Episode 197: Navigating Gender Dynamics: What Leaders Need to Know w/ Robin Goad

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Today Counts Show Episode 197

Preview

Robin: What you generally hear women talk about is, “I wish I would have known that some of the beliefs I carried from my primary family were not healthy.”

Jim: They say, “I have to work twice as hard to do the same job and still don’t get the recognition.” I have seen that. I’m just going to say it to be true.

Robin: It isn’t about how hard you work. The problem is we are the little ducks on the pond with our feet just paddling as fast as possible, and the men work smarter.

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make The Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. And be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content. All right, let’s get to the podcast.

Introduction and The Guest’s Background

Jim: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Today Count Show. I am your host, Jim Piper. We’re going to be talking about something that, well, I don’t know, it’s going to take me a minute to get through this introduction. I’m a little bit left and right on this particular topic. I live with this topic. I’m just going to jump in and kind of share with you what I think the topic is about, and then I’m going to introduce my guest.

Jim’s Background

So, those of you who’ve been watching or following The Today Count Show, you know that my life began in Bank of America. At the time, I believe it was number one or two in the world. And so, I had quite a career with Bank of America in those days. I really enjoyed a lot of it, and I hated a lot of it. That’s just the absolute truth. I was kind of learning how to operate in a world that was different than the world that I was raised in.

I was raised in a very traditional Christian home. My mom is an all-star. She still is. That woman is absolutely amazing. And later on, as I got older, she did work out of the house for the post office. And again, I love her to death. But what I was referring to at the bank is a lot of women worked at the bank. The more you moved up the ranks, the less women you saw.

There were all kinds of terms, not-so-great terms. There are terms like the “good old boys” that I would hear whispered, or I would hear in other media sources about these bad guys called the good old boys. You could be part of the good old boys and not even realize that you’re part of the good old boys.

I was learning how, since I was raised in a home that was more traditional, I really wasn’t ready for working alongside women in the marketplace. That’s just my honest confession. Let’s put aside the fact that I’ve also spent decades of my life as a pastor, and that is a controversial issue—not so much today as it was maybe back in the day, but it still is—about women and leadership in the church.

Introducing the Guest

So anyway, I am going to introduce to you a corporate executive. She has done extremely well in corporate America. She currently is an executive for one of the largest corporations in the world, and she has just recently written a book. I’ve got to put my glasses on so I can read it. The title of the book is Girl by Birth: Woman by Fire. I love it. And the subtitle’s even better: The Get Real Guide to Becoming the Woman You Were Meant to Be. Everybody, please meet Robin Goad. Robin, welcome to the show.

Robin: Thank you so much. I loved that intro. I like how you do that with not knowing where you’re going to take it, I love it. Thanks for having me.

Why Robin Wrote the Book

Jim: Robin, why did you write this book? And what is this book about? I think your titles are pretty clear, so this isn’t an all-feel-good story. You’re saying that you’ve come against some obstacles, some uphill battles, but maybe fill us in just a little bit on why you wrote the book and what it’s about. Then we’ll go from there.

Robin: Okay. So, the reason I wrote the book is because about five years ago, I clearly heard from God say, “Be ready for five years.” I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know why. But I have it in my journal that the Lord said, “Be ready for five years.”

The Inspiration Sparked by Motherhood and Legacy

Starting February of last year, I sat down and said, “I’m going to write a book.” And that came from my daughter just having our first grandbaby. She had the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting on her nightstand, just like so many women in America have that book. We all got it.

And you’ve got this wonderful 400-page book for nine months of your life. Nine months of your life, you have a 400-page book that tells you everything that is going to happen in the next nine months. I put two and two together. I said, “Where’s the book for all the other stuff, for the other 80 years of my life? Where’s the book for that?”

And I think that’s what I’m supposed to be. I think that’s the five-year thing. I think I’m supposed to be writing this book.

In addition, when you are in your mid-50s, sitting in a room with women around any sort of table, you will hear it said at least a dozen times: “If I just would have known that when I was 24.” “Oh, if I just would have known that when I was 34.” “Oh, if I just wouldn’t.” I heard that so many times that I said, enough is enough. I know what I’m doing. I’m writing this book, and it’s going to be all of those things I wish I knew when I was 24, 34, 44.

The only caveat is that God said you have to be 100% transparent, authentic, real. You have to tell the real real.

The Origin of the Book’s Title

And the title came—my publisher and I argued for a month over what this title was going to be. I don’t know if you’ve ever written a book, but you have a working title, and then you have what you think is going to be your real title. We were going around and around with my publisher for over a month.

I was sound asleep, and I got woken up at 3:00 in the morning with the title. The title was Girl by Birth, Woman by Fire: The Get Real Guide to Becoming the One. I got the whole title—the title, the subtitle. I got it all. So I got my phone out really fast and wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget, and then went back to sleep.

The next day I told the publisher, “I think I’ve got the title.” I gave it to him. It was the first title that we actually agreed on.

Jim: Wow.

Robin: That’s the story.

Jim: Now you have already front-loaded this conversation by saying that the Lord told you. So obviously, you are a woman of faith. But when people say things like “God said” or “God told me” or “the Lord told me,” it kind of freaks some people out because we don’t know what that means. Does that mean that you were weeding in the garden, planting flowers, and all of a sudden a voice came from heaven? What do you mean when you say the Lord said, “Be ready for five years”?

Journaling, Impressions, and Discernment

Robin: Yeah. I’m a big journaler. I spend a lot of time journaling. I spend a lot of time in quiet time in the mornings. And so I write. I just start out every morning writing what’s on my heart, what’s on my mind, and what do I think the Lord is saying.

When I go back to that journal in 2020, I just wrote a five. I had just started working at this new company in 2020 during COVID, and I just felt in my spirit, you need to be ready for five years. So I just wrote that down.

Jim: Would you say it’s like an impression?

Robin: Yeah. It’s a thought that I’m not consciously thinking. That’s how I explain it. I have my conscious thought, which I’m in charge of the pen, and I write down what I’m thinking. And then when something comes to me that isn’t me, I feel like that’s coming from the Lord.

Jim: Yeah, I’ve had those experiences as well. And sometimes they come in some very practical things that I go, okay, and I do it. I might think that it was actually my thought, and then after it materializes, I realize, you know what, that wasn’t even my thought. That was a God thought, I would call it.

Right?

Robin: Exactly.

Setting Up the Core Themes of the Book

Jim: But other ways they come are in the sense of conviction. And for me, where I’ll be convicted about something, if I’m being rebellious or cowardly about that conviction, I notice that it won’t go away. It just keeps coming back. That’s when I’m confident to say, you know. I may not say it the way you said it. I might say it more like a warrior, you know, would say it. God’s on my case about something here.

Most of my work is with men, so I know how men think. So you can’t just tell me about the title of your book. I know you can’t give it all away; otherwise, why would we buy your book? We’ll get to that later. And no offense, I doubt that I’m going to buy your book.

Robin: I don’t know. You might like it.

Jim: Maybe. But one of the things that I forgot to say in my introduction was that, obviously, if you’re a woman, you probably want to listen to this podcast. But if you’re a man that works with women, which probably all of us do, you probably want to listen to this podcast as well. Some of us are as dumb as a nail about what that looks like.

You said this too. You said you’re around this table with these 50-some ladies, and how often do you hear someone say, “Oh, I wish I would have known.” What are some of those things? Because that’s what you said the book is kind of based on. Give us some examples—some of the more popular or obvious, or maybe not obvious but attention getters—that make you say, “Gosh, if I would have known.”

The Three Pillars of Life: Relationships, Vocation, and Health

Jim: Yeah. It comes in a lot of different things you’ll hear women say, “I wish I would have known.” I sort of bucket them into themes, and that’s how I ended up doing my book, too, because we were trying to figure out how to organize an entire life. I’m trying to give you this playbook for life, and we tried to figure out how to organize it so it wasn’t 900 pages.

So we bucketed it in three ways.

Part One: Relationships and Inherited Beliefs

And what you generally hear women talk about is, “I wish I would have known that some of the beliefs I carried from my primary family were not healthy.” Just because it’s the way my family always did something doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the right or good approach.

So the first part of the book is about relationships. What did you learn? And what did you inherit from that core family? What pieces of that are truth and good, and what things maybe did you learn that aren’t so great and that you probably need to divorce yourself from—some of those ideas and beliefs. So part one is around relationships.

Part Two: Vocation and the Reality of Corporate America

Part two is around vocation. And that’s that, gosh, I wish I would have known that corporate America is actually a game to be played. It isn’t really about going to work every day and killing yourself, working harder. It’s so cliché to say, “Don’t work harder, work smarter,” but it’s so true.

But then you don’t know what that means. Don’t work harder, work smarter—okay, fine. What does that mean? Tell me. I’ll work smarter. But somebody has to give me some insight into what that means.

I wish I would have known when I was 25 years old that this thing called corporate America is this big mechanism, this big system, and there’s actually a rule book on how to be successful there. But it’s a game, and you’ve got to play the game, and all games have rules. Some are written, and most aren’t.

Part Three: Health, Money, and Long-Term Well-Being

Then the third part is about health. You’ll find most 50-year-old women sitting around talking about emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial health. I think so often times, my dad taught me growing up, you save 10%, you invest 10%, you tithe 10%, and the rest will take care of itself.

Well, that’s true if you want to retire in your 60s. But so much of that investment money you can’t have access to. So I wish I would have known some different financial strategies so that I could be set up. It isn’t that I can’t retire; it’s just that I can’t retire today. Had I known some different ideas and different approaches, I might have had a different investment strategy starting in my 20s versus what I did, just thinking I’d retire in my 60s.

I’d really like to retire right now, but it’s not possible. Anyway, those are the kinds of things you’ll hear women talking about when we’re saying, “I wish I would have known how fast my kids were going to grow up and how fast those 18 years that you’ve got them at home went.”

So I just share all of my life’s lessons in those three categories. And most of those life lessons are all from getting it wrong.

Gender Dynamics in Corporate America and the “Good Old Boys” Club

Jim: Let’s let a man into this conversation. See what you think. I think that a lot of what we experience in life, we tend to generalize because there’s always exceptions to every rule. That’s a generalization, I think, but I think that’s pretty accurate.

I think some of the things that I’ve heard and have experienced in some way, shape, or form is that not only do I believe that you do have these good old boy clubs in different places, it doesn’t mean that the organization is necessarily ruled by a good old boy club. It could be, but there are different spots within an organization where, if you land in that area, you’re going to be exposed to that culture. Have you experienced anything like that?

Robin: Oh, for sure. I’ve spent 30 years in high-tech, large corporate Fortune 100 companies. When you’re in high tech, it is predominantly a male industry, and the only roles that are allowed for women to have serious advancement are marketing and HR.

Outside of marketing and HR, I would show you org charts. If you look at the sales organization, which is where the business line of business is run, that is predominantly male at the top. The finance organization and the technology side, the product or services side, is also predominantly male.

What ends up happening is, go look. I’ll tell your viewer: go look at the top Fortune 100 companies and go see who the CFO is. Go look at the executive org chart, and you will see women in the HR role and in the marketing role. You will not see them in the other parts of the business.

Temperament, Roles, and Generalizations

Jim: Being that we’re both believers, we’re probably not as sensitive to this next topic that I’m going to throw out as some are. I certainly don’t mean to offend, but marketing and HR don’t surprise me because I think they have a tendency, especially the HR side, to fit a female better than a male. Generalization. Generalization, right?

Because it is nurturing, listening, collaborating. Generally speaking, my mom is a better collaborator than my father. My mom is a better processor than my father. My mom doesn’t always feel driven to have the answer now. It can be something that is massaged out through conversation, relationship, and all those soft and fuzzy things.

And let’s just be honest. If it is a man’s world still in corporate America for the most part, and a beautiful woman walks in who represents a brand versus a dude that walks in, I know that’s crude and rude, but is it not a reality?

Broader Observations on Temperament and Work

Then I’ll say this too. When you study temperament, there are temperaments that seem to be more loaded male versus female. That’s one broad truth. I invite any psychologist to get involved with me on that because I know it to be true. I’ve done thousands and thousands of these, and I can do the basic statistics on it, even in my own anecdotal way, which would still be a pretty good sample.

I also know that what we used to call third world countries, but now we have a different politically correct term for that—I forget what it is—underindustrialized nations or whatever. I notice how interesting this is, that there is a certain temperament that is more dominant in those countries that work with more labor than those that Peter Drucker would call abstract thinkers.

Individual Temperament and Career Fit

With that said, that doesn’t shock me. And I’m actually agreeing with you on this. I know it takes me a long time to get around to this, but what I’m saying is I have a certain temperament, and it is a very small percentage of the world’s population. I forget what it is. It’s like 1% or 2%. And if you have my temperament and you’re female, it is way less than that.

Yet, somebody with my temperament doesn’t typically want to do HR, nor do they want to do marketing, to your point. That’s what I’m trying to say. So what I’m trying to do is bring some balance by saying, okay, Robin, you’re making a good point to some degree.

Perceptions of Effort and Recognition

Let me bridge that over to another statement that I have heard women say, because I do have female clients, and they’re fantastic, by the way. I will tell you this: besides the gap between the two genders, I generally find that women do what they say they’re going to do.

I generally experience that they lean in and they want to engage in this coaching relationship. They really want to get better. But here’s what I have heard them say, and it depends on what level of frustration they’re at when they say it. They say, “I have to work twice as hard to do the same job and still don’t get the recognition.”

I have seen that. I’m just going to say it to be true in many cases. I don’t know. What do you say?

Robin: I would say that women believe we’re working twice as hard, ten times as hard. And it’s true. We do. And this goes back to my point that it isn’t about how hard you work. The problem is we are the little ducks on the pond with our feet just paddling as fast as possible, and the men work smarter.

They do the things that are visible. They have a strategy that they are executing, and we are the ones that are working so hard because we think that’s what we have to do to get ahead, get promoted, and show our value. It’s just not true.

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The Unwritten Rule Book of Corporate Success

Robin: It is not true.

Jim: The way I would say it is this. I’m going to get into the feeling, observing side. It feels to me, from the observing side, that some women simply try too hard. What do you think about that?

Robin: Yeah, I think you’re 100% right, because they think that’s how you get promoted. Women believe, I go to work, I have a job to do, I’m going to excel at that job. If I’m supposed to deliver ABC, I’m going to deliver DEFG because that is how I get noticed. It’s how I get ahead. It’s how I get promoted.

That’s the misconception. That is the entire premise behind why I say there is an unwritten rule book that operates corporate America. It just so happens that men wrote the rule book for corporate. They’re the ones that built the systems. Men built these companies, and they built the systems that make these companies run. That’s just the way it is.

So we think we’ve got to work twice as hard. We’ve got to deliver twice as much. It’s not true. We don’t. We have to get better at creating our strategy for our careers, creating our narrative, and getting that narrative shared. That’s how men do it.

That’s why the good old boy club absolutely still exists. I’ll tell you, I would have told you five years ago that I didn’t think the good old boy club really existed as much as it did 20 years ago. But I have recently been proven wrong on that. I’m like, wow. I hadn’t seen it in a while. I hadn’t seen it really operate in a while and then I just saw it recently. And I was mind-blown quite frankly.

The Mindset of Working Smarter, Not Harder

Jim: I’ve never graduated with certain psychology degrees, but they have been a minor in some of my academic studies. Let’s face it, I’ve been working with people for a long time. I now get to employ the grandfather effect. I get away with saying things and asking things that, if I was 20 years younger, I probably would get slapped.

Robin: Love it.

Insecurity, Work, and Proving Worth

Jim: With that said, I think some of the things you’re saying are very insightful, and I think it might be true. If you put seminary aside, that was school, that was advanced education when we first started, but when you put together the facts that our education system was made to get people ready for the workforce, the vast majority of that workforce was male.

If I could use the term “the evolution of work,” men have had more time to differentiate between being a doer and being somebody who can construct something that gives back with less effort, which is what you were talking about.

The other thing we can throw on the table, and why your book should be read, is that aren’t both females and males working in corporate America still responding out of a deep-seated insecurity than it is confidence?

Going the Extra Mile and the Root of Conflict

Let me explain. If you go the extra mile, and I’m not talking about when you should. Everybody should. There should be times where you go the extra mile, but if going the extra mile is what you do six out of seven days a week when you’re supposed to be taking a day off, but you’re still doing that kind of stuff, what are you trying to prove?

They might say, “No, I’m trying to accomplish.” No. If you go seven layers deep, you’re trying to prove.

Robin: That’s right.

Men’s Insecurity and Working With Women

Jim: The good old boys club is often there for some obvious reasons: shared language, or generally we don’t always know how to work with women. We don’t know how. I don’t know why someone doesn’t say that out loud.

The insecurity is, if I tell this woman what I think, will it hurt her feelings? If I say this, you can’t say that. Some things we shouldn’t say. Some of the things we have been saying—rude, crude, and stupid stuff. You can throw religion out the window for this. This is just the reality of the pickup truck mentality.

If we set that aside, that obvious thing that we should set aside, I still think that because of the things that temperament assessments don’t tell us, which again is the gender gap—God made male and female—I don’t know why we don’t just say that men are more uncomfortable working with women than women are with men. I think. At least I know that’s true on the man’s side.

A Personal Story of Letting Someone Go

I remember when I had to let go of my first female employee. And I cannot even describe to you the emotions. I felt like a bully, a gorilla, a mean man. I was in my early 20s.

She could not balance her cash drawer to save her life. She was not stealing from the bank. We have ways of figuring that out. She was a single mom. She was the nicest, hardest-working lady. I tried to think of another job to put her in. I could not do it.

It messed up my world. I don’t like firing anybody. Well, that’s not true. Sometimes there’s a person where you’re going–

Robin: They fired themselves. My dad always told me, “Robin, they fired themselves. You’re not firing them. They fired themselves.”

Naming Insecurity to Disarm Conflict

Jim: Right. Right. And because insecurity, in my view and in my studies, is the root of all conflict—and I’m talking about inner conflict and interpersonal conflict—I just wish we, as a people, would sometimes start off conversations with, “I’m fighting through insecurity to say what I’m trying to say right now.” I think that disarms everybody. I’m going to tell you this.

Robin: You know what I’m going to tell you, Jim? I never, ever, until this moment, have thought that a man might have an insecurity about working with women.

Jim: Well, if they’re scared of asking you to the dance, how do they ever get over that?

A Boss’s Honest Advice About Beauty and Power

Robin: I don’t know. I had a boss one time back in 2000. He told me, he said, “Robin,” he’s the first man that ever gave me this level of transparency. He said, “Robin, here’s the deal. You are going to shock some people. And that’s what I want.”

He said, “Because when you walk into a business meeting and you sit down with a four-star general, the first thing—he’s a man—he’s going to look at you, and he is going to immediately see this beautiful woman, and you’re going to put him off. You’re going to get him off-centered.”

Being Underestimated and Then Overdelivering

I was kind of shocked by this conversation because it was happening at a Fortune 100 company. But he said, “You are going to startle him a little bit because you’re an attractive woman. You’re going to sit down, and he’s not going to hear anything you’re talking about for the first few minutes of the conversation because he’s just going to be looking at you. I’m just telling you the truth.”

I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe he was telling me this because I really did not think that was true. And he said, “Then what’s going to happen, Robin, is you’re going to blow his mind once he gets out of this beautiful woman sitting across from him. Then you’re going to knock his socks off because you’re going to blow him away by how smart you are and all of the stuff that you’re going to be bringing to the conversation.”

He said, “So you’re a double whammy. I want you on my team all day because you are going to be so successful.”

I remember that I hadn’t thought about that conversation in 20 years. But you saying what you said about men being insecure—I never have thought about a man being insecure in working with women.

Robin: If a boy is not afraid of asking a girl to the dance, that tells me one thing: he does not respect her. He’s already got too much experience in life, if you know what I mean, and he doesn’t respect her.

If a man isn’t nervous in a working relationship with a woman, that scares me more than what I just said. These are just my thoughts. Again, I haven’t studied this widely. It’s just what I see.

A Secret Weapon: Learning How Men Think

Jim: I think you’re right. I think you’re right, and let me tell you why. I married my husband 15 years ago. Prior to being married to this man, I behaved and operated in a certain way in the corporate world.

After I got married, I’d be sitting on the couch, I’d get an email from the boss, a text message from the boss. I’d open it, read it, and start to respond. I’d start to type something, and my husband would say, “No, no, no. Time out. You’re answering the wrong question. That’s not what he wants.”

I said, “What are you talking about? That’s what he said.”

He said, “No, no, no. Don’t answer that right now.” And he started giving me all these little nuggets about what my boss was really asking, what he wasn’t asking, and what I should say. He said, “No, just respond ‘no.’ That answer you want to say is no, so just respond ‘no.’” That’s all he asked. “Did you do this?” Whatever the thing.

I’m like, “I can’t answer that. I need to write him a paragraph about this.”

Jim: That’s right, “You’re trying too hard.”

Learning to Stop Trying So Hard

Robin: Let me tell you something. I had this secret weapon that started teaching me how men think and what my best way to show up in this environment. It became a secret weapon. He’s one of the main reasons that I now get this.

He was giving me the backstory around what was really going on in the environment, and I didn’t have that insight until he and I got married. He’s retired military. You talk about a man’s man—he was infantry in the Army. You can’t get much more, you know.

Talk about somebody that doesn’t believe women belong on the battlefield for all the reasons we already talked about.

Jim: Yeah, that’s got to be tough. You’re giving out orders, and you’re supposed to pretend that the soldier you’re looking at is not a girl.

Robin: That’s correct. He said, “If there’s a soldier out there, I noticed, I would put his arm out and want to put her– ‘Get behind me. Let me protect you.'”

Jim: You know what’s funny? Listeners might think that since some of the things I’ve said lean toward a marketplace that is male-dominated, that’s not at all what I believe. All I’m doing is acknowledging a long way that we have to get better at working together.

I don’t know how we’re going to do it. It’s not going to be by HR fixing everything. HR people have already been offended if they’ve listened to any of my podcasts before, because to me HR is a lot like the legal department. It’s also like the bylaws. It’s like the org chart. You don’t really look at that stuff until there’s a problem.

The Role of HR and Telling the Truth

Robin: HR is only around to keep the company out of court. HR is not there for the people. That’s a big misconception.

Jim: They’re offended when you say that.

Robin: Yes.

Jim: Yes, they are trying to become business partners. That’s the new lingo. If you want to become a business partner, those of you in HR need to start telling the truth. Just tell the truth. If you can’t do this and you can’t do that, help people understand why you can’t do this and why you can’t do that. We need to talk about the things that no one’s talking about.

Robin: That’s right.

Jim: I think that will help.

I want to come back to what you said about being a beautiful woman walking up to–

Robin: A four-star general.

Jim: We’ve got to talk about that a little bit. Since I mentioned this, I took a girl to a dance in high school. She was striking. I’m going to ask you a question because I only have two anecdotal examples, so this is not an exhaustive study. I’m going to get hate mail for this.

We say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think there’s truth to that. But isn’t it also true that when a certain guy walks into a steak restaurant and he is truly tall, dark, and handsome, everybody notices? Not just the girls—the guys know it, too.

Psychologists can tell us that we’ve been, you know, shaped that to think that way. “Okay, whatever. I don’t care.” Or this beautiful model walks in. It’s not just the dudes. The women see it, too. Is it also not true that those nines and tens on the physical appearance side can also be extremely insecure?

“Pretty Is as Pretty Does”

Robin: Oh, for sure. One hundred percent. I don’t know if I’m a nine or a ten, but I can tell you that– Let me tell you the story.

My grandmother used to always say, “Robin, pretty is as pretty does.” I know what she meant by that.

Jim: What does that mean?

Robin: What she meant is you can’t be pretty on the outside and ugly on the inside, behave ugly, and show up ugly. Your looks are going to go away, and who you are on the inside is what really matters. Anyway, I know what she meant by that.

However, it did a number on me because I internalized that when I mess up, when I make poor choices, when I do bad things, that means I’m not pretty.

Jim: Oh, wow.

Robin: I heard what she said but I took it to mean is when I make mistakes, when I make poor choices, when I do bad things, that means that I’m not pretty.

You touched on it a little bit. I think insecurity comes in all forms. You’ve touched on it a little bit. I was on a podcast earlier today, and I talked about it this morning because it bothered me all day. It bothered me all day that I was doing a podcast and the title of the podcast was Wickedly Smart Women, and I was terrified to be on that podcast.

Jim: I rest my case.

Robin: I have a resume of things I can show you, this piece of paper proves I’m a wickedly smart woman. But I had a belief for a long period of time that I wasn’t. I had an insecurity that I wasn’t smart.

Jim: Why did you believe that?

Robin: Because I wasn’t good at math.

The “Pretty or Smart” Trap

Jim: Okay, so this is where we can bring up another good example. The whole Miss America thing. What we always make our jokes about, whether they’re true or untrue, is there’s no substance.

All the cartoons, sitcoms, and chick flicks—whenever there’s that stage and Miss Oklahoma comes up and they ask her a question of substance, everybody’s embarrassed. I don’t know that to be true because I think I’ve watched two pageants in my whole life, but–

Robin: It’s a stereotype, right? That you’re either pretty or smart. That is my point. God forbid you’re pretty and you make bad choices, and you think that just because you make bad choices, it means you’re an ugly person.

Yeah, I think that that is where you think I’m either pretty or smart. Don’t they say politics is where all the smart people go and Hollywood is where all the pretty people go?

The “Daughter” Test: Advice for Men Working with Women

Jim: Let me ask you a hard question. I’m going to put you on the spot. It’s not fair, but I’ll give you some seconds to think about it, and if it goes into a minute, we can edit that minute out.

What advice do you have for men who are in the marketplace and they’re willing to say, at least to themselves, “I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t think about the fact that sometimes I don’t know how to hold someone accountable because they’re a girl. I didn’t realize I was insecure.” Because not knowing how breeds insecurity.

Do you have any thoughts, even if you’re thinking out loud, on how we can do better working side by side with women, regardless of where they are on the org chart—whether they are our boss, a colleague, or a direct report?

Reframing Accountability Through Empathy

Robin: You know, the first thought that comes to mind—and I’ll process it while I’m saying it—but the first thought that comes to mind, and how I’ve engaged with some bosses in the past, is I’ve said, “How would you want another male colleague to treat your daughter? What if you were thinking of me right now as your daughter, not as a woman?”

Jim: Wow.

Robin: And it shifted their thinking.

I even had a compensation dispute one time, and I was dealing with a very high-up executive. I said, “So, I hear what you’re saying, and I understand that that’s the answer. That’s the final answer. The company is giving me the final answer, and you want me to accept that answer. If this was the answer your daughter came home tonight and sat around a dinner table and told you, ‘Here’s what happened at work today. Here’s what my boss said,’ what would your advice be to her? Is that an okay answer, or what would your advice be back to your daughter?”

And it shifts their thinking because they’re like, “Oh, no. I wouldn’t want my daughter to be treated that way. Oh, no. I wouldn’t want my daughter to get–”

A Father’s Coaching and Career Advice

And having had a dad that was always building me up and trying to teach me things, he really—I always called him for all my career advice before he passed away. One of the great conversations I remember having with my dad was I was negotiating a new contract, salary, and package to change jobs. I was standing outside a restaurant on a corner in downtown Austin, and I called my dad.

I was telling him, “I did this, I did this, and here’s what I said to this, and here’s how this.” And we get to the end of it, and I’m like, “Okay, so what now?” And he said, “Rob, you just outkicked my coverage.” He said, “You’ve already done it. You thought of things I didn’t even think of, and I’m done. My job here is done. I don’t have anything to give you. You did it all.”

And so I think if a man could think about that—what if this woman, what if this girl in my office—what if this was my daughter and I was trying to give her advice, or I was trying to coach her? Maybe that’s a way to simply think about it from that perspective.

Mentorship, Timing, and Leadership

Jim: I really like that. That has more of a mentoring feel to it. It’s not like you are going to not confront difficult situations, but you’re going to be—you know, one of my mentors told me a long time ago that a lot of times, most times, it’s not the decision that the leader is making that becomes a mistake; it’s the how and the when they carry it out. Which really resonated with me, because when I was younger, right was right, and that other stuff—I didn’t even think about it probably if I knew the right answer.

Playing the Corporate Game: Career Strategy and Ambition

I want to come back to something that you said earlier, because I’d like to give you an opportunity to explain it a little more. You said that executive women, or women in the marketplace, have got to learn how to play the game. Can you unpack that a little bit more?

Performance Versus Promotion Expectations

Robin: Yeah. So, it kind of goes back to that whole thing I was saying about how we believe—and again, like you said, we’re making some big generalizations here—but we believe that I get a job, I go to work, I exceed my expectations, I get promoted.

And I had a boss one time say to me—I was giving him a hard time. This was years later. I was giving him a hard time about a promotion he had given one of my colleagues. I said, “Why did you give Danny that job? He was not qualified. I was more qualified for that job than Danny.” And he said, “I didn’t know you wanted it.”

Part of the rulebook that I coach women on is making sure that your boss’s boss knows what your intentions are, what your wants are. That thought is very scary. As a woman in a corporate environment, that is a very scary thought—to think, “I’m going to schedule a one-on-one with my skip level.” My skip level today reports to the CEO. So I’m going to schedule 30 minutes once a quarter with that skip level to make sure that skip level knows my value to the organization and knows what my intentions are, what my goals are, and the value I’m delivering to the organization, because you don’t want that narrative to just stop with your boss.

Getting Your Boss Promoted

And by the way, I’m also the queen of getting my bosses promotions. People say, “What’s one thing you could tell people? Practical advice?” Go get your boss promoted. That’s the best way to get recognition and get noticed is go get your boss promoted. Work really hard in getting your boss promoted, and make sure you’re the backfill—make sure you’re the succession plan.

But anyway, there are lots of rules that I could talk about.

Declaring Ambition and Creating a Roadmap

Jim: That one was a great example. Let me ask you a question about that example. Let’s drill down a little deeper. I think I know what you’re going to say. Why wouldn’t a woman in corporate America naturally do that?

Robin: I see guys do that. Guys do it. This is a story I tell in my book. I was driving an executive vice president of mine. I picked him up at the airport, and we were going to see a customer. He was my boss’s boss at the time, and I had an hour of uninterrupted time with him driving from the airport out to the customer. So it was this amazing one-on-one session.

I said, “Bill, you are about seven years older than me. I can kind of figure it out. You are the executive vice president. You report to the CEO of this large company. You’re seven years older than me. I know for a fact you have not outworked me, I know you haven’t. I will put my work effort and my results up against anybody.”

And he said, “Well, Robin, first of all, don’t ever underestimate seven years in technology. That really is a lifetime, and if you get in the right company at the right time, you can get quickly promoted.” He said, “But I love your question. I will tell you what I did when I was 23 years old, out of college. I had my first job at IBM.” And he said, “The first thing I did was schedule a meeting with my boss’s boss.” He said, “I wanted that guy to know.” They said, “What do you want to do?” He said, “I want to be the CEO of IBM.”

After they laughed at him because he was 23 years old saying he wanted to be the CEO of IBM, it let them know what he wanted. Also, when you have that vision of what you want, you know the steps—the roadmap your career would need to take to get you there.

The Assumption That Hard Work Will Be Noticed

As women, we just don’t historically think that way. We think we get a job, we go to work, we deliver, and somebody will notice. My husband will notice when he comes home and the house is clean, and the laundry’s done, and the dinner is on the table, and the kids are doing their homework. My husband is just going to magically notice all those things I did all day. No, he doesn’t.

Jim: That’s perfect.

Robin: Neither does your boss.

Final Affirmation and Conclusion

Jim: Yeah. Let’s land this plane this way, with an affirmation. I don’t remember who it was or when it was, but I do remember it vividly. I was speaking with a younger female executive, and she said something to me to the extent that, “If I don’t tell others what my ambitions are, I’m going to be overlooked because I’m a woman.”

And my response to her, after I thought about it—and it may not seem like it on this podcast, but I tend to be pretty pensive. I tend to bring things in, and then they bubble. And I said, “No. If there’s truth to that, the greater truth is that anybody who doesn’t speak up tends to get overlooked.” And I think that’s kind of back to the mindset that you were speaking of.

I’m sure there are people who do things on purpose in a negative way, but I think most of us do things that aren’t the best out of ignorance. That is—I tend to give people the benefit of that.

Closing Thanks and Transition to the Book

All right, Robin, thank you so much for being with me. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Let’s talk about your book before you go. I want to give you the opportunity to tell us again the title. It came out, I think you said, yesterday.

Robin: Yesterday.

Jim: And I’m sure we can get it on Amazon, but tell us where we can get that as well.

Robin: Yeah, you can get it in all the places that books are sold—Amazon, of course, but all the others as well. And the title is Girl by Birth, Woman by Fire: The Get Real Guide to Becoming the Woman You Were Meant to Be.

Jim: Thank you so much for joining me. I thought it was a fun conversation.

Robin: I did too. Thank you for having the courage to say the things that people don’t want to say out loud.

Outro

Winston: Hey, thank you so much for joining us on The Today Counts Show. We’ve got so much more planned for you, so stay tuned and stay connected on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube. And remember—today counts.
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