How would you lead? with Sarae Pratt

What comes to mind when you picture a leader? For many, it’s the same old stereotype: a white man in a suit, speaking and acting in a particular, "traditional" way. This narrow vision of leadership shapes how we see ourselves, particularly if we're women, and whether we even see ourselves as leaders at all. But what if there’s a different way?

In this episode, I’m joined by Sarae Pratt, a coach and trainer for women in traditional male or male-dominated roles and industries. She helps them thrive with joy and confidence, free from self-doubt and burnout, by refining their authentic, sustainable leadership style.

We dive into the social pressures and stereotypes that hold women back, the "good girl" expectations ingrained in us, and how these patterns impact leadership and workplace culture. Sarae also shares how she helps individuals and teams unlock their unique leadership style, creating more effective and inclusive organisations.

It’s an inspiring conversation about breaking cycles and reshaping leadership to reflect who we truly are. Grab your coffee and tune in—you won’t want to miss Sarae get on her soap box!

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Transcript

Peta: 1:16

Take a minute. And picture in your head. I lead. Whether that's a corporate leader or a political leader or a social leader. The chances are. That if you're picturing a corporate leader, you are picturing a guy. Probably a white guy. In a suit. And a tie or, you know, maybe he's fitting extra casual in his open neck shirt. He talks in. The specific particular way. He uses particular language. He reacts to problems to confrontations. To building morale or telling people off. In a particular way. We will grow up with a vision of what leadership looks like in our heads. What leadership feels and sounds like. The kind of things that leaders do. And the kind of things that leaders don't do. The way they talk. The way they dress. The. The way, the way that they manipulate. the stereotypes that they fulfill. the goals that they have and how they bring their teams with them. And often if we are, particularly if we're women. those particular stereotypes. Those particular pictures. Don't fit with how we feel about ourselves. and so we either decide that this is how leaders are and therefore. I can't do it because I'm not like that. I'm not that kind of person. And so we decided we're not going to be a leader. Or we look at that stereotype and we think this is what leaders are. And I could probably do that. So I'm going to be a leader in that same way. And so the cycle perpetuates itself. And we end up with. That stereotypical view of what a leader is of who are leaders of how a leader is. That looks exactly the same. And that means that's Well, it means a whole. Massive stuff. That I'm going to talk about with my guest today. But from my perspective, It means that. Organizations and companies. They end up with a really narrow. Experience. With a really narrow focus with a really narrow type of culture. That is led by leaders who lead in that stereotypical style. But there's a different way. And that is why I'm talking to my guest today on the soap box. Sarah Price is a coach and trainer for women in traditional male or male dominated roles and industry. She helps them to thrive with joy. Without self-doubt or burnout. By refining their authentic, sustainable leadership. She helps women find. A different way of leading. One that feels more aligned and true to themselves. We cover an awful lot in today's discussion. Uh, we talk about the codes and the stereotypes. And the social pressure. That women are brought up with. How we are pushed into that good girl. Stereotype. And how that affects is later on in life. And we talk about the way that Sarah works with teams and with individuals to UN lock that. Special way of leading. That they have that can help them get even more of their teams and their organizations. I had an awfully lovely time talking to Sarah as I always do. And I'm sure that you will too. So sit back and grab a cup of coffee. And listen to Sarah. Get on a soap box. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the Soapbox. I'm really excited to chat to you in, like, I don't know, a more recorded situation, rather than our usual conversation. Um,

Sarae: 5:28

It's lovely to be here. Thank you for having me.

Peta: 5:31

so for people who do not know who you are and what you do, can you give them a bit of a rundown about that for us?

Sarae: 5:36

Yeah. So I'm Sarah Pratt. I'm a leadership development expert and specifically I work with female talent. So I run a mixture of open to the public opportunities and I run in house corporate opportunities for usually medium to large size employers.

Peta: 6:01

and this morning you were saying that you've been working with translators. So it tends to be like you can, you do lots of different countries, lots of different languages.

Sarae: 6:09

Yeah, mostly the Europe, Middle East kind of part of the world that works best for me time zone wise. But yeah, previously I've been all over the world doing this kind of thing. And in much broader, you know, I started out in L& D in the broadest sense before I narrowed into talent, narrowed into female talent. So it's been a bit of a journey and a bit of a shift in my message and branding.

Peta: 6:31

Did you start out in corporate and then move into running your own business?

Sarae: 6:35

Yeah, I started out weirdly. I started out in engineering. I built airplanes. And you're safe. You're not likely to find anything that I've ever worked on, Peter. Um, I was lucky enough to get seconded to a program. And it was a big change program, a big transformation program. And I got to sit between, like, my team and HR. And it was kind of like, Oh, you engineer organizations to be better. Whereas I look after nuts and bolts, you look after people. They're kind of a bit more interesting. So I stepped out of that. I went back to university and re qualified. I then took on regional training positions. And then into management, into team management, into regional management. Before it was like, nah, I need to start narrowing this down. Into talent and be really specific about working with high potentials. And I did that in the corporate world. I did that as a consultant for a big four and then I moved into business schools, where you have that luxury of having 60 plus nationalities on one program, but they come to you. I didn't have to keep flying out and putting on Heathrow pounds. Every time I flew in and out on aeroplanes, I didn't have to go to them. They came to me and I had a quick commute from home. I

Peta: 7:53

That's a really interesting perspective on HR and the idea that they're engineering teams to be better. I, yeah, cause I think a lot of people wouldn't look at it that way.

Sarae: 8:06

think you're right. Yeah, you're, I had thought, I hadn't realized it was unusual. You're right. The reason I say engineered is it's intentional and it's deliberate for it to be strategic and make long term differences to how we all experience workplaces. Whether that's as a customer, as an employee, as a supplier. The work that we do across HR, and HR in its broadest sense, from employee engagement, to diversity, to recruitment, to the policy makers, the payroll people. All of that meshes together to how we experience work. How we experience the connection with each other.

Peta: 8:46

Yeah, that's so important. It's cool. I think, yeah, probably more HR teams could do with like an engineering

Sarae: 8:52

And

Peta: 8:53

on board to think about it that way. I like it. Having been married to two engineers, that's, yeah. Sometimes it's a really helpful perspective. Okay, so, I ask all of my guests what their soapbox is. What is the thing that they always find themselves talking about at parties at like 11 o'clock at night when they're clutching a glass of wine and people are looking at them with vaguely glazed eyes. Um, what is, what is your soapbox? The thing that gets you all worked up.

Sarae: 9:22

one that gets me, and you're right, with a glass of wine or two I get a little bit noisy about it, is I'm really passionate about how do we get women to recognise their power and their brilliance so that they step up and start leading organisations. Because I really honestly believe that if we can balance out some of the history, we can balance out some of what is already there, with a big old chunk of feminism, a big old chunk of feminine energy, and the brilliant innate talents that women have, that guys have, but are less, less easy to demonstrate, if we could get those to the top of organisations. so many things could just fall into place. We'd fix budget problems, we'd fix engagement problems, we'd fix exclusion, we'd fix budgetary issues, you know, and there's really great research on that kind of element of female leadership, not so much research on the rest of it. But what we see is more women at the top that are role modeling that are able to say, this is what successful female leadership can look like, and this is what do that's different to some of my colleagues and my peers. And often the women that came before them, you can do this too, and you can bring your flavour of leadership to that, and you too can be successful. Yeah, I can ping you to the kitchen counter and keep talking all night on that

Peta: 10:49

That's fine. I'm just about to say amen. Um, so there are the two things I wanted to pick up from that. One is, what do you think, like, from the women that you work with and the women that you see, what is it that is holding them back from getting to that point? Are there, I mean, and I'm sure there are other personal elements, um, or are they just systemic or are we looking kind of a mix of both? I

Sarae: 11:14

I think you're looking at three different paradigms. I think you're looking at the personal paradigm. What did we learn when we were growing up? The good girl. The good girl does what? She puts herself at the back of the queue. She holds back. She pours the tea. She's neat and tidy and quiet. That's And when we broke out of that, we were, I was a tomboy, I was a tomboy, and I had my hair very, very short, and I wore dungarees, and I was happiest in my dungarees, put me in a skirt, and I was a real terror, more of a tantrum of terror.

Peta: 11:46

was an opinionated know it all.

Sarae: 11:48

And we weren't encouraged to ask questions, let alone have an opinion. Good girls, you know, let the boys go in front, let, let family go in front, let friends. So there's that piece of upbringing about what was acceptable at home, acceptable in the classroom, and how that's responded to. And this isn't a finger pointing exercise at any parent. But often what we're told is to hold that back, to keep that in, to play small. Anything else is bossy and aggressive and arrogant and, hmm, lots of the traits we see in male leaders. And then I think we take that into the rest of our lives because it's almost like we have that little inner voice on our shoulder. And it kind of goes, it's not safe to do this. Good girls, if you want to be successful, do well at school. They do well and get a good job. They meet a nice guy. They have their 2. 4 children. They make their home beautiful. And society starts to condition us. And that's often layered with cultural expectations. create us like a checklist. This is what the good girl, the good adult girl, achieves in life. Thank you. And that can really hinder people. It leads to perfectionism, uh, inner critics, self doubt. It's often why we end up over delivering, over sacrificing, because we're over generous with our time and energy, because we're at the back of the queue, so we don't look after ourselves. And I think it's that combination of the paradigms that we grow up in, the societal slash cultural paradigms that we experience as adults, That interplay can hold us back, because it's a really brave person that says, Hmm, all these things I've held true, all these things that I've done because it's kept me safe, I'm going to drop them and do something different in order to be successful.

Peta: 13:53

And even if you decide to do that, or decide that you want to do that, it's harder to let go of all that conditioning than just making a decision, like waking up one day and going, I don't want to be a good girl anymore. I was like, well, that's lovely. But kind of the training that you've done for your brain or the society has done for your brain, it isn't going to go away just because you've made that decision. Yeah.

Sarae: 14:16

can you hear that vacuum? I'm not going to be a good girl anymore. What am I going to do then? What do I behave? What, what does, what, what are the alternatives and what is, is going to be safe enough? But still allow me to step up, still allow me to play bigger, still allow me to be really authentic to who I am and what I want out of my life. On my recognition of what, what success is a real kind of like, Oh, there's a hole. So what we can then see is people sometimes tip into a much more masculine, they put on the mask of masculine leadership and they push and they strive and they carry on regardless. And they mask their, their emotion and they hold it in and their vulnerability disappears. And that's really toxic for the female body. Toxic for anybody, but we know particularly the way that the female body, our biology works. We don't have the testosterone to help with that. What we do is we pump out adrenaline and cortisol and that strips our nervous system. We know more and more corporate women are suffering with types of paralysis. because of burnout and exhaustion, because of the overload, the mental overload and the physical overload balancing the different aspects of their life, their careers, their work, their family, their love, their hobbies, all of that stuff. I find that really scary, really scary.

Peta: 15:45

Um, did you ever read Arianna Huffington's book? Yeah, after she had I can't remember what happened specifically because I read it ages ago.

Sarae: 15:57

Let me tell you, she had a kidney infection and she had this awful temperature. She was editing the post and she kept going, she kept going. And eventually she passed out. She bumped her head on the way down, knocked herself out, ended up being rushed to hospital. And that was her kind of aha moment of I'm a female leader. And this is not how I want to lead my life or my work.

Peta: 16:20

Yeah. Yeah.

Sarae: 16:22

Gut kick, isn't it? It's a real kind of gut kick of wow, how close are we to that moment? When, is, is that what I'm, is that what I'm heading for and how can I avoid it? I managed to do it, I did bang my head, I ended up in hospital having an operation and losing a lot of blood and being really poorly afterwards. Um, and it was, it's that lying in hospital bed looking out the window going, what on earth was worth this? And it's a, I can't tell you the sort of the, I mean, I was high as a kite on morphine and really wasn't very well, but just the, it wasn't even a, a head thing. I wasn't thinking about it. It was a very physical, like. Whoa, this is not, this is not sustainable long term, really not sustainable long term. And I don't really want anybody else to do that. So

Peta: 17:18

No.

Sarae: 17:19

the, the kind of work that I do looks at the woman as a whole. It's not just how do you lead and the various aspects and the skills and the models that go around that. It's also, how do you look after yourself? How do you bring your best self to this? Well, sometimes it's about saying no and boundaries. Sometimes it's about saying, actually, I'm cancelling this and I'm having a hot bath. It's about getting outside and having a walk, doing your phone calls, you know, on your ear pods as you're outside in the, it's beautiful sunshine here today, cold but sunny, getting outside and having your phone calls out there. It's about saying, I just need to go look at the art gallery and just surrender to the awe and brilliance of somebody else's talent for five minutes, 10 minutes, half an hour, three hours. and recognizing that as productive. It isn't just the reports and the Excel tables and the diagrams and the pretty colors that we, we, we generate and we publish at work. Looking after us is productive.

Peta: 18:22

Interestingly I've got an email scheduled to go out on Friday that talks about that kind of like, that palate cleanser. Mm hmm. Of, of a moment where you kind of, there's, there's been a lot of work to do, there's still going to be a lot of work to do, but, like, you need that moment of rest and reset, just like when you're at the gym and kind of you're, you've, you've lifted a whole bunch of weights and you've got another set to go, but like, your muscles just need to, to rest and get ready for what's coming next. And that could be, like, a walk, it could be, it could be a Netflix broadcast. binge, like, it could, it doesn't, I mean, it could be really worthy and really nature focused, or it could just be like, I need to be under a duvet with a hot chocolate and kind of watching Gilmore Girls for like half an hour.

Sarae: 19:06

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's productive. If you can, there's, um, a brilliant lady in the, in the University of California and her research on this talks about how from a neuroscience perspective, switching tasks, if you ask every 20 minutes, By the end of three hours, which is our morning at work, at the end of that three hours, you're only delivering about 60 percent efficiency. If you take a gap and you perform what she calls a transition exercise, which is what you're describing, uh, get outside, make a cup of tea, cuddle the dog, even if it's clean the loo, right? If you do something that, that is a distinct energy change, a state change, a focus change, By the end of that three hours, you can be almost up to 100%, because you are still energised. You've still got the brain engaged, you've kept the body moving. We haven't just sat at our desks, physically still, by our fingertips and our eyeballs for three hours. Yeah, some of us fall into that trap from now and again. We get really in the zone and in the flow, and physically it's still really challenging on our bodies. So yeah, you're absolutely right, those little moments. of replenishment, those little moments of refocus, recalibration, really, really important.

Peta: 20:32

Yeah, definitely. It's one of the reasons why I love your permission slip, um, posts that you put out like just reminding people that, yeah, you have permission to do this because it would be lovely if everybody just. Decided that they could already like that women decided they could do what they want and they could go and do those things or they could make this decision or they could change this mind frame, but because of how we've all been socially conditioned, having someone go like this is I'm giving you permission to say no, or I'm giving you permission to take a nap. It's so valuable when you're kind of scrolling through social media going, I have all these things to do and I'm too. anxious to do any of them.

Sarae: 21:17

Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love that that works for you. And for me, they have like a double edge. I spend my time split between talking to the women on my program and the people that buy the program. So the employers or the charities or business schools or whoever it is. And The permission slips, for me, have a little bit of that dialogue in there. Yes, I'm talking to women that read them to go, Hey, Peter, it's cool. You can do this. It's fine. Give it a try. Experience a little bit of that courage. I'm trying to fill the, the stuck, empty hole that we talked about, that vacuum that we talked about earlier by going, Here's an idea. Here's something that might work for you. And I don't expect every single permission slip. People are going to go, bang on. That's the one I need. Yes. And sometimes at the end of them I get lovely replies back to go, how did you know? This week's one is about disappointment, which after last week's election news, um, yeah, disappointment was fairly rife in the world. I wish that was a strategic decision. I didn't engineer that one. That was just by look of the draw, to be honest. I decided that at the beginning of the month, not the end of the month. But it's, it's the secondary, not necessarily unspoken part of that, those little bits of messaging, but it's as an employer, or as a male leader, or a senior executive, looking back on that and going, I didn't know women had a problem with that. I didn't know that's how women experience the world. And if I can just open the eyes of a few more people that do sit in those senior leadership places, that do have the ability to buy programs, to buy support for their female talent. To allow them to be successful beyond their internal training programs, which are fantastic and wonderful, but don't take the holistic part. We don't take the gender specific part into consideration. If they can go, Oh, I wonder how that ends in my team. I wonder how that is my organization. And if that leads to a conversation or it leads to, and I don't mean a conversation with me, even that's nice. That's a bonus. What I mean is if they can talk to the women in their team and go, I've read this. What are you making of that? Is that something that is true in your life, in your experience of this place, in, in, in our culture, in our industry? Hmm. What can I do to change that? What can I do to support you better? For me, that's a massive win.

Peta: 24:01

Definitely. Okay, let's talk more about that then, this idea of like this dual audience that you've got, because a lot of the, the things that we've talked about already are quite counter cultural and especially in the, in the corporate landscape, the way of looking at things, the, the kind of different roles that people can play, um, pushing against, stereotypes, pushing against conditioning, all that kind of stuff. And it's, It's fairly straightforward to see how you can communicate that to your audience of individual women leaders. Like, obviously, they've got a lot of work to do, but it's all kind of things that they will, they're more likely to receive in a, in a positive light. But when you, you are also talking to their employers, who are going to pay money to, to bring you in and invest in you and invest in their teams. Those kind of countercultural ideas are not always as. Well received in those circles. So, I guess I have two kind of questions. One is how do you do it? How do you how do you split those or how do you talk about those things in, but the same thing in very different ways to those two audiences, but also how hard is it to get employers to talk about? Those things.

Sarae: 25:21

Ooh, good questions. Okay, let's take them one at a time. So, okay. One of the most common responses, and it still breaks my heart a little bit to say that this is happening in 2024, is Well, if we do a women's program, we'll have to do a men's program.

Peta: 25:42

I knew exactly what you were going to say as you started that sentence.

Sarae: 25:46

Um, and that's usually swiftly followed by, we've already invested in this policy, that policy, the other policy. So we've, we've created the space for them to be successful. Policy is important. and it needs so much more. And then the third thing they say is, well this year we've already invested, and then they list out other disadvantaged groups. We've invested in people of color, we've invested in a disability group, we've invested in a neurodiverse group, etc, etc. or program, or initiative, or network, or, so we're covered. It's that sort of like, well we've, we've been to the shop and bought some groceries, Eat people. But we've not cooked it, we've not prepared it, we've not asked you like, is this what you want to eat? But like, we've been and bought groceries. And depending on the level of, openness, level of, um, gentle, provocative conversation you can have with, um, it's particularly boards and economic buyers, often all the departments, as the last hurdle to getting the budget to get in the cash for these kinds of programs. Sometimes it's okay to use those kind of metaphors and it's okay to go, can I tell you how that feels on the receiving end of all of that? Can I tell you how I hear your employees work? You know, I've already worked with people in house or something that, or I've worked in a competitor. This is what I know from there. That can be really helpful, and still you will get some people that are incredibly worried that their male dominated workforce, I could probably go further than that, their white male dominated workforce, mostly middle class, mostly well educated in the kind of industries that I work in, will push back and go, it's not fair, where's our program? Where's our network? You, you hear it, you know, every time we get around to March and we have International Women's Day, you see that kind of When is International Men's Day? Well, here's the date for it, love. Crack on. Um,

Peta: 28:02

There's a journalist who, who just answers all of those, all of those tweets with the date and the link to the Wikipedia page for International Men's Day.

Sarae: 28:10

I love it. I love it. But it, and it, it can feel a bit like that sometimes. It's like, are we really having this conversation again? And then the flip side of that is where they are willing to kind of look at something different. They want case studies of where it's been successful. They want, what's your data on this? And you go, well, did you know the Foxy 300 has a target to have 33 percent of CEO board positions filled by women? We've got three more years or four, I forget what it is now. Where are we now? Six more years to achieve that. Do you know how close we are to getting that? And you go, Oh, we're at 17%. And it's like, you've had this target. You are a FTSE company. You've had this target. And are you going to hit that target? Is that something? You know, big companies now produce their equal pay data. That could be really helpful, you know, that suggests to me that more women are in more junior positions or more part time positions. How many of them get to the top? often talent teams can support you. Often your HR teams that you're having the conversations through, it's about enabling them. It's giving them the research. It's saying, quote the McKinsey article, quote Deloitte, quote this professor, quote this, build that into your business case. Here's the figures that boards that have two female, um, members on it secure this much more investment, secure this much more profit. This is what customer service NPS scores look like when you have more female leadership in your industry. So I spend a lot of time digging in quite deep in a slightly, well, it's, I'm an engineer, quite geeky, kind of sciencey kind of way to go. Here is your irrefutable evidence. It's reasonable to hypothesize that if you were to invest in your female talent and even more specifically your female talent, where they cross section with another disadvantaged group, allow those people to thrive. your business will do better. That's what your stakeholders want. That's what your shareholders want. That's what your customer group wants. This is a key to making that happen. If we're talking with HR, often they end up with the, my hands are tied. I know this is a good idea. I can't convince the board or I can't convince procurement. It's different enough to what we do in house. We already have a leadership development program. We already have a, you know, moving from this level to that level, transition program. We already have development centers. And it's like, that's great. That's giving everybody the generic vanilla version of leadership. Yes, you've put your style, your branded style over the top of it, your nuance with your culture and your values. And it's missing this big piece. We know more graduates going into organizations currently, and for about the last 10 years have been female. But why are they disappearing at mid management? Why are they not getting to senior management? Why are they not getting to board? Yes, some of us like to go and have children and devote our time to our children, and that's cool. If that's your vision of success, I'm all up for that. If it isn't, how can organisations help that be different? Okay, I spent a lot of time on that first question. What was the second question? Yeah. Yeah,

Peta: 31:40

So, um, so like the nuances between talking to to your kind of female leaders or potential leaders about it and talking to those corporates. You did, yeah, a little bit,

Sarae: 31:53

employer perspective, from an employer buyer perspective, it's what's happening at the grand scale of business. What are they seeing in terms of female succession, um, employee engagement surveys, what happens in terms of revenues, what happens in their industry, you know, there's still quite a lot of that sort of keep up with the Joneses. They do it, we want to do it better sort of thing, that still happens quite a lot, um, between competitors, particularly where there's not a lot of difference between their, their kind of EBPs. from the individual, I tend to see two sorts of reactions. It's either, I don't need this, I've been on a leadership development course, and because the people I've seen be successful have been on that, I will also be successful. And they are almost closed off to the idea that if we could employ your feminine wiles in the workplace, that magic that we have because we're women, you'll be successful faster. And with more energy and more sustainability and more authenticity, and that gives you breathing space. And that gives you the opportunity to enjoy the other stuff even more. Or I get the, I really desperately need this because I can't see how I can be successful. It's sort of the two ends of the spectrum. I don't see how with what I value inside and outside of the workplace, what I value. how that can match with what successful leaders look like here, what they sound like, the hours that they work, the flexibilities they have, the presenteeism that they have, the target driven drive success and excellence type competencies that people get marked on. Working goes against those of us that do it because we're not seen, we're not heard having the conversations. We're not seen pumping out the things on our laptops, on our keyboards, um, Yeah, we might dial in a bit later on and do a couple of hours work when kids have gone to bed. Might get up early and do it so our hours look a little bit different. And I'm all up for those flexible policies, don't get me wrong. And we need to match. It's that cross section of HR that I spoke about earlier. We can have the competencies and we can have the frameworks and we can have the policies that are all enablers. Oh, if there's disharmony there. It kind of doesn't quite work and we end up in this, there's a really great book that I'm reading by a lady called Megan, I hope I'm saying this right, Della Camina. Um, and she talks about, the empowerment paradox. It's the employer that goes, but we've made it easy for a woman to be successful here. And the women in the organization say, not really. That kind of flexibility you're offering actually stifles my career. Okay. That maternity leave package that you are giving me? Stunts my career, or it plateaus me for a couple of years.'cause I have to get back up to speed. Particularly if you're in a client facing industry. So if you're in law, if you're in consulting, those kind of spaces, you have to kind of, we spin up a bit like we're entrepreneurs. If we stop, you know, we stop at marketing, it takes a wee while for me to spin it back up to get going up to speed. It's this kind of, but we've empowered you, now go be successful. It's a bit like we take the training wheels off the bike and go. Go on darling, you can do it. Good luck.

Peta: 35:44

It's quite so that that two, like two different responses really. Interest is almost like, but they're both going, this is the only way to do it, and one of them's going, and I can do it, and the other one's going, this is the only way to do it, but I can't do it. But both of them are like. Absolutely clear. This is the only way that you can be successful. This is the only way that you can get to that point, because it's the only way I've seen, apart from maybe, I don't know, an odd maverick every now and again, or like a part that Helen Mirren plays in a TV show, just like, it's the only way that I can do it. And so I have to decide either if this is going to be for me, or I'm going to make all these sacrifices and all these changes to my lifestyle, my physiology, my kind of, The way that I'm going to let my brain work, the relationships that I'm going to build, all that kind of stuff. Or I look at it and go, I can't make those changes, or I don't want to make those changes. And therefore I can't be successful.

Sarae: 36:41

Yeah, there's um, you're making me think of Edward de Bodo. I used to teach innovation training many, many, many years ago. It's a lot of fun. And he talks about your rivers of thinking. And if the river runs from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain, it creates a groove. That's, that's where the glacier comes through. It's where the valley gets created and out of the bottom comes the lake. And it's about how do we change our rivers of thinking? There are many ways down that mountain. Or in this case, maybe up the mountain, I'm not quite sure.

Peta: 37:10

Yes, it's a fish ladder.

Sarae: 37:14

different paths. Yet we get very convinced because what we see around us as success often has a, has an archetype, it has a character, a persona, and the majority of people that are successful will fit within it. And you're right, the mavericks exist, and of all genders, mavericks exist. One of the things I see most common at the moment for mid career female talent is they look up at the next rank up, or the next two or three ranks up. And they say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so the CXO, who happens to be female, came and talked at a presentation and she talked about her au pair and her nanny, and how her bonus goes into private schooling, and her after school care. I don't want that. I want to have time with my children. And it's almost where we've sort of, the aspirations of the women that came before us, who, who's, you know, shoulders we stand on. I think back to kind of that 80s. era, if you can remember that far back, Peter, where we had the working girl do you remember? And it was like, they had this crazy massive hair, the big shoulder pads, they had the briefcase and the baby on the one arm, they had the massive, like, I'm gonna say mobile phone, but it wasn't that big, and that's what success was, is this, juggling and sacrificing of parts of yourself to be successful. And okay, they broke the path. They, they, I'm not sure they really mounted the glass ceiling, but they, they pushed forward and created space for the person behind them. And without that, we wouldn't be where we are today. And yet here we are 40 years later, where we still have to be truly successful. I have to time when I have my children, I have to decide how much maternity leave I can afford to have. both financially and from a career perspective. I have to decide if this organization can support me as a, as a strong female talent. I can, I have to decide. And it's the sort of, they see the compromises that have been made ahead of them. So to be, um, I work with a brilliant female leader that, that regularly comes to our one to one sessions and says, Sarah, this week again, somebody told me I was really aggressive. And I go, and did you go, do you mean assertive? And that's her response now, do you mean assertive? What's aggressive about my behavior? And she challenges it head on now, which I love.

Peta: 39:57

that's amazing.

Sarae: 39:58

she has the security that she's exceedingly senior, but she recognizes her children are teenagers now. They're much more independent. You know, they'll be off to university in a year's time, one of them. And she talks about because of their age, that gives her flexibility, allows her to work a bit later. It allows her to be away overnight in a way that when they were tiny, it didn't. And that had to cause of plateau, a pause in her career path. So she's so driven now because she wants to catch up her peer group who didn't have those gaps in, in time. They didn't have that spin up time again. So it's, I find it really, really fascinating that, you know, we get told as, as entrepreneurs, as self employed people, that we have a niche. Now that we talk to our niche and we only ever really talk about our niche and we talk about the the challenges and the problems and the opportunities for our niche. And I always end up talking to two. The language that I use to, to market a program or a coaching scheme, um, to work with sponsors in organizations, so they can better support women in their organizations, is really different language to what I work with, with the individual that's like, Hey, you're coming on this program, that's cool. And, you know, I can even hear it in my voice, that there's a shift in tone.

Peta: 41:21

Yeah.

Sarae: 41:22

in formality, there's a shift in what I share about me, even. Not from a perspective of masking, but what's connective between me and a woman on the program, and me and a buyer, or the buyer's stakeholder, it has a really different feel.

Peta: 41:48

And what does that mean practically? Like, do you use different channels? Do you, yeah, in terms of marketing or or do you just, yeah, have days where you are that one person and your days when that you are that slightly higher pitched bubbly person?

Sarae: 42:03

Yeah, there's, it is really difficult because obviously, I mean, you know the figures better than I do from a marketing perspective. How much of our social media is seen by people?

Peta: 42:13

hmm. Like a very depressing

Sarae: 42:15

Yeah, very, very little. So if I've got a HRD that's looking for some help, they may see me talking to a woman about, you know, you and I are in this boat, what can we do about it? And I might be lucky that they happen to see something that I'm talking about it from a more kind of researchy organisation perspective, if I'm lucky. So there's a real kind of, it's not quite a scattergun approach. But I know it's, there's a, there's a feel of it being a bit ad hoc on my behalf. Maybe that's my engineering brain kicking in. It would like it to be planned and neat. And actually it can't be because I can't control who sees what in that kind of marketing space. Um, what I do try to do is if I do anything that's in person, it's shifting. So for example, earlier in the year, myself and Jen, who, who is the co founder of SOAR Leadership that we do together We spoke at a conference that was purely for people that were in the L& D talent space. So we're specifically talking to buyers. And we did that through going, we are going to teach something that we teach to all our people. Because we think it will help you. And it will give you a flavor of why we do things differently. And the impacts of what we do differently. And if I go to something where I know lots of professional women will be at. So there's some brilliant networks around London to do that where you can go and hang out with people in finance or people in marketing or people in media and that kind of thing. And my conversation is back at that human level, woman to woman. How is it? What's it like? What's missing for you? So there is a little bit that I sometimes feel it's like, like one of those dolls. Remember where you could turn the heads?

Peta: 44:04

Yes.

Sarae: 44:04

Yeah, remember those? It's like they had a dress on one side and a dress on the other side and you could kind of flip them around. And you know which one was which. Maybe that's how I come across sometimes, because I have to go, who am I talking to? Which version of the same thing? And it's that two sides of the same coin. I want you as an individual woman to recognize you have the potential to be a senior leader, to make real impact on the world around you. And, oh, you have the ability to buy this and enable your women this way. This is why you want to do it. So it's, there's always a little bit of like, who am I? Where am I? Who are you? It's probably a good thing, really, that I don't just launch into my plug and play. And

Peta: 44:51

I think it probably makes it more authentic. I think it's like, but the key for, the key for you is that you are saying, you're trying to get to the same result. Like you are, you are trying to reach the same goal that you're not like, to pick the metaphor from earlier, you're not trying to walk up two different mountains at two different times. Like it's the one mountain, the pinnacle, the peak is the same. In order to encourage the people that you're working with to walk up to the top, you're gonna have to tell them different things. Like, one of my children will be, um, really enthused and, um, I can't think of the word now because my brain is just gone, but one of them will be like, if I tell them there's a cafe at the top of the mountain, then they will climb up the mountain. For the other one, if I tell them there's like, I don't know, an interesting fossil or, I don't know, there might be a dragon, then, or if we're going to have a race, I tell them that it'll be the first to the top that wins, then they'll run up the mountain. But if I just had a blanket message, then nobody would get to the top of the mountain. So I think you're not being, if you were. If you were trying to reach a different goal for each of those audiences, it would feel more disingenuous, I think. Um, and you would, I think you'd probably run the risk of losing trust with, with either audience. But you're always trying to get to the same place. You're just saying it differently.

Sarae: 46:09

I think if I wind back about, ooh, 10, 12 years, where I taught a lot of Pilates, I still teach Pilates. I never market it anymore. If you get to hear about my Pilates, please don't anybody listening to this, ring me up and ask if you can have a Pilates class. Sorry, loves. No. Um, I don't market it. If you come to class, it's because somebody's gone, can I ask a friend? They put their back. Can they, you know, I teach rehab, prioritize. It's really specific. It isn't general stuff like you find in the gym. It's really specific. I don't market it, but I used to, and I used to market it all on the same, um, pages or tags or handles, whatever we're going to call it now. And I think that confused people. Lots of people were like, that's really cool. She understands what's going on in your head and in your body. That's really interesting. And I still have that background knowledge and I still have that inner desire to learn more about how do we physically function? What are our hormones doing? What, what's happening in our muscles as we're getting older? All of that stuff is still there, but I tend to just be Blur it into what I'm doing now, I don't go my Pilates CPD this month that included looking at Yeah, the cycle what happens during a hormonal cycle to our body Why we should be eating quinoa the week before we have our bleed who knew that was a big learning for me.

Peta: 47:30

Goodness.

Sarae: 47:31

isn't kind of relevant when I'm talking to employers or to women

Peta: 47:34

writing that down.

Sarae: 47:36

You can do that. I can send you a whole list of stuff. But there's a, there is a piece where we talk about cycles as part of female leadership. There are weeks where, and I don't know whether this will resonate, Peter, there is weeks in my hormonal cycle where you could just take a running jump and I couldn't care less about you. And then there's a week where it's like, come on, bring it on, everything's going, this is fab. And then it's like, oh, I love everybody. And then it's like, oh, I'm drifting into like, don't mess with me territory. And then we hit cycle again, and off we go. I do, baby.

Peta: 48:13

Definitely.

Sarae: 48:14

But understanding that and understanding the physicality of that, and enabling women leaders to understand that, it's to schedule your diary different. Don't do a massive launch on the week that you want to have a duvet day. Because you can't have it. But you still feel like it. Just a week after when you're all get up and go. And it's having those little pieces of wisdom, it's having those, that kind of thing that doesn't appear in in house corporate stuff. That's where I think the magic is in what I do. It's that empowerment piece, not from the cheesy kind of, yay, women kind of, bernard bras kind of programs, which are fabulous if that's what you want. It's about going as a woman, what makes you whole? And the whole is more than the person that sits in the meeting. It's more than the person that rocks up and gets in the elevator. It has to be head, heart and hands. It's the whole of you.

Peta: 49:17

Love that. That was a very beautiful way to finish the conversation. Um, if people have listened to this and gone I need Sarah to come talk to my company or I need to talk to Sarah about quinoa, like, where should, where should they find you? Where can they, where can they find you, um, Uh, yeah. And if there's anything that you want to plug, then please be my guest.

Sarae: 49:41

Thank you. Um, the easiest thing is to check the spelling of my name, because if you get it wrong, the Sarah Pratt with a H isn't suitable for work, as I learned from a client, um, who very, politely told me that you don't look anything like your IMDB picture, and it was like, I don't, yeah. So not Sarah with a H. Sarah, S A R A E, two T's, that's important too. If you Google my name, pretty much you'll find me, because there isn't anybody else with that weird combination of spelling. But yeah, please don't hit on any links that are S A R A E.

Peta: 50:19

That has made my day and also made me want to go and look on IMDb, not gonna lie. Uh.

Sarae: 50:24

It's funny, but it's not me.

Peta: 50:27

There's another Peter O'Brien in Australia who is a food photographer and occasionally I get her emails. It's very weird.

Sarae: 50:34

Yeah, I've never had this lady's emails, but you know, maybe one day. In a different life.

Peta: 50:40

so yes, people need to go and Google you. I will pop links, the correct ones, in the show notes for people to go check out. But yes, follow Sarah on on LinkedIn and Instagram. Her permission slips are brilliant. All the content she puts out is great. Um, and she's a fabulous human being, so you should go and do that anyway. But thank you so much for being with us and for taking the time to talk to us about, yeah, about what you do and, and the things that you're passionate about. It's been a joy.

Sarae: 51:07

It has for me too. Thank you for having me. Brilliant.