EmpowHER Women in Leadership Series | Part III

Chuck Shelton: Thank you so much Rahul. So I'm Chuck Shelton. My pronouns are he him. Great. Our consulting is based in Seattle. We focus on developing inclusive leaders. Our bias about inclusive leadership is that everyone can lead inclusively from any role. So whether you're an executive, a people manager, a partner, somebody the newest to the firm, you have the opportunity to lead and serve as an ally and to do so from any role that you're in. I'm just going to let you take a quick look at the goals for the next few minutes for me and then we'll jump in. So I'll just pause, take a couple of minutes and take our moments and take a look at the five goals. Here we are going to define allyship, talk about what it looks like and then talk about the benefits and risks of doing so. Let's start with the definition.

Allyship is listening, co-creating opportunity, being accountable, keeping promises and taking action. You can see the orientation inside allyship to action, to making sure that you're on the balls of your feet and not leaning back on your heels. You're looking for chances to build stronger credible relationships of trust with one another. In the case of our conversation today, we're talking about factoring gender identity into that. So for those of us who identify as men, we're focusing in on the female alliance, how do we as men think about allyship, become allies not only to people who identify as women but to one another as men as well? So that's a simple definition oriented to action for sure. One of the things we want to talk about is the connection between being an ally and growing performance and opportunity. It makes me think of a gentleman we work with at a large insurance company.

Over the last number of years when we started with Jim, he was in a senior leader role. He was well thought of, people knew he was human-centered, very focused on both the people that reported to him, people down inside his part of the organization, and he had a reputation for connecting with customers. Well, what Jim hadn't really done is start to factor in, he was early in his development of his point of view around aspects of identity, and that came partly with the advantages that went with being who he was. When we started talking with Jim about men as allies, one of the phrases that we used with him and we often use is a man as an ally when a woman says he is, and this speaks immediately to the accountability for us, the opportunity for us to say, how do I build relationships in which others are?

We're co-creating opportunity, we're making and keeping promises together that improves our performance and it opens the doors of opportunities to others. As Jim's built his point of view and tested out that idea of being accountable and not declaring himself as an ally, but in his case, in this case, women in his organization, seeing him, paying attention to ways that they might have disadvantage, opportunities that they needed to have the same chance for as other folks did, and the way that he also extended his allyship and leadership towards thinking about working with men. One of the artifacts of a place where men are thinking about allyship is that women don't have to be in the room for us to be having this conversation and doing this learning. Jim in part had the opportunity to move up into an executive role because he demonstrated his ability to work with, see people as individuals, recognize that not all men are the same, not all women are the same, and inside those different identity groups, people needed opportunity.

And so he not only saw it interpersonally and from an insight point of view, but he thought about it in terms of opportunities for advancement, for innovation, for really aligning to the individual's strengths and skills of people with gender and view, but not over focusing on it. A little bit about Jim's experience around performance and opportunities. One of the main tools we use to help, we help Jim, it's been an experience for me is to think about five stages of transformation. And again, this is for all of us all the time as a learning paradigm or model for how we build a point of view in this case around allyship. I'll briefly walk through these and then we'll apply it to allyship. The pre-awareness stage is maybe asking why does this matter with some doubt, it's not an aspect of identity or a difference or an issue or a question in the business, an issue with the customer that we really know much about and we've been disengaged, we haven't been paying attention or it just arrived.

Interest and necessity is the point where we start to pay attention. It's about awareness. So interest is I don't know what that is, I need to find out about it. In the case of today's conversation, maybe as somebody who identifies as a man, you're thinking men as allies. I like the sound of it, but I don't really know what it is and I like to explore it. So that's the interest part. Necessity is when the world requires it of us, and so for example, around generational change, as the youngest generation comes into the workplace, one of the necessities is us understanding that different generations had different experiences around life, around expectations of social activism, around experience with technology. So interest and necessity is the awareness phase. I need to find out about this. Careful practices, when we move awareness into action, we need to learn how to do it.

It's often awkward. We know we don't get it right. We have to find our courage during careful practice, but it's moving from awareness into action skill. Building the line from careful practice to activated is really crucial because then it's us building confidence. It's us less worried about mistakes and it's us starting to think more about not just how my learning and view my own learning, but when we move into activated, it's starting to become a part of how people see us. So one of the opportunities around for us as men around allyship is that people start to see us as people who they can trust, they can count on. I think that we're building a point of view where we're not as worried about which words we're using. We know how to recover from mistakes that we make and then activate and influencing and starting to think not only about interpersonal connections and on team production, but we're thinking about so what does this have to do with things in the system and culture?

So for example, thinking about equitable pay or how dads are using leave policy, not just moms or whatever. We're thinking about it from a systemic point of view. If I give you an example for me, I've been at thinking about inclusive leadership for decades actually, and when it came to gender 10 years ago on the binary men and women, I had as informed a point of view about that as somebody would after 40 years of doing it. And at that point the whole framework for gender being non-binary appeared and that people don't only identify as male or female, it's a spectrum. People think about themselves differently sometimes they think about themselves differently around gender day to day. And as much of a mystery to me as that was, I was over and active and influencing on my view of gender identity back to pre-awareness. I didn't even know quite what the categories were and I'd say when it comes to for example, plural pronouns for, I mean careful practice, my brain was influenced by a mom who's an English teacher.

Why not someone's pronouns are they them? My brain is thinking plural, and so I'm practicing and as I have relationships with clients, friends, family members who use they them, now I'm noticing I'm moving towards activated where I'm less worried about getting the pronouns wrong, I better at apologizing and noticing what I do and I'm starting to learn how to use they them in a way that works for the folks that use those pronouns. So if we apply these five stages to allyship just in buckets, pre-awareness as you can see is around allyship is like I don't really want to know about allyship, so maybe I'm even sorry I signed on for this session, but interest necessity and a careful practice for that place where I need to learn more about what this is. I hope it's not what I fear it to be. For example, it's win-lose one of the biases operating we're working on as allies.

It isn't necessarily that for women to win, men have to lose the opportunities to think about competition and collaboration in a generative and healthy way. So you can see some examples of interest and necessity learning to be an ally, and then on activated influencing, you're starting to come out of you in your work day to day again from any role and people are seeing particularly that third bullet under activated influencing. You're seeing people that others are identifying you as an ally. That's kind of the gold standard of that idea of a man as an ally and when a woman says he is, and I've been really impressed with Eisner that there's an ally's, ERG, so you actually have a community of people thinking about allyship that you can be part of and I hardly recommend that you take advantage of that.

Let's talk a little bit about the benefits and risks for those of us who identify as men as allies. First up the benefits. I've mentioned a little bit about trust and accountability already. We define trust as the making and keeping of promises over time and across difference. Trust is making and keeping promises over time and across difference. So you can imagine how to be thinking about trust is crucial, is connected to ally work and honestly it's a much broader conversation because if you look at the way that people in marketing and sales, the culture of marketing and sales over the last 30 years has absolutely evolved from being transactional, pitching features to building relationships as a trusted advisor. The connection from trust and accountability is if trust is the intention, I want to make promises that I keep accountability is ensuring that we keep them and having a relationship with people where they tell us, when you did this, you lived up to the promise that you made or this promise got broken, we need to talk about it.

So one of the profound benefits for us as men with ally work and in every reciprocal way, however you identify from a gender point of view, trust and accountability are a core asset core benefit. The next one is connected to that we can become influence partners in that definition of allyship, we co-create or looking for opportunities to support people's success and they're coming to us and saying, I need your help with this because there's trust and accountability. You can also flip the idea of influence partners because it's also you having influence partners to grow your own point of view. My experience as a man over the years has been that in my family, in my personal life and certainly my professional life with clients, when I am known as an ally or at least somebody that's trying to be one with gender in view, women will take risks to help me learn, maybe even correct a mistake or talk about an impact that I had that I didn't intend.

So the influence partner thing works both ways and is such a powerful asset. One more benefit is then all of this derives to credibility and personal that people trust you to be teachable, trust you as an ally to be somebody who's ready to learn and also ready to provide direct feedback as well. Because when we as influence partners, when we as allies can provide feedback to somebody, particularly say a woman who's wondering if the fact that she identifies as female is preventing her from an opportunity or the kinds of experiences, many women report in meetings about being interrupted by men talked over or offering ideas and then a guy will say something two minutes later that's about the same thing and he gets credit for the idea. We can figure out how to become part of those situations in a way that's credible and that opens up amazing doors for us as well as the benefits of what that looks like for people. Allies too. We're talking today primarily about gender. For us as men, as allies, everything we're talking about is relevant to other aspects of difference as well. Part of my own journey has been knowing in an American context that I'm white. So all of what we're talking about, I would guess in your allies ERG is connected to all of your ERGs. It is applicable to what ally work looks like. So those are some of the benefits. Let's talk quickly about the risks. One is inconsistency.

It honestly would be better to not start across the five stages and moving into careful practices and especially to aspire to get to activation. As a man who wants to be an ally, if you're not really saying, I'm going to actually I'm going to learn how to do this, I'm going to stay the course, one of the things that most damage is trust is when we show up and then we don't show up, people can count on us and then they can't count on us. So inconsistent engagement is to the degree that you're in, like careful practice right now as a man being an ally, lean in, get on the balls of your feet on this one and stay with it because people, in this case, women need you to show up like that. A second risk is the avoidance of accountability. One of the things that happens when you're building a point of view around as an ally is you realize that promises do get broken. Sometimes they get broken by other people's behavior or something that comes down inside the organization or a choice a customer makes. There's all kinds of reasons why promises and trust gets hurt.

This is a version of consistency. We so need to be the ones not only waiting for people to come to us and say, it feels to me like what you said was going to happen. Didn't we need to be able to take the initiative we need to lean in and be on the balls of our feet about being honest about things, shortcomings that we saw or saw be part of. One of the ways I've learned to do that is if I misspeak or I see a look on a woman's face during a meeting and I'm not ready or it doesn't seem like the right time to address it, I'll go to her later and say, when I said that or when that happened, I looked at your face and I thought, Hmm, I'm not sure that landed. Well. Sometimes people say, I don't know what you're talking about, and sometimes they say, I really appreciate you bringing up because I was uncomfortable and here's why.

So avoidance of accountability is absolutely a risk in being committed. And the final one is an interesting one that I talk about that as arrogance as a champion and one of the consumer products companies we worked with, a group of guys decided they wanted to really focus on being men as allies. They insufficiently considered how they needed to connect to the women's employee resource group and they kind of liked the word champion because it made them feel like they were out there making it happen, which isn't exactly the spirit of allyship. So I'm good with the word champion as a verb when it comes to advocacy and support, but I'm not so happy with it as a noun. We need to be careful about the arrogance part of and that hearkens back to a man as an ally when a woman says he is. I want to look quickly at some practices as I wrap up my comments here.

The first one is around psychological safety and standing. We're familiar with the idea of psychological safety. Standing is that we belong in the conversation. Women need us as men to engage, to lean in, to be consistent and to be teachable. So psychological standing for us as men, sometimes we deflect and say, well, I don't know if I belong in the conversation we do. It's crucial that we're there as allies. A second best practice, oh sorry, is around intent and impact. Intent is what we intend. Impact is what happens. Allies attend to impact, so we want to be clear about what we're trying to communicate and we need to be closing the loop one way or another, sooner or later on the impact to make sure that people understand that and that we check in. It's true their way around too. If in this case a woman does something that doesn't land well for you on the impact side, you have accountability, you have responsibility for figuring out a way to honor her, to equip her to be generous with her about how that went.

Now obviously it's connected to the nature of the relationship, but it's vital that you do all of these that you tend to intent impact. Not going to go through it, but you can see what it looks like across the five stages, especially over in influencing. I actively consider the person on the receiving end of my actions and communication. Impact is everything. Intent is the place we start the chance to think about impact. I want to talk briefly about advantage and disadvantage. Privilege can become a word that is an automatic argument these days. We like to talk about advantage and disadvantage. Advantage accumulates into privilege, disadvantage accumulates a pattern of loss. The reason this is a valuable concept is that all of us have experiences of advantage and disadvantage. They don't immediately gravitate to if you're a man, you have all advantages or if you're a woman, you have all disadvantages.

It's more nuanced and more clear. We need to get allies, get conversant around advantage and disadvantage in their own lives and with their colleagues and customers. And I want to close with Decentering. Decentering is the idea that to the degree when you notice that it's your voice that's being heard, you're a subject matter expert, you have a role to play that's at the center of something, you own that, but you also look for opportunities to help others step up. It's about stepping back, stepping aside, looking to give others voice. Decentering is one of the most active practice ways to serve as an ally, particularly for us as men. Women will notice when we step away from the center of things and open the door for them to step in. I'll close with that. I've mentioned the leaning in. We need to be on the balls of our feet as allies, not on our heels. Another way to think about advantage, disadvantages, advantages when the wind is blown on our back and disadvantage is when the wind is blown on our face. You have a chance if you identify as a man, you have a chance to take these tools and orient yourself to being in service and to do it in a way that will profoundly impact and help your own career as well. I'm going to stop there. Thanks so much for attending to my contribution. I hand it back to you for us to move into the panel.

Rahul Mahna: Wow, thanks so much Chuck. There's a lot to think about there. There was a lot to digest. One thing that struck me was your five stages model. A little bit about me, I'm the national practice leader of outsourced it and in our industry there really hasn't been that many women historically and it's been an evolution for me in my career and as I've grown and bringing women into my allyship and now I have significant influence by women that are helping me in meaningful ways and it really resonated to me to see that five stages model in this part of my evolution. As we move forward a little bit, again, I would encourage everyone that is attending to please use your emojis. I know the panel that you see up right now are fantastic partners, colleagues and friends of mine and I know they like a lot of encouragement and once you get 'em started, they're going to keep talking.

So if you have questions, please put them in. They are very, very responsive and they do like to get in touch and if you want to reach out to them, I'm sure they'd be open to assisting in any way possible moving forward. Let's start perhaps a question for Mark. Mark, please feel free to introduce yourself, but as you do, you have a very large position in our organization where you manage many service line leaders like myself and it'd be really interesting if you could share about your experiences as being part of an alliance of up and coming women leaders and how it's impacted your approach for leadership development.

Mark Staley: Yeah, I'd be happy to. Rahul and thank you for opening us up. And Chuck, thank you again for going through the presentation. That's not the first time I've been able to hear the material or even hear Chuck present it, but every time I get to experience it and hear it, it's just such rich content that can be applied so deeply in the work we do. So I guess I would like to start as I was preparing for this webinar today, I thought a lot about my career and I've spent most of my career in professional services and I've thought a lot about the incredible women that have impacted my career and my life and that I've worked with in the past and that I continue to get to work with today. Two of which I'm serving on this panel and have had really an awesome, I would say last probably year and a half of getting to know ROIA and Ola in a variety of different forms and fashion.

But as I think back, one of the things I'm most proud of is the accounting profession and the consulting profession have really focused in on understanding the importance of women in leadership. And that really became acute to me when I first entered entered the workforce, I worked for a very large firm and as part of a contribution that I was making internally, I was asked to help put in place technology for what was called the women's initiative. This was a very large professional services firm and so as a part of what I was doing and how I was contributing to this group, I really was able to get firsthand exposure to some of the different challenges that women were facing in the workplace. And because of the multi-generations that Chuck touched on, I was actually able to see how people were being affected differently. And so my generation which was coming into the workforce was experiencing or maybe didn't have awareness of some of the things that maybe prior generations had.

And so that was really some great exposure that I had early on. And then as I continued to work for incredible women leaders and have had the chance to work with a lot of women colleagues, I've really started to learn how to be a better change agent. I learned how to from the women in my life growing up and through my career and I really became a better listener, which makes me a much better communicator because listening is such an important part of what has to happen in order to be able to be a change agent and to be able to be a leader and to be able to be effective at communication. And so that was really a lot of what I was experiencing through my career. And then as I again reflected back, I never necessarily hold up a flag or even call myself a champion for women leaders that need or count on allyship, but allyship, which is founded in trust and credibility is a part of what we do as professional services professionals.

We are considered the trusted advisor. So everything as it relates to alliances and allyship to me is naturally baked in into what it means to be strong in the profession that we live and serve in all day every day. We are in the business of people and that means you have to be an ally for our clients, our colleagues, the profession, our community, our families. And so as I was thinking back through the many stories that were rolling in my mind preparing one popped up in my head that I just wanted to share with you guys real quick, and that is a colleague that I still have the privilege of working with today who is an educated, trained, licensed and highly skilled attorney.

And this attorney left practice as a partner in a law firm and decided to come on board and do something different as it relates to what we were. We were offering our clients from a consulting and advisory perspective, but throughout our journey together she continued to reinforce and while we leveraged her legal experience and knowledge, she continued to reinforce her desire and passion for the law while trying to balance her love and passion for what we were doing as a firm for our employees and our clients. And over the course of really many years, we continued to work through how to co-create those opportunities as Chuck outlined and really get to a point where this professional could find her way into really the best spot for her to be able to exercise her skill and passion and while continuing to be a part of the community that we have built here at Eisner er.

And I'm proud to say today that she's a member of our legal team. She is seen as a leader by many people. She has taught me how to be a better leader. I think I've received more from her than maybe I've provided to her, but it's a one example that popped in my mind about how being an ally of just listening and supporting and learning and understanding and also the patience of helping a colleague, a female colleague go through this journey of being able to accomplish all these goals and objectives that she has for herself and her career. And again, I don't necessarily consider myself a champion. I think she did way more than I did, but the fact that we did it together, I am proud. I'm proud for her, I'm proud for our firm and it's a good example and a good story of again, how this works. And frankly, I believe as an organization we're doing this day in and day out and with more focus and intention, we'll continue to do it and continue to get better at it.

Rahul Mahna: Raul, that's great Mark, really good background and thoughts behind that. I want to turn the conversation a bit to Ramia and Ola, two fantastic thinkers in our organization. I learn a lot when I speak to both of you and work together with you on things. I will fully allow you both to introduce yourselves because you can do a far better job than I can. But I would love for you to talk about concepts and feel free to take it wherever you want, but mostly around alliances is what I'm thinking and working with men and what impacts you've seen working collaboratively together, how did that process happen, evolve, things of that nature. So Ramia, maybe you could just kick it off and Ola, feel free to continue with that.

Ramya Bala: Welcome. Good afternoon everyone. It is truly a pleasure to be here on this panel to talk and share about some of the experiences and a lot of ground to cover, a lot of experience to share and I'm sure at some point we'll get a ping on how we are going to run short of time very soon. But I do want to start the whole conversation by putting it out just there that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but here we are together on planet earth. So let's put it out there now. How have you developed a strong alliance? What does a strong alliance mean to you and how does this alliance really benefit both men, women, and the relationship in an organization that you are building together? A lot of my conversation today is going to be about my personal experience, how I have navigated through my career so I can give some other perspectives and things that had worked well for me.

Well first, I personally believe in the simplicity of life. The foundation for all strong relationships and alliance as Chuck reminded us is trust and our ability to recognize that human emotions are complex, change is difficult, let's accept it. And our ability to accept someone who doesn't look like us, doesn't think like us on a surface is not an easy road to walk on. And having said that, if you have ever walked into a kindergarten classroom before the surroundings and society molds us as an individual, those five year olds are good at something and that is making friends without knowing the boundaries that we create as we continue to grow up in life. That has been a foundation of how I have looked at my life, my career, my personal and professional relationship. I strongly believe in making friends. Now. Being friends only happens when we know each other and for that I have found it's to cultivate a genuine intent to know one another.

It is simply mind boggling how a 15 minute conversation you can discover so much more about each other when you truly want to know something about that person and that genuine intent and sincerity builds a strong foundation of trust and truly having someone in your corner. In this process, I have also observed and learned on how I can contribute to that relationship and once you are in any relationship, you'll quickly learn that some people are givers and others are takers. As we progress in our life and in our career, we surround ourselves with people who can balance that equation. Growing up in the career, developing a thick skin was probably the first lesson I was taught. I am personally a strong believer of empathy as a giver, but it was very important for me to know not to take everything personally or as a reflection of personal action.

Now this has helped me, others or others, it has helped me manage my own expectations better. I have also learned from my male colleagues on how to compartmentalize better and put some of those emotions in the back burner when I'm dealing with everyday situations now we often wait for someone to think about us, our talents, our credentials. I will often find myself as a younger self where I would ask this question to a male colleague or a friend, what do you mean you didn't know I did this? I mean this is literally what I do. How come you didn't think of me? I quickly realized that in this fast paced world, we act first and we think later. So one of the behavioral aspect that I had to change in myself is to put yourself out there. It is definitely not comfortable to talk about it and advocate for yourself, but advocating for your skills and your strength not to oversell and be honest on when you don't know enough has definitely helped in laying the platform where my male colleagues now know where they can reach out for me and where I can help them and vice versa.

You have to accept the fact that your male colleagues intuitively do not engage first. So it helps when you proactively engage breaking some of those eyes, walls that we create and learn our ability to talk and ask more. Now to make the conversation easier, one of the things that I have cultivated early on or have learned from my male colleagues is also to have direct and critical feedback. Now you'll notice both men and women dance around on how to give constructive and honest feedback to the opposite gender. Now, one of the ways to build a great relationship is to make the first move. My male colleagues know this, and if you're in the audience, you will humor me that I often give my male colleagues honest feedback on how they handle the situation, especially if it involves a female colleague. It is my way of helping them understand the other perspective, looking out for your male colleagues and helping them navigate the complex environment similar to what we have now.

This behavior has evolved over the years sometimes as a friend in college now helping my peers at work and now I share those feedback with my leadership slowly and steadily building the credibility of giving unbiased opinion. Now it is not entirely a unselfish behavior. This technique has helped me give me some honest feedback as well. Now, a successful working relationship between men and women at workplace also means that someone is looking out for you, be comfortable with you in sharing their feedback. I want to make sure that my male colleagues are not worried about me getting offended when they do give me constructive and critical feedback. When you turn to work on large scale project across different geographies, you cannot do it on your own. You need your circle of influence. You need your male colleagues to be able to walk up to you and empower with you with all the right things that you're doing, but also offer you alternative thoughts for you to reflect upon and reevaluate some of your decision.

And that comfort in a relationship comes in with a lot of open and honest conversation where it's okay for you to say that if you see me not doing something right or if you feel that this is not how I should be approaching you, or if you think in this situation I should have handled this better, come and give me the constructive feedback and I will take it with open mind without getting offended that I may not be doing it right now. The current leadership is definitely male gender centric, right? It is definitely a game changer when men speak about you and advocate for you when you are not in the room. Now, how do you help men get there? I like to believe that inherently our male colleagues and leaders, our advocates, more often I feel they just don't know what we want or simply because we don't often ask enough.

Over the years, you tend to learn to accept that no is okay. I had an idea, my boss said No, it doesn't mean that the idea doesn't have a merit. It simply means that maybe it's not the right time today, you put it in the back burner, bring it up again after some time. Same thing holds true for need more money. Ask, need that promotion, ask and then tell them that why you need that more money or that promotion and lead that into a more honest conversation. Now, the core of the question, can men empower you? Can that make a difference? Oh gosh, it makes a huge impact. Now, early in my career when I entered into a strategic role, one of my responsibility involved working closely with my firm's senior partner group. At that time I was just a manager. Now to think that I manager is going to advise, tell, and ask your senior folks to buy into an idea felt extremely overwhelming.

I spoke to my boss about it and I said, Hey, give me a fancy title. Looking back, it was probably not needed, but back then it felt like an armor. The title was my way of looking at the credibility of what I was set to do. He did humor me after some celebration, we came up with this really long fancy title. He still jokes about it that supported on what I was set to do. It was a simple, small act, but it gave me a profound strength. It gave an empowerment that I had a support and backing of my leadership to what I was set out to do. The lesson ask, don't assume. And over the years, the strategic partnership has resulted in excellent results and the progress that has set a great growth for our growth in our practice. Now, do you formally ask someone to be your ally or how does it work?

Right. I feel it's a combination of both. One, it is important to know that women perceive an ally as empowering. Now men typically look as allies or allyship as a way of setting norms of equality in an organization. Our thought process is let's empower each other more allies in women. It increases their sense of belongingness and it makes women feel that you can trust that the organization of the firm is going to treat you fairly. Earlier, probably I would've asked someone to be my mentor or a guide, but as I grew up my career, I think I offer more alliances before Ola, I ask you on how this journey you took, I do want to give a shout out to Mark. Mark and I, we of course we know each other for less than about six months and we were recently on a pursuit where we were working together.

Now, when you are on a pursuit, there are a lot of meetings, there are a lot of calls, there are a lot of conversations. More often than not, it would turn into a conversation among men. Now Mark, I think he had quickly learned about my skillset and what was my role in the pursuit. He would often bring me into the conversation by naturally stringing my roles and responsibilities into the conversation. Now that's a wholesome experience when your male colleagues are naturally doing it as a practice. I think it lifts everyone's experience at workplace. A Adriana, what are your thoughts?

Adeola Akinrinade: Alright, I hope everybody can hear me. Okay, good afternoon. It's interesting as I'm listening to everybody speak, actually, I just started sort of taking notes on some of the things that we've been talking about today and I just want to highlight a few things because I think it is important. I know Chuck had mentioned or you made the comment about with regards to allyship and how for women to win it doesn't mean that men have to lose. And I also really enjoyed what Mark said or the comment you made about learning to be a better change agent by being a good listener and allowing that to make you more effective in terms of your communication. And I think Ramia you also mentioned, and I think Chuck mentioned this as well with regards to trust and how that is so important. And as part of that, you talk about empowerment and it's almost like we have the same notes.

Ramia putting yourself out there asking questions. Why don't I go back and just answer the question, the role last, right. With regards to allyship and start with, for me, it wasn't really a formal process. I would say that it's been more of an organic process really based on working together with folks and sort of getting to know each other better. So in terms of what I do, I work in the distressed environment and we deal with very challenging cases. We spend a lot of long hours working on just really trying to develop the best outcomes for our clients. And I'll say that as part of that process, you really get to see a different side of people, both folks we work with internally as well as clients who we work with externally. And I think this has gone a long way in terms of just being able to foster strong working relationships with people.

In addition, just again going back to trust, there is a level of trust that comes with the territory that I will say that sort of allowed me to bring in a different perspective to our engagements. We understand the issues we work collaboratively together to try to achieve our goals. I want to just sort of take a step back and I want to highlight a few things. I think it's important to note that you can be intentional about your alliances, whether it's somebody that you look up to or you aspire to be like. I remember when I first started my career, I worked for an investment bank many, many years ago. I was one of four women in the group. I think we had about 50, 55 people. And back then we worked 15 hour days because in banking that's really what you did. And at that time it was not uncommon for us to go into a conference room where we would all sit together and have dinner since a lot of us were working late.

And I always thought it was interesting back then whenever the women joined dinner would last about 15 minutes. But when we weren't there, it lasted a lot longer. And I think eventually it wasn't like we felt unwelcome or anything like that, but eventually the women just stopped joining the conference room dinners and we just ate at our desks. And I remember reaching out to one of the senior female leaders at the firm at the time, we had coffee together and this topic set of came up and we talked about some of the challenges that I was dealing with and she gave really great advice and made some suggestions about my approach. And I would say that really from that conversation I learned how to find ways to connect with people. And I think again, this was what, 20 years ago in retrospect, I realized that that decision to stop attending those conference room dinners, I think really made it more difficult to develop a strong working relationships with some of my team members. And I think you know what, it was an opportunity lost for them to get to know me, to get to know what I was able to contribute to the team. And at the same time, I didn't really know them from a work ethics standpoint, from a drive standpoint, from a productivity standpoint. I think these working relationships are very important. When you feel connected to your team, when you feel seen, you are more likely to go over and beyond and remain loyal to the firm as a result of that.

So I will pass it on to Raul. I think

Rahul Mahna: That's really interesting. Eddie Eola and one of the previous sessions, Beth Leonard, another senior leader in our firm had something very similar to say that people like to work with people they know. And when we go for, as Ramia said, promotions in different areas, you have to have that friendship as well. People have to know you a little bit about you and the relationship and that is part of it. Also, we only have about 10 minutes left and I would love to ask each of you to, we all come to these webinars and seminars and we hear a lot of concepts, but what about takeaways? Something these people who've attended today? Let's give them something really tangible. And so I would ask you to spend two, three minutes each and give a takeaway to the group, which is if someone wants to get started, maybe they haven't done anything in this regard today, what is one thing you would recommend for them to actually tactically do to get started? And if they hit a challenge or maybe you can reflect on how you started, if you hit a challenge, how you overcame it. I know you all gently talked about it, but perhaps one actionable item if you could, and we can start wrapping the session from there. So Chuck, perhaps I could start with you to start.

Chuck Shelton: Thanks, Rahul. Yeah, so I'll just say simply that and specifically to the guys, we need to pay attention. We need to commit to building relationships. We need to commit to listening when we pay attention, when we get curious about what people do, I think from both what you said, Ramya and Ola to pay attention to what's going on in the conference room, we're fully capable intellectually, emotionally, spiritually to observe what's going on around us. And it's not the purview of just people from Venus as well. So to me it feels like pay attention, look for what's going on, attend to what's going on around you, and then care enough to get curious and find out, build relationships. We all know how to do this. We need to find our courage to do it with differences like gender in view.

Rahul Mahna: Mark, maybe you could pick up from there.

Mark Staley: Sure, happy to. I would say first off, Ola, thank you for that story. That was a very good example of the impact that not building relationships and not being allies and this, that and the other can have on everybody engaging with one another. And Roya, thank you for the feedback. And so for those that have worked with me, you'll often hear me say feedback is a gift. And Roya gave me some incredible feedback about our interaction we had on a recent pursuit, which has been a lot of fun. But it was feedback for me because it's become so natural for me to make sure that the right people are being engaged that I didn't even realize that Roya was experiencing something. And just to hear it from you is good, is a good refresher and a good reminder. So my two takeaways, Rahul, I have to add too, I apologize, is feedback is a gift and don't hold that back from people, that gift. And then the second thing is back to intent versus impact. I mean that's the foundation of emotional intelligence and that's a big part of what we're talking about in relationships and trust and credibility. And so I would take those two areas and really dig deep in and I think you'll see some really impactful ways that you're improving the lives of yourself and the people around you.

Rahul Mahna: Great, Ola.

Adeola Akinrinade: Thank you. I think maybe what I would like to share with everyone is really just finding ways to connect with people and developing deeper relationships with colleagues and business relationships. I think it's important for people to recognize the value in having different perspectives and representation and finding those ways to connect. And I put some notes on here for myself when I was again listening to everybody speak, which is speaking up for yourself, putting yourself out there, asking questions, showing up and being proactive. Thank you.

Rahul Mahna: Great Ramian.

Ramya Bala: The only piece of advice after all this knowledge and wisdom has been shared is don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to ask. There's a powerful sentence when someone says, the best you can hear is a no. What more can happen beyond that? Don't let that discount your ability to ask. I believe it helps us sleep better at night that I asked if it worked, it worked. If it didn't work, it didn't work. But why go through with that thought that you probably should have asked, it could have happened. So be proactive, take control, take charge and brave build those relationships where men are comfortable in having those conversations with you and having saying both, yes to you and no to you. So go ahead and ask out more money, power, more promotions, everything ask.

Rahul Mahna: That's great advice. We did have one question which I think is very insightful and I'll leave it to any of you to comment on in the next few minutes that we have left is after Covid, our dynamics have changed. We are no longer in the office where you can just bump into somebody and start these actions that you all kindly mentioned. And so do any of you have any feedback for this remote world we're in today and how do you foster some of this allyship and concepts that you all talked about in a more predominantly virtual world? And I'll just leave it to anybody to start on that

Ramya Bala: Check in, ask, reach out to people, look for ways to connect with people. Sometimes it may feel a little artificial reaching out to someone more frequently when you're not in their face. It's a lot more easier to walk the corridors and say, how are you doing? What did you have for breakfast? What did you guys do last night? It feels a little, I don't want to use the word fake, but it feels unnatural to ask some money on teams. What did you do? How was your dinner last night? Try to make that uncomfortable notion. Reach out to people if you know their interest, if there's a game going on, if there was a game last night that your friend or colleague might have enjoyed, reach out to them and ask them about the game. So find ways to connect. It may feel like a superficial in the beginning, but over a period of time it feels more natural where you can have a running set of conversation going on. So you have to find ways to let people know that you're not remote, that you're thinking about them, that they can think about you and there's more than one opportunity to connect.

Adeola Akinrinade: One other thing I'd like to add to that too is for, because our team is spread all over, so sometimes it's impossible to get together physically, but turning on your camera and just having conversations with people, I find I feel more connected and I can see them and we can have conversations not about work, their interests, other things like that.

Mark Staley: The one thing I would add too on that is being intentional about making sure that you can connect in person. And so oftentimes we may be moving around or that maybe an opportunity at a retreat or a meeting. You make time when you're there. I was in Philadelphia last minute in December for example, and I only had about 30 minutes, but I made time to pop into the office and I got to see Kristen, one of my colleagues, Kristen and another colleague, Charles and some other folks. And so be intentional about trying to make sure you do have some face time at some point along the way.

Rahul Mahna: That's great. I think there's just some good ideas and we'll keep learning together as we all evolve here. We only have a few minutes, so let me wrap all of this up for us a bit here. This is the end of our third series out of four. Part four of the series is scheduled for April 23rd. It's a celebration of the value of your alliances and it will feature our CEO Charlie Weinstein, who's a wonderful speaker. If you've heard him before, he's very insightful and I would highly recommend you join to hear his thoughts. We know how easy it is to learn something in these sessions and then you get back to your daily grind and you lose some momentum. So we wanted to offer a way to keep these conversations alive and help put those learnings into action. So at the bottom of your screen, I feel like a YouTuber doing one of these here, but there's a presentation button where you'll be able to get access to a lot of learnings.

In fact, there's also some Lumi Q podcasts and group discussions that you can get access to and download for yourself. The one nice thing that you will see is you'll get 10 free credits, which you can use, and you can scan a QR code down there and visit the Empower Her website and also get some more details. I want to highlight two lummi, two podcasts that are available, a Guide for Men to be allies with Women at Work and how to become an action oriented dialogue. Those are great, and again, all these resources are available for free and they're part of the webinar. And of course you can always refer to the EER Amper, empower her website and get much more details. So thank you for joining us today and we can't wait to see you at our April 23rd event.

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