How to be courageous, with Jenny Wood

Career expert Jenny Wood shares lessons from her book Wild Courage

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they have for the rest of us. Today, I am

(00:25):
delighted to welcome Jenny Wood to the show. Jenny is
a career expert and the author of the brand new
book Wild Courage.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
So, Jenny, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Thanks so much for having me. Laura excited to have
you here. So yeah, tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, I'm in Boulder, Colorado. I've got two kids who
are seven and nine. I spent eighteen years at Google,
growing from entry level to executive, and I recently left
to work on this book full time. It came out
not too long ago, hit the New York Times bestseller list,
which is so exciting, so awesome, and I have a
goal to spread insane amounts of Wild Care into the

(01:00):
world so that everybody can make their days go from
great to awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Heay, well, then we're all about that there, So well,
what are the ways that you kind of burst onto
the scene a few years ago is a famous story
of how you met your husband that this went a
bit viral. Maybe you can tell our listeners about that.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, it's twenty eleven and I'm riding the New York
City subway home from work when about twenty feet away
from me stands this really good looking guy, gorgeous blue eyes,
thick brown wavy hair. And even though I want to
go up and talk to him, something holds me back.
What if he's a convicted fella, what if he's married?
What if a hundred people stare at me on this
packed train? Well, I later came to realize that underneath

(01:42):
those questions were fears that hold so many people back,
because they're the same fears that held me back so
much in life. Fear of uncertainty, fear of failure, and
most importantly, fear of judgment of others. So I sit there,
I do nothing as the train passes stop after stop
after stop, and life passes me by. But I'm still
so taken by him. So and make a deal with
the universe. I say, if he gets off at my stop,

(02:02):
then I'll try to strike up a conversation with him,
and if not, then se LEVI. Well, he gets off
at the next stop, which was not my stop, and
I say, I like slump down in my chair so disappointed.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
And then all of a sudden, this.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Wave of wild courage like washes over me and practically
pushes me out of my subway seat and off the train.
So I chase after him, tap him on the shoulder.
I say, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you. You're
wearing gloves, so I can't tell if you're wearing a
wedding ring. But in the event that you're not married,
you were on my subway and I thought you were cute.

(02:34):
Any chance I could give you my business card? Then
I wait for what feels like forever, thinking this was
a terrible idea. But he takes the card, calls the
next day, asks me on a date a week later,
and then three years later we get married. We've now
been married eleven years happily. So wild courage, you know,
changed my life in that moment, and then I started

(02:54):
using it as a habit professionally throughout my days to
be more productive, etc.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, it is exciting.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I mean sometimes the things that we get inspired to
do just have I mean repercussions like you couldn't even imagine.
But what's interesting about the story. Of course you were
telling this story from the place where it worked.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Yeah, totally. And you talk a.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Little bit in your book about this, Right, we see
I think the phrases, we see everything differently in the
context of success. So let's talk about it because I
think it's very important for people to realize that and
how they're hearing stories.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
Yeah, it's so.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Interesting you bring that up. It's like survivorship bias. Right,
so it's like, well it all worked out. Of course,
you can go out and tell people to have wild courage,
but the reality is like our failures fuel that success, right,
you know, if you want to double your success as
quadruple your failures. And wild Courage covers nine traits that
create the bars of an invisible cage that keep you small.
And I'm encouraging people to reclaim these nine traits. Those

(03:49):
nine traits are weird, selfish, shameless, obsessed, nosy, manipulative, brutal, reckless,
and bossy. And I think the move on that subway
that day was reckless, right, reckless, redefine And my new
words is the courage to take intelligent risk, to err
on the side of action. Better to learn from your
mistakes than waste time predicting the consequences of every decision.

(04:09):
Think fast and fearless, and if you're on the fence,
do it. But you bring up the good point of like, Okay,
it worked out for you that day, but what about
what it doesn't. The reason I advocate for it anyway
is because those risks, those little mini risks, those moments
of recklessness, as I call it, help build the building
blocks of something great in the future, because it's it's
it's building that muscle to ask the uncomfortable question, to

(04:31):
ask your boss for a race, to ask the client
you know, for an upsell, to ask a friend in
a new city to go out to coffee.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
I've had so.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Many failures, especially since leaving Google and being an entrepreneur.
I had, you know, I wanted all these fellow authors
and influencers to support the book, and a lot of
them said yes. But I got so many ghosting responds
or so many non responses right, and I got one
from a really, really well known author that everybody would
know this person's name, that was not just a no

(04:59):
I'm not going to support it with my audience, but
a blatant this is the end of our friendship and
my mentorship with you, Jenny, because I don't think you know,
I'm offended that you asked, basically, and it was really
hard to stomach that rejection that like, flat out not
just rejection, I'm not going to support you know, the
book and with my audience, but just like and this
is the end of our relationship. And so that's a

(05:20):
perfect example of Yes. Sometimes you take that risk, you jump,
you run off the subway, you ask for the raise,
you ask for the client partnership, and you get told
to flat out no, But you still keep going because
there were the hundreds of people who said yes with
massive audience, you know, millions of people in their audience.
And so if I hadn't had the boldness, the wild
courage to ask that person who happened to say no,

(05:41):
it means I wouldn't have had the same courage to ask.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
The other people who did help me. And it's that
muscle that you just have.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
To build over and over and over again. Even though
sometimes you are going to fail. You are going to
feel rejected, you are going to feel disappointed, you are
going to feel depressed, which I did feel all of
those things when that happened.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
But it's the marker of a leader when you can
do that and keep going.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah that you realize a lot of times the response
eventually to this, you know, discouragement, rejection.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
All that is like, oh well yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
I mean, if the guy on the subway had been like, yeah, dude,
not not doing it, you'd been like, Okay, next guy,
you know, move on.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
That's the thing, is, like, of those three fears that
I help people push through with wild courage, fear of uncertainty,
fear of failure, fear of judgment of others, the one
that happens to plague me the most is fear of uncertainty.
So I would have rather run off the subway and
asked that guy and had him tell me a flat
out no, then leave an uncertainty the rest of my
life thinking what could have been. In fact, it's kind
of a win win if he said no, I'm married.

(06:35):
He gets to go home to his wife and kids
and be like, I still got it, honey, I tell you,
and I.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
Have my answer.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
It's like okay, no, no, nothing nothing venture, nothing lost.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
So you bring up a really good point, Laura.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, yeah, No, I've always said that with like I
mean public speaking. I do a reasonable amount of it,
and at the beginning is like it's a little bit,
you know, nerve wracking to get up in front of people.
And then you do enough of it and you realize
some go great, some are fine, some go wrong, often
for things.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
That have nothing to do with you.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
I mean they just announced like huge cost cutting right
before you got up on stage.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
You know, it's a little.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Different than if like the boss is giving out iPads
right before you go on stage, Like the energy's a
little different now the has nothing to do with you.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
And but you learn, oh well, you know that one bombed.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Oh well, you know, and think about how much you learn,
Like my entire business is keynote speaking now and I
completely understand what you're saying, And think about how much
you learn from the ones that don't go well, Like
I made a huge mistake and a keynote a couple
of weeks ago, and I asked for a confidence monitor
so I could see we slide was coming next, and
then they like reluctantly put it there.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
But then I later found out.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Like that was a five hundred dollars cost to us, Jenny,
so we wish we had known about that ahead of time.
And I was like, oh my gosh, but like what
an amazing learning Like I wouldn't have even thought that
this would have been an incremental cost for them, And
I felt really foolish, and you know, it's disappointed and
maybe I was taking nosy too far. Nosey is the
courage to get in statiably curious to you know, dig deeper.
It's about how curious drowns out fear and pulls you

(08:01):
toward what most is exciting to you. So use it
as a compass, and it's all about like, yeah, don't
be scared to ask a question. I asked a question, Hey,
could you add a confidence monitor? But then sometimes without
even realizing it, realizing it, you can take these nine
traits too far, and I call those traite traps. And
in that case, I didn't think I was taking it
too far, but I later learned I had taken it
too far, and now I know to be more thoughtful about,

(08:21):
you know, the investment that the client is making, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
So sometimes we get caught in these tradite traps. Without
even knowing it.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Absolutely all right, Well, we're going to take a quick
ad break and then I will be back with more
from Jenny Wood. Well, I am back with Jenny Wood,
who is the author of the new book Wild Courage.
Has spent her career at Google and now off on
her own doing lots of speaking and writing and teaching

(08:49):
and things like that. So, Jenny, you have a phrase
for when people are going after goals that you want
them to remember, which is rock, chalk talk and walk.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
I think I said that directly without tripping over it.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
Soday.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
You can talk a little bit about what that means.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, absolutely, So rock chalk talk walk is goal setting
in a nutshell. It's about how do you have the
most productive hour in any day, right, or how do
you have the most productive goals for a six month period?
So rock is what's the big thing you want to accomplish.
I set out to, you know, sell a lot of
books the week this book came out, So I said,
my big goal is to sell ten thousand US hardcover

(09:26):
copies of Wild Courage by pup week. That was my
rock and it was specific. It had a number in there, right,
and I had a date. So it wasn't wishy washy,
whether I.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
Achieved it or not.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Chalk is I wrote it down so right here. Listeners
can't see this, but I'm showing up a little sticky
to Laura here.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
But here we go.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
It is just like it's on my monitor and it
says that what I just stated written down so I
could see it every day.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
That's chalk write it down.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
Talk is talk about it out loud, not in a
MANIFESTI kind of way, but in a very practical, say
it to people so they can help you kind of way.
A lot of people say, well, how do I tastefully
self promote at work?

Speaker 4 (10:00):
Right?

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Like, I don't want to share with my boss that
I increased, you know, customer satisfaction year a year by
by this percent.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
I'm like, no, they.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Want to hear that, like they want to hear the
awesome things you're doing because they can help you. So
by talking about my goal out loud, people said, oh,
let me introduce you to this other person, or you know,
have you thought about this strategy? Have you thought about
bulk sales for companies? So that's talk and then walk
is what's it's walk the walk? What's the one thing
you can do today, in this hour of your time,
to be the most productive toward that goal. So, just

(10:28):
to give another example, let's say your goal is to
lose ten pounds. So maybe the walk is you're going
to replace the big dishes in your kitchen with smaller dishes.
And that's the one small step you can take to
move you toward that big rock. So that's rock, chalk,
talk and walk.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Excellent, excellent.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
And you also talk a lot about betting on yourself,
right that that part of being having this wild courage
is the idea that you know, we need to bet
on ourselves. I don't know if other people are going
to do it or not, but you know, we at
least need to put that level of support for ourselves.
So somebody's listening to this in the car on the
way to work. It's Tuesday. How practically can they bet

(11:07):
on themselves today?

Speaker 4 (11:09):
Yeah? Well, I think when when you share bet I.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Forgot it'll be on Wednesday. But okay, it is Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yes, yeah, means whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday or Saturday.
You know, we think we hear betting on ourselves and
we think quit your job to be an entrepreneur. But
you can bet on yourself directly within your own team,
within your own organization, with your in your own company.
What might that look like? This comes out of the
shameless trait. Shameless is the courage to stand behind your

(11:37):
efforts and abilities. It's about finding your swagger. It goes
back to kind of how do you thoughtfully self promote
to your managers that you can get that raise, get
that promotion, and bet on yourself within your organization. So
try sending what I call a shameless Monday email. It
should take no more than fifteen minutes. It's four bullets,
two things you're proud of from last week and two
things you're excited about this week. Four bullets, really.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Short and sweet.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
It's it's not a productivity report. It's simply sharing highlights.
Even better if you use numbers like I referenced before.
But it's just sharing you know what's been going on
in your world. As a Google exact Laura, I think
I only saw this about ten percent of the time,
but the people who did this always stood out as
rockstar performers.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
I always knew what they were working on.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
It was different than them bringing it to me in
our regular weekly one on one because this is something
that I, as their boss, could see my boss on
and then maybe that gets spread to other people and
it just shows that they're proactive. It shows that they're
you know, proud of what they've accomplished, and it gives
me an opportunity to give feedback if I need to.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
And it's a.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
Very effective tool to betting on yourself within your job,
within your team, so that your boss falls in love
with you absolutely.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
And you actually suggest that people use that word proud,
Like you said, listen, two things you're proud of, but
you actually want people to say, I'm proud of this.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
I mean, what's going on with that exactly? Well, it's
just so rare.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
It's like we think that we have to underplay our
or downplay our efforts and our abilities.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
So that's why I call it shameless.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right, what is the shame if you you know, did
this marketing launch for the ath leisure line of the Fall, Right,
what's the shame in saying our goal was seventy percent
adoption and we got to eighty percent customer adoption whatever
the metric is, Like, what is the shame in that?
Like literally using the words I'm so proud of how
this marketing launch went. I'm proud of this customer feedback.

(13:20):
Here's a screenshot of it. I'm proud of this testimonial
from a client, and we could do the same thing
for you, you know, if you're an entrepreneur. We just
hired a nanny recently and she does a bunch of
stuff around the house in addition to being a nanny.
She's amazing, and so in her email to us, she said,
you know, I love being with kids, I'm happy to
do grocery shopping, and I'm an exceptional cook. That's like

(13:41):
taking I'm proud and dialing it way up to eleven.
And I have to say one of the reasons I
wanted to interview her was because she had the courage,
the wild courage to say in an email, I'm an
exceptional cook. I mean, of course you then got to
have the goods to back it up. And she is
a great cook. But like that really stands out and
tells me so much. She's confident, she's she is an
exceptional cook, and like, think how rare it is for

(14:04):
someone to say something like that. So whether it's I'm
proud or I'm really good at this, or these are
my three power assets, you know, the three strengths I have.
People oftentimes don't take time to identify what their three
are mine or people leadership, stakeholder influence and building things
from startup to scale, and whether I'm meeting my boss's
boss or a mentor or a new customer. Like, I
have those identified, I have them practiced, and I say

(14:25):
them and I say that I'm proud of them, because
that pride is contagious, and that positive energy is contagious.
People want to work with people who they're excited by
and like to partner with and who are positive.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, and you suggest that people actually do come up
with those power those three power statements and like work
them in.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
I mean, there's all sorts of situations.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Where people like say, introduce yourself, or hey, you know,
I have somebody who want to be can you tell
them a little bit about what you do, and then
you launch into the three Exactly.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
I was coaching someone yesterday. I do a lot of
executive coaching one on one in small groups, and I
was coaching someone yesterday on an interview and she was like,
but what if they don't ask me, you know, what
my strengths are I'm like, Oh, it doesn't matter what
they ask you. They could say, why do you want
this job? Boom, Well I want this job because I'm
really great at blah blah blah.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Okay, well what are you most excited about in this job?
Same thing?

Speaker 3 (15:11):
You know, to be able to leverage my three power assets.
And I always encourage people to have two business skills
and one soft skill one people skill in there. Just
like your financial portfolio, your power assets make up your
power portfolio. And just like your financial portfolio is a
mix of stocks and bonds, you want your power portfolio
to be a mix of people skills and hard business skills.
So no matter what they ask you, a mentor a boss,

(15:31):
you know, an interviewer, you can always drop those three
strengths in. But it takes time to sit down and
identify what they are.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, and you don't like the phrase shameless plug or
shameless self.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
We throw that around a lot. I mean, what because
we've identified that.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
I guess the idea that talking about yourself is seen
as bad.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
Yeah, No, I think it's I think it's such a
great thing.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
By the way, it can really hurt you in your
career if you if you don't someone, you know, because
now that the book's doing well, and you know, people
come to me asking for help, which of course I'm
delighted to offer. Someone said, hey, i'd love to talk
to you about the publishing industry, you know, would you
have a conversation with me about agents?

Speaker 4 (16:10):
And like that's it.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
There were no numbers, there was no kind of like
anything promoting the great work this person had done. So
I just initially thought, if this is probably when I
can brush off, right. I'm human, I try to be
productive all so I can't take every meeting that comes
my way. And then I said, you know, do you
have any examples of you know, do you have an audience?
Do you have any followers on social media? That's obviously
important for the publishing industry. She came back, She wrote

(16:33):
me back, She's like, well, I have two hundred and
seventy thousand followers across social media. And I was like, oh,
my gosh, if you had the if you and she
probably felt like, oh, it's shameless to say that in
my first email. No, that's exactly what I want to know.
It is so much more efficient. It helps me be
more productive. But you saving me the time of A
assuming that you are totally starting out, you have no following,
but B I then don't have to come back and

(16:55):
ask you, right, totally inefficient that i'd write back and
ask her the question. So, you know, when we talk
about a shameless plug, I have this example of someone
was in a meeting with thirty people and we were
talking about something that was related to this thing she
just built, and she said, well, this is a shameless plug,
but I built this spreadsheet. I'm putting it here in
the group chat, and if anyone uses it, you might
find it saves you sometime.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
The emojis on the virtual meeting went gaga.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Everyone's like, oh my gosh, this is gonna save me
thirty minutes every time I do this project. And so like,
what's the shame and sharing a tool that's going to
be helpful and help other people be productive, and yet
we still are conditioned to feel like we have to
underplay our efforts. We have to say this is a shameless,
shameless plug. But it's like, no, be proud of what
you put out there. What I would have wanted her
to say was I'm proud of this resource I put together,

(17:39):
and I think we'll save you each a half hour.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I love anything that saves me half an hour, So
it saves me five minutes, I'm all over that. So
all right, well, we're gonna take one more quick ad
break and I will be back with more from Jenny Wood. Well,
I am back with Jenny Wood, who's the author of
Wild Courage, just how to go after what you want

(18:02):
and get it. So, Jenny, we always like to talk
about routines here on this show. I'm wondering if you
personally have any routines that help make you more effective?

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Well, can I talk about one that I have started
this morning?

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Okay, Well, today is as good a day as any,
So if we started this morning, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
They say the best time to plant a tree is
twenty years ago. The second best time is today. So
I started this today even though for ages I've been
wanting to do it.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
And this would be part of what I call brutal.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Right, this is the trait that's the courage to protect
your time and energy. It's the power of know It
also gets into people pleasing, how people pleasing pleases no
one and keeps you small.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
But this is real. Brutal is about.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
Ruthless prioritization at its core, and it's something I've struggled
with for a long time, is charging my phone next
to me in my bed.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
And this is probably like the oldest trick in.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
The book to most of you listening, but I'm new
to it, and I've realized that, you know, it's something
I share in Wild Courage is if you don't have
the time, the energy, or the capacity to respond to
an email, don't check it. So like if you're walking
to the subway or you know, to your car in
the parking lot from work, if you still work in
an office, like there's really no point to scroll through
your work email if you're not going to action and

(19:13):
write back to that email in that moment, which you're
probably not. If you're walking, you might get hit by
a car. Well, I was finding the same thing would
happen first thing in the morning. I would pull up
my phone and then for like a good forty five minutes,
while my eyes are you know, still half closed, I
would scan through DMS on LinkedIn because I'm very active there.
I post every day. I'd scan through my inbox. I'd
listen to maybe a voice memo from someone on my team,

(19:33):
but I just wouldn't action anything, and then I would
forget things I would not get back to them. So
I kind of applied that same strategy I talk about
in the brutal trait, which is if you can't action it,
don't read it. And so for the first time last night,
I charged my phone in another room. My old boss
would say, charge it on a different floor of the
house if you have more than one floor, like make
it really hard to get to. And then today when

(19:55):
I sat down at my computer, I actually could read
the emails and respond real time.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
And that is brutal.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
It is not easy to do that because there are
so many reasons I would say I need to charge
it next to my bed. But it's a ten dollars
investment in an alarm clock and a digital you know,
digital clock. But I'm trying this out and I'm hoping
that it can stick. Because it is it'll.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
Make a difference for me for sure.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, Now that's always what trips people up. They're like,
but I need it as my alarm.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's like, well, guess what people had alarms We didn't
magically wake up prior to smartphones.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
There's there's a.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Way to solve this problem exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
You'll figure it out. You'll figure it out.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
Well.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
One thing I always ask people, Jenny, is what is
something you've done recently to take a day from great
to awesome? So obviously charging your phone somewhere else is
going to hopefully take your days from great to us
I'm but I wonder if you have anything else for us.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
Well.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
One of the I think that I oftentimes live in
a maximizer world. And this gets a little into the
trade traps again. So this is about the obsessed trait.
Obsessed is the courage to set your own standard, to
push perform persists. It's to let your energy fuel or
your enthusiasm really to feel like any project or any goal.

(21:07):
And I can take that a little bit too far.
And there's this research by psychologists and professor at Swarthmore University,
Barry Schwartz, who talks about maximizers versus satisficers. Maximizers want
to dial any project up to eleven. They want to
ace every test. They want to, you know, run the marathon.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
And have the fastest time. And I tend to fall.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
Into that category of maximizers. However, there are also satisficers
who are okay being an eighty out of one hundred
on a lot of things. And the research suggests that
while maximizers might get slightly better results, the satisficers can
sometimes be happier. And since I think it's not a
bad thing to optimize for happiness when you're taking your

(21:49):
days from great to awesome, you know, I've tapped a
couple of times in this past week into being a
satisficer and not my natural inclination of a maximizer. Again,
this gets into trade traps. Basically, it's like where do
I want to be obsessed? What projects should be an
eleven out of ten, and what projects.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
Can be an eight out of ten?

Speaker 3 (22:06):
And so I try to not get caught in a
trait trap by taking obsessed too far on too many
different things. So this week I had some good opportunities,
especially spending time with my kids. I just came back
from a field trip with my seven year old daughter.
I drove them to choir a couple of times this week,
went to a field day yesterday at school, and so
it forced me to be a satisficer around a couple
of projects I had brewing for work, and it actually

(22:27):
felt really, really great to be more discerning about where
I had to just really squeeze every last ounce of
productivity into a project, and where I could say, eh,
good enough, I'm going to go spend some time with
my kids. And that made me my That's made this
week awesome and not just great.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah, I'm one hundred percent of satisficer on so many
things I don't like, you know, looking at the universe
of options, I want people to bring me three Oh.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, and I go with one of those three. They're
going to be great.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, That's that's something I share in Bossy. Bossy is
the courage to see others to success, and it's all
about being a strong leader. And one of the things
I share is leaders love threes. Give three options and
then have a POV to your leader, Right, Like, giving
three options shows that you can look at things from
multiple perspectives.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
But having a perspective, hey.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
We could you know, we could sell vanilla ice cream,
chocolate ice cream, or strawberry ice cream next year if
you're you know, the VP talking to the CEO, and.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
I recommend we go with strawberry.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Right. Giving those three options shows that you've got diverse
perspectives that you're considering. But the thing that your c
suite is looking for as a leader, if you want
to be a rising leader, is do you have the courage,
the wild courage to have a perspective to pick one
of those three options and oftentimes that senior leader will
say yeah, let's go for it. Or if they say no,
then you've got really good data on their opinion, which

(23:38):
you don't always have. But have the wild courage to
give three options and have a stance on it.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, absolutely so, Jenny, what are you looking forward to
right now?

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Hmmm, Well, it's really fun to partner with companies and
you know, different leadership teams to help them tap into
their wild courage and to improve employee engagement and to
thrive through change. Right there's so much going on with
AI and the economy and politically and in organizations restructuring
that I think everyone is just looking for a dose
of realistic motivation and how they can thrive more at

(24:09):
work and also in life. And so just all the
incredible partnerships that are coming up with different companies, their
leadership teams or even their entry level employees because they
want to get them started on the right foot and
hit the ground running. That's what I'm most looking forward
to is just bringing this work to more and more
companies because it is so much fun to partner with
people on awesome.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
And where can people find you?

Speaker 4 (24:29):
It's Jennywood dot com.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
They can find me there and reach out to me
for speaking engagements or workshops, or buying the book for
their organization or to excellent excellent.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Well, Jenny, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback on
this or any other episode, you can always reach me
at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.

(25:05):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(25:27):
listen to your favorite shows.