Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self-doubt, become brilliant at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development. And I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now.

In this episode of the influence and impact podcast, I'm talking to Jodi Flynn of women taking the lead about how to get into senior management positions and leadership positions. Some of the ways in which we as women often hold ourselves back when we're in those positions, and also what organisations could do to encourage more women into senior leadership.

So Jodi Flynn of women taking the lead is an executive leadership coach, podcaster, author and speaker and in fact, I recently appeared on Jodi's podcast, so have a listen to that if you haven't already, organisations hire Jody to support their women leaders to develop the skills needed to grow into and thrive in senior leadership. She's the host of the critically acclaimed women taking the lead podcast, and an Amazon Best Selling Author, with her book accomplished how to go from dreaming to doing. Jodi is president of the board for the main Women's Conference and has been featured in Entrepreneur and Forbes magazine. Jodi spoke at the Massachusetts conference for women, the women in banking and Emerging Leaders Conference and Podcast Movement.

Jodi is a bundle of energy and shares her experience and wisdom generously and you can just tell from listening to her and talking to her that she has a huge heart for this work and the women she works with, and that she really wants to help organisations to make the most of the talent that they have in the women that work there. So I hope you really enjoy this conversation.

In terms of what's going on in my world. The book is continuing to sell and get reviews, which is fantastic. If you have bought the book and had a little read of it, please do leave a review. It makes a big difference, apparently to future sales, and just encourages women to see if it's the right book for them to read. So I really appreciate that. I was looking back in my diary this week. So I do when I remember keep a diary and just jot things down at night. It just helps me get things out of my brain. Although when I moved house, I literally binned about 20 years worth of diaries because I wouldn't let anybody else read my diary. And I really don't go back and look at 20 years worth anyway. And when I saw I looked at my diary and saw that it was a year ago that I had been vaguely thinking or maybe I should move house before Charlie start school. And because I don't necessarily want to live where I was living for the next seven or eight years. And I had started vaguely looking and realising I couldn't afford anything in the areas that I wanted. And I happen to think oh, what I wonder what the cost of properties are and what they're like up where my sister lives and saw this house, the one that I am sitting in now, recording this, saw it online and immediately fell in love with it and got my sister and brother in law to go and view it just a few days later. And before then I had absolutely zero plan of ever moving up north in my entire life. I'd been to Australia more times than I had been up north for pleasure. And I love sunshine and good weather.

So I am a bit nervous about winter as it approaches but we'll see how we go. But I just think it's interesting to think sometimes life can surprise us and sometimes we can surprise ourselves so I ended up moving up here because I thought it was a very sensible thing to do great for Charlie to have a small school village school be near family. My parents are moving up as well. So we're all in the same place. All very sensible but I was thinking is my heart still gonna be in London and actually my heart is fully here. Now I love this place it is so I love my house and my garden. It is so beautiful in this area that even like a little walk to school involves seeing the pen lines and the Lake District. The drive to the dentist I've got to take my son to today again there's going to be lovely scenery. I just find myself saying most days to Charlie aren't we lucky? To live in such a beautiful place. And you may have noticed, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I've become really interested in gardening, which I promise you I had zero interest in before, but I've been finding it very therapeutic. And Charlie likes it too. And so I think the point I'm making is a giving you a bit of an update on my life, because I feel like you're my friends, even if we've never actually met. But also that sometimes we live this really narrow, fixed version of ourselves. I think, particularly as we get older, as you know, I'm in my, I think we can call it late 40s. Now, I've been calling it mid 40s for a while, but we're definitely edging towards late 40s. And you can get quite fixed and think, Well, I am this kind of person, I'm not that kind of person. These are, this is my personality. And this isn't but actually planned to somewhere different. And we can change but it's in a different situation, or we're different people and we can change.

So it's just worth remembering that that we're not as limited as this version of ourselves that we have in our heads, we have unlimited potential, in fact, and sometimes it's just great to reflect on that and think, How am I holding myself back? How am I stuck in a rut, and I risk getting stuck in a rut up here, actually, it's quite hard to make myself get on a train down to London. I did that yesterday, we're running the Be Bolder programme in house for King's College London, we had 40 people there, which was fantastic. And actually they had hundreds that wanted to do it. And it was actually fantastic to a meet my key contacts that the clients who are wonderful, but also just to be in a room full of 40 people. And it was men and women, which was super interesting to see how the content went down with men, because we were talking about tackling impostor feelings and things like that. And as a note on that they found it super helpful, too, which is good to know. Again, we can make an assumption that men don't struggle with these things. And they may struggle for different reasons. But I think there are still plenty of men that struggle with speaking up in meetings with self doubt with impostor feelings, and with having those challenging conversations and having the tools and courage to do those. So we're not alone in that either. We have more in common with men than we think we do sometimes.

Anyway, that's my little update on life let's get on to this really interesting interview with the lovely Jodi Flynn. So having chatted on Jodi's podcast, it's fantastic to have Jodi on the influence and impact podcast. Welcome, Jodi.

Jodi Flynn 07:36
Carla, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. And for everyone listening, I'm excited about the conversation we're about to have.

Carla Miller 07:43
Absolutely, and we will link in the show notes to the episode where I was on Jodi's podcast, so you can go over there and discover her fantastic podcast and all the content she has on there as well. So in the pop in the conversation we have for your podcast, we talked about how our experiences in our career shape, our leadership style, and what we want to contribute. So what experiences in your early career led you to the work that you're doing today?

Jodi Flynn 08:09
Yes, and we talked about that quite a bit. And you hit on something that I do in some of my workshops, where we explore our leadership style based on previous experiences, and even our what we will consider our bad bosses because it's often our bad bosses that inform us the most about how we want to be as a leader because we have such a visceral reaction to our bad bosses. But in my career, I mean, I, I earned a degree in psychology and I was working on a master's degree in Counselling Psychology, when all of my advisors were saying, unless you plan on going on for your PhD, switch to the Social Work crop programme, because that's all you're going to be qualified to do for work with this degree. And I didn't want to hear it.

I loved psychology so much. I stayed with it until like I had gotten like so burnt out, you know, towards the end and life experiences and I decided to pivot and I took an entry level job for a mutual fund operations organisation. And it never imagined myself working in a business environment. I imagined myself sitting on a couch talking with somebody about life and, you know, the struggles that they were having. But it turned out to be an environment that I really thrived in. I come from a big family. So I'm very accustomed to dealing with different personalities and temperaments. And I was also brought up in a household where there was a strong work ethic and if your name is going on something, you better make sure like it is good. And that gave me the opportunity to advance pretty quickly and unexpectedly. And within the first six years of my career and mutual fund operations I had been promoted Five times, well, some of them I was writing for, and some of them were absolute baptism by fire, it's like you're in the position, now figure it out. And by the way, you don't have the skills to do this job yet, you need to figure that out and develop yourself primarily, to to be up to speed to perform well in this position, which I did. But it was like a very rapid learning curve. And in retrospect, it was a very intense and short period of time. But I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work as a leader, how you need to take care of yourself, what leads to burnout, what tolerating right and not speaking up will cause you know, in the consequences to your mind, your emotions, your body. And through those experiences, I now, in turn, share that information with my clients and customers.

Carla Miller 11:02
I love that. I was reading a book just the other day that basically used a quote saying writers and I think it's the same with coaches, are beggars telling other beggars where they found pieces of bread. Shattering. Yeah, that's absolutely yeah. And now you sit in your chair instead of your couch, but you do get to have those conversations.

Jodi Flynn 11:24
I do. And with technology, it's I don't have to just talk to the people who can show up in my office, I can show up in their offices, anywhere in the world, and which is what I love about my job. And your job as well is like, as long as somebody you know, speaks English, because that's the only language I speak as long as they speak English have a good internet connection and a device, I can coach them anywhere in the world, it’s lovely.

Carla Miller 11:49
It is fantastic. Now I know that some of the people listening will be like, Oh, she got promoted five times in six years. What's her secret? So what mindset Do you think helped you to achieve that? Because it's a huge accomplishment?

Jodi Flynn 12:04
Yes, I think part of it is just my personality, which I didn't realise I had at the time, because I grew up very shy, you know, and very timid, you know, almost like, I'm not an introvert. So it was not introversion, it was shyness, a little bit of social anxiety. You know, so I would never have labelled myself before college as being ambitious, you know, or driven, you know, like, like a high achiever, anything like that. But when I was in the right environment, and it was, there was a lot of learning, right, because it was mutual funds, but I was intrigued by it. And, of course, the work ethic, again, like wanting to deliver something really great and get high marks, right, like, I'm definitely, you know, the, the girl in the class who was like, I want the gold star, I want the approval, that sort of thing.

So being driven that way. But also, I think, the fact that I was so shy and timid as a child, had me pay attention more to the dynamics in the room, and the vibe, you know, to be able to read, I didn't realise this, but my whole childhood prepared me to read social situations pretty quickly, and determine, Okay, who's the leader in this situation, what's going on for the other people in the room, what's going to happen, and I think that has helped me navigate social situations in which are primarily in the workplace to sow so that I'm showing up to contribute the best that I can give. And all of this can be learned, like I was learning it on accident as a child just due to due to my, you know, own personality and temperament and fears. But this, this is a skill that can be developed and you don't have to be shy or timid to develop it either.

Carla Miller 14:02
Exactly. And I think that being able to read the room is such a key part of influencing, which is something that we talked about. And I was really shy and love to watch and assess the situation and learn what the unspoken rules were before contributing. And that that's proved very helpful going forward. And it's something that we teach people to do. Now, isn't it to really work out those dynamics before rather than just waiting?

Jodi Flynn 14:31
Right? And if you've ever seen someone do the opposite, right to dive right in before reading the room, you know what a train wreck that turns out to be and it hurts that person. Because then they they're sort of labelled as, you know, lacking self awareness or situational awareness because they dove right in they made a joke that was inappropriate or they, you know, inadvertently offended somebody in the room because they didn't take the time to get to know the players or Where the situation before diving right in?

Carla Miller 15:03
Absolutely. And you have a leadership development programme of your own as well. And you've written a book. And we can explore more about those later. But that focuses on helping women leaders to grow into and thrive in senior leadership. One of the common struggles that your clients experiences, they're promoted to those higher levels of leadership.

Jodi Flynn 15:23
Yeah, and you, I imagine you see this very often in your work as well, Carla, it's a few different things. So it's letting go of the old responsibilities, I can't even tell you how many of my clients like they've been promoted, they've taken on their new responsibilities. And they're complaining about like, I'm just having a hard time keeping up. And when we explore, like, what's eating up their time, we discover they've held on to some of the things that they had before and that they're just not ready to let it go. And so and part of it is due to like, either, actually, it's a couple of things, I'll get into it in a moment, they also have a hard time really thinking of themselves as a leader of leaders, versus an industry individual contributor or frontline manager, saying no, and setting boundaries, right, not going to all the meetings, you know, not setting like office hours, or here's when I'm available, that sort of thing. They're just like letting people come at them at any time, and they're going to all the meetings. And then also, it's a dual thing, like not having high expectations of their team, you know, in terms of that, you know, these my clients tend to be women who are smart, talented, and hardworking. They're very accustomed to being, you know, the lead in situations.

So this has given them the impression that people just aren't as capable as they are, which is not true, which is absolutely not true. And in fact, these women sometimes make themselves incapable, because they're not protecting their time and their bandwidth and their energy. And they need to start trusting people and giving people a chance to be high performers, or more people to be high performers. And additionally, what happens with the, with these women is there's, they're so tired, right, and they're so overworked, that their thought is I can't let this experience happen to my team. Because they'll leave, they won't be happy and they'll leave. So I'll protect them, I will protect them from all of this work, and I'll do it myself. So then what happens is, then they don't realise they're actually hoarding the opportunity, as well. So you know, so a lot of it under underlying it is trusting that other people are very capable, and actually want the opportunity to take on more work. And until they can, like those dots can be connected, they end up like being their own worst enemy. And they also hobbled their team.

Carla Miller 18:10
And that brings us back to that sort of closes the loop on the first thing about why do they hold on to those old responsibilities? A part of it is a struggle to delegate.

Jodi Flynn 18:21
Yes, yes. And that usually comes from, you know, I can do this better than everybody, I can do it quicker. It'll take me longer to teach somebody else. But that's a short, that's short sighted, right. Of course, in the short term, it's quicker and easier for you to do it yourself. But in the long term, you have invested way more time. And when it would have been easier to just take the time and give somebody else a chance. Give them a chance to be bad at it. At first too. Sometimes we forget that when we first did something, you know, I remember the first time I had to put together a budget for my division. I was bad at it. I had to have it reviewed several times before it was good to go. But then it got to the point where it was so easy that I I referred to it or related to it as like this is common sense. And that was absolutely incorrect. It was not common sense because I struggled with it at first so also letting somebody else have a learning curve with it too. And to also see delegating not as this is work I don't want to do or I don't have time for so I'm gonna give it to somebody else. Instead relating it to this is an opportunity to develop the next leader who will take my place after and my team is looking for opportunity. I was that person right. I was like delegated to me. I'll do it right I want to prove myself. I want to show that I'm capable and I do want to advance but we need Lee leaders to give their teams that opportunity so that they can prove that they're capable and they can do the work.

Carla Miller 20:05
I just literally had this conversation with a coaching client. And one of the reasons she gave is I want to be helpful. So people are coming to me, and I'm answering the questions. And then I'm just doing it for them because it's quicker and easier, exactly, like you said. And I was like, and if you left, that those people actually be able to do their jobs, because you think you're helping them. But actually, you're not empowering them at all. I like to call it spoon feeding. It's like you're trying to teach your child to eat, and it's just so much easier to keep spoon feeding them because there's no mercy and they don't mess it up. But then you spoon feeding teenagers is the same thing. You're not helping them, are you helping them is actually empowering them and giving them opportunities to grow, learn and to fail, like you said.

Jodi Flynn 20:50
Yes, and I wonder if some of it and this is just a wandering, it's not I haven't seen any studies on this is if those of us who had mothers who were like, doing it all and multitasking and just being superheroes, if we've gotten the impression that that's what it looks like, that's what it's supposed to look like, if I'm taking care of everybody, then then I've done my job, when in fact, what I'm trying to help my leaders do is get to the point where your team doesn't need you hardly at all right, other than to just validate that they're on the right track, or maybe suggest one or two things. Because actually, that's when you are the most promotable is when your team no longer relies on you, because I've also seen experiences where conversation in the room, right, the room where it's happened, you know, where it happens, the conversation is, well, we can't promote that person, because their team would utterly fall apart without them. Right, they haven't done the work to develop their team, you know, and whatever that would take, you know, so they're stuck in that position until their team can be successful. Without them.

Carla Miller 22:00
I think it’s so important for people to hear this Jodi because I think there's this unspoken myth of management, where it's your job to look after everyone all the time, and be constantly available to them. And exactly like you said, that isn't actually going to support them or support your, in your career development, I think aligned to this, do you see women taking that maternal approach in terms of feeling responsible for their team's happiness?

Jodi Flynn 22:30
It is funny, and actually, we talked about this a little bit before we hit record. So I'm going to come from a different perspectives. And maybe this is a segue into further conversation. I see it a lot with my clients who grew up in the US, that they, they, they feel this need to give and serve and contribute and take care of their teams. In fact, talking to a client recently, who has just been promoted for like the second or third time since we started working together and to still holding on to responsibilities. And initially, it was, well, I don't necessarily trust the other leader, it might be, you know, the person who took my place to be able to distribute this to my team, and that sort of like she was in a new division, and still spending a lot of her time worrying about and trying to take care of her old team members who now have a new manager, a very capable manager, you know, and when we got down to and we discovered what was going on was there was a little bit of a personality conflict. I was like, okay, so we designed a meeting where she would mediate understanding different personalities for this whole team. And then it was like, okay, now you need to like, kind of wash your hands and, and move away and get that done.

The exception is I have a client, who grew up in Switzerland, but also has worked in Sweden and Germany, and she does not feel the same responsibility to make sure her team is happy. Her team is happy, right? Because she's giving them opportunities, and she trusts them. And she speaks directly to them. And they have great conversations about her team's career path and where they want to go. But she's not staying up at night worrying about whether or not people are happy in their job, like her understanding of that is and we even had a conversation about this. She's like, I can't take responsibility for that. I can't make somebody else happy or not. I can provide opportunities and have conversations with them and you know, try to understand what they need, but it's up to them to be happy. And I thought that was interesting. I was like, You're right. Why do we struggle with this? We all know this is true.

Carla Miller 25:02
I think we need it articulated to us sometimes, though, because I see that a lot in my clients. And I really felt it a lot when I was a manager. And exactly like you said, we can't actually make someone happy, even if we wanted to. And sometimes people just are in the wrong job, or unhappy with a decision you've made or unhappy with something else that's going on in their life. And there's, there's a difference between being supportive, encouraging, and taking on that responsibility. And it's really interesting, I wonder if that is a cultural difference or a personality?

Jodi Flynn 25:35
I will, I will say this, I think it can be a little bit of both, right? Because I will, I will raise my hand and acknowledge I am a people pleaser, it's something I man, I now manage actively, like, you know, to, you know, I do want to do certain things for people, I like to make people comfortable, but like my client, it's like, what's within my control to set up, you know, the environment. But I will share a story, there was a time in my career when I was in my mutual fund operation career. And I, my people pleasing went into over drive, one of my managers, we needed to move desks, right to make sure people were, you know, geographically within the office in places that made sense.

So we could all work together and function. And one of my managers, the configuration of his cubicle, was really funky. And I heard, he didn't tell me that he was unhappy. But somebody else told me that he said that he didn't, he didn't like his desk. And I dove in, like, like a parent who wanted to take control of the situation. And Carl, I won't get into all the details, but it ended up like nothing was changed. My this manager was upset because he was like, it's fine. I did not want this big stir, because I had gotten maintenance involved, they were coming over, we disrupted a good hour, hour and a half of the day, because I was like he's unhappy, we have to fix this, we have to like immediately. And my people pleasing ended up causing more problems than if I had just trusted that this is a grown man. Right? I could have checked in with him, Hey, I heard through the grapevine. You're not happy? So there's something we can do? What were your thoughts? That would have been a better reaction, then I'm going to save the day.

Carla Miller 27:38
Rescue him, yeah.

Jodi Flynn 27:40
I am going to rescue him. And I do see this, you know, you know, personality wise, you know, I use the disc, Everything DiSC Workplace indicator in my business. And there are certain personalities that are more focused on people, you know, and I will say, women in general, are brought up and conditioned to nurture and focus on people. And there are certain cultures where women are also brought up, you know, that that nurturing takes on a whole new level. So I think it's, it's both ends I can contribute to this.

Carla Miller 28:21
Yeah, I agree. And I think that the people pleasing side of things is rife. But if I look at my clients, and the women in the programmes that I run, it's got to be 90%. If I said, You're a people pleaser, that you struggle with people pleasing, like 90% would raise their hand, there's 10% that are like, totally the opposite. Yeah. But the 90% are like, and even me, now, I still have that instinct. I had a meeting the other day, and I, I went along with the dynamic of the meeting, and I left the meeting. And afterwards, I was like, I just tried to, I was saying yes to things, when actually my instinct was No, but I didn't want to push back. And it was with a man, interestingly, and I spent a lot of time talking to women, and I'm used to women's energy. And his energy, despite being really nice guy, his energy was, was very powerful. And I was like, it's just easier to go with the flow now like, and how do I undo in that meeting, because I don't want to go ahead with what we said. And that's completely on me, not on him at all. But that instinct of people pleasing and not wanting to create conflict or be seen as difficult or awkward. It's, it's instinctive, isn't it? Because it was just drilled into us so much. When we were younger, I think.

Jodi Flynn 29:40
Bbsolutely. We were taught like, this was the way to go. And this was the best way but it's not always the best way. You know, I can even think of times because currently, I'm the president of the board for the main Women's Conference, and there are 16 Women on our board, and we have to have some really hard conversations you know, and Sometimes, I mean, I don't, I was about to say you have to be the bad guy, you don't, it's not being the bad guy. But sometimes you have to say, here's the reality. This is what we have for resources. This is what we have for time, we're not going to be able to do all of these things that we want to do. So what can we get done? Right? You have to, you cannot, please everybody. And I have another funny story, Carla, because I was just looking at a survey post presentation that I had done. And 33 people filled out the survey 25 People thought the presentation was amazing, you know, five stars, seven people had given it four stars. And one person gave it a three. And the feedback from that person, and it was like the designation was neutral, right?

They didn't love it. They didn't hate it. It was Yeah. And their feedback was the presentation was a little dry. Do you think I spent much time at all thinking about the 32 people who thought it was good or excellent and reading the feedback that they gave? No, I was so full. I even went on a walk. And for a good part of my walk. I was like dry? Try. What made them think it was try? Like, what how does this happen? And then I just have to say like, Oh, yes, the wisdom for taking feedback is especially and for those of you who are listening, I hope you have heard this as well. Throw out the worst review, throw out the best review. Because those are just anomalies. They're out there, there are people who are just impossible to please or there are people who are just so easy to please, it doesn't matter what you do, you want to look at the middle, you know, and that's where the information is. And it took me a good half an hour, 45 minutes to get there. And finally, I was like, That person wasn't going to be happy with my presentation no matter what it didn't. But it's not like somebody's on the happy with me? What?

Carla Miller 32:08
Isn't it funny how it's much easier to articulate that advice to someone else than to take it yourself and I do the same thing I do. I go down the route and I catch myself and I go hang on, I have the toolkit to deal with, I just need to remember. And I think when it's personal, it's harder to do that I often talk about that owning the authority that comes with your role. And that makes it much easier, doesn't it to kind of not lay down the law, but to set boundaries and be really clear. But when it feels when there's a blur between what's my job and what's me, then it can feel a lot harder because you aren't going against years of priming, basically. So I love that example. Now, obviously you and I work a lot with women directly. But taking a different perspective. What can organisations do? Do you think to remove the obstacles that prevent women from attaining those roles in senior leadership?

Jodi Flynn 33:01
Okay. I love your question. And what I love about this question is it has to come from we have to frame it, right? Because here's the reality, companies get more benefit from women in leadership than women in leadership get from companies. It has been proven the research is out there. It's been replicated and validated that when women are in leadership, and especially senior leadership positions and on boards for companies, the company like outperforms their competitors, in profitability, year over year performance, increased retention, morale, all of those things. In fact, while companies with larger numbers or all male boards may have this huge spike early on when the business is first started in profitability. You see a quick crash thereafter, right? Because they've got the great ideas, but they don't know how to sustain it. Nor do they, men are more risk taking, right. So they're not likely to look far in the future and say, Well, what are the impacts going to be? What are the consequences? The implications of the decisions that we're making today, women tend to be in that side of the conversation more often than not. So companies want to have more women in their ranks and more women in senior leadership. So from that perspective, that it behoves companies to do this because sometimes I think women are like, Oh, well, I don't know if I'm gonna get permission. I don't know if they want me. I don't know. Right? Because our day to day experience doesn't always translate to I'm appreciated. I'm wanted, I'm respected right, our day to day tends to fly in the face of this. So what I'm trying to get out there and the message I want to give companies is it's our new company, company XYZ it's fun knew to make the environment more.

How do I say this? I'm more inclusive of women and have women feeling like that they belong in, they're appreciated, and they're respected. So how we do this is we have to take a look at the practices, right, from hiring, to performance evaluations to promoting. One I know, we both have read Marianne Scott's book, the authority gap, and she has tonnes of research in her book that talks about how subjective we are when evaluating men and women. Even if we look at the facts, we still were left with different impressions of how many men performed and how women perform. So as much as possible, we need to take subjectivity out of these, you know, these processes and these milestones, not that you can completely take subjectivity out of it right there, there still is like, what is the impression I get from this person? What's, what's the vibe, right?

That that we give, how did they come across, but as much as possible, like make the evaluation of candidates and our team members and people who are up for promotion, make it as fair as possible. And also looking at the benefits, right, like, women, especially women who are in that sandwich generation, right, they're taking care of small children, and they're also taking care of ageing parents, they can provide tremendous, tremendous values to accompany, but it's not going to be in a nine to five schedule, right. So we have to look at how flexible is our company? You know, do we have work from home opportunities, so that, you know, these companies need to recognise that women also have huge roles in our communities outside of work, and respecting that, because if you can give women the leeway to perform all of these roles outside of work comfortably. They will go above and beyond for your company as well. So that's just that's just a few things. But if those things were looked at, it would make a huge difference in having more women being senior leadership.

Carla Miller 37:19
Absolutely, and are you seeing shifts in that in the States, because here we have COVID, obviously, I think we had a lot more lockdowns here than you did. So there was a lot more remote working. And that has started to shift the remote working side of things. And there's a lot of embracing the rhetoric of flexibility. But if you actually go and look for a job, and look for one that is remotely based here, it's almost impossible to find it. So I think we aren't we are seeing improvement. But and I think that that is accelerating, but it's been very slow to get started. And it's still not as widespread as we think it is. How what's it like in the states?

Jodi Flynn 37:59
The sense I'm getting here is that it's a big tug of war, right? Are the workers getting what they want? Are managers and leaders of companies getting what they want? And it depends on the industry, as well, you know, what we're seeing in banking and financial services is this huge drive to get people back into the offices, right, and there's where a huge tug of war is going on, where the the leaders of the company are kind of winning that war. Whereas, you know, technology based, you know, marketing, that that type of thing. Those industries, you know, have a little more flexibility and leeway for people to be able to work from anywhere, right, they're looking for talented people, so they're willing to make, you know, some concessions in the work. But also what's what's happening here, too, is, you know, the unemployment is changing as well, you know, so much like the real estate marker, where's that market where sometimes you it's a buyers market, and sometimes it's a seller's market for a long time and during the pandemic in this, like, need to find talent, you know, the power was in the seat of the worker, but now we're seeing a shift that as these jobs are getting filled, and companies aren't as dependent or desperate to find new talent, they're starting to change the rhetoric around, you know, whether or not they're going to demand work from home. I you know, and I, you know, I have siblings that are working in different industries in different companies, and they say that the their companies are tiptoeing, right, they want people back in the office, but they're, they're still hesitant to demand it at this point.

Carla Miller 39:47
It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, for us, as well as he element of flexibility and equality in the workplace has been shared parental leave. So we've made progress on that in terms of legislation, but You don't even get much parental leave for moms even do you don't get much in terms of maternity leave?

Jodi Flynn 40:05
Oh, and not every company is required to provide it, you know, and it depends on Are you a full time employee or an or a part time employees, because part time employees, you know, definitely get the shaft when it comes to benefits. And more and more companies are trying to take on freelance and part time work so that they don't have to provide those benefits. But yes, it is, you know, just anecdotally, because I am not a mom, I know you're a mom and have a lovely, lovely little boy. But just from family and friends, you know, the heartache of having to go back to work after six to eight weeks, which is just not enough time, you know, for women or for young children to adapt, you know, in those the that first stage of life, it, it, there's a lot of work to be done. I'll say that.

Carla Miller 40:58
Definitely. I'm feeling that we're quite advanced. Now. And as we were talking about earlier, we also now have our third female prime minister, we'll see what she does in terms of advocating for women's rights and that side of things, because that being a woman is not the same as supporting and encouraging other women. But let's keep our fingers crossed on that. But yeah, that barrier hasn't been broken yet. Has it in the States?

Jodi Flynn 41:20
No, no, it hasn't, you know, and it's so funny. We were chatting about this where, you know, I think people get this impression that the US is so advanced and so progressive, and women are so empowered here, but we haven't had a woman president yet, right. And we do have a culture that is just as biassed against women is like in some other first world countries, you know, and in fact, there are many other first world countries where their culture, it has more equality than we have in the United States. I think, you know, and obviously the, you know, the conversation around reproductive rights in the US, it has been absolutely shocking, right? And is a pivot point for us. We'll see what happens in the next year or so. But yeah, we're, we're there's definitely work to be done. And there's a whole nother conversation we could have around this, Carla around women in leadership and how sometimes they don't speak up because it could impact their careers. Right. They, they're thinking and I think of women, especially in politics, who Mum's the word on some very key women's issues, because the constituency that voted them into power does not support women's rights, you know, or not, to the extent that, you know, we would, you know, support women's rights. So that's, that's a whole nother sticky issue to get into.

Carla Miller 42:50
It is and I've been reading halfway through reading a book about patriarchy, stress disorder, I don't know if you've ever come across this, you will find it fascinating. But it's the idea that our nervous system is on a high alert because of various threats, the threats that we might experience personally. And then the threats that our ancestors as women have experienced, because actually, it's never been safe as a woman to boldly speak, and they edited. And then the third part, which I think is so key at the moment is we are a collective and actually as a, as a society, we have a collective nervous system. And actually, as humans, we have a collective nervous system. And so when we see women in the states who are losing the right to have control over their body, for example, or we see women in Iran, who are getting, I mean, it's just awful, absolutely awful. On the one hand, yeah, that that feels quite distant when I'm sat here in my little Cumbrian village house, but on the other hand, at some level, we register, it is not safe to be a woman in a way that men don't register that so it's a really interesting concept. But it's it's that little reminder or big, shocking reminder sometimes, that actually, our rights have been gifted to us, rather than having had them from the beginning.

Jodi Flynn 44:19
Yes, and, you know, we, we take for granted rights, liberties and privileges that we have when the reality is you have to continue to fight for these things. And I hate using the word fight because it's so combative and conflictual. But you have to keep speaking up for them, you know, and advocating for and appreciating these rights because the rights that we take for granted we have seen in history are the rights that get taken away when we assume oh, we're good, right? Roe v. Wade, we're good. Like this is all set. No, it's not. No, it's not right at all. Have this can go away, if we don't continue to advocate for it and say, this is a right that women need to have to have agency over their own bodies. And until they do, they will never be equal members of society.

Carla Miller 45:15
And it's really interesting. There was a great article in the press here at the time saying, Oh, we're assuming that we're fine here in the UK. But actually, we don't have that right. Either a doctor, we have to go to a doctor, and we have to make a case and the doctor has to approve. It's a special case so that we can go ahead. So yeah, absolutely. I think we do make a lot of assumptions. And if it's happening to one woman, then effectively it's happening to all women. And we need to make sure that we are taking action to support women across the world, even if it doesn't feel like it's impacting us right now. Anyway, we got really, yeah. If people have listened to this interview, and they're like, God sounds like my person. How can I work with her? How can I find out more? How can people work with you?

Jodi Flynn 46:06
Yes, so my business and my website is Women Taking the Lead. So you can find me at womentakingthelead.com that is my hub. That's where you can find my podcasts and my social media channels. I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you look up Jodi Flynn, I'll come right up in the search because I'm on there just about every day, please connect with me. Send me a note that you heard me on Carla's podcast, I would happily accept your invitation to connect and I look forward to get getting to know you better.

Carla Miller 46:41
Brilliant. Well, I'm sure there will be people connecting, we are connected, so there'll be able to see you as someone that they can connect to. And thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure talking to you again, and quite to find a like minded person to be sharing this wisdom or be on different sides of the pond at the moment.

Jodi Flynn 47:00
Yes Carla, I'm honoured that you asked me and it truly is a joy to find another woman out there who's like minded. There's so many of us and we just have to connect with each other.

Carla Miller 47:17
If you've listened to the podcast, and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look.

First of all, I've got a couple more freebies. I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self doubt hold you back.

So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF. There are my open programmes influence and impact for women at management and leadership level and be bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level.

You can preorder my book closing the influence gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard. You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops, or to run my influence and impact programme or be bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering.

If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation so I look forward to chatting to you. Take care