Attuned Leadership for Women Podcast
Episode 005: How Backing From Upper Leadership Fuels Women’s Success
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RSSWhat if you had the key to unlock the doors of upper leadership support to accelerate your career? In this episode, I’m talking with a special guest, Barbara Rapaport, who holds that key. She’s the visionary founder of Real Time Perspectives, an executive coaching firm, and the author of the memoir, “Reimagined.”
In this candid, powerful conversation we’re not just showing you how to make sure you are seen and heard, but highlighting how to build supportive relationships with people that will open doors and pave the way for your future success.
Tune in for Barbara’s insights on how to manage pay inequity, respond when your authority is not respected, and her real-world executive coaching advice on how to create meaningful relationships with upper leadership that may turn into your greatest career asset.
Show Notes:
00:04:26 Importance of upper leadership support.
00:09:25 Internal values drive personal agency.
00:13:29 Gender pay disparity.
00:17:09 Take ownership of your power.
00:20:31 Workplace bullying and resilience.
00:24:56 Build trust and rapport with leadership.
00:32:05 Embrace curiosity for new opportunities.
00:33:10 Negotiation and compromise.
00:35:41 Personal branding is critical.
00:42:49 Leaders should support their team.
00:45:33 Hidden barriers in authority figures.
00:50:41 Empathy and empowerment in leadership.
00:52:34 Nurture relationships and reframe perspectives.
00:53:00 The power of knowing what you want.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Reimagined by Barbara Rapaport (book)
True North by Bill George (book)
Connect with Barbara:
Prefer to Read? Here’s the transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
Introduction:
Dr. Crystal Frazee
What if you had the key to unlock the doors of upper leadership support to accelerate your career? Today, I’m talking with a special guest who holds that key. Her name is Barbara Rappaport, and she’s the visionary founder of Real Time Perspectives, an executive coaching firm, and the author of the memoir Reimagined. Be prepared to take notes with this conversation, and to be truly inspired by Barbara’s insights, here’s a sneak peek before we get started.
Barbara Rapaport
Walking into the room and saying, in that room, regardless of role, regardless of responsibility, regardless of hierarchy, I am there because I have thoughts that are worth speaking to, learning more about, getting feedback on, etc. So walking into a room with the mental model that in this moment, I am the same as everybody else for the purposes of this discussion, sets you free.
Main Content:
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Welcome to show number five, where I have the privilege of diving deep into women’s leadership with a true local legend and global expert in the coaching field. Barbara, in the short time that I’ve known you, I’ve observed a few things that I want to share with the listeners that they may not know yet. You have this true sense of purpose and dedication to developing leaders that just seems to fuel you and keeps you going. You’ve had this successful corporate career, founded your own company that has thrived, and written a memoir after a harrowing cancer recovery. I’m just so appreciative of all that you’ve contributed to the field and continue to do. And I think that that’s really important to set the stage with. And second, there’s this humility that I get from you that is an essential piece of your leadership that just puts people at ease. That I know the listeners can’t really get through the sound waves like they could if they could see you in person. And somehow you always know how to insert humor right where lighthearted relief is needed. So I think those are important qualities that help our listeners get an idea of what’s in store. And I’m thrilled to jump into our topic for today. And I’m so appreciative that you’re sharing the insights from your journey that you’ve learned with us.
And what we’re going to talk about is this conversation that Barbara brought up at the Athena Forum, which is this lovely quarterly luncheon put on by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, where you were the keynote speaker. And at the end, an audience member asked a question. And I just had this light bulb moment go off. And I said, everybody needs to hear this. Because I’ve had this experience. I know so many other women have had this experience.
And I want you to share the story of how important it is to get upper level leadership support in order to succeed as a woman. So now I’m going to turn the mic over. Barbara, you can take it away and kick things off.
Barbara Rapaport
Well, first of all, thank you for such a beautiful conversation. Thank you for such a beautiful beginning to our chat today. I can’t tell you how warm inside I’ll be. You know, use hackneyed phrase, but it makes me feel warm inside and joyful. And you know, I have a smile on my face. So thank you for the opportunity. When I think about starting off and sharing a little bit about who I am and who I intend to be, not so much what I do, I think about a whole bunch of things at this stage of my life. And I’ve talked before about a tool that I’ve used in my practice, my consulting practice. It comes from Bill George. It’s a book he wrote called True North. And it’s really interesting. There’s some valuable frameworks there. One of them that I really like is he interviewed a whole lot of leaders in, I think, major corporations over a number of years. And he found out that when you put the research together, there were three stages of leadership. The first one being character formation, edging into learning to lead. You know, all the things that many of maybe your listeners are coping with now and gaining more and more competency, encouraging confidence. But the third one is giving back. And I feel like that’s me in my own way. And that giving back came as a result of lots of experiences, some of which I hope we get to share today, some that weren’t so great. And how I overcame them under the perspective I took, but also what I learned with the hope that you wouldn’t have to go through, you the listener, wouldn’t have to go through any kind of traumatic experience like my cancer experience, for example, that would transform how I saw my life and the world within which I was operating. I’d like to give you enough thought today that maybe you could turn a corner sooner and never have to experience something that traumatic in the end to leave you in a place of, I can now really see my values. I really wasn’t paying attention to them. Maybe you can do that more now. Does that make sense, Crystal?
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Absolutely. And I am so on board with that because I just feel like we’re at this juncture point where there’s this aha, this waking up, all the studies are there. We know that women are just as capable, as accomplished, and as ready to step into leadership. And what we need is more conversations around the challenges that we’ve had, open, vulnerable, and insightful conversations that really highlight the root of the issues that we feel and how we overcome them and not gatekeeping that information. And I really think that’s how we’re going to get ahead.
Barbara Rapaport
The place I wanted to start before we get into some tangible experiences that maybe you and I could really go back and forth around to get to the highlights of our topic today are the things that make me tick today. Okay. I really believe in paying attention to whether or not we’re driven by our own internal values and internal standards of what’s right, moralistically, operationally, right? It could be in our work world, just making decisions about what to do next. That we never take out of our lives, even as women who care a lot about other people, we know this, right? The nurturers biologically on some level, but that we never take away the fact that we can intersect our care for others and desire to nurture and support others in service to others. But we never downgrade the importance of us doing that same thing for ourselves.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
That’s so good. You’re going to have to say that again. Can you repeat that one more time? Make sure everybody’s listening.
Barbara Rapaport
So I hope so. That we don’t, as women, take away all the wonderfulness. I don’t even think that’s a word, but all what’s great within us, that’s around service to others, caring for others, nurturing others, helping others grow and develop. We don’t take that away. What we do is we give to ourselves equal time around those things. So we nurture ourselves. We give time to ourselves. We develop ourselves. And the way I have seen that come to be, both for personal reasons, and for my client base, is recognizing the difference between internal standards or authority and external standards or authority. Who and what are driving you to make the intentional decisions you have an opportunity to make. And the more you can rely on your internal, the more you will be free to exhibit or express your agency, your self-advocacy, your self-worth, and your capacity to let your voice be heard. So that’s really critical to me. Is there something you might want to respond to that, perhaps?
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Well, I think, I mean, just what I’ve seen in my own practice is that that can be a challenge. I mean, that there’s so many things that come up unconsciously that can make that a challenge for women to navigate that. The what I want and what’s expected of me. I would say that makes a lot of sense. That when we look at people’s natural dynamics with others, we base it on what we observe and see and, in essence, learn from.
Barbara Rapaport
There’s another little tool, I guess, we could think about. That’s the way we can learn from. And I think that’s a great way to do that. I think that’s a great way to do that. And I think that’s a great way to do that. And I think that’s a great way to do that. Another little tool, I guess, we could think about, which would be when you have an opportunity to make a choice, are you willing to just think about what is driving that choice that’s within you? Right. Put into your mind in that moment all the other things that are informing what you should, quote unquote, do. I don’t like the word should. Because should, to me, kind of implies that others are giving you a standard that you should adhere to. Maybe you can make that should for yourself. I should at least think about what do I really want? It’s a simple question, Crystal, right? And I ask myself that all the time. What do I want? What outcome do I really want? And can I finesse or navigate wholly and with integrity and all the things that I value, can I do that listening to that inner voice? And so as hard as it is, and I don’t diminish that, right, because I have a client base full of people who are struggling.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
But it’s amazing how much can happen if we do a simple take that pause and ask yourself, what do I want? It’s essential. Like if we started every day and ended every day with that clarity, for sure. Yeah.
Barbara Rapaport
So it’s very important to me in my life at this stage. I’m really clear about that. And if I make an intentional choice to put myself not first for self-care or anything like that, that I’m doing it wholeheartedly with full understanding of what the tradeoffs are and why they’re worth it.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So I’m wondering if you can talk to, you know, how to do that? How do we take those qualities that you’ve developed over your whole career and boil those down so listeners know how they can translate those into some practical strategies to use in the workplace?
Barbara Rapaport
I want to tell you a couple of stories about things that happened to me at the Fortune 500 company where I was working. And they all have to do with, at some level, not being backed up or treated with respect by a leader. And in all cases, they were male. Except for one. And I’ll also tell you one story or two stories about people who were the opposite of that, who were totally supportive. And the difference from my vantage point, some of those attributes that, I don’t know, I think impact all of us. Let me give you a quick sample of a few because I think you’re going to go, oh my gosh. Once you start thinking about them, you remember way more than you’ve realized kind of at a conscious level. Right. Yeah. Yup. Yup. All right. One of them was I was underpaid in this company and I found out, I don’t even remember how I found out, but I had a male colleague, same level, same title. And it wasn’t like a thousand dollars. It was like thousands, plural, of dollars. And it was so interesting. I went to HR and I said, you know, I found this out. What am I supposed to do? And they and my current leader, again, remember these all be male unless I say differently, said, well, how did you find out? That was the answer.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Mm-hmm. You’re guilty.
Barbara Rapaport
Yeah. There you go. Like shame on you. And I found out actually from someone in HR, they told me. Yeah. So I was like, what? Like, what’s this about? And I got the fun and dance about, you know, this person was way more, you know, experience, you know, all this stuff, the jargon we get all the time. Right. Some of which may have been true. I was pretty young in my career at that time. So I’m not sure how much might have been true from the organization’s perspective. But my story is what followed years later was that played to me my entire time at that company.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Was that because you asked or-
Barbara Rapaport
No, I’m sorry. That I was always behind. I was always behind. And one of my leaders, also a male, when he took me on and I’ll allude to how that happened later on in these stories, but when he took me on and said, I have a place for you, one of the first things he did was he came back to me and he said, you are grossly underpaid. So we’re talking years later. And he said, I’m going to do everything in my power to get you up to par. And the first thing he did was he gave me a different title in HR, not what the world knew, but what HR put down on paper. Yeah, because that’s what matters. He could give me the bigger, I almost forget what we call them. You have to have a different job code. Yeah, a different job code. And I had more spectrum of what the salary could be. And over a course of three years, he got me to work. So it isn’t just gender, right, Crystal? And we have to be careful. I think that there are many amazing humans out there. And if you’re a person like me who in the corporate career had a lot of these negative things happen, that the one thing I never want to forget is I don’t want to call it giving benefit of the doubt. That feels like too much. I’m giving too much.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Right.
Barbara Rapaport
But I’d like to understand what’s going on for that individual. And is it about me or is it about them?
Dr. Crystal Frazee
That’s a great lens. Yeah. The listeners can’t see. Barbara and I can see ourselves. I like to do this. I’m like, I take my hands and I push them away from me. And it’s a physical way when you realize it’s not you, that it is someone else’s stuff. It’s so relieving to then go, OK, and then literally to embody that and then push it away and give yourself back power and realize, yeah, this isn’t my thing to work through.
Barbara Rapaport
Yeah. And that leaves you with a lot of, I think, dilemmas. And for me, there were lots of dilemmas. And here’s the things I learned. Just to start off, and then I’d like to tell a couple more stories because I think they’re really relevant. One is, once you know you can access your power again, that it’s not about you, you still have a tough choice to make. Like, what are you? What am I in those cases? What was I going to do about it? And I think the first thing we all have to do, and I do this yet today, every single day, especially in conflict or potential conflict-laying situations, I ask myself that same question we talked about a few minutes ago. Barbara, what outcome do you want? So it’s a version of what do I want, right? But it’s the outcome. And you decide around the bigger context, I think. In the first example of the being underpaid where it all started, I could tell the context was not going to support me. Right? Meaning that if the first response was how did you find out, that was not what I might have expected would have been something like, wow, that’s important for us to know that you’re aware of that. Let’s talk about what that means to you. What you think is potentially behind it that we should be aware of. I have none of that. So it was so clear to me nobody wanted to find out what I wanted or needed. And the decision I made was to get out of that department, which I did. So there’s always an action for me, but I look at the bigger context. So I think those two things immediately we could say, I think, are key learnings. And assess the context. Right.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
And I think what I hear and what you’re saying is you didn’t take it personally as much as you just realized this isn’t where I belong. I need to move laterally, vertically. I need to find the place where I do belong.
Barbara Rapaport
Find the place where I do belong, where I’m valued. I like that you said that because it can be laterally. Everything doesn’t have to be a literal move up in a hierarchy. Because I’m finding actually in my current practice, I heard something today that blew me away. I have clients in large corporations, high level folks, and I heard that one just got demoted. And so it doesn’t really matter that they were X level yesterday. They’re Y level today. So sometimes lateral moves are great because they give you a different set of things to learn about, different access to functions and disciplines. I got my MBA on the street at this company because I was able to pick and choose opportunities that gave me that access. So I think that was a great thing you said. Couple other stories. I was bullied in multiple ways. It was always passive aggressive. The one story that I remember the most had to do with when I was creating materials for the sales organization out in the field. We didn’t have budget to do what they wanted. And I had a writer in the room taking notes when all the people from the field came in and were giving input about what would be most helpful and this and that. And I explained what our budget constraint was, but what we would do anyway to meet their need and this individual male, he’s in the back of the room with my writer, and he turns to her and says, that woman is a bitch.
Dr. Crystal Frazee Wow. Yeah.
Barbara Rapaport Literally. Oh, here you go. Like you get sucker punched. You’re like, how can people behave like this? But they do.
Dr. Crystal Frazee Right. Especially after you’re, it sounds like you are pulling something out of nowhere. You didn’t have the budget to do the work and yet you’re making it happen. Yeah. Yeah.
Barbara Rapaport
And so how easy it was. And look, we’re talking a long time ago now, right? Because I was at that place for 20 years. I’ve been doing this work that we’re talking about, my private consulting firm since 2005. And that was a long time ago. The whole culture was different. Women were treated at least outwardly, much more so the way I was treated that day. And with respect, I don’t think I, with respect to me, I don’t think I chose to do anything about that because it was in that same realm of, I see the handwriting on the wall. There is no opportunity for me. What was going to, what good would come out of it? He’d get called on the carpet. He then would probably blackball me quietly behind the scenes. Instead of me just saying, no one else heard it. I don’t think they did anyway. And it said more about him than it said about me. Right? So sometimes there isn’t the satisfaction that someone else gets their bum up.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
But you know, you stood firm with your own integrity, your own moral code, your own view of how to treat people and someone else’s poor behavior doesn’t reflect on you. Right. And you hold your hand up. The high road. Yeah.
Barbara Rapaport
Michelle Obama, right? We go high when they go low.
The two experiences though that were the toughest and literally, I will say, the worst of my life in a career perspective also happened at that place. This was the bullying. I was in a function where I was at a high level manager role. It was a dual role with sales and communication, sales training and communications, meaning external communications, marketing and all that good stuff. It was a fabulous job. I learned so much. And my boss transitioned to another role and a different gentleman came in. And that gentleman knew me from before. And I am not exaggerating when I say one week he’d call me in his office and he’d say, you’re doing a great job. Why don’t you keep doing what you’re doing? I’ll help you any way I can. The next week I would come in and he’d say, you know what? You’re really not measuring up. I mean, you are in the wrong spot. I mean, he just degraded me like crazy. And this went on and on and on and on. And finally, I’m a strong human being. And I said, I’ve had enough. Like a yo-yo. Yeah. And I was ready to leave because I was still, you have to remember, I was in that same context of women don’t get what they need or want in these situations. There were no senior level leaders who were females at the time. So I was kind of like many of my clients. I was reticent to try to do anything about it, but I had made a good network. And this is the point I want to make. Women network. And we’ll talk after this if you don’t mind about how to do that. But network. And I had this amazing person, a gentleman who had seen me now and then in the course of his role. So we knew each other. I don’t think we knew each other that well. And he went to my new boss and he said, I’ll take her. I have the headcount. Just like that. He saved me. Amazing. And that’s the same person who got me equity around my compensation. And he’s one of my best friends still today.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
So this is somebody that you had built trust with and you networked with them from within the department that you were at. Exactly. And I think what it was, let’s use this term for each other, women, it’s street cred. I had street cred with him. You know, I love that you said that, Barbara. So can you tell us a little bit more about some takeaways for building relationships with upper leadership, whether they’re in your department or someone else’s? Because I think what you’re saying is we really want our voices to be heard, you know, whether it’s about your pay, whether you’re not being treated well by someone in your department or that ranks over you and you want to confront that and advocate for yourself in any way, even if it’s just your goals, you know, and the focus you want to bring to a certain project. How do we build that trust and rapport with upper leadership so that we can be received?
Barbara Rapaport
The only way I know how to do that is, and there’ll be a few little comments after the is, first, when you are in front of people, be seen. Say more. Yeah, if you allow yourself, and again, I’m speaking for me, but I know it helps my clients, so I just hope we’re speaking for all of us. Yes. To some degree. When I walk into a room, if I immediately feel intimidated, I will be intimidated. And that will set me into a whole series of mental gymnastics around why I should stay quiet. Instead of walking into the room and saying, in that room, regardless of role, regardless of responsibility, regardless of hierarchy, I am there because I have thoughts that are worth speaking to, learning more about, getting feedback on, etc. So walking into a room with the mental model that in this moment, I am the same as everybody else for the purposes of this discussion sets you free. And another thing then in the moment is pay real good attention to what’s going on. It’s definitely reading the room, but also I encourage jot down things that come to you as the discussion is playing out. And if you think something is being missed, interject. And so it’s not interject by interrupting people. Interjection can happen a lot of different ways. One can be, can we pause a moment? I’d like to make sure I’m understanding. May I play back what I think I’m hearing? That’s good. Right. Another way could really be, we got past something that I was really thinking about at the time was important. Before we close, I’d like to go back to it for like two, three minutes. Like not freaking everybody out that you’re going to make them stay another hour and a half to have a discussion, but speak out. And sometimes it’s a verbal thing, but sometimes it’s a gesture you make. Like a timeout, it depends on how well you know the people. So I think you have to walk in with a mental model. I’m equal in the moment. And then when did I walk out the door? I may not be because other people will make the choice and all that good stuff, but I want to have a say. So that’s part of it. I think the other is another mental model, which is if someone doesn’t want to talk to me, they don’t have to, but why wouldn’t I reach out to the different folks in an organization or outside the organization who I’d like to meet and chat with? The worst that can happen is they’re going to say no. So you can say, well, that’s a rejection of me. I wouldn’t do that for myself because they don’t even know me. So they’re not rejecting me. I typically try to think, well, what else could be going on in their life that makes it really hard for them? Or just disinterest. I had a friend who was part of that Fortune 500 executive team and started her own business. And there was a point in time when I said to her, one of my clients would like to meet with you. Can I do an E introduction? And she said, Barbara, I can’t do them anymore. I literally don’t have time in my schedule. Right. We do have to make that call. We can’t give to others if we don’t have enough capacity for ourselves and what’s already on our plate. Yeah. So knowing that everybody has a story and everybody’s got something going on. Don’t put the energy into people who don’t want to get reach out and find out who does and get past the sense of, well, they’re rejecting me. I can’t tell you how many executives I went to at this company when I was tormented around, should I stay or should I leave at some point in this journey? And they became mini mentors for me that one hour I spent with them and gave me a lot to think about and different perspective because perspective is everything. And you can’t change your perspective if you aren’t open to understanding other perspectives. But just because you understand other perspectives doesn’t mean you have to change
Dr. Crystal Frazee
yours, but at least you know you have more to choose from. Now I want to channel some of the listeners who may be thinking, okay, if I set those sessions up, I identify those people. And I love what you said. Find the people who want to put more energy into me. Like they have energy to put back into me versus me just putting it into them. What do you recommend to do or say with those people so that you can communicate your values and your contributions?
Barbara Rapaport
I have to really think about that for a sec because I think there’s so much that could go on from a dynamic standpoint that are all positive. That particular one, I think comes out best if it’s truly how you see what you might want to achieve in the future. And you’re honest about that. Less about, I’ll give you really concrete, not going in and saying, you know, I’d really like my next job at the company to be something like this. They may have zero opportunity to help. Instead go in and say, I’ve really been thinking hard and challenged by the kind of role I want to play if I choose to move up. And you are a person who obviously has made some headway. Can you tell me some of the lessons you learned? And when they give you something from their perspective, then you have a chance to give your own version of that back. So you see, you turn the tables and make it about curiosity about them for two reasons. One is they give you a good mentoring advice. And the other is it’s an entree for you then to say, gee, when I think about that for me, right? But typically at the end of those kinds of conversations, if someone in the organization is in the know, or it could be someone outside the organization that you’re going to as well, if they’re in the know, they’re going to make the connection to how there might be something specific for you that they could, you know, put you in touch with. Right. You’re on the radar. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it starts with being curious and realizing that the curiosity brings out new perspectives and understandings. And those create a whole range of opportunities that you didn’t even know were out there and you can respond right in the moment because you allowed them to unfold. Right. Organically. Yeah. I’ve got another piece to that. If it’s okay. I thought along and hard about this too, that at this stage of life, it’s often hard when we’re trying to represent our brand and get past some of these barriers, as you mentioned early on when we first started, it can be hard to own our own contribution to something. And I think the more we’re able to do that without beating ourselves up for it, without diminishing our self worth, the heart of negotiation, the way I’ve come to learn about it is everybody contributes to what’s getting in the way of an effective negotiation.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
And in fact, I once had a client, I did a bunch of work in Ireland and he was the head of a big commercial development group. And he said to me at the time, you know, Barbara, everything’s a negotiation. And I remember as his coach going, no, it’s not. And, you know, I’ve come to think that to some degree he was right. I don’t know that I use the word negotiation, but it’s a back and forth. I can see that, especially if you know what you want, you have a vision for an impact you can make. You see a way to do that, to leverage your natural talents. And it’s a compromise to figure out how to serve the needs of your department, your organization, your business, and also put those out there. You know, if that’s important, I can see how that’s a give and take potentially.
Barbara Rapaport
Yeah. And so when I brought this up for us to talk about for just a few minutes, I wanted to make the big point about not diminishing yourself or giving up your own belief in your self-worth, because that can appear to be very manipulative, right? We say something, well, you know, I wanted to share this experience I had and here’s where I was at fault. And the other person’s taking it and going, does this person just want me to say, no, no, no, you’re really good. You don’t need that. If your internal standard is working, you can say to yourself, I am really good and I made a mistake, both hands. Right.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Right. So you’re saying contribution, not just achievement, not just kind of bragging rights, making sure you recognize what I’ve done and validate me, but you’re saying, oh, I made a mistake. How do I bring that forward without shaming myself? Basically.
Barbara Rapaport
Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Better wording, better wording. Yeah, I do see that. I see that as well in some women where it’s, and I’m from the South, so, you know, there’s a certain way of communicating, way of being that’s more stereotypical there, that’s certainly related to this of, you know, gee, I’m thirsty. And someone says, well, here, may I offer you this? Oh, no, I could never. It’s very confusing. And so in the professional sense, yeah, there’s a way to say what you’ve got to say and maintain your integrity.
Barbara Rapaport
Yeah. And it’s a big part, this branding thing, when I was running my programs at the chamber, two leadership programs, one was solely for women, we had one whole session, four hours or more, just on personal branding. It’s really critical because if you don’t brand yourself, someone else will brand you for you. Now, in some cases, you’ll be happy with that branding. But in others, you will feel victimized by it and turn the tables. And I think there are these things about courage and grit with empathy, empathy for yourself, empathy for others. And getting over the courage thing we sometimes have, which, you know, you’ve talked before in some of your work, I know about confidence building. It’s the confidence to have courage that is innately there. But we’re letting the fight, flight or flee response take over instead of that pause and say, I am feeling this desire to flee, I am feeling this desire to stay paralyzed. Let me take a pause and think about the outcome, what I really want, and how can I assess the context and find a workaround perhaps, or find enough data that tells me it is a toxic environment in that department, Barbara, find another job in the company. You have so much agency. Oh, my gosh. I wish I had had this wisdom when I was in that corporate environment.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Right. Yes. Some of it’s hard to learn. I love this statement, remember who you are. And when I say that in critical moments to different clients, it’s amazing how varied their responses are, what emotion comes up. But usually there’s a sense of like, damn, you’re right. You know, like I’m subjugating my value because of this feeling I’m getting that’s not even being verbalized. Somehow I’m putting myself lower relative to others around me or other people’s achievements when I may be doing it to myself and no one else is doing that. I think it’s really powerful to remember that you do have agency, like you said.
Barbara Rapaport
Well, it touches on a big part of my practice because a lot of what I do is I help people uncover hidden barriers. The term we use is self-stabotage. The things we think will protect us and we have beliefs, unproven beliefs that they will protect us, we hold onto. And if we could just recognize that they’re just beliefs, they’re not necessarily reality, we could shift them, think about them differently, therefore act differently. We call that reframing, but forget the lingo. That’s really not the important part. The important part is the thing we do that we think is protecting us is actually getting in the way of us getting the thing we want the most. And we have complete control over that self-stabotage. If we’re aware it’s going on and we’re not afraid to pay attention to it. And I stand here, sit here today telling you this isn’t like you wake up one day and you’re there. I work on this stuff every single day. And I think I’m lucky, Crystal, you may feel similarly in your practice that I get to do that more easily every day because every time I’m with a client or a group of people in a group setting, they give me things to think about that I can take and say, well, what am I doing around that? I pay attention to them and I support them, but then I think what wisdom have they given me that they didn’t even know they gave me in their willingness to share their struggles and challenges?
Dr. Crystal Frazee
I’m lucky because it’s front and center for me every day. There’s a shared humanity in this work to be able to connect and find the strengths in others they may not see in themselves. I wonder if you can take a few minutes and share the story. Do you remember what story I’m talking about from the forum? Are you comfortable sharing that?
Barbara Rapaport
Sure. Sure. This was a story that I was asked to share some negative experience I had had and when I did about it. And the first one that came to mind that particular day was I had been known in this Fortune 500 company, not only for the job I did in the department I worked in that I had technical skills and competencies, but people had observed me from other functions be a really good facilitator in meetings. So I was lucky. I didn’t have the role of facilitator, but they would see me use curiosity and inquiry and restatement and summarization as a skill that would be great in facilitating meetings. So I got asked by lots of functions to facilitate their meetings, the big meetings, not the little small things. And my bosses, I have to say, were always very generous about that and they would let me do it. So this one time I was loaned to the sales department, another sales department story, and I had been given guidance and marching orders by the vice president to get something big accomplished with all the regional sales managers over a two-day period. They were all coming in from all across the United States. And we had to get this thing done. And I will tell you today, I don’t even remember what it was, but it was important. And it had a lot of negative stuff that could go back to the regions and they had to address and be prepared for et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, I had this amazing game plan. I can say that because it really was. Proven later that it was amazing in that I presented it the first day and I said, here’s why we’re here. These are the outcomes. Everybody agree. Yes. And here’s how we’re going to go about it. And as soon as I finished the intro, one of the more, I’ll just say arrogant, dominant people in the room said, I don’t think we’re going to do it that way. We’re going to do it this way. So for the next couple of hours, they argued about which way they would do it. So in the lunch hour, the sales VP was joining the group. And so I pulled them aside and I said, look, this is what happened this morning. If they continue this way, we will not get this done in the two days you want it done because we’ve gotten nowhere this morning. And their plan for the afternoon isn’t going to get us there. I know my craft, right? And he said, no, I want you to hang in there a little bit, you know, see what happens. Well, okay. End of the day, nothing. We got nothing. So the next morning I went in, I said, okay, you guys got us nowhere. We’re going to do it my way. And so we pushed and shoved and you know, we got it done in the one day instead of the two. And my learning from that, that you took in Crystal that day was the sales VP didn’t have my back. Right. You were blindsided. I was blindsided. I was not supported. All he had to do was come in right after lunch and say, look, we brought Barbara in for a reason. Let’s take our lead from her. And we’ll know pretty soon if we’re getting traction or not. Why are you arguing when your expertise is in something else?
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Right. It could have been set up from the beginning, like an email to everybody, hey, Barbara is going to lead this part.
Barbara Rapaport
There were lots of opportunities there. Yeah. So, you know, the question I think you gave me at the time was, Athena was, you know, what do you do about that? Well, there’s any number of things you can do. At the end of the day, it was, I am just reminding you this whole thing in this corporate environment was so long ago that I would believe today, some of it would still be true. For sure. There are plenty of times when people’s leaders don’t have their back. But what I would do today is I would have gone to him after the fact, because during the moment, poolheads are not prevailing. So after was all over. If you want me to ever do this again, here’s what has to happen. And I would have had that conversation being kind, being empathetic, but also deciding that in this case, it would have been worth it to have the conversation. Right. Because sometimes you decide, don’t have it like I did with the, when I was underpaid. This one, I felt the individual would have responded. I didn’t have the maturity to do it then. But looking back, what a mistake. What’s the worst you could have done to me? I didn’t even report to him. Right. Right. He would have said, push your boundaries, Barbara, with me and, you know, don’t come to me again like that without doing it in this way or whatever. And I would have gotten feedback about how to talk to a senior leader in a different way and more productive way. I didn’t have a whole lot to lose. Right.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
And fortunately, in that situation, it was an earmarked event. Right. It was, you were requested to come participate, facilitate in this specific thing that had a beginning and end. And some people, that’s just the situation they’re in. Right. They’re sort of elevated into a position, but then never broadcasted the trust that’s been spoken and given to them, the authority that their role actually has. And so they’re never, it’s the same thing that you experienced. It’s this like persistent backlash. Does that make sense? So whether it’s like a one-time event or it’s happening more broadly in your position with your whole department, well, what do you think the root of that is? I mean, that’s kind of an interesting thing.
Barbara Rapaport
Well, this thing I do around hidden barriers is very fascinating because I work with the individuals, like you’re saying there’d be a woman we’re talking to who has the consistency of this happening over and over and over again. Right. Not my one-off. Yes. And I work with those individuals and we decide what’s risk, what’s worth taking a risk and what’s not worth taking a risk and what their hidden barriers. So you said, well, what’s at the root of that behavior on the part of the authority figure? It’s typically, they have their own hidden barriers, which are clashing with your hidden barriers. They’re not in sync. So that individual is protecting something you don’t even know about. You can guess, but I can tell you if you guess, likely you’re going to be wrong. Because I know this from being an executive coach. You find out things you had no idea about, like CEOs can be very afraid of making decisions. And you would think by the time they get there, like what the, what? Right. So I think it’s that empathy around what is their hidden barrier. And I, and I kind of, um, come to them in a way that allows them to be vulnerable with me. And I’m speaking as if I’m you, right? The person who would go into that person and saying, I’m watching and observing, you seem to have all this going on. And I wonder if I could be of help to you in ways that we hadn’t even considered. I have a few thoughts. I wonder if you have a few thoughts. So you don’t always come at it directly, but come at it indirectly. Because if it’s about a power thing, well, you may never be able to get past that because they’re in the power seat and they love it and they just want to be in it. If it’s more around, I’m kind of afraid to make this decision because of all the parts and pieces. And what if I miss a part, you could raise your hand and say, how can I help you keep tabs on all the parts? Right. You become a helper and you learn so much while that’s going on. I think it’s so incredible. One other thing I’d say before we would finish today, which would be what saved me that particular time with that VP and the sales people was me walking away from that with a learning that I have never stopped owning and believing in, which is when I go into a room and I’m tasked to help create an outcome on behalf of a group, I don’t own the outcome. They do. If they agreed to the actual events, they agreed to participate, they were given whatever mandatory requirement, I don’t care the circumstances, they’re in the room, they own the outcome. So if that were to happen to me again today on day one, actually at lunchtime, I would say, you all get to choose. I’m still going to be here for the next day and a half at your disposal. You have my way, we could go about this. You can choose to do it another way and ask me to intercede in any ways that would be helpful. But at the end of the day, it’s your responsibility to get to the outcome. And it’s not just saying that crystal, it’s actually believing it. It’s not up to me.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
I think that’s so powerful. And yeah, I think the frustration and energy that does not happen when we can surrender a sense of control, that we don’t have to prove ourselves, that we don’t have to drive and force things in the directions we had originally planned and just have that bigger, that’s like a 10,000 foot view. What’s going on and the ability to say, okay, there’s a lot of things conflicting right now. What’s an easy path? And it’s to, I mean, I just think that’s brilliant. It’s kind of like a, that’s like a spy move.
Barbara Rapaport
It’s liberating, it’s empowering. It takes away exhaustion. Because I know people who would walk away from a similar role with other groups in the organization, they just be exhausted and feeling it was their fault. And I’m able to walk away from it. And it’s in my private practice, in my group stuff and everything I do, which is you’re an amazing adult. You get to choose.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Yes, absolutely. And make it my problem if you don’t see it as a problem. Right. We can’t want things more than someone else, whether that is our partner’s health, whether that’s an outcome with a team, or organizational goal. We can’t, we cannot want it more than the decision makers.
Barbara Rapaport
Well, I will tell you, the call I got off right before we came together today, the individual said just that. Even the leadership role and how he wants to help his people understand what you just said. Brilliant, my dear.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Wow, there’s so many pearls that you have mentioned in this conversation that I think are so valuable. And if, you know, I just kind of take a second and just recap with everybody some of these main points. We started by talking about how important it is to have these internal standards and to know your values. And I love what you said to never downgrade that. It’s like a this and that and you’re looking for that win-win solution that may need some compromises, but you’re never downgrading your own values for yourself. And how important it is to be able to have some answer, which is evolving. What do I want? That is so critically important to everyone’s success because we can show when we can show up knowing that we’re meeting our own needs, then we can really show up and it just improves everything we touch. And that moves into the conversation of what outcome do I want? And I mean, those are real power moves. I think they sound real kind of soft and somebody might think it sounds a little woo to really spend time on that, but we know how transformational it is in someone’s growth and impact. And so for the listeners, even if you just take away and sit down with a journal and move through those questions, it’s going to make a difference for you. And then I love the practical kind of actionable steps that you gave around speaking out and interjecting. And I hope that everyone goes back and writes down transcribe, you just go to the transcription and copy those two phrases that Barbara gave around how to do that. If you want two ideas that she gave, they were they were so well spoken. And then to build your network, put energy into those who put energy back into you and nurture those relationships by being curious. I think that is so human and so needed at this point, post pandemic. And then just the power of reframing. I think that’s really something to think about. Is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up? One simple thing about all of these, and thank you for the beautiful summary, that it seems like a whole lot and it could take so much time. At the end of the day, if you only do one, which is what do I want slash or what is the outcome I’m seeking? You can spend five minutes on that and you’ll get it. Because the issue isn’t that you don’t know. You just don’t know you know. So you don’t give yourself the time to let it come in. And when you ask the question and sit back for just a moment or two, it will surface. Right. I promise you it will surface. So if you take nothing else, I take that. Can I add something? Every hour of every day. Can I add something to that? Yeah, of course. I encourage you also to not just think about it and come up with it as an idea, but then take a moment and feel it in your body. Like let it be embodied and that will help you navigate there. Because we live in our thinking minds. Most of us have gotten to our place of success because we’re smart. And what we leave behind is that your body has wisdom and your body can help you get to that true North Star. When you create it in your everyday life, you feel it when you think about it. I know what I want. I imagine what it feels like. And then when you have that experience for you, like the mentor that said, bringing you on, I’m getting you paid. We’re not dealing with this anymore. Your body probably lit up and it said, yes. Right. It was familiar with that. So I think that’s a great one thing to focus on. I love that.
Barbara Rapaport
Absolutely. I am so in sync with that. And I just want to say, this is a great example to people coming together who don’t know each other very well and how our mutual and different perspective taking feeds one another. Yes. A great real time example of that.
Dr. Crystal Frazee
Yes. It’s been beautiful. I am so grateful, Barbara. Thank you. This has been a really valuable conversation. And for the listeners, make sure to check out the show notes to connect with Barbara, check out her book and any of her links to connect with her on social media. And if you enjoyed the show, please make sure to leave a review on Apple podcasts. It’s the best way to support the shows that you listen to next week. Tune in to episode six with another incredible interview that you don’t want to miss. Thanks.
Barbara Rapaport
Bye.