Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
Speaker 2: and speaker.
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
Speaker 3: and courtse creator. We are two working parents who love
Speaker 3: our careers and our families.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
Speaker 2: how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
Speaker 2: from figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Speaker 1: Term career goals.
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2: This episode is airing at the end of May of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. I am going to be interviewing Lorena Yee,
Speaker 2: who is a senior partner at Mackenzie, the consulting firm,
Speaker 2: and who is also the co author of The Broken Wrung,
Speaker 2: which is a book about how fewer women than men
Speaker 2: get that first promotion into manager.
Speaker 1: So I know there's been.
Speaker 2: A lot of discussion out there of why are there
Speaker 2: not more women in senior leadership roles, and the authors
Speaker 2: of this book have done the research sort of tracing
Speaker 2: it back to that initial first promotion that women are
Speaker 2: significantly less likely to get.
Speaker 1: And so the book talks about ways to deal with that.
Speaker 1: There's obviously a.
Speaker 2: Lot that organizations can do, which they have suggestions for that,
Speaker 2: but also about what you can do personally to make
Speaker 2: sure that you are positioned as well as possible to
Speaker 2: be forefront of mind as people are considering promoting someone
Speaker 2: into management, how you can show that you have the
Speaker 2: experience to take on a new role, sort of some
Speaker 2: strategic ways to organize your career with that in mind. So, Sarah,
Speaker 2: you've certainly observed there aren't even though women are what
Speaker 2: half of medical school classes now, I mean, there still
Speaker 2: aren't that many women in senior positions and like hospital
Speaker 2: leadership and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: On the administrative side, I don't see that to be
Speaker 3: the case, meaning like the non physicians, we actually have
Speaker 3: a lot of like senior female leadership, which is cool.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like I see as many women kind
Speaker 3: of go the directorship role. I do feel like this
Speaker 3: has improved the ratios even in the time since I've
Speaker 3: been in practice.
Speaker 1: And why might that be?
Speaker 3: I mean, unfortunately, I think some of it is just
Speaker 3: like I mean, I think back to my division when
Speaker 3: I joined and they had one male amongst all women
Speaker 3: in my group, and he was like the director even
Speaker 3: though he was like almost fresh out of training, and
Speaker 3: I just think there's just such a and he was
Speaker 3: a great guy, by the way. I don't think it
Speaker 3: was like a bad hire, but I do think there's
Speaker 3: like still this bias of like when you're looking around
Speaker 3: the room to see who should be in charge, like
Speaker 3: people instinctively tend to look for the y chromosomes, and
Speaker 3: like that's hopefully going to keep getting better and better
Speaker 3: because it's like disappointing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and hopefully that will change in a
Speaker 2: lot of places too. I'm curious you do a lot
Speaker 2: of forward looking planning. I know you've made like sort
Speaker 2: of ten year goals and five years old. Do you
Speaker 2: think a lot in terms of how to sort of
Speaker 2: strategically position your career to get to those things, you know,
Speaker 2: five and ten years in the future.
Speaker 3: My story is a little different because I guess I
Speaker 3: sort of made the decision that I prefer not to
Speaker 3: be in a leadership role at least at this phase
Speaker 3: in my life, like within my medical career, like I
Speaker 3: enjoy more just being an individual contributor and like mentoring
Speaker 3: and trying to do the best I can. But like
Speaker 3: I don't like middle management, I guess, is what I learned,
Speaker 3: And I don't like trying to serve competing interests, like
Speaker 3: I don't like not making people happy, I guess. So anyway,
Speaker 3: I like decided, you know what, I'd rather work for
Speaker 3: myself and have growth on that side, and then on
Speaker 3: the other side be more of a like contributor, a specialist,
Speaker 3: a worker. So I mean, I don't do that much
Speaker 3: thinking about growth. I think more about what could maybe
Speaker 3: be different or new angles of expertise, Like I do
Speaker 3: love mentoring other physicians, and I know I've made a
Speaker 3: difference in some of my colleagues and like how they
Speaker 3: do their work and like their productivity, and like kind
Speaker 3: of how they feel about their work, and so I'm like, wow,
Speaker 3: that would be fun to kind of leverage that someday
Speaker 3: going forward. But I don't think a lot about like
Speaker 3: climbing a ladder, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's no real ladder in my organization. As
Speaker 1: I were, I'm at the top wrong already.
Speaker 2: But as I think about my career, I yes and no,
Speaker 2: do I think long term strategy about it. I do
Speaker 2: kind of think of sort of slow growth in lots
Speaker 2: of ways like keep building up the audience.
Speaker 1: What could I do next to bring in the audience.
Speaker 2: But a lot of it is just trying different things,
Speaker 2: and it's like the number of times at bat you
Speaker 2: can have right, Like I'll put this product out into
Speaker 2: the universe and see what people think of it, and
Speaker 2: then I'll try something else and maybe something will be
Speaker 2: amazing and take off. But I think it is good
Speaker 2: for us to spend some time thinking about it because
Speaker 2: part of taking our career seriously is think about, Okay,
Speaker 2: well I'm going to be in this long term, what
Speaker 2: do I want it to look like. You know, I
Speaker 2: Am going to be doing something professionally ten years down
Speaker 2: the road, So let me treat it seriously and get
Speaker 2: to that point.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to see.
Speaker 2: What Lorena has to say. So here we go with
Speaker 2: Lorena ye author of The Broken Wrong. Well, Sarah and
Speaker 2: I are delighted to have Lorena Yee joining us today.
Speaker 1: Lorena, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you here.
Speaker 2: So maybe you could tell our listeners just a little
Speaker 2: bit about you, who you are, your career, that sort.
Speaker 1: Of thing, sure.
Speaker 5: I work at McKenzie and Company, and over the last
Speaker 5: twenty five years I've been working in the technology sector,
Speaker 5: really on client services, helping companies grow and innovate through
Speaker 5: using technologies. And about fifteen years ago I started what
Speaker 5: was a side hustle project which clearly became a lot more,
Speaker 5: which was to use the tools and analytics in ways
Speaker 5: that we think about organizational change at mackenzie and apply
Speaker 5: it to one of the hardest questions in the world,
Speaker 5: which is how is it that we start with gender
Speaker 5: equity and education but don't land there in the workplace?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you've been doing a lot of different
Speaker 2: research projects related to this, and this has actually sort
Speaker 2: of informed your career at mackenzie, right, I mean you
Speaker 2: led some of the early diversity and inclusion initiatives there.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 4: Absolutely so.
Speaker 5: I co founded Women in the Workplace, which is one
Speaker 5: of the largest studies in the United States on the
Speaker 5: experiences of both men and women in the workplace, as
Speaker 5: well as a kind of benchmarking on representation. So really
Speaker 5: kind of putting representation experience together. And as you say, Laura,
Speaker 5: this book is in some ways it's been over a
Speaker 5: decade in the making of pulling all of those perspectives together,
Speaker 5: as well as new research that we had on a
Speaker 5: concept of experience capital and the impact that has on
Speaker 5: women's careers, and really shifting the spotlight from what organizations
Speaker 5: can do to what, given that it's not a level
Speaker 5: playing field, what women can do to find ways to
Speaker 5: succeed in.
Speaker 1: Spite of it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I thought that was a fascinating angle because
Speaker 2: it is one thing to point.
Speaker 1: Out that the wrong is broken, as it were from.
Speaker 2: The title of your book, Clay, But given that most
Speaker 2: of us are not in a position to change the
Speaker 2: world right now tomorrow, what can we do within that? So,
Speaker 2: I mean, why was that sort of a real conscious
Speaker 2: decision on your part to tackle that angle.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, we're always looking for different ways to understand how
Speaker 5: to solve something that is actually quite of a systems
Speaker 5: level challenge. Right, It's not one action, it's multiple actions.
Speaker 5: The challenge with company level change is that it is slow.
Speaker 5: It takes a multi generational commitment of a company to
Speaker 5: truly go from the entry level all the way to
Speaker 5: the top and to the board level, where you have
Speaker 5: a really different type of representation of culture. And I
Speaker 5: think for the average woman in the workplace. You just
Speaker 5: can't wait that long. So, whilst that's super interesting and
Speaker 5: we want committed companies to walk the talk, so to speak,
Speaker 5: we also need a set of tactics and strategies that
Speaker 5: we can employ if we're currently in the workforce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we just don't all have that kind
Speaker 2: of time exactly, I.
Speaker 1: Don't have that time.
Speaker 2: Well, let's start with let's say we've got a young
Speaker 2: woman who you know, we have lots of different people
Speaker 2: of different ages listening to this podcast, but let's talk
Speaker 2: about like a young woman newly out of school, perhaps
Speaker 2: looking around at the working world, figuring out how am
Speaker 2: I going to start?
Speaker 1: What am I doing?
Speaker 2: Are there things that she should be looking for in
Speaker 2: companies as she is looking to get in At the beginning,
Speaker 2: let me.
Speaker 5: Say a couple of things that maybe aren't quite in
Speaker 5: the book, and then we'll talk about a couple specific
Speaker 5: strategies that she should be thinking of. The first thing
Speaker 5: is I think if you're starting a job search or
Speaker 5: you're in the earth stages of your career, one of
Speaker 5: the hardest things to do is find the self confidence
Speaker 5: without a ton of work experience to bet on yourself.
Speaker 5: But I think it's really important to bet on yourself,
Speaker 5: and that is kind of a mindset and a personal
Speaker 5: journey that you have to be on. Now, let's talk
Speaker 5: about some of the tactics that you can apply to that.
Speaker 5: The first thing is knowing your facts, and we lay
Speaker 5: that out in a section called roots of the Problem,
Speaker 5: because I feel like a lot of women don't go
Speaker 5: in understanding the facts of what they're getting into. The
Speaker 5: fact is is that in the United States and globally
Speaker 5: in most countries, women outperform men in school in two measures,
Speaker 5: the percentage of the population that graduates with an undergraduate
Speaker 5: degree and their GPAs. So here's the thing, ladies, you
Speaker 5: are doing amazing at school.
Speaker 4: Congratulations.
Speaker 5: Now we don't see that success at those same rates
Speaker 5: in terms of representation, promotion, velocity, and salary in the workplace.
Speaker 5: So how do we flip the strength of being amazing
Speaker 5: students at school to being amazing achievers at work? And
Speaker 5: that's where this concept of experienced capital comes in, which
Speaker 5: is close to fifty percent of your lifetime earnings comes
Speaker 5: from what you learn on the job. So what you
Speaker 5: learned in school only gets you about fifty percent of
Speaker 5: the way there. Then, you have to take all that
Speaker 5: strength and confidence and resilience and pointed at work. So
Speaker 5: a tactical thing to get started with is pick a company,
Speaker 5: not just a job. If you're starting out and you
Speaker 5: feel fortunate, which I remember feeling just so grateful to
Speaker 5: be offered a job, that's amazing, But also ask some
Speaker 5: other questions. Make sure you're applying for jobs or you're
Speaker 5: comparing if you have the fortune to have two or
Speaker 5: three offers. How many women are at the leadership ranks
Speaker 5: of that company. What are the policies and programs that
Speaker 5: advance fair workplaces in that company?
Speaker 4: What are the things.
Speaker 5: That they do for early entry employees to help them
Speaker 5: gain the capabilities and skills to get to that next level.
Speaker 5: What do women who are too maybe promotions ahead of
Speaker 5: where you would be say about that company? Have you
Speaker 5: met women? Did you see them on the website? Did
Speaker 5: you meet them in the recruiting process? What did they
Speaker 5: say in an authentic and genuine way. You have to
Speaker 5: ask a couple more questions, because remember, this is your career,
Speaker 5: and this is best exemplified by this incredible woman who
Speaker 5: if I take her towards thirty years after she started,
Speaker 5: she was the CEO of a major technology company in
Speaker 5: the valley. But when I asked her, what's the one
Speaker 5: story you want to share of all your stories, she
Speaker 5: said why. She chose IBM for her first job as
Speaker 5: a sales leader, and she chose it as to well,
Speaker 5: not even a sales leader, sales rep. She chose IBM
Speaker 5: because she was admitted to a leadership program and that
Speaker 5: leadership program taught her negotiation taught her like business skills,
Speaker 5: taught her how to succeed, and that investment was worth
Speaker 5: more than just being a sales rep at a prestigious
Speaker 5: tech company.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are certain companies that really take it seriously
Speaker 2: to train people, and I know a lot of companies
Speaker 2: these days are kind of weary of that because they're like, well,
Speaker 2: they'll just fly out the door, which they do.
Speaker 1: I mean, IBM's great.
Speaker 2: People go elsewhere eventually in many cases, but you know
Speaker 2: that they still find it worth it because it's the
Speaker 2: place that people then want to go. We're going to
Speaker 2: take a quick ad break and then I will be
Speaker 2: back with more from Loraena Ye. Well, I'm talking with
Speaker 2: Lorena Ye, who is the co author of the book
Speaker 2: The Broken Wrong, which looks at how the gap between
Speaker 2: women getting that first promotion in the workplace. I believe
Speaker 2: Loreena was a number like eighty one women for every
Speaker 2: hundred men promoted to the first level.
Speaker 1: Is that what it is?
Speaker 5: Yeah, the odds of advancement are not equal. For every
Speaker 5: one hundred men who get that first promotion you're just
Speaker 5: a couple of years into work, only eighty one women
Speaker 5: will see that same set of opportunities. And that's been
Speaker 5: a number that's been pretty sticky for the last decade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's interesting because that's like, again at the
Speaker 2: beginning of people's careers, so not even necessarily have gotten
Speaker 2: into that whole thing of parenthood and all that, which
Speaker 2: we will get to in a minute. But let's talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about how we can build our own
Speaker 2: experience capital. So we're looking at this to say, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: one of the big things that's going to help my
Speaker 2: earning's going to help my promotion and possibilities is to
Speaker 2: have more experience capital. If I'm like looking around at
Speaker 2: my life, what practically can I do to make sure
Speaker 2: I get more of that?
Speaker 5: Sure, there are so many things, but maybe to say
Speaker 5: I'm at the beginning of my career. First of all,
Speaker 5: it goes unset.
Speaker 4: You have to deliver the results.
Speaker 5: So whatever the OKR nbos quotas expectations are, you have
Speaker 5: to deliver it. That is the main bowling alley. But
Speaker 5: as you learn how to deliver that, you are gaining
Speaker 5: a whole bunch of skills. Pop your nose up and
Speaker 5: ask a couple of questions. One, what are the broader
Speaker 5: set of capabilities that I need to be great at
Speaker 5: the next job, in the next job after, And how
Speaker 5: can I start to get experience at a project level
Speaker 5: within the role that I have to lean towards that.
Speaker 5: A second thing is how can I start to demonstrate
Speaker 5: entrepreneurship really early. That's not about leaving and founding a company,
Speaker 5: although you're more than welcome to do that. I sit
Speaker 5: in Silicon Valley. That's a very popular thing to do.
Speaker 5: But entrepreneurship is also how do you take initiative and
Speaker 5: demonstrate leadership and forward thinking in the role you have.
Speaker 5: It could be as simple as you have fifteen minutes
Speaker 5: with a mentor and you get some feedback. You share
Speaker 5: who you are, but you also bring three ideas to
Speaker 5: the tape and offer not just like problems but I
Speaker 5: could help by doing X, Y, and Z. I would
Speaker 5: be excited to try and do this to help us
Speaker 5: deliver a better product, a better merchandising experience, whatever it
Speaker 5: is that you happen to be doing. So, I think
Speaker 5: how you demonstrate that leadership and that extra quotion early
Speaker 5: is not about working more. It's about building a set
Speaker 5: of capabilities you're going to need in the long run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I find that interesting because that is a
Speaker 2: distinct thing from academic achievement in many ways, right, that
Speaker 2: you tend to get good grades by doing well on
Speaker 2: projects that have been assigned and tests that you know
Speaker 2: are going to happen, on material that it's spelled out,
Speaker 2: will be covered. Whereas that entrepreneurial mindset is looking for
Speaker 2: something new that wasn't even there, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: an entirely different.
Speaker 5: Thing, exactly, And maybe one way to think about it
Speaker 5: is to turn on its head a kind of phrase
Speaker 5: that's often used, which is that women are promoted on
Speaker 5: performance and men on potential. And that is this very
Speaker 5: frustrating thing. It's something that's been discussed for decades, like, oh,
Speaker 5: women look at all the criteria for a next job,
Speaker 5: and they wait till they've exceeded on the all the
Speaker 5: criteria and men say, hey, two out of ten ain't bad.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna raise my hand, okay, and then they get
Speaker 5: the job. Now instead of saying gosh, he doesn't deserve
Speaker 5: the job, maybe say how I mean it is what
Speaker 5: it is. I mean, don't worry about somebody else, worry
Speaker 5: about yourself. How do I bet on my potential? And
Speaker 5: so if I turn that around as something you can do,
Speaker 5: you can say, look, I'm two years into the job,
Speaker 5: the next job is exit. I would be really excited
Speaker 5: about what are the pieces that are part of my
Speaker 5: potential that are important for that next job. How do
Speaker 5: I start to get some experience so that when I
Speaker 5: have maybe not two out of ten, when I've got
Speaker 5: seven out of ten, I can say, look, here's some
Speaker 5: of the things I'm doing towards the other three, and
Speaker 5: here's how I see it, and here's how I'm excited
Speaker 5: to grow. So kind of looking up and around the corner.
Speaker 5: We call that being strategic. I call that being practical.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's really important. Yeah, and part of this might
Speaker 1: be switching jobs.
Speaker 2: I think it can be easy and sort of comfortable
Speaker 2: to stay in jobs, and sometimes it's a good job.
Speaker 2: But I think what I read from what I took
Speaker 2: away from the Broken Wrung is sometimes even when things
Speaker 2: are good, if you feel like you're not growing enough,
Speaker 2: you really do need to keep looking around.
Speaker 5: Absolutely so, I've seen this at junior levels. I've seen
Speaker 5: this also at senior levels, where women feel like, for
Speaker 5: specific reasons, the C suite is elusive. Maybe someone before
Speaker 5: them could be practical, someone before them who's a woman,
Speaker 5: just got that big CMO role, so it's not even
Speaker 5: something holding them back. Take your talent and consider should
Speaker 5: you go somewhere else? Now, Well, that doesn't you know
Speaker 5: people are like, oh, that's not loyal or whatnot. You
Speaker 5: can still be loyal by doing an amazing job. You
Speaker 5: can still keep the network of people that you work with.
Speaker 5: You can be very authentic in your job. But you
Speaker 5: shouldn't turn down opportunities that would allow you to get
Speaker 5: to your full potential. There's a balance there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely well.
Speaker 2: One of the things I also found interesting in the book,
Speaker 2: you talked about a finding that women tend to get
Speaker 2: less actionable feedback than men. So as we're going about
Speaker 2: building our experience capital, having these conversations with the manager
Speaker 2: about what I need to know to be at the
Speaker 2: next level. How can you get a little bit more
Speaker 2: practical feedback on how you might improve.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there are two things that the data shows
Speaker 5: which I'm very focused on, like how do you turn
Speaker 5: something slightly depressing into something that is a practical point
Speaker 5: of action. So two things that are kind of depressing.
Speaker 5: One is that women tend to get less quote negative
Speaker 5: or constructive feedback, both by male and female managers. So
Speaker 5: that is maybe you're like, oh, I only want cheerful feedback,
Speaker 5: but the challenge is is that actually negative or constructive
Speaker 5: or developmental feedback is some of the best ways you
Speaker 5: grow when someone If you make a mistake and someone
Speaker 5: is willing to tell you about that and help you
Speaker 5: get to the next place, that's a huge gift. So
Speaker 5: if you're getting less of that, that's actually not helpful.
Speaker 5: The second thing is that women tend to have more
Speaker 5: narrow and more junior networks, so there are more, fewer,
Speaker 5: and let me just say it, less powerful people in
Speaker 5: the average women's network.
Speaker 4: When you put those those things together, it is.
Speaker 5: Hard to have around you that kind of village that
Speaker 5: propels you forward. So sometimes a woman may be sitting
Speaker 5: there like how is it that the guys know everybody?
Speaker 5: The you know what to do next? Like what meeting
Speaker 5: did I miss? And I think you didn't miss a meeting.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of these micro points that add up
Speaker 5: to a macro difference, and so seeking directly feedback and saying, hey,
Speaker 5: I didn't think that last project totally. I don't think
Speaker 5: I hit it out of the park. Could you tell
Speaker 5: me two or three things that I should take with
Speaker 5: me to the next place.
Speaker 1: So just de risk.
Speaker 4: So it's easy for people to give you that feedback.
Speaker 5: It requires confidence again to be like, look, it wasn't perfect,
Speaker 5: but tell me how to get to the next thing.
Speaker 5: I'm eager to get there. So seeking feedback out and
Speaker 5: then also consistently building out your networks. These don't just
Speaker 5: sort of happen to you. They are relationships that you
Speaker 5: have to build an investment in over time. It's part
Speaker 5: of your job.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, it is part of your job.
Speaker 2: It's not the extra stuff, it actually is a part
Speaker 2: of it. So yeah, this podcast is aimed at women
Speaker 2: who are building careers while also raising families, and of
Speaker 2: course that is one of the reasons that perhaps representation
Speaker 2: as we go up the ladder may not be equitable.
Speaker 1: Is that many women wind up taking time out of.
Speaker 2: The workforce to raise children, or they may be more
Speaker 2: responsible for the kids within a partnership or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And so maybe we could.
Speaker 2: Talk about how to address that elephant in their room,
Speaker 2: like what are some ways to make sure that if
Speaker 2: you are raising a family and want to spend time
Speaker 2: with your family and all that, that you are still
Speaker 2: moving your career forward and maybe even seeing parenthood not
Speaker 2: as a liability but as something that could be a
Speaker 2: potential moment of change in your career.
Speaker 5: So I have two co authors, Maria and Quillon, and
Speaker 5: amongst the three of us, we have nine kids. Each
Speaker 5: of us have three. I would not say it's easy.
Speaker 4: So first I think let's just call it as it is.
Speaker 5: It is not easy to work at advance your career,
Speaker 5: do a great job in the current job, invest in
Speaker 5: your future job as well as Ray's incredibly important people
Speaker 5: young people to be wonderful adults like that the whole thing.
Speaker 4: And kids.
Speaker 5: When your kids, you have multiple kids less than ten
Speaker 5: at home, this is challenging and it's challenging for both parents.
Speaker 5: But we do find year over year that when we
Speaker 5: look at even dual career families, the vast majority of
Speaker 5: the household burden or the workload in the home economy,
Speaker 5: irrespective of whether the woman is the prime bread winner
Speaker 5: or the secondary bread winner, tends to fall on women.
Speaker 5: So I think, like we just kind of have to
Speaker 5: acknowledge first of all, that it's not an equal division
Speaker 5: of labor in many cases, and we also have seen
Speaker 5: from an economic perspective some of the challenges that really
Speaker 5: face So all that said, like you know, we shouldn't
Speaker 5: be afraid to say that it's not even that it
Speaker 5: is harder that women have and carry different loads, and
Speaker 5: I'm not saying which one is better or worse, but
Speaker 5: some of those loads have a lot more in the bag.
Speaker 5: So with that, one of the things is I would say,
Speaker 5: how do you manage the tactics of your leave? And
Speaker 5: one of the things that I always talk about, and
Speaker 5: I this used to just be with women I mentored,
Speaker 5: and then more and more broadly, is pack a round
Speaker 5: trip ticket for yourself. Women do an amazing job planning
Speaker 5: to leave.
Speaker 4: Okay, I've made sure that all.
Speaker 5: The activities of my job that someone else has it
Speaker 5: all the projects are taken care of, all the checklists
Speaker 5: are there. If you're in a client service business like myself,
Speaker 5: I've talked to all my clients.
Speaker 4: They've seen me. I'm going to be leaving at X date.
Speaker 4: I will be back.
Speaker 5: You've done all all the things to prepare. You've done
Speaker 5: all the things to prepare for taking a certain amount
Speaker 5: of time off, no matter how long or short. That is.
Speaker 5: What we don't often see is that women take that
Speaker 5: same amount of care to Like what I say is like,
Speaker 5: write your round trip ticket back, what does the return
Speaker 5: trip look like? And that may be getting in contact
Speaker 5: with your mentors and sponsors and your boss early, like
Speaker 5: you know, a month before you come back, thinking about
Speaker 5: the work you're going to do when you come back,
Speaker 5: thinking about the fact that other people were doing part
Speaker 5: of your job, how are you going to do that,
Speaker 5: Thinking about ways that you can lead, maybe even thinking
Speaker 5: about part time for a little bit of the beginning
Speaker 5: and then moving to full time, but like really architecting
Speaker 5: with that same executive function skill to which you left,
Speaker 5: how you come back and thinking about how to do that.
Speaker 5: And sometimes what I have found anecdotally is that the
Speaker 5: first two or three months back aren't really that hard.
Speaker 5: It really starts to hit at six and nine months
Speaker 5: when you have the collective maybe the sleep deprivation times.
Speaker 4: The chips and work.
Speaker 5: Usually the first moments aren't as difficult as the sustaining model,
Speaker 5: to which you will have to work differently in a
Speaker 5: world where you have one, two, three kids at home
Speaker 5: and you are in a different stage of life and
Speaker 5: you still have all those work ambitions.
Speaker 4: So I think there's.
Speaker 5: Something about using the function there there. Second thing is
Speaker 5: about how you think about the skills you've learned. Some
Speaker 5: of the soft skills which we call soft skills, are
Speaker 5: hard skills. How some of those contribute as opposed to
Speaker 5: take away from your ability to be seen as a leader.
Speaker 5: And then I think the last thing is do you
Speaker 5: think about time differently? And maybe just to give you
Speaker 5: one quick story, is one of my favorite stories. I
Speaker 5: mean there are lots of favorites, say like favorites every chapter,
Speaker 5: but one favorite story is this incredible lawyer and she
Speaker 5: was on the rise doing a amazing things at Yahoo
Speaker 5: at the time, and she had her first boy, and
Speaker 5: then she decided to be a full time mom. And
Speaker 5: I mean, if you saw her in action, you were
Speaker 5: like you took that on with the same gusto that
Speaker 5: you took on being a lawyer. Then fourteen years later,
Speaker 5: she actually joined a reboarding group at LinkedIn, got back
Speaker 5: into the workforce, and is like thriving at LinkedIn in
Speaker 5: legal department again. And I love this story because she's
Speaker 5: the same amazing leader, like you see it in her
Speaker 5: when she was at Yahoo, when she was a full
Speaker 5: time parent with her husband working full time, and then
Speaker 5: now she's back and I think, like you just imagine
Speaker 5: her kids, like her kids have seen all these different
Speaker 5: versions and this texture to their mom, and she still
Speaker 5: has so much energy in life and career left. And
Speaker 5: so sometimes we measure it in days and months, maybe
Speaker 5: sometimes we measure it in years. But that takes a
Speaker 5: lot of personal courage and some companies that are willing
Speaker 5: to invest in women to help them get back up
Speaker 5: to speed.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Well, We're going to take one more quick ad
Speaker 2: break and then I'll be back with more from Lorena Ye. Well,
Speaker 2: I am back with Loraina Yee, who is the co
Speaker 2: author of the book The Broken Wrung about what we
Speaker 2: can do as women to help our careers advance to
Speaker 2: overcome the problems of under representation, particularly in that first
Speaker 2: managerial level. I want to talk a little bit though
Speaker 2: about the mental load and the load of carrying the
Speaker 2: household administration and work and all that that we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: that women tend to carry more of that, particularly in
Speaker 2: dual career couples. And you, guys, your co authors, and
Speaker 2: you are in a field that is known for longer hours,
Speaker 2: for travel for client services. I'm curious if you guys,
Speaker 2: or you in particular, have anything that has found it
Speaker 2: made it easy to feel like you have the mental
Speaker 2: space to take on the job given what it entails.
Speaker 5: I think I might have tried something different at every season,
Speaker 5: every phase, So I think I've been still in search
Speaker 5: of when the kids were younger. So my kids are
Speaker 5: I have a twenty two year old and eighteen year
Speaker 5: old and a ten year old. So for quick math,
Speaker 5: and I talk about this quite openly, McKinsey had won
Speaker 5: every decade, every tenure. So one thing I've found is
Speaker 5: that there are different types of tactics at different types
Speaker 5: of tenure that are required because your responsibilities and also
Speaker 5: your learning curve and your team and everything is a
Speaker 5: bit different. So I don't think there's one way to
Speaker 5: do it. I do think it's a bit custom built
Speaker 5: to where you are. The second thing is there are
Speaker 5: a couple of things that have helped, though the specifics
Speaker 5: may have been different. One is I used to think
Speaker 5: I was very well organized, but when you are overwhelmed,
Speaker 5: sometimes you present is disorganized. So I found that having
Speaker 5: some quiet time to think ahead three days three months
Speaker 5: or three days three weeks three months is really really helpful.
Speaker 5: I found that making to do lists that entail work
Speaker 5: and home and looking at them together, as opposed to
Speaker 5: I do all my work stuff and then I try
Speaker 5: to get to my home stuff or vice versa. I
Speaker 5: think there's something about just kind of letting it all
Speaker 5: be on a sheet of paper. I know that sounds
Speaker 5: incredibly tactical, but there is something about organizing in your
Speaker 5: operating model, and that's a fancy way for saying all
Speaker 5: the things that you have to get done. A second
Speaker 5: category is I think over time, and it was really
Speaker 5: hard for me at the beginning. I think I've gotten
Speaker 5: a little bit better at just saying I'm not good
Speaker 5: at that, or I'm having a hard time with this,
Speaker 5: and then that entails getting some help or maybe even
Speaker 5: just signaling like this.
Speaker 4: Is gonna be a little bit sixty forty, not even eighty.
Speaker 5: Twenty, or just maybe giving myself more time to do
Speaker 5: something or not expecting that same level of thoroughness, and
Speaker 5: that's less like work deliverables. But I think we add
Speaker 5: on a lot of things at home. So there's something
Speaker 5: about just knowing where you're at and saying, look, this
Speaker 5: is a little too much for me. And it's amazing
Speaker 5: how many people want to help you. And it's amazing
Speaker 5: when you have a community around you, both at work
Speaker 5: and at home. And then I think the last thing
Speaker 5: that's a little bit tactical and helpful is as the
Speaker 5: kids have grown up, you realize all the idioms that
Speaker 5: you know are real. It's a really it's a marathon,
Speaker 5: not a race. And part of this is being there
Speaker 5: at the milestones in the like seventeenth lap and the
Speaker 5: eighteenth lap and the twenty second lap. And it's like
Speaker 5: such an honor for me to be my kid's mom.
Speaker 5: And I feel like it may not accelerate my promotions
Speaker 5: in all cases, and I think that's real and it
Speaker 5: has real economic value to it, so I want to
Speaker 5: discount it, but it definitely accelerates my totalness as a
Speaker 5: person in life.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well. And you've gotten a lot of promotions too.
Speaker 2: So let's let's be clear. Do you think I'm very curious?
Speaker 2: Do you think you have more control of your time now?
Speaker 2: I mean, you had the last child than when you
Speaker 2: are quite higher up versus the first one.
Speaker 1: I think it might.
Speaker 5: Have been easier. It might have been oddly easier with
Speaker 5: the first one.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're younger than too.
Speaker 5: I mean, who knows, well, well, I was younger, I
Speaker 5: had a boundless energy.
Speaker 4: I still do, but I had more energy.
Speaker 5: But I also I do think there's a real difference
Speaker 5: when you're managing yourself and the things that you're working on,
Speaker 5: Like you're an individual contributor, even if you manage two
Speaker 5: or three people, but you're largely an individual contributor versus
Speaker 5: managing like a whole function. And so I definitely felt
Speaker 5: a different level of responsibility when you work on a
Speaker 5: project basis as an individual contributor. If you leave your work,
Speaker 5: you give it to someone else. You can go away
Speaker 5: from it and then you can come back from it.
Speaker 5: That's an amazing gift for maternity leave or printal leave.
Speaker 5: When you manage whole teams like that's a little more complicated.
Speaker 5: So I think like the texture of what's hard is
Speaker 5: a little different each time, which is why I think
Speaker 5: investing in your round trip ticket and that that's a
Speaker 5: long journey with a couple of stops is quite helpful.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well, good to know, good to know.
Speaker 2: Well, Lorena, we always end with a love of the week,
Speaker 2: So this is anything that is making your life better
Speaker 2: right now? This is gonna be a funny one, but
Speaker 2: I've visited a friend over the weekend who happens to
Speaker 2: have a farm and left with many, many eggs, which
Speaker 2: is just sort of a funny thing now because they're
Speaker 2: ridiculously expensive, but they're also really really good to have
Speaker 2: these eggs, like straight from the chicken. My breakfast has
Speaker 2: been amazing this week. So that is that is my
Speaker 2: love of the week. What's good for you right now?
Speaker 4: Well, I would say if I had fresh eggs, I
Speaker 4: would make carbonara sauce.
Speaker 2: Just kidding, scrambled're going straight to the pasta.
Speaker 5: I would just go to the pasta and the panchetta
Speaker 5: and some oil. I mean, what a difference fresh eggs
Speaker 5: make in panchetta pasta. But I think my enjoy for
Speaker 5: the week is so I was listening and I've been
Speaker 5: reading and thinking a lot more as I spent a
Speaker 5: lot of time in AI about robotics and kind of
Speaker 5: robotics powered by AI level reasoning. And it's really interesting
Speaker 5: because one of the things that humanoid AI robots are
Speaker 5: making progress in are like basic house tasks. And that's
Speaker 5: not the exciting part. What was the exciting part is
Speaker 5: I was listening to one of the engineers breakdown how
Speaker 5: hard it is to get a robot to do things
Speaker 5: like to clear the dishes and put them away. And
Speaker 5: what I thought was, Yes, there is complexity in what
Speaker 5: seem or with ours like discounted simple things, and so
Speaker 5: I just thought it was great that, like there was
Speaker 5: complexity in terms of making a essentially a computer and
Speaker 5: a physical object do this kind of the way mow
Speaker 5: for the house. But I also thought, in the long run,
Speaker 5: I love the promise that AI could help take some
Speaker 5: of the toil which really sits on both parents away,
Speaker 5: because what matters most like why are we working so hard?
Speaker 5: We're working so hard so we can be at our
Speaker 5: best and have quality time with our colleagues and our
Speaker 5: people that we work with. And quality time with our families,
Speaker 5: and so you know, if there could be a real
Speaker 5: sea change in that, that makes me really optimistic for
Speaker 5: the future.
Speaker 1: Also, it would be really cool to have a robot
Speaker 1: empty the dishwasher. I would enjoy that quite a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the dishes, it.
Speaker 2: Seems like gonna be very high.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of judgment. You need a judgment involved us. Well, Lorena,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. If people want
Speaker 1: to learn more, where can they go?
Speaker 4: They can go to Broken Wrong.
Speaker 5: You can find it on the McKinsey dot com website,
Speaker 5: as well as Amazon and all other places that you
Speaker 5: buy books. It's in my local bookstore, and I found
Speaker 5: out that it was actually at a stock so they
Speaker 5: had to writing more, which was probably the greatest compliment.
Speaker 4: Hopefully, it wasn't just my kids buying the book.
Speaker 2: It's just your family buys it and then it's like,
Speaker 2: but it's out of stock. Now I've done that, Like
Speaker 2: that was the last copy I bought it.
Speaker 1: Well, all right, Laura, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for hosting all Right.
Speaker 3: Well, that was awesome and probably inspiring to lots of
Speaker 3: our listeners. So we now have a question that is
Speaker 3: tangentially related. Someone asked they got promoted into a major
Speaker 3: leadership role, and this actually came from one of our
Speaker 3: Patreon subscribers, but hopefully she won't mine is getting shared
Speaker 3: even more widely. And she said she was going to
Speaker 3: be working with an administrative assistant for the first time.
Speaker 3: So do we have advice on how to make sure
Speaker 3: this is a productive partnership and one that helps her
Speaker 3: be more effective in her role?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think definitely thinking about that last part, Like,
Speaker 2: this person's role is to help you be more effective,
Speaker 2: So you need to think about where are the places
Speaker 2: where support would really allow me to spend my time
Speaker 2: on my highest value skills and the.
Speaker 1: Things that I uniquely can do.
Speaker 2: And especially if you are in a major leadership role,
Speaker 2: this is probably working with the senior people who are
Speaker 2: reporting directly to you, spending time with those people and
Speaker 2: making sure they know what they're doing leading the organization right,
Speaker 2: providing the motivation for everyone, and encouragement in the direction
Speaker 2: broadly for the group. And so what can this person
Speaker 2: do to make sure that you can devote as much
Speaker 2: of your time as possible to those things? So I
Speaker 2: think it would really really help to track your time
Speaker 2: as you are doing this, to look at how your
Speaker 2: work hours get spent, and then to sort of go
Speaker 2: through and say, well, which one of those things were
Speaker 2: the ones that were my highest value use, what were
Speaker 2: the things that somebody else could do, and then try
Speaker 2: to kind of over time put more and more of
Speaker 2: those with your administrative assistant.
Speaker 1: And I think also recognizing that it is something that
Speaker 1: is going to.
Speaker 2: Take time to build a relationship because both of you
Speaker 2: are going to have to figure out how to work together.
Speaker 2: So don't take anything that happens in the first few
Speaker 2: weeks as set like it can change.
Speaker 1: This person will have ideas, you'll have ideas. You'll work
Speaker 1: together to make it work.
Speaker 2: But you could also especially if you are getting someone
Speaker 2: who has a lot of experience in this, which I'm
Speaker 2: hoping that you are, Like maybe they were supporting the
Speaker 2: previous person in your role, or it's somebody who's been
Speaker 2: hired who's been a long time executive assistant, has worked
Speaker 2: with people in major leadership roles. Before ask this person,
Speaker 2: what do you do that has been most helpful? Like,
Speaker 2: what have you done that has been transformative? What would
Speaker 2: you see looking at what you know of my role
Speaker 2: that you would like to support me on and you
Speaker 2: think would work best, and they'll probably have ideas that
Speaker 2: you might not have thought of.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 3: I think what you said earlier about like taking time
Speaker 3: is important because it can be It may feel laborious
Speaker 3: at first to get someone really used to the way
Speaker 3: you like things done, or maybe they do something and
Speaker 3: you want to give feedback, and that all takes time,
Speaker 3: like it's going to come up the works. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, if that person is someone
Speaker 3: who's going to be staying, it's so where it's spending
Speaker 3: that time to have him or her understand how you
Speaker 3: do things, because again, that's like over and over again,
Speaker 3: that's going to pay time dividends. I also like what
Speaker 3: you said about like things that are the most value
Speaker 3: of your time, But I also think kind of thinking
Speaker 3: about like what do I least want to spend my
Speaker 3: time doing that I'm doing right now, and figuring out
Speaker 3: how you can template that out to have that person
Speaker 3: help with those extremely low value tasks.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about the broken wrong getting that first
Speaker 2: promotion into management and settings people up for.
Speaker 1: Success in that. We will be back next week with
Speaker 1: more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
Speaker 3: shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
Speaker 2: has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
Speaker 2: us next time for more on making work and life
Speaker 2: work together.