disparities unless we join together and move forward together so I wanted to make that point and then I leap into the nine leadership intentioning tools with that as a backdrop so that there's more context for it and a context for understanding the value of diversity as something that can make a stronger and richer and smarter as opposed to dividing us so I hope I've delivered that message successfully and woven those ideas into all of these leadership tools I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode net suite now picture this this is it the putt to win the tournament if you sink it the championship is yours but on your backswing your hat falls over your eyes is this how you're running your business poor visibility into what's actually 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to upgrade at net suite dot com slash Scott Clary so if you want to take advantage head to net suite dot com slash Scott Clary for a special end of the year financing on the number one financial system for growing businesses that is net suite dot com slash Scott Clary and why and why that particular word for the title what is intentioning mean to somebody because that's I've never heard that word before because I made it up I made it up I was wondering I'm like I don't think I've ever used that in a sentence before but I but I wanted to be in the dictionary I wanted to be the word of the year next year so no it's good so it's like it's like it's like the act of doing something with intention exactly and that's exactly I was trying to find the right word and I looked in the dictionary I looked in the Thasaurus I googled for it and I couldn't find exactly the right word so I made it up I just made it up because that's what you say what you say is exactly what I what I wanted to do which was to take a noun which is a very perfectly good noun and intention is something we talk about a lot these days but I wanted to exemplify the fact that I intention is great but unless you're doing it it doesn't matter and it's all about what you're actually doing and I also differentiate between ambition and intention in that regard because to me ambition is I hope I wish I want I've got a dream about it intention and intentioning is I will I am I'm doing it I see myself having already done it I know it will happen so it's a qualitative kind of difference and I feel that that is a linchpin that is an absolute linchpin for helping women get to parity in leadership because they have to have that belief for themselves and the courage to act on it I love that okay so let's break down you said there's a few like very tactical takeaways in the book so there's nine tools but we don't have to go through nine obviously that's why you go get the book but pick pick a couple pick like one or two things that if somebody is you know they're sitting in a career right now and they they want to move their career they want to get a promotion they want to do something more or do something and move up I don't know what that move up looks like and maybe you can describe what they should be looking for should it be another company should it be a tip to negotiate should it be finding a mentor or sponsor than your own company what's the actionable thing that somebody could do I'm going to start with the first one because I believe it is the bedrock and it is uncover yourself and by that I mean know who you are get in touch with what your values are I believe that the greatest leaders and the most effective leaders are very clear about who they are and what they believe what values they will stand on and they know themselves and they show themselves to others that you have to know yourself first before you can show yourself to others authentically so that is the first that is the first tool and and you know both men and women say they cover themselves in the workplace because they're trying to fit in women more than men and both men and women of color more than white women because the culture was built by white men for white men who had women and people of color at home at the time 250 years ago doing the to kind of take care of their lives and so the world has changed the world has changed the families are different they're usually if they're two partners they're usually two breadwinners and if there's one person you know that that breadwinner has to cover everything so it's very different it's very different and not functional anymore and and and and so there's there is this need to uncover ourselves in a particularly in a society that is increasingly diverse and we need to use that diversity as a strength not as a divider which is that we could do a whole program on but I'll move on um I will move on one I'm gonna take one more here and then you can ask me some other questions about them but one that is counterintuitive so I have three three of these tools are what I call your self-definitional tools in other words that how you are introspective three of them are counterintuitive very often they're things your mother told you not to do but you should if you want to be a great leader and the third the third bucket of these tools is the change leadership tools so big systems change how to make big systems change so a counterintuitive tool that is I think super important for women is modulate confidence there is a whole industry out there making tons of money trying to show women how to become confident confidence however is not something you can just learn you get confident by doing things by practicing by actually growing up your sleeves and doing the thing that scares you and that's how you get confidence you don't you you can't inject confidence into your veins you you it really takes doing and frankly the reason I say modulate confidence is that if you're totally confident why do you have any reason to learn something new if you're totally confident what's the bur under your saddle that that helps you to want to learn new things to try new things to do better to to ascend to a higher level of a position so you we need to learn to do things long before we're confident it ages learn to do things maybe as Jonathan Kennedy said we go to the moon not because it's easy but because it's hard though you know that we do those things because they're hard because that's where the growth is that's where the growth is that's what really teaches us how to be bigger and smarter and greater and and build bigger businesses or run for Congress or whatever it is that we might want to do so those are those are a couple of them and and when you say you want to say these are things that well yes there are things that everybody should really try and internalize but if you are if you want to champion some of these things do you think that you should try and champion them in the organization you're already in or is this something that maybe the organization values has to align with your own personal values to really get the best effect because they're going to you're going to come up against some people that are not with it not in line like super bigoted like old school like and that's that's a block or two it can't just be one sided because it's never going to happen if you're a media boss is just an absolute asshole right it's not going to happen so what what do you suggest people look for very another sort of like a practical thing if somebody's trying to find an organization that will help enable these things what do you look for is there is there a process for like interviewing the interviewer is it is it finding the organization that I don't know has some sort of some sort of person or or cultural or something in place that can you look to and like this is an organization is going to help support my growth because I know there's a lot of organizations that may not or there's a lot of people with an organization that may not and I want to keep people away from those and give them the best possible chance of succeeding in their careers right it's so how do you find that right well the first step again is to is to know yourself and decide what what is that important to you because you're probably not going to ever get everything you want in yeah yeah if you're working in an in an organization you're you you will make some compromises along the way most likely actually in any situation if it's your own business it doesn't matter what it is you'll probably make some compromises along the way but you need to know what is it you care so much about that you will walk away rather than violate that I I have one of the power tools in my previous book no excuses is called where the shirt and what that means is what do you believe so strongly you'd put it on your shirt and let other people see it that that that you hold that so so you know so strongly I have I have this is a shirt somebody gave me actually I saw I saw yeah I know I said yeah right yeah and I'm wearing that shirt today that's my shirt for the day but so so you have to first of all figure that out and your question is a good one for people to ask at different stages of their careers because when you're just starting out you have more of the luxury to research organizations and zero in on okay this is where I feel like it's a fit for me I know I there's a young woman who was in one of my courses a few years ago and I just noticed on LinkedIn that she had taken a new job and when I read her logic for taking this new job it was all about you know I've had some great jobs before and I've learned a lot but I wanted to go with this particular company because they put together my core value of belief in the power of education with making it more democratized for you know available to people so you know this is like consciously she was intentioning that she would be able to work in a culture and that set of value like a company that had the same value set that she had that's you can research that I mean things are much more transparent now and I I think they're probably I it's not true of every company I mean that's true but increasingly companies are having to be more transparent about what their values are and what their mission is I mean their mission maybe to make money but how did they do it and how are they serving the world when they make money they they're they're telling you that on their websites those are questions you can ask in interviews you can you it's perfectly legitimate to ask those questions and I'll tell you as somebody who has hired a lot of people over the years I appreciate it when people have done their research and they know what matters to them and they ask me those questions no but what I was going to say is I just want people to feel comfortable like asking these questions because that's how you really set yourself up for success right that you want to you want to make sure you know what you're stepping into right exactly yeah yeah and I think I think you know as you grow in your career you have more even more opportunity to be very straightforward and discerning it may take you longer to get a job as for sure but it's worth taking that time and making sure that you feel it's a culture that you will thrive in and that you can contribute to I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career so when you think about your success story what do you actually picture is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline is it leaving a legacy with your name on it or maybe it's helping influence and change some of the world's most pressing issues whatever it is writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart your success story writes itself a HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter with intuitive visual workflows and bot builders you can create scalable automated campaigns across email social media web and chat so your customers hear your messages loud and clear are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are which is just smart learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM at HubSpot.com that's smart I want to ask one more point and then I'll do a little sort of wrap up because this has been really good you've gone through a lot of stuff in the book to I appreciate there's one thing that I thought was really interesting that I just want to get your take on it one of the change leadership tools you mentioned was be unreasonable what does that mean so I quote George Bernard Shaw it's one of my favorite quotes of all time and it is the reasonable man adapts to the world the unreasonable man expects the world to adapt to him therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man and I give him credit that he was a little bit of a feminist in his day and and that if he were speaking today he would include women in that so I'm sure he would do that it what it means is that if you again it's sort of like the confidence issue if you're self-satisfied you don't you aren't going to make any progress for the world if you see a problem that needs to be solved and it sticks in your mind and you want to solve that problem it may be unreasonable to some people but you'll make it happen if you are unreasonable enough about it and I mean when people say to me isn't saying you're going to get to gender parity by 2025 unreasonable I say yes it's unreasonable but if you don't put a stake in the ground you won't get anywhere and maybe we won't hit the full 50% mark by 2025 but I guarantee you will get a lot further than if we hadn't put a stake in the ground be unreasonable I'm going to do some rapid fire just to pull some last insights from your career before we do that if somebody reads this book what do you want them to take away from it what's the main lesson the most important thing they'll take away from it I want them to take away the power of their own intentioning and to understand they have that power and to learn the I call the VCA method of intentioning vision courage and action those are the three parts good and then if people do want to get the book or connect with you where should they go website social anything like that you you can get the book any place that you like to buy your books but I hope you will go to my website gloriafelt.com f-e-l-d-t dot com uh and go to the forward slash intentioning page and there you will find a downloadable workbook that you can get that will go along with the book and will help you actually utilize all of these tools in the book more efficiently so it's gloria it's gloriafelt uh felt with d-g okay gloriafelt d-l-o-r-i-a like the song f-e-l-d-t dot com forward slash intentioning and or just go to gloriafelt.com and you'll find all of it and also um I take the lead take the lead women dot com you can find out the training coaching role model programs and thought leadership that we can provide to you as an individual or to your company I am at gloriafelt on all social media so I'm easy to find and love to interact I'm on social media way too much so feel free contact me there connect I love it hey good good all right let's do a couple rapid fire um the biggest challenge you've had in your personal or professional life what was that had you overcome it the biggest challenge I've had in my professional life is that when I left a 30 year career I didn't know who I was I realized at that point that I had given everything including my identity to a cause and to an organization that I believed in but I hadn't I hadn't nurtured myself and I had to literally rethink myself that was a huge career challenge I had been doing what everybody else needed me to do hadn't taken care of gloria um if you had to choose one person who obviously there's been many people who have been influential or impactful in your life who was that person and what did they teach you I give the credit to my father who was way ahead of his time he told me from the minute I could hear him you can do anything your pretty little head desires and he made sure to use the female pronoun when he would tell me things like she who asks gets or you know these little bits of advice your daddy gives you as your kid he would I didn't realize until I was grown how important that was I could always see myself in that picture that's good um if you could recommend a book or podcast or audible or something that you've read um what would it be oh there are so many that I do listen to a lot of books so I'm definitely I have a lot from audible I one of the most powerful books I have read lately is called or listen to because the author's voice is so beautiful and he recorded it himself that's doubly wonderful it's called my grandmother's hands and it's very it's very instructive about how racial and other kinds of trauma affect us not just intellectually but also in our bodies and how to how to identify that and how to heal from it so it's a it's a it's a very powerful book my grandmother's hands if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be be more intentional I would I would have learned to be intentioning much earlier in life that's fair that's fair that's good um okay uh and last question what does success mean to you to me success is is enabling people to to be successful that's that's success to me I uh yes I just I would just boil down to that I if if what I do help somebody else to be successful in their own life then I have been a success