The Psychology Of Breaking Barriers In Law With Caroline Flanagan

What does it mean to go from feeling like the only one to becoming the first? Richard is joined by Caroline Flanagan - The Coach for Black Lawyers - for a powerful conversation about identity, imposter syndrome, resilience, and the mindset shift that changes everything.

From studying on a makeshift desk of car tyres while facing eviction, to holding a Cambridge offer, Caroline's story is one of radical reframing. You have never been the only one. You are the first.

Key Takeaways

Imposter syndrome is rooted in being the only one in the room - awareness is the first step. Survival mode drains your bandwidth and limits your performance. Reframing from victim to first-mover changes how you show up entirely. Hard work alone won't get you promoted - visibility and strategic relationships do.

Episode Highlights

Caroline's defining moment at five: the only Black child in her school assembly hall. Growing up between two worlds - excelling at boarding school while facing poverty at home. Studying for A-levels while facing eviction, with a Cambridge offer on the table. Why technical excellence alone won't get you to partner level.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction 

01:06 From law to coaching 

03:26 The defining moment 

06:41 Imposter syndrome and self-fulfilling prophecies 

12:21 Survival mode vs flow 

16:06 Family pushback on aspiration 

23:39 The car tyre desk story 

28:31 Who Caroline coaches and how 

33:35 Is the dial moving on DEI? 3

8:28 You are the first — closing message

🔗 Connect with Caroline Flanagan 

Website: https://carolineflanagan.com/about-caroline/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolineflanagan00/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolineflanagan00/photos

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@carolineflanagan-coach

⭐️ Connect and Subscribe

Thank you for joining us on The Business of Thinking podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe and leave a rating! It helps us bring more insightful content on the psychology of high performance. Find more about Richard Reid's work at www.richard-reid.com.

Download the first two chapter of Richard's "Charisma Unlocked", audio or PDF version for free and begin your transformation towards authentic charisma:

https://richard-reid.com/master-authentic-charisma/

Production Credit: Edited and produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Business of Thinking podcast. This is the place for high achievers who want more than motivation. They want mastery. Here we skip the surface level talk and go straight into the psychology of high performance.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hello and welcome to the business of thinking. My name is Richard Reed, and today I'm joined by Caroline Flanagan. She's a coach, an author, and a keynote speaker, and she's known by the name the um the coach for black lawyers. So welcome, Caroline. Pleasure to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Thank you, Richard. It's my pleasure to be here. I cannot wait for this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

So there's a lot to talk about today, and you've got a really interesting background and journey, which I guess has probably led you to the point of the work that you're doing today. So, do you want to give us a potted history of how your life sort of unfolded and how it's informed what you're doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, of course. Thank you. Let's get straight into it. Um, so yes, as you've um very kindly introduced me, I am known as the Black Lawyers Coach. Um, I haven't always been a coach. You can probably tell by um by that title that I also have a legal background. Um, so I was a private practice lawyer for just under 10 years. I worked in the um in international finance law, and then, and we can get into kind of my pivot moment of pivot um a bit later on in the call, but then I had the fortune, the discovery of this thing called coaching, which was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard of when I came across it. Um, for context, it was many years ago before coaching was as popular as it is now. But what effectively happened for me in that moment of discovering coaching is I saw the opportunity to take my life lessons, my experiences, and the strengths that actually had helped me throughout my life to achieve the level of a success that I had at that point in terms of becoming a lawyer as a person of colour, um and having always been the only one in the room, like that was my story growing up. Coaching gave me the opportunity to channel those strengths and that experience into something that could make a really big impact and a difference in the world, and specifically a difference to underrepresented groups. Um I say that because initially I started off um doing coaching kind of professionals of many descriptions, like typically I would attract like sort of women who are in who are the minority in very male environments or other ethnic minorities. And then what happened, Richard, is over the years I have, I guess, fine-tuned both my skills and my focus to help people really just like me. Like I really wanted and noticed that I had this sweet spot, this intersection of legal background, the black experience, and coaching expertise that meant, oh, I know exactly now. It's like a it was a hard moment. I know exactly why I'm here, why I've had the journey I've had to help my community in this way.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Fantastic. And you you've sort of alluded to your journey. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that before we get into the coaching element?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah, of course. Yes. So um, when I'm asked this question, I always go back to a very specific day, like a specific day, specific moment. And I'm age five, and I've just been dropped off at a school. It's a boarding school. And I don't even know why I'm there or how it happened, like nothing was really communicated to me. I just knew I was in this school, and you know, every kid is nervous on their first day of school, right? I'm sure you were, I'm sure everyone listening was. But for me, what was particular was I was there in this sort of enormous assembly hall and I was sitting on the floor, and I looked up, and all around me, like every other pupil, person in the room was white. And I'd never had that experience before. It was like a literally a moment of realization that I was the only one. And it's very hard to convey to someone who's never had that experience what that is like, but it changes you when it happens for the first time. The self-consciousness that creates the awareness of otherness of difference, and particularly at such a young age, it creates in you a vulnerability and as I said, a self-consciousness that that really um ended up actually defining and still defines me to this day, that being the only one, that difference. And so what my life has been is a sequence of events and experiences and circumstances where I have always been or had the experience of being the only one, or one of very few, like one of so few, it felt like I was the only one. But here's where the story is. I mean, it's there's a sadness to that kind of context, like that original experience. But here's where it gets really interesting, and for me, it has become very empowering and very exciting. What I had to do, and what I learned to do as a result of that experience, is I learned to survive in that environment. So I got very, very good at building relationships with people who are who were different to me. I also, of course, I worked extremely hard and I excelled. Now, there's two sides to that experience. Um, there's the the great side of kind of all the great skills that I learned as a result of being the other, the only one. But then there was the feeling of being the, you know, and we'll talk about imposter syndrome, we can get into that, because that is something that comes up a lot for my clients and I do coach and speak on. But that experience of being the only one was really an experience of like, I'm an I'm an imposter, what am I doing here? And a fear, a constant fear that was probably like unlike underneath everything that I did was this fear of like I'm gonna be found out um my success. Like every time I achieve something, it's down to like any minute now, it's all gonna disappear or evaporate evaporate, and I'm going to be kind of evicted from this world. So there was sort of a there were two things going on. And I think how I make sense of it, and perhaps we could get into a conversation about this, because um I'd be interested from your perspective, how you see it, um, is that while I was in it, I felt very strongly the weight of imposter syndrome and feeling um like a fraud, yeah, right, that I didn't deserve to be there, and working very, very hard to compensate for that. But interestingly, as I became more and more successful, and I really um and I counted this feeling over and over again, and I I eventually took on the challenge of trying to understand the feeling and and have it not hold me back in ways that I could feel it was, it then switched my experience of those years to one of feeling quite empowered. So if I may give you an example, while I was at school and really junior, I was um whether it was eight or nine, and my white school friend would say to me, Oh, Caroline, you're quite nice. You're not like black people, normal black people at all. You know, there were such negative stereotypes at that time. This is the 1980s, right? Um, and you're from Birmingham, right, Richard? Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah, as as as are you, yeah. Yeah. God's God's own country, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, exactly. So um, and and I say that because you know, I grew up in Birmingham in the 1980s, right? Then it was you know, racism was it wasn't just a thing, it was a very um overt thing, it was a very visceral experience.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, think back to the things people would say, not necessarily the only malice behind it, but how that might land for somebody on the receiving end.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah. Exactly. So I was called Lady of the Jungle at school by my teachers. Um, and so yes, the example of a friend would say, Um, oh, you're really nice, Carolyn. You're not like normal black people at all. Now, while I was in it, yeah, cringe or appalled. And while I was in it, it was sort of, you know, it was gut-wrenching, it was hard having to process all of that and keep going. But as I grew, as I learned and built up the skills of to navigate that environment, I started, and this is what has been the root of the work I do now around be the first, we can talk about that later. I started to see the value in that. So, what used to be a kind of, oh, they see me as this different weird thing, and they don't value me and they're and it's still I'm the other and less than. It became a kind of, oh, if they're saying that to me, then look at the difference I'm making. Like if someone's saying you're not like normal black people, what that is, what that means is I am messing with their perception of what black people are supposed to be like. And I had that my whole career where I was changing, like every time I was successful, every time I built a relationship, I was changing people's perceptions of people who look like me. So you can hear there what a transformation that is to go from so the circumstances were the same, it was still an environment that was essentially quite racist. I experienced microaggressions. But I turned that same experience of being the only one into one of being actually look at the difference I'm making. I'm the first. So that's how my journey up until this point, there's this sort of two sides of the same coin where it was the sort of experience of the learning and the navigating, and then the way in which I think about that journey now, how I interpret that journey and how I teach and coach from that journey is from such an empowered place in terms of what you can do, even in an environment that feels like they don't want to include you or it's not made or built for you to succeed.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Absolutely. And it was interesting something you were saying a few moments ago. It was all interesting, but something I picked up on a few minutes ago, you mentioned the word surviving. And and I and I immediately thought of this idea of psychological safety and how actually when we're just surviving, how much harder it is to be our best selves, to do our best work, all of these things that that you have to contend with that I guess people in the end group, so to speak, doesn't even occur to them.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Right, exactly. And the way I describe it to my clients, like that that's when you're in survival mode, so much of your bandwidth is being used up in just staying, feels like just staying kind of alive and trying to stay safe. And of course, that leaves, it doesn't mean that you underperform, but it means you're not performing to your potential because of how much energy is being diverted to the survival place, right? Absolutely. Um and and we all know the difference between when, in fact, I was coaching inside, so inside be the first one of my coaching groups this week, and we were talking about how like when you know you're in flow and you're like, it doesn't matter what comes in, like you're on top of it, you're thinking, you're able to think critically, you're able to see, like make decisions, you can see, you get creative. Like we all have had that experience of being like, oh, I know what I'm doing is this kind of beautiful tension between the the work itself and then where you're meeting it with your capability. Like, I think everybody's had that experience somewhere, if not in the work environment, then in their personal life. And then we all know that experience where we're so much in our own head and so caught up with and occupied with just not being not saying something we think might come across as stupid or that people might judge us for, that we have so little left, like we don't definitely do not feel in float. We definitely do not feel our most capable.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Yeah, and I guess one of the risks with that is is that you potentially create these self-fulfilling prophecies, don't we? When you're in your head and you're very self-conscious, you you act in ways that aren't the typical you, and potentially that's what people see and pick up on.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah, exactly. That's the frustrating thing. Um, trying to protect yourself because you want to avoid a scenario where people may think they may judge you or think you're not that good at as good at your job as you need to be. But then in doing that, in protecting yourself, and what that tends to look like is the retreating, the overthinking, what you do then, sometimes what can happen is your output then suggests that you're not as good. And your job as you as you need to be, self-fulfilling. Um, and then again, in in the coaching room, it was again, I'm like, and I always am very light when I'm sharing this, but especially with new clients, it's like we do it to ourselves. Yeah, the overthinking creates the result, the exact result we're trying to avoid, right? Um, but there's something really powerful in that because when you can have ownership over the fact that being stuck, stuck in your own head and worrying can result in an output that's less than you're capable of. What it means is, oh, okay, well, if I'm not stuck in my own head and I can get myself out of my own head, then I can create a different result that demonstrates how capable I am. So there is something empowering in that as well, um, as the recognizing your role in the kind of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

And I and I guess I'm speculating, you you tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing when you were sort of going through your your career journey, there weren't that many people you're coming into contact with that that were of colour who had paved the way or that were obviously paving the way. And so I'm guessing that's that much harder when there's already sort of a uh a pathway of people that demonstrate that example. Um so I guess you know your story is probably inspirational for for people listening, but not necessarily one that you had to to to draw on from other people when you were going through this.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah, no, absolutely not. I I do not remember any black role. Actually, that's not true. I remember one black role model when I was growing up, and it was Moira actually, sorry, correct myself, two. They were both news readers. So uh Trevor MacDonald and Moira Stewart. Remember them? And they were black newsreaders, like on the BBC, or I think I can't remember which. And it blew my mind to see a black person on TV reading the news. Um, and but that was like it was such an anomaly. It was just like it was almost like when they were when they were coming through. Yeah, yeah, like phenomenal. Um, but and obviously that was seeing on TV, but in my actual life, and and I will also add, I'm not afraid of sharing in my personal family life, I didn't have black role models of people who were holding down careers and or even holding down jobs, really, and able to and succeeding at a at a level where they had financial security, for example. Um, so that was something. I mean, my dad he was a bus driver his whole life, so he did he had work his whole life, but it was very low means, and we were struggled enormously. So the the aspiration, the role model, they they weren't there. So it's great to be able to provide some form of of that for people who are who are younger and coming up with it.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Yeah, definitely. And and I I'm just wondering, obviously, there's the moving towards the aspirational element and the challenges that you already touched on with that. Was there any sort of um pushback from the sort of uh the environment, the culture that you were coming from? Because sometimes people are threatened by people trying to move on and be more aspirational.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah, yeah, huge, actually. I don't often get asked that question. Um, but it was I felt very challenged, like almost caught in the middle between two worlds. So caught between the environment that you know, surrounded by and the children I went to school with, they came from from affluent backgrounds, and it was normal to aspire and want to go to university and read books. But then my personal environment, like at home, most um like my siblings peers, um, they were dropping out of school, getting pregnant at 15, 16, um, sometimes in and out of prison, somewhere, and then just culturally within my family, actually, for you for me, I remember specifically a conversation being at my aunt's house and my cousins being there, and they um they'd found out I was trying, I was applying for university at the time, and they thought it was hilarious that I was like they were laughing at me for having my head stuck in books and saying she's 18, she hasn't even had a kid yet, and like being mopped.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

It's almost like a force of an inverted snobbery.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

It was honestly exactly that, Richard. Um, like being really shamed for having books, for studying, for wanting to go like continue my education. Um, and so it was really, I will say, like it was lonely because I didn't feel at home, particularly in my home environment. And of course, I didn't feel I felt like an imposter. In fact, I felt like an imposter probably in both environments. Um, and I will say that there were a good few years where that was a something I carried around very heavily and and felt that I succeeded in spite of, right? So then it was something I had to just deal with and navigate and succeed, even though these two things were true. Um, and again, and this I guess is testament to the coach in me and to the value of the work I do, like now how I experience that history and that story is that you know, I was the bridge also between those two worlds, right? So for my family, anyone in my family who'd not really had the experience of even desiring an education, desiring a career, having those aspirations, suddenly they were seeing me. It's like, wow. So I, through me, there was a sort of bridge to that more aspirational world. Um, and then also vice versa. I feel like I was also a bridge between like friends of mine who didn't know any black people, had negative perceptions in them. Suddenly I'm bridging the gap again by challenging their those stereotypes. So I'm the bridge is one of the really empowering thoughts I have about myself, supported by those experiences, and which again I use to empower me in my work and see the value of kind of my unique perspective on these things.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

I think that's fantastic. And and when you've got, you know, when you're feeling not safe in an environment, you've got people from your your you know, your your your home and your and your your your your immediate environment questioning why you're doing what you're doing, I guess that you know that takes a tremendous amount of grit. Where where does that come from? Is do you feel that's something you were born with, or where do you where did you get that to inspire yourself to keep going in spite of all these sort of question marks?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah, um I've been asked this question before, Rich, and I'm not really sure whether I know what the right answer is. And what I mean by that is I think I'm still figuring that out. Um are we born with grit and resilience and resourcefulness? I'm not sure. Um for sure, of course, our environment shapes us. So being the only one at the age of five in the school and being kind of teased and all of that stuff, like that does build exposure to hardship to challenges, does help to build resilience and build bridge. Absolutely. Does everybody, when they're put in a really challenging environment, come out stronger and better for it? Not necessarily. So it's hard to say. I will say that my mum was a fighter. Yeah, she was very um, I would say she was very resilient. She was also had lots of qualities that put her in situations where she needed to be. Um, she was a sort of tricky, and I say was because um we lost her a year ago. Um, she was a fiery character that didn't would never really accept the norm or the way things were supposed to be. And and it could be that the for sure there are traits of her in me. Um but yeah, still figuring out like where did it come from? And I suspect, as with with lots of things, there are all these different strands that just interweave into that. But for sure, I think capitalizing on seeing how a willingness to I don't really, I don't know if endure is the right word, but an willingness to keep going in spite of difficult circumstances or challenges, that then feeds, because you then get the result of that, that then feeds your resilience, it builds that more because you're constantly gathering evidence of what the payoff is if you keep going.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah, yeah. It's often the case, isn't it? It's the things that we wouldn't choose that we find difficult that actually helps to grow the most, don't they? Yeah, and they're the things we often try and actively avoid.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm doing a lot of work, so I work with a coach, I'm a coach, I have a coach as well, um, obviously. And um, one of the things that I we're working on at the Moment is that the importance of failure to like the contribution of failure to our growth and to our learning and to our expertise as well, and how, and especially as entrepreneurs, like it's what you're signing up for as well. Yeah. Is the exposure to failure, the failing again and keeping going? Like it is the definition of being an entrepreneur. And so I'm doing a lot of work at the moment around being really leaning into that and normalizing that in a way that makes me lean into the next challenge, really. Um yeah. Okay. Is that something that your listeners would experience or that would resonate with your own?

SPEAKER_02 22:43

I think I think so, yeah. You know, we've got a lot of entrepreneurs listening to the show, and as you've just said, you know, picks and chops probably on a daily basis. But then a lot of a lot of people within within the business world as well, you know, things don't always go according to plan. It's how we respond to that, isn't it? Do we get the learning from that or do we chastise ourselves and withdraw? Um, and that's often the determining factor as to how far we we progress in life. So it's I think for anybody, whether they acknowledge it or not, it's it's a prevailing factor, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a reality. Yeah. And I also will add, like, as well as like the need to go through those challenges to get where we want to, it's also what we learn from those challenges, actually, in the getting through.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

It is, it's not just about gripping your teeth and getting through it, it's it's it's it's how you absorb that and process it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah, it is, and how like what it brings out in you when you are challenged. So, one of my um a story I share a lot and is very empowering for me, some what are we now, 30 plus years later, is of um working for my A levels and we were getting like eviction notices every single day.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Perfect platform for your exams.

unknown 23:57

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

It was great. So living on my own with my brother, because my parents weren't there, so living in a council cloud on our own, unable to pay the rent, and I had an offer from Cambridge, like the biggest opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

It's almost like a chalk in choke and cheese, isn't it? Those two things.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

I mean, it you know, it would just make you dizzy, just just this evening thinking about what I was holding right there. And it's interesting. So many of my uh I'm still good friends with a few of my uh classmates from that time, and many of them had no idea this was going on. Um, like facing eviction while at the same time, you know, trying to get these grades to get into one of the big universities. And um so dealing with that threat of eviction, which then did happen actually a few weeks before I was uh before I set my exams, but also being like we were so under-resourced, that's a very polite way of saying what life was like, living me and my brother living together as teenagers and trying to make ends meet. But at a certain point, I was um my desk in the when I was studying in the daytime was um these four, like we would just collect stuff from junkyards, right? It was these four rubber tires, like from cars, like just the tires. I had these four tires, so I'd pile these four tires on top of each other and had a bit of plaster board, like MDF board. That was my desk in the day studying. And then at night, I would put them one next to each other and then put sheets and blankets on top, and that was my bed, right? And what I will say is that experience, so obviously, to be honest, when I was in it, I was just so in it, it was like I was surviving. Okay. Um, later, like I felt a lot of sadness for the younger version of me for like how challenging that was. But like now, again, it's like that story empowers me so much. Like who I became through that experience, like someone who, okay, you can take away my home. Okay, I haven't got a bed to sleep and I don't have a proper desk, I don't have that, I I've got to get these grades. Like, that is not gonna stop me. The circumstances are not gonna stop me. I'm gonna figure this out, and I now have that identity as someone who, whatever is happening around me, I will always figure it out. Like I am incredibly resourceful, I'm very resilient. And so, how that experience it showed me what I was capable of, and I take that with me into obviously challenges now and everything I do going forward, and also especially into my coaching to support my clients to see their capability as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Yeah, and and and you know, all the things you've been through and the and the honesty in in in in which you tell your story just makes you hugely relatable. So, you know, never mind just black lawyers. I think any anybody who's grappling with anything, I think it it makes you more relatable. When you think about uh you know, law itself is a classic example that we often present this sort of uh you know perfect exterior, but whoever you are, there's things going on behind the surface. So actually hearing some of your stories, I I guess makes people open up to you more about what's going on for them.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah. Yeah, the relatability piece is really it is really key. Um, and I it's one of the privileges of my work is to um have those conversations with people where they are also able to open up about the challenges that they have faced. And the the wonderful thing about working predominantly with black lawyers is that you know, I'm working with some young lawyers who have like come from Trinidad or a place in um, or maybe they've come from Nigeria. And it's not that they've come from like necessarily really poor background, but they have decided, like they've studied really hard in their country and they've decided to somehow like come to the UK, um, finish their education in the UK and try to succeed in in a foreign country, in an industry that's very challenging and competitive for anyone, even someone who has all the opportunities. And and on that journey, they've experienced so much hardship. So it's really wonderful to both have the you know, my own experiences to share, but also to invite um and help those clients to see the power in that story, just as I've I've shown with mine, like what I've taken away from the challenges I've faced, a big transformation I create for my clients is then being able to see, okay, well, hang on a minute, you're the person that you know you got two law degrees in your home country and you got yours you paid your own way, you got yourself. That's a journey already, isn't it? That's a journey, right? And look at how much, like take how much confidence and um resilience you can take from that into where you are now.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

So you you've just touched there on some of the types of clients that you work with. Tell us, tell us more about your typical coaching clients and the kind of things that you do with them.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yeah, sure. Um, so I coach clients at all at all levels of the legal profession, um, because that's my kind of vision, is for like even a student, black uh black law student, for example, to find me and be able to access all of my sort of free content. So I have a podcast and blog, and there's a lot of ways to sort of still learn from me even before you've got to the stage where you're inside a law firm. Um, so I I um then coach at a very junior level within a membership, um, and that's actually sort of re purposing that at the moment, but at the membership level, it's really about you having the confidence to be the first. Remember, that's the kind of key message um behind what I teach, which is you're not the only one, you're the first. Like that sums up the transformation. So at the more junior level, I guess it's about building, helping them build the confidence to be the first. And then at the mid to senior level, it's a it's giving them the strategies, so the very like specific tactics um and a process for navigating what I call or what is known as the black experience. Um, and I gave you some examples of that from my own childhood, but whether it's racism, microaggressions, and not being included, so it's strategy we focus on at that mid to senior level because it's very you have to be very strategic to make it into the more senior positions.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

So it's not about, and this is a mistake a lot of my clients make, and is an example of the kind of work I do with them to answer that question. It's not about your technical expertise at a certain point. Like a lot of my clients. Yeah, right. And and that's the same, I think, in actually a lot of different arenas. But what stands out for my client is so many of them have had to work and certainly have the belief that they have to work twice as hard to get where they are versus their white peers, right? Or have had to work twice as hard to get half as far. Like the standard is higher, more is required of me. And what that has created is definitely an epidemic of overworking massively, a lot of focusing on head down, doing the work, saying yes to everything, sacrificing all of your time, your energy, your weekends. And thinking, yeah, there's a personal cost to doing that. But also there's a career and political cost to doing that because actually they're thinking that's enough, but that's not what gets them promoted to the next level. What gets them promoted to the next level are the relationships that they build that bring in opportunities or bring in the support and in the form of a sponsor who's someone who's willing to advocate for them. What gets them promoted is how visible they are and how front of mind they stay, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:29

When those opportunities perception, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Um perception is key. Um, and then ultimately what gets them promoted is not so much the hard technical work at that at that level, it's about adding value to the firm. So one of the key things I help them to see is how it's not enough how hard you've been working for the last 10 years. There is no entitlement to being promoted to partner, and what you need to show is the value you will bring at that higher level, and that's a completely different conversation and a different focus. So that gives you an example of that's probably where I spend the majority of my what what the majority of my work is is at that sort of mid to senior level, helping them switch into more of an entrepreneurial life, actually.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

It's a completely separate set of skills, isn't it, in many ways? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Exactly. So really thinking about the business, and that's a real differentiator. And then finally at the more senior level, so where I'm coaching partners, that's about authentic leadership. So we're looking at the very small number, but I'm helping to grow it of black partners in a law firm or in very senior, like maybe they're general counsel in a wider organization, and it's helping them to figure out who they are in a partnership. Because the other thing is for my clients, they're getting into bigger and bigger rooms, but they're whiter and whiter rooms as well.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

And that can be very challenging. Yeah. So there is the confidence around being able to lead authentically and hold on to like your difference being the value you add to those.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

And this is the challenge, isn't it? And you know, I I I I I deal a lot with sort of uh women who are trying to make that step up. And and and again, the risk is that you you lose sight of your individuality, you're trying to become more like the people uh in the room that you're going into.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Yeah, yes, exactly that. Yeah. Um so yes, that sort of gives you a snapshot of those different levels that I that um or different levels at which I help um my clients.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

And and in terms of your experience versus the experience of your your your coaching clients that are coming to you now, is is the dial moving on this at all, or are we pretty much the same sort of environments that you would have experienced coming to the industry a few years back?

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Um I will say without hesitation, the dial is moving. Are we there yet if there is like an equal society or a profession where it's equally possible for everyone to progress? No, we're not there. We still have a long way to go, but things are very, very different. And it's important, I'm glad you asked me that question. It's so important to recognize that, to hold on to that, and we want to be building on and thinking about it as building on progress that we have already made versus what I hear sometimes, sometimes a lot of, which is nothing will ever change, it's still the same, how come these things are still happening? And then for me, over-emphasis on the road we still have to travel, right? Or the distance we still have to cover versus how far we've come. And a key principle in my coaching is we track our progress, we celebrate every single win, internalize those wins and those successes, because that also emboldens and empowers and energizes us to and motivates us, right, to do right, to keep going. Um, so for me, so much has changed. What does that look like more concretely? It looks like well, law firms paying someone like me to come in and specifically to help support and develop their underrepresented staff. Like that is unbelievable. They're putting budget buttons. Um it's making a statement. It's making a statement like we value you, we know that it's harder for you, we want to help you, we think, we hope this might be a way to help. That is huge. Um, affinity groups within organizations. So whether it's um uh the Black Lawyers Network within a firm, or even sort of just the the more like there are so many um communities and platforms and groups for for different underrepresented communities. Like they're they're saying this, like everywhere you look, you can't you cannot feel alone, right? If you are a black lawyer or or any underrepresented, there are so many places that you can join and belong to. And for that, for me, that is it it blows my mind the opportunities that there are for support compared to what I had. And I think it's useful to have someone like me remind people of how different things were not that long ago. I mean, I'm old, not that long.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Yours, not mine.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so yes, I think we have made progress. Things absolutely have changed. Do we have still more to do and further to go? 100%. Let's keep going.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

And what's your felt sense? A lot of these initiatives that you're you're encountering, uh do they all feel authentic, or is it any of it which is sort of uh about about ticking the box and being seen to do the right thing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Um, so no, they don't all feel authentic. I try to filter those out, actually, um, because obviously it's not at all rewarding for me to work in a scenario where it's it's box ticking. Having said that, if I think I can help, it could be that the organization is box ticking, but if I'm able to, if they give me enough access to their lawyers, then I know I can help the individual lawyer, then I would, then I would take it right because it's all about the end, the the the individual client ultimately. Um, so some box ticking, I would say that that happens where I'm asked to come in and speak, and I'm asked to give it like a shopping list of about 15 things. Oh, and could you talk to that and that's it? We've covered it now.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

We've covered it now, that's it for the year. So that does happen, I would say less frequently now. Um, and um I just had the thought in my mind that is that something to do with my my pricing because sometimes that can filter out those who aren't who aren't invested. Um that's a good conversation maybe for another day. But um, yes, so some box ticking, but a I mean, I've got a couple of corporate clients that keep coming back, keep coming back that blow my mind and their the two or three blow my mind and their commitment to this work and to the support that they want to give um their underrepresented staff. So that fills me with absolute joy. It's a pleasure to work with both clients like that.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Yeah, that sounds that sounds really encouraging. We're just sort of coming towards the end uh of today's conversation. It's been fantastic, thank you. But are there any final thoughts that you want to share with the audience? Any any observations on things that that might help them in terms of their journey?

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Um, so I would uh I guess this is picking up on a theme we've been talking about the whole time, Richard, and as I've also given examples of from my own story, and it's about how we can take we can take a story that we've been telling ourselves about of an experience we've had, and how we tell that story, how we think about ourselves in though in that circumstance is up to us, it's a choice, and like we can we get to choose between feeling um victimized or feeling like things are happening to us, we can choose between that and feeling more empowered and that there's something really valuable in us all from that experience. So, to make that more tangible, if you have the feeling that you're the only one, and this could be because you're the only black pupil in an all-white school, it could be because you're the only one woman on an all-male board, it could even be because you're the only white male who um who's the oldest and you're surrounded by young people. I mean, the number of surprisingly older white men who will like reach out to me and say everything you say really resonates to me. It's like the opposite of what you would expect. But the point is it has really broad application. Whenever you're thinking about yourself as disadvantaged or less than in any way, there's a flip side to that. It's always only one side of a coin, and there's another side to that where it empowers you, it demonstrates your value. And and so, my um what I would offer your listeners is like, what's the strength of that? What's the version of your story or your experience that sees you as like the hero, that shows what you're capable of, um, that empowers you. So it's the classic, you're not the only one. You've never been the only one, you're the first. And if you can like practice that thought, and this is work I do with my clients, like practice thinking differently about a set of circumstances, practice thinking about yourself in the way that way, I'm the first. It completely changes how you show up, completely changes how you feel, it completely changes your response to the challenges or things that don't happen the way you do. If you hold on to that identity as being someone who is powerful and uniquely valuable, it will change everything for you. So that would be my parting. Hopefully, that um the message is kind of I've explained it in a way that's easy to take away, but really it's mindset. Yeah, like a shift in mindset can change everything.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Yeah, yeah, totally agree with that. Sage words, Carol, it's been fantastic, really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

This is the business of thinking. Mastery doesn't end here. See you in the next episode.