Unlevel Playing Field

Describe one piece of leadership wisdom that you would like to pass on to the next generation of leaders?

I think the piece of advice I leave with most people and, and most especially women, is that look, the playing field is never going to be level. Different people have different advantages for different reasons. And that's just the reality of where we are. But if you can continue to cultivate a growth mindset, someone who's an expert will be better than you. There's always someone better than you, but if you're constantly growing, you're constantly improving, you are always going to exceed someone who's fixed. And so really forcing yourself to continuously learn, to challenge yourself, to get better. Those are the people I see becoming greater and greater leaders. I was extremely introverted. So I started out not speaking very much, not doing a lot of public speaking. An event like this would've been really intimidating for me. And so I treated the skill. I got speaking coaches, I worked on it, I spent many, many hours in front of the mirror. But it taught me that I can learn to be comfortable in a different and uncomfortable circumstance. I can't get out there. And I think if we treat all of the things that we want to achieve in life as skills, as opposed to kind of talents, we would all be much better off.

And you are the embodiment of what you just said, because I never would've guessed that you were an introvert and did not like public speaking because really you are so natural and you have this beautiful effusive, effervescent aura when you speak.

Thank you so much. I mean, it's been a long road. I remember I used to be really frozen and stiff and I had a hard time warming up to audiences. Being warm is actually one of the things that people look for in women leaders. I just wasn't warm. And I realize that, if I could learn to be warm and my husband jokes about how warm, how lack of warmth, how unwarm I used to be, it was just incredible. He's like, it's so weird that people hug you. You don't like to be touched and you're not at all warm. And you're right. And I don't think I even realized how far I had come on that until he pointed that out. And so I do realize that even something, a skill, the thing you think is innate, like warmth can actually be taught and that you, if you wanted it enough can learn it.