Let's learn how to shake up the status quo. Charlene Li, an influential transformational leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, teaches us the art of disruption based on her background helping top companies, like Adobe and Southwest, navigate through complex shifts.
From her personal journey of forgoing medical school to pursue a career in disruptive leadership to the audacious changes she's helped leaders implement, Charlene's story is nothing short of inspiring. In this episode, she stresses the importance of failure as a learning curve, the power of astute listening, and the wisdom of seeking advice from seasoned individuals when making critical decisions.
Join us!
Show Notes:
Subscribe to Charlene's newsletter at charleneli.beehiiv.com
Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and kindly review the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more working moms.
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Let's learn how to shake up the status quo. Charlene Li, an influential transformational leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, teaches us the art of disruption based on her background helping top companies, like Adobe and Southwest, navigate through complex shifts.
From her personal journey of forgoing medical school to pursue a career in disruptive leadership to the audacious changes she's helped leaders implement, Charlene's story is nothing short of inspiring. In this episode, she stresses the importance of failure as a learning curve, the power of astute listening, and the wisdom of seeking advice from seasoned individuals when making critical decisions.
Join us!
Show Notes:
Subscribe to Charlene's newsletter at charleneli.beehiiv.com
Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and kindly review the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more working moms.
We always want to hear your thoughts, concerns, questions or guest suggestions – email workingmomhour@212comm.com.
Follow us!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workingmomhour
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingmomhour/
TikTok: https:/www.tiktok.com/@workingmomhour
Working Mom Hour Website: https://workingmomhour.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@workingmomhour
We'll make some progress if we incrementally improve within our comfort zone, but I don't think we're going to really make the substantial changes we want to see for ourselves and for our children and for the future, unless we take some drastic actions. And that requires leaders to step up and make some significant change, because that's what leaders do. They see there's a vacuum, there's a change that needs to happen and we step into the void. Welcome to Working.
Speaker 2:Mom Marrow.
Speaker 1:Oh fuck.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, Welcome to Working Mom Hour. I'm Erica and I'm Madeline.
Speaker 3:We're working moms, business partners and friends with kids at different ages and stages.
Speaker 2:We know moms tend to get more done in an hour than the average human, yet are often misunderstood and underappreciated in the workplace.
Speaker 3:We are here to shine a light on the Working Mom experience, to help ourselves and others step into and advocate for the superpower. We are not experts. We're two women who have been there and are still there kids, clients and all.
Speaker 2:Join us as we cultivate more joy in working motherhood at the corner of calm and chaos.
Speaker 3:Today, on Working Mom Hour, we have a true powerhouse for you. Charlene Lee joins us. She is a bestselling author and transformational leadership expert, and responsible for shifting newspapers from print to digital. This is especially meaningful to us, since we work in media relations in our day jobs, and she advises companies like Adobe Southwest and 14 of the Dow Jones Industrial 30 on disruptive growth and seizing opportunities that no one else had the confidence to reach for.
Speaker 2:Charlene's insights have been featured in prominent media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, new York Times, 60 Minutes and CNBC. She's the author behind critically acclaimed books like Open Leadership and Ground Swell, which was one of the first business books that was recommended to me at the start of my career. Mostly, she's just a very cool person and she's here to share her wisdom and vision with all of us. Let's welcome Charlene Lee. It's my time to rise up with the power cloud of the moon.
Speaker 3:Welcome, charlene, we're so happy to have you. Thank you for having me. We're going to jump right in. What does it mean to be a disruptive leadership expert, and why is this important?
Speaker 1:Oh, I wish I knew. I think exactly it means I get to go around and ask people really tough questions that get them to think twice about what they're doing and to shake them out of their status quo. So I see myself as a catalyst for transformation, both for leaders and their organizations, but also for people personally. My goal and purpose in life is to catalyze transformation, to maximize human potential.
Speaker 3:Can you give us an example of that, whether on the personal or executive coaching side, or when working with a business and asking tough questions about a business?
Speaker 1:I was working with this very large organization, 150 some years old. They have a lot of tradition, very high functioning, really good executive team, and they wanted to go through a culture transformation Because what they wanted to become. They knew how they could do it strategically, but they didn't know if they had the right culture to do it. And I was asked to help them figure out how to do that as quickly as possible, to make that change happen within weeks and months, not years. And so I started with the executive team and I said you all really like each other, you get along great, but do you truly trust each other? Because if you're going to go off and do highly disruptive things, you have to have each other's back 100%. And you're like 80% and they're like looking around each other and like, well, it's just like because no one had ever given them that tough message that they really needed to help their trust game.
Speaker 1:So what did it mean for them individually? What were the changes they were going to do individually as leaders? And that became the work plan and so it was taking on that individual ownership. When I work with people, I really go for what that ah-ha moment is going to be when they realize, oh, I thought I looked at the world this way before. Now I can look at it in a different way. And when I can create that, it is like the greatest joy and happiness that I could achieve for myself, because I really feel like I move somebody further on in their journey.
Speaker 3:I love that and that is sort of like a gut punch, both on a personal level and in a work setting, like are you really trusting each other and what will it take to get there?
Speaker 1:And what I really like to do is not just to destroy your vision of what the status quo is. It's really about giving people the confidence that they can go and do this, that they have it already inside of them. They had all the knowledge, they had all the wisdom and the experience they ever needed to be able to accomplish these audacious things. I really try to give people that strong sense of agency and confidence that, even if things don't work out the way they wanted it to, they're going to be OK. And when you know you're going to be OK, then you're more likely to strike out and do something audacious and unexpected where you wouldn't have expected that you had before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I imagine that that's difficult at first to get people to change. Do they have to come to the table and meet you, kind of like the hitch 90, 10%? Do they have to meet you 90% of the way and then you take it 10%?
Speaker 1:What I'd like to say is they already came with this desire for this unsettled feeling Like something's not right or there's something else that could be doing. There's something in there and they can't quite put a name to it, they can't put their finger on it, and I can just give them a different perspective of looking at it, and that's all I'm doing. Is this really pointing at them and saying, look, turn this way, look at it from this angle? Or I hold up a mirror and reflect back to them what they're saying to me already? And it makes such a difference to have that different perspective and to also have it attached with. You can do this, you can totally do this. This is within your power if it's something that you want.
Speaker 4:But is it?
Speaker 1:something that you want. So I oftentimes like to say there's a difference between what we need and what we want. But we want maybe over here, but what really we need is over here, and I try to match the two together.
Speaker 3:I was just reflecting yesterday about how, when we, as counselors or advisors, can come to the table making space with calm energy, like everything's going to be fine, like you're saying everything's going to be OK, we can help the people that hired us to sort of regulate themselves. Rather than coming to the table with we have all the answers, it feels like the answers just tend to calm. We naturally present themselves. If we can just come from a place of we're going to hold you and we're going to work through this together, how do you approach yourself and your regulation before going into a big meeting like that where you know you're going to have to hold space for a table full of high powered individuals who have a lot to say and think about?
Speaker 1:What's interesting is I'm not your typical kind of person expert walking into a room. I'm not a tall, old white man who has years of experience and has that sort of gravitas, whatever. I'm a short Asian woman of undefined age, so undefined, and I'm used to my advantage because they don't know what to expect. Yeah, the way I prepare myself is like what do they really need? What's my understanding of? What are the underlying problems that they're trying to address? What does success look like? And I aim for that success Like what is the outcome I really want? And it's usually not a specific action but a state that I'm trying to achieve of clarity for them. Yeah, the thing that I like to say is the truth that I say I don't know if they always calmly arrive at it. They usually arrive at it like oh my gosh, I can't believe.
Speaker 1:This is what I'm actually thinking and saying right now, and what I'm holding space to them is like you're allowed to think, that You're allowed to feel this way. In fact, you should feel very unsettled. There should be a pit in your stomach, your palms should be sweating and you should also be feeling like, oh my gosh, this could actually work, but it's terrifying, and what I'm doing is holding space for them to actually imagine that.
Speaker 2:Amazing Charlene. Why did you get into this work? It seems so specific.
Speaker 1:I keep thinking about all the problems that are in the world. It doesn't require somebody giving us a title or permission. We step into that board and we make that change happen. And so I really wanted to support theaters and their desire to make change happen. And it's such a lonely place because you feel like, am I crazy? Am I the only person who's seen that this needs to happen? And I really wanted to support leaders who wanted to create these huge, audacious changes in their organizations and themselves and the world society and our communities and our families.
Speaker 2:You just described for everyone what you look like. What did your parents say when you graduated? And you're like I'm going to be a disruptive leadership expert.
Speaker 1:I actually went from being a medical school bound. I was planning on doing an MD, phd. I loved it. I loved it and I realized the thing that I wanted to study, which was neuroscience, was going to take another 20 years of science to develop. So I was like, what am I going to do for 20 years? And so I just went this is not an era in Korea and I was doing all these student leadership things and I really liked leadership and so I said I'm going to go into business. And my father said everyone in business is a tall, old white man.
Speaker 3:You are none of them.
Speaker 1:Show me an example of somebody who's successful. And I'm like I can't think of a single person. Yeah, and he said why do you think you'd be successful then? And I said I love doing this work and I'll be okay, because I can type 100 words a minute and if nothing else, I will be the most amazing executive assistant out there. So I'll have money, I'll have a roof over my head and food on the table. I'll be fine. That gave me the audacity to say like I don't know exactly what I'm going to do. I know I like this world of business and leadership. I want to figure out what that was. I mean, I was like 21 or something at that time when I started thinking about doing business.
Speaker 3:I mean that's incredible. You're literally coaching your dad an executive in your family through the unknown. You were doing exactly what you were going to end up doing for your career in that moment. That is so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I never thought of it that way. But again, I'm the sort of black sheep in the family, my extended family, everybody. Whenever somebody wants to go into business, they go. Go talk to Auntie Shirley, she knows something about business. Everyone else is engineers and doctors and dentists. So if any of the nephews and grandnephews want to do business, they call me.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:Can you share some of the most powerful examples of disruptive change, either in your work or your personal life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, I'll speak very personally. A few years ago I decided to make some significant changes. I shifted my relationship with my husband. We did get divorced. I would say that we're stronger now as a couple and as a family because of it, because we really addressed some of the things that were working for us and things that weren't. Unfortunately it's a dissolution on marriage, but again I still call him my husband, because when you married somebody for 26 years I couldn't say goodbye to him. What I found was a deeper level of compassion and love and grace in our relationship to be able to shift it.
Speaker 1:The other thing I changed my work. I had started a company, sold it and was still at that company and was kind of stagnant. I was still doing a lot of things with my content writing books and stuff but professionally it just wasn't working. So I tried another large company and realized that wasn't working as well. So in June I hung up my own shingo and I'm completely independent again and I love it. Amazing, that's the thing. I also got really healthy. I developed self-love, lost 30 pounds, got all my metabolic and cardiovascular numbers down, so just really did a huge 180 turn in my life about two years ago. They say you know, don't change your job and get married or divorced and move all at the same time.
Speaker 3:Don't do it all at the same time.
Speaker 1:And you did, of course you did.
Speaker 3:Of course you did.
Speaker 2:You're gonna do what they say.
Speaker 3:You already did the books and the big career things and now you shifted to personal stuff. I think that's awesome. Did Erica tell you that your book was one of the first business books recommended to her, like years?
Speaker 2:ago, like graduating school, yeah, and that book gave me ground swell.
Speaker 1:My husband Really so cool, that makes sense Ground swell. That book so many people have said. I read that book early in my career or at some point in my career and I changed what I was doing, and that, to me, is like the greatest honor to realize that my words, my thoughts, the research that I do had an impact on somebody. So, erica, thank you, it's so cool. Thank you so much. It did it definitely did.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm not gonna say that in the book, but for folks listening how do you define disruption and how do you get people comfortable with it? It's an uncomfortable word to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people like say can you use a different word?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Like a more approachable word. We don't want to disrupt and I went.
Speaker 1:But wait, if you think about change, we're comfortable with that word change and the way I define disruption is when you think about the way that you fit into the world and something happens and you don't know where you stand anymore.
Speaker 1:So until you figure out and get more balanced into understanding where that status is, you feel disrupted. That's why new technologies coming in, economic changes, family dynamics changing, can feel very disruptive because we're not in our normal comfortable place. But when we're in this messy middle, I call it the liminal space, where you've left where you were, you haven't arrived at where you're going to be. It can also be a time of great creativity, of exploration, because you're not anchored in the past and you haven't arrived, so the worlds of possibilities are there. So it is a mindset of how you think about being in this disruptive space. Is it something you want to avoid and get out of as fast as you can? Or is it something that you want to luxuriate in a little bit, because you don't get these opportunities? And do you look around and you see what else is out there? Because you have a different perspective on the world?
Speaker 3:It's beautiful, Okay, so how do you now my brain is going to flow versus disruption. How do you recommend we weave both of those beautiful processes into our lives?
Speaker 1:Well, I do believe in this idea that our world comes at the edge of our comfort zone. So it's when we leave our comfort zone, that's when we grow, so the more that we can build disruption into our lives. Every single day you have this like ebb and flow, where you're flowing into a place of discomfort and you're looking for those opportunities to experience. I'm a bit of an adventure junkie, disruption junkie, so I try to build experiments and adventure and disruption into my life every single day. They just push my growth edge to see what I can handle, what I can't handle, like oh that's, you know, sometimes it's really edgy, sometimes it's just okay. Yeah, this is a little comfortable and how am I going to deal with it today? So the idea is, instead of doing it in one big, huge soup when you've never done it, do it all the time, because it's a great, open adventure and insights going to come from.
Speaker 2:So do you plan it in advance or is it like I'm going to get in the cold punch every day, because that is very disruptive for me every morning? But it's something that I try to do. I try to put myself in situations and really when I'm doing it, I'm picturing my almost teenage daughter in situations that I was like I could never do what she's doing. And if she can do that, then I can sit in cold water for three minutes. So do you do it like physically, or do you do it mentally every day, or both? I guess that is a both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, both. And I also say that you can be sitting there completely quiet and just be looking at literally ants crawling across a rock and make that a disruptive Interesting.
Speaker 3:Yes, because we have so many inputs.
Speaker 1:We are surrounded if we can slow down, and this is why meditation is so helpful. I don't think about it as sitting for hours and meditating. Meditation is mindfulness is being aware and being present, because meditation is just an effort to turn off your monkey brain and be present. So being disruptive means being fully present and aware of what situation you're in. So putting yourself into a situation where you are going to be disruptive is just being aware, even that you feel disrupted.
Speaker 3:That is a great way to think about it, probably for this specific working mom audience, because it feels as though so much of our lives are disruptive already, our whole day. It could be chaos for whatever reason, different every day, but I love thinking about it, that the disruption could be the moments of peace and singular focus.
Speaker 1:My kids are grown. They're in their early 20s now, but I distinctly remember the complete and total chaos of my life was like, and it still is to some extent. My kids have chosen to live with me now as a dog. They want to wait and live their life, and one of them is just me. Something move back in with me, which is the greatest to have your kids say I want to live with you.
Speaker 1:So it's just so wonderful and sweet. And it is really disruptive because she's like can I use the car? You're like go see? And cards three today. And I was out there parking the car before coming into here. So the chaos continues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember, though distinctly at one point, my son turning to me and this is when he was much younger and I tucked him in and I was taking a bread. I said I want to say good night, I won't be in the morning because I'm going to fly out tonight to go see a client. And he turns to me, goes mom, do you love your clients more than you love me? And I thought for a minute and I just go I love you and your sister more than anything you could ever imagine. I also love my work and love what I do. I wouldn't be the person I am if I couldn't do it. And he didn't quite understand, but he got it. He got the reassurance that I loved him and it also was a strong statement and my kids have taken that as a model. They, yeah, they really regretted that I wasn't there, my daughter especially. I was kind of mad that you were right there as one of the moms in the class always bringing the cupcakes and everything.
Speaker 1:And I appreciate now because the role model that you are, that you were able to make all of these things work, and I like to say that there's no such thing as balance, because you always feel like you never achieve a balance, and I just I gave up trying to balance a long, long, long time ago and instead I think of myself as lurching from one less than optimal compromise to another, because I'm constantly compromising, constantly compromising one thing or another in my life, my friends, my relationship, work, everything and making it just juggling like crazy and doing the best that I can, because that's all I can be asked to do.
Speaker 2:It's one of the most relatable things I have ever heard, Charlene.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. People will look at me and say, well, while you've had this amazing career and you've written all these books, I'm like if you knew what it took to write a book literally, are you organizing something to like the writing hour, half hour, 15 minutes to do things, and when I have 15 minutes, even if it's in the back of the Uber, I'm doing that 15 minute thing. So it was literally. I will revise a few paragraphs when I know I have 15 minutes and it could be anywhere. So it's one of those things where I've just learned to squeeze in. All of my content has been about working full time at a real job, and this is the first time ever that I have ever written a book where I'm not doing another job, like working for somebody else?
Speaker 3:Oh, you're writing right now.
Speaker 1:I am writing right now.
Speaker 3:yes, Wow, can you give us like an insight into what, directionally, what the book is about?
Speaker 1:The current book I'm working on is about generated AI and how leaders and organizations can thrive with it, so the idea is that you can create a full blown strategy in 90 days for something that's constantly changing the title of transformation, and this, I think, is one again. I've been analyzing business and technology for 30 years. I've never seen anything like this. Amazing. And then I have another book I had to put on the side, but now it's about leading with wisdom, and if we could focus on accumulating wisdom rather than knowledge, what would it look like? How do we make better decisions with better, not wisdom? Beautiful, and, in particular, I would love to see our schools teach wisdom rather than trying to stuff more information of knowledge into our kids.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I have found this year to be one of the most frustrating and eye-opening that this is what we're doing to our kids. My daughter started seventh grade which, where we live, is technically middle school and she came home a couple of days in with middle school math and I was like this is so archaic that you're memorizing this the way that you are. I mean, there's a calculator now that exists for anything. I would love for them to be teaching AI.
Speaker 1:Use the tools.
Speaker 2:And yes, exactly. And wisdom, and where we got to where we are, instead of just memorizing for a test, which is what she said. I just need to memorize it so that I can take the test and then we can move on to the next thing. It's the first time I really was like oh, what are we doing? What are we doing to our kids?
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, if you think about education and even the college of education, it's based on a credit system that supported tenured professors. Yes, it's not really based on developing competencies that are needed in the workplace and when you're educating people, and you can also say that college is basically a time, like a holding tank for you to just mature your brain. So that's another way to think about it, that's right, which means workforces with an education that's gonna last them now for 60 years in some cases, and the world just changes way too quickly, even within the age of 10, for your education to be relevant still so, the critical thinking skills, the analysis skills, the basic reading and writing and math skills needed to be able to flex your career in whichever direction is needed is absolutely essential.
Speaker 3:Right, right. Do you have any wisdom on that topic for how we might ourselves continue to invest in ourselves in a crew wisdom or continued learning, but then also sort of like teach how we do that to our kids rather than teaching them the content that's relevant today might not be tomorrow. How do we impart that sort of like wisdom on them or how to do that process?
Speaker 1:Right, and my whole research is is how do you get wise, how do you become wiser? Because we don't actually know how you become wise. How do you make better decisions, Right, you?
Speaker 3:just have to screw up and we're all just hovering around our children so they don't fuck up, like we're not allowing them to accrue wisdom, right.
Speaker 1:And there are a couple of different ways. The most painful way is from experience, and we just don't give ourselves the permission to experiment and to fail. So, really looking at what our relationship with failure, it looks like like truly delving into that. How do we feel about failing? Do we think out opportunities to push ourselves and to fail Right? You see this all the time in sports. You see all the time with artists. We need to apply those kinds of practices into our lives, too, as well. How do you fail? Well, and the best way to think about it is you don't think about it as failure, you think about it as an experience and you learn from it. So we don't fail, we're learning forward.
Speaker 1:So, constantly, constantly looking for opportunities to improve and to grow. Think about increasing wisdom as you're increasing your ability to look at the world from as many different perspectives as possible, and that requires really good listening skills, really truly world-class listening skills. So how well can we listen versus having to talk all the time? We were born with two years on one mouth, so let's use them in the right proportions. And then the last thing I would say is when you're actually sitting down to make the decisions, who else do you turn to? Because the interesting thing about the wise people is they usually aren't doing things on their own. They usually have friends, they have councils, they have colleagues, they have family members who they can turn to if they're unsure about something, and this is where you cultivate those relationships amongst other wise people who can give you the you really will respect and really use.
Speaker 2:This is going to be a fascinating book, Charlene. I also think when people think of wisdom, and why is they think you're old? You're older, you're ready, you're on the other side of all of the learnings and you can become wise at five, you can become wise at 20, you can accrue this wisdom throughout your life. You're not a wise elder.
Speaker 1:We all met young people who were just wise beyond your years.
Speaker 2:That is right yeah.
Speaker 1:I've been looking to them like you've been described as wise, but on the years, have you? You can be less of that. Oh yes, why do you think that is? And they all have really different perspectives and what it comes down to is they're very observational. They observe the world, they're listening, they're taking it in and they're processing it and they're putting it into the implications of what the work would look like. They have different levels of intelligence and background education. They're not necessarily high empathy people, but they're looking at the world, yeah, very, very closely and carefully. They're observing. And the other thing I noticed is that they are highly regulated. They are able to turn their emotions and be able to separate their emotions from the situation that they're seeing. And so I think this is one of the reasons why we fall out of wisdom.
Speaker 1:We can be very wise and experienced and we can make foolish decisions, and it's usually because we're locked up in our fear and anxieties and we're not able to let go of them and they cloud our judgment. They cloud and block out everything. So we can be very clear about what our fears are. Be very clear about anxieties are. What is it about? Failure that's really holding us back and making us tighten up. When we can address those things, then we can step back into. It was really hard to do, really really hard to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this came up in our business recently, marla basically was like you could have let me fail in this situation, and I heard you say I'm doing this in other areas of my life. I can do this at work too and, to be honest, three of us work very closely together and Erica and I, as mothers probably I mean we absolutely save and rescue more than at least I would like To do, knowing that when I allow my children or my colleague to fail, that they will accrue wisdom, and it's a relief because I don't have to do more stuff, I don't have to review more things or you know whatever it is. So anyways, marla, would you be open to sharing more about that or what you've been like working on in your personal life?
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh what a question in terms of writing just because I have a job in communications. And then I woke up one day and I was like I think I should write. I think I should write even more. And so I have been taking writing classes, which I adore, and I learned to write all of these really cool essays in hopes that one day they will get published. Tie in the sky dream is like New Yorkers, something along the lines of like a humor essay column is my dream in life.
Speaker 4:So been taking these courses which are so fun and it's funny, mads too, because I appreciate you saying all this, but I feel like I still hold myself back from opportunity to fail as well. But I remember before I took this writing class, I signed up for it on a whim and I remember going into the class and I said if you hate it, you could just cancel. And it never happened. But what I really liked about the class was that it was a class about failure in a way, because every class we had to respond to a prompt and then write it and then we had to present it with no preparation. You couldn't change a word, you couldn't cut anything out, and I loved it because everyone would go around the room and just read whatever was at the time you're nine, but with that freedom.
Speaker 4:This is just from a personal standpoint. Yeah, I felt like I wrote my best ideas down because everyone in a sense naked, it's like everyone just had to get into their brain. So, yeah, so that's just stuff I've been doing on the side. So I feel like I learned a lot through that, because I realized what I was looking for was feedback, and I should have been more clear about that. But I always thought back to my writing courses because the whole class was about failure and just sometimes you would write a beautiful introduction you loved so much and then I'd have my classmates come back to me and be like I didn't understand this, I didn't get this joke. I got a good laugh out of it, but it's just really good to see. It pushes you to be better.
Speaker 1:so, yeah, yeah, you know what you're talking about. In that class was this level of safety that you could put your best not even your best, but your most authentic yeah Forward. So you didn't have to hide, you didn't have to second guess yourself like here I am. Yes, yeah, yeah, oh, my gosh. What a terrifying and exhilarating experience that must have been.
Speaker 4:I love that I've taken like three of the classes so far. They are so fun to me. I've talked to so many friends about this and they're like why are you subjecting yourself to this? Like that sounds like my worst nightmare and I'm like I love presenting. I love it's so fun to me. But then you realize we're all the same because you see the crazy ideas that come out of everyone else's minds and their backgrounds and like even if you're sharing a sad story, you're like, wow, we all have baggage to bring on the table. It's like, yeah, like we put our suitcases on the table and just dumped them and we're like here you go, this is what life is.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I'm so religious. I'm taking a writing class right now, and you write something and then you post it into an online group and anybody can comment on it.
Speaker 3:And it's, you write something every day, so I'll be honest, I haven't done it every day, but the whole idea is to dig down deep.
Speaker 1:You share something really personal, and those usually are prompt, a background of reading or something. They just kind of get you into that space, a little bit of a meditation to get you started. So good. I try to carve out half an hour to an hour every day to just go do that, because it's really good practice and it's great to get the feedback that this is what resonated for me.
Speaker 1:I wish I could have heard more of this. That didn't work for me at all. I'm like, okay, this is super helpful and I love getting that feedback and I think about it as not feedback, but feed forward. Yeah, you need forward. It changes your mindset about things, and so I love working with editors. I love working with co authors and collaborators and they're like you, okay with me giving some frank feedback. I'm gonna go please, the more, the better. This is going to be. Yeah, I don't know what we're trying to achieve. So that safety, that psychological safety, is by far the most important thing that you can have in any sort of relationship workplace, family, it doesn't matter but especially in creative pursuits, to know that somebody has your back and forward is such an important place to be.
Speaker 2:Very special.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because when I give feedback to my kids, I oftentimes have to check myself, because am I giving this to help them move forward or am I giving this out of a fear and anxiety on my part? And every time I screw up with my kids, it's usually because I've done it from a fear and anxiety on my part, because I'm like, oh, I think, are they doing this well enough? Are they being focused on things? Are they not? You know gaming so much, because of all gamers and their families, who are all gaming.
Speaker 1:Oh, funny yeah so there's all these worries and anxieties that you have as a parent, and it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away Come on Charlie.
Speaker 4:I feel like it's like a visual of like riding a bike. You can give your child the helmet, but they need to fall down in order to learn how to ride a bike, because, right, what else are you going to do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, of a child who's trying to figure out what do you want to do in life, and you have to just bite your tongue and just give them that space and hold it for them as they go through their meandering. So computer science major decided to become a chef for a while. I'm like, go for it, get a job, try it for a while, didn't like it, more meanderings and has finally centered on something that I think he really, really loves. But because it's him and he went on this journey to figure out for himself what that answer was, he's in a much better place. And I just said like I think you should just do this, right, right.
Speaker 3:I'm going to figure out something Like okay, just have to stand. And I think I need like a banner in my home to remind me of this. So hard.
Speaker 2:It is so hard. All right, I'm going to jump to this question because we're talking about it. So you brought this corporate culture of feedback feedforward into your home and curious what did that do for your kids and how do they give you feedback?
Speaker 1:So I taught them early on because they were just talking past each other and past me how to give good feedback, and it's a pretty simple thing. It comes from the center for creative leadership. What's the situation, what was the behavior observed and what's the impact that it had on you or me as a person, or again in the situation. And so in this very recent example my son came to me was like you know, when you started going on about me not doing the work on career stuff and everything, you said these things and it made me feel like you didn't think I was working hard enough.
Speaker 1:And that didn't feel great because I am doing a lot of work and so for him to feel, first of all, safe that he could do this and then, given a structure to be able to give this feedback to somebody who's kind of freaking out over there me, get more centered, thanked him dearly for it and said I'm so sorry I did that and I'll be much more aware of me doing that in the future. So it's this acceptance and this grace that I have for my kids that I am not perfect and I don't expect them to be perfect, and that we will figure this out. But we're not going to get the right to try to pretend that we are perfect and instead we really try to aim for excellence and doing the best that we can.
Speaker 1:And I would say to them you know they're like okay, I did this work, but I'm so frustrated I think I'm done. I'm like why did you do the best that you can? They go, but, mom, I could always do more. I'm like that's not what I asked, that you do the best that you can. If you feel like this is the best you can do, that's all we can expect of you. So, yeah, that's really hard to know if you've done the best that you can.
Speaker 2:Right. So how do you discover your best and what's enough to be fulfilled without sacrificing what's most important or the non-negotiables?
Speaker 1:Well, it's knowing what's most important, what are the non-negotiables and never deviating from them. So if your objective is to write a book, is it going to be a best-selling book? Is it a book just to get done and published? What's your definition of good? It's your main goal. Yeah, I know this book is not going to win any prizes for writing. I'm trying to get it out as fast as I can. It will be chock full of examples. I'm working with a co-author so our voices will not be totally meshed and my poor editor is like how do you want me to go into this? And I go, just make it coherent enough that the audience understands what's going on. Yeah, so that's our definition. Just skip the wisdom in the world.
Speaker 3:So great.
Speaker 1:That's very different than my last book, where I really labored over it and really wanted to be just right. And even then, at some point you just have to stop. I remember my editor from my second book and I'm like wait, but wait, there's one more thing I want to add. She goes it's done, it's gone. You can't change a book. I'm like, no, no, you can't tell me that this is my book. She goes it's done. I'm like it's gone. So rude, the exact right thing. You can cut me off. Amazing, because I kept working on it, tweaking it to make it even better Forever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, forever. So, as working moms, you've talked about how our days are often divided into shifts. What do these shifts look like and how do you approach them, knowing you only have so much energy to give?
Speaker 1:I was told this actually even before I was married and as a parent. You work the first shift when you go to work. You do your second shift when you come home and you become that parent and then you work a third shift, unfortunately feeling guilty that you haven't done enough in the first and second shifts. So the person said do not work the third shift, there's nothing to be gained from it. Do the first shift, do the second shift and stop feeling guilty about having not done enough because you could always do more. And I took that to an extent where, professionally, I said I will work 45 hours a week and that's it, and whatever I do within those 45 hours is all I can give, because if I do more than that, I figured out I was starting to fall apart at the same things.
Speaker 1:So I intentionally got out of management, went into an analyst position where I could control my outreach more. I knew when I was going to travel, so it just had more control over my life. I was still working full time but I'd be like, see you all, I'm done. Yeah, and at some point I had to. I had flexible hours to some degree, but went into the office five days a week with young kids and had the whole childcare balancing routine and it was a nightmare in some ways and actually quite doable at 45 hours a week for me. So the thing for me was being able to find a position and a work and a role that worked for myself and my family, and then knowing that within those time periods I was doing the best I could, and then just not worrying about not trying to make it perfect.
Speaker 3:How do you advise the working parents that you consult with, or just people you're talking to who have not found that set of boundaries or have not reflected to understand, like you know, who maintain that third shift? Do you have any guidance for how to get rid of that or set better routines and expectations or find a better work set up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you won't do it for yourself, then you do it for your kids.
Speaker 4:And we would wait for our kids. That helps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:And are you the best parent that can show up if you're working the third shift? Are you spending all your time, energy, on the first and second shift? So why are you spending any energy on the third shift that is not producing any results in the first and second? It is wasting time and energy. So we focus it Like we direct it anytime it's coming up.
Speaker 1:I'm not doing enough. Really, check yourself, am I really not doing enough? Am I doing the best that I can and making the choices Again, those compromises that we have to make with the best ability that I have, with the best information, with the energy that I have, the resources that I have, I mean, I think about how much privilege we have, that we are able to work and that in itself is a great privilege or choose not to work In any situation of those. The ability to have the choice is such a privilege. So, because we made that choice and stick with it and do the best that you can, and at the end of the day, say sit back and, like I did the best that I can and I'm really happy with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, that takes so much self-work to get there. It really does, it really does. But this is, I feel like, something a lot of us need to hear I'm trying to feel guilty about anything.
Speaker 1:And if people start making me feel guilty, looking at social media is like the worst thing you could do, because everyone else has a perfect reckoning doubt right. So I work in social media and I stay off of it.
Speaker 1:It's a great degree I feel that it is not good for my mental health. So it just went. Not working great and surround yourself with people and friends who are not in the rat race. At work I'll say every work and I'm an organization wrote out like ABC, so you get a grade of A or B or C and I had the very beginning said I'm going to be a happy B. I'm just thinking of buzzing around so great.
Speaker 1:I'm going to keep myself out of the C territory. I will just be a happy B. My leaders manager got really upset with me. No, we want you to be an A. I'm like, I don't want to be an A. I'm going to be a B. I'm going to let these other people who are very ambitious and it's important for them to achieve an A, go BAs. I'm going to be an A.
Speaker 3:I feel that so much in school culture and like the fundraising and the PTA and the cupcakes and the everyone jumping on the group me chat to volunteer to bring forks and you know, sometimes like that's going to fill their cup, that is not going to fill my cup. I'm just going to take a backseat on this one.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, what I did was you know you have a drop off zone and at school and I said I can't be there like doing the work day and everything. But I committed to my kids when they're in elementary school, I would walk them into their classrooms every day. We would find a parking spot and I would walk them in, I would see them with their friends, I would be in their classroom seeing their teachers and give them a hug and kiss Goodbye. Yeah, and that to me was my connection to them into their classroom, to understand who their friends were, understand their teachers, be a presence, so to speak, and they could see me in their space at least at the beginning of the day, if they couldn't see me at the rest of the time of the day.
Speaker 1:I'm like just could not volunteer doing school day. I work the full job, right, and so on weekends, you know, evening events and things where I could be possibly doing things, then would volunteer for those things. But I just went, no, I'm not going to just my work day. People bring cupcakes to class, so just not Totally, oh my God. So I put the boundaries around that, but they love the fact that I walked them in every single day.
Speaker 1:And that was really important to me.
Speaker 3:We have a final question, but one of the questions we skipped. I really just want to ask, but maybe just give a brief answer to is that okay? Sure, what are you enjoying most about life right now, in this stage?
Speaker 1:You know, people talk about being empty nesters and I always thought about it as being a free bird and it's a different set of ways of thinking and I enjoy my freedom. I enjoy the freedom of deciding what I'm going to do. When I sit in this chair every day and come to my desk, what am I going to do? Choice I have choice in how I live my life, where I go, my friends complete and total choice because I'm responsible only for myself at this point. So good, and so I love that part of my life, Just the freedom and the choice. Being a total free bird, I really enjoyed my time of having a nest. Love being a parent, still enjoy being a parent, especially with what in the nest? Now with me.
Speaker 1:Right, that's a great relationship. So back to the next. When I talk to a lot of my friends on, I'll become a quote empty nesters and they're like, and I remember I went into full blown grieving when my first went to college, which is completely understandable. But I also realized it was a new phase of my life and that I had just as hard at defining what that was going to look like as I did before.
Speaker 2:Yes, Ah, I feel that.
Speaker 3:And looking back on your motherhood journey, what is one lesson learned or a tip that you can share with listeners?
Speaker 1:It goes by so quickly. It was a complete and total blur to me. I'm like wait, that just happened and I don't remember a point in moments. So I would say, to the extent that you can, journal, reflect, collect those learnings, because you will look back on this and say what was that like, what did I do, what was I feeling like, how was my, what was my journey like? And to be able to go back and see how far you have come. It's an amazing journey to see how much you accomplished, to see how strong you are doing this incredible phase and that will fuel you in the future. Instead of looking at how hard it was, you'll see how strong and incredible you are as a person, such great advice.
Speaker 2:Such good advice, charlene, thank you for being here. It was such a pleasure chatting with you. We're going to go ahead and link your website, because your website has your books and resources in our show notes. Is there any other site or social media platform you want us to direct listeners to?
Speaker 1:Yes, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I know it's a professional network, but it's where I put a lot of my content on there, and I do have a personal newsletter to email newsletter, where I write about a lot more of these personal things. I just wrote about going to Burning man, for example.
Speaker 2:Oh, I want to ask you about that.
Speaker 3:Wait, did you go? I guess I'll check out the newsletter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually posted about it on LinkedIn so you can go find my post on LinkedIn on my Facebook page. I posted in my email newsletter about going and then I posted after I got back about Mudhocalypse.
Speaker 4:That's what I want to know. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:It was it made my burn actually. And I have to say, you plan your burn and then you burn your plan.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:That's a great attitude for life. So we were all prepared. We knew there was a chance of rain, so we all have plenty of food and water and fuel, and it brought out the best in everyone. And so people kept coming up and you couldn't go very far because it was really hard to walk around and it was really hard, and so people were doing impromptu gatherings and everything slowed down and you could really connect with people at a different level and a lot of people either didn't come in, because a lot of people come in for the weekend and didn't come in, and a lot of people left. So since this really poor group of hardcore burners left, so good, we all worked really well together to make sure everybody was taken care of.
Speaker 2:What an experience.
Speaker 1:Impromptu performances, literally parades in the middle of the street, mud sculpture building contests.
Speaker 3:So we made the best of that. Oh my gosh. Once in a lifetime.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much this was awesome. And we will talk to you next time.
Speaker 3:All right, all right, thank you, thanks, bye, bye now anyone caught me short? I was thinking this was the way to go. And you put up your puppet show. I say cheers to life. No, I'll be no good man's wife, just be alone. I'm on your show. I'll tell you it's my time to rise up, live the life we're proud of. No, you can't go home. I'll tell you it's my time to rise up, live the life we're proud of. So I woke up sun in my eyes. I forgot all about you.