July 27, 2025 • 38 mins
Hey BA fam!
For this Washday Woosah episode, we are welcomed by CEO Coach, keynote speak, and author of “YOU'RE THE BOSS: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need)”, Sabina Nawaz!
During this episode, Sabina discusses being able to understand the complex connection between power and pressure as a workplace manager, and how to turn the hidden pressures you face, into astounding results created by hardworking and communicating!
During this interview, you will Discover the leadership secrets of the world’s most successful managers and an important set of tools for managing yourself, others, and being able to navigate working relationships.
Follow Sabina Nawaz!
- Website: https://sabinanawaz.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sabinacoaching/?hl=en
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Email us at brownambitionpodcast@gmail.com or DM us @brownambitionpodcast!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think that authenticity can sometimes be an excuse for
not growing and not changing. I think most people when
they talk about authenticity, they're talking about their values. How
do you keep your values intact while continue to grow
and rediscover and reimagine yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Heyba fam, I am so happy to introduce you to
my guest today, Sabina Noahz. She is an executive coach,
has worked at some incredible companies like Microsoft, like Google.
Not that brand names matter, Okay, it's nice. It's nice
to know that someone's come from some elite institutions. But
Sabina has written a book. And you know what, My
(00:42):
five year old son loves this book. I've had it
around the house while I've been reading it and he's like,
you're the boss. Like he's just learning how to read.
These are some sight words for him. I was like, yeah, baby,
you know how to say the word boss. But the
book is you're the boss, become the manager you want
to be, and other need being a welcome to Brown Ambition.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Well, thank you so much, Mandy. And I cannot help
but notice, since you mentioned visuals, you're in red, I'm
in yellow.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Are we not a little ketchup? And mustard moment. This
is like a match made in heat. They are who
knew there's some there's a reason that those colors are
so ingrained, you know, in the culture. So yeah, beautiful.
So talk to me about your path from corporate, because
I actually have a similar path. I left corporate in
(01:33):
twenty twenty one and I became a career coach.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
You.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I don't know when you left corporate, but I have
loved that transition was unexpected but also really fun for me.
But I'm curious, what was your path like? Did you
always know you wanted to step away from that traditional
like corporate role and then help executives be better at
their jobs?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh gosh, No, My undergraduate and graduate grease are in
computer science and electronics and systems engineering. And I started
my career at Microsoft in software engineering. Oh okay, yeah,
So I did that, and I managed teams and worked
on products like Windows and MSN and Internet Explorer and
(02:13):
a bunch of version zero products that never went anywhere
for over nine years, and then switched careers into HR
at Microsoft, where I ran the company's executive development, worked
with Bill and Steve running succession planning for the company,
management development for the eleven thousand managers we had and
(02:34):
so on, so it was a whole different career shift.
I did that for about six years, and for the
past twenty years I've been on my own coaching CEOs,
doing leadership training, large keynotes, writing for Harvard Business Review, Forbes,
Wall Street Journal, and then of course, most recently, writing
the book.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Gosh, it took you that long to write a book,
this's your first one? Yes, even too busy doing the work, right, Okay,
that's incredible. Okay, so well you're I mean, you're my
goals then to have a couple of decades under your
belt of making it on your own, all right, So
talk to me about the book. I mean, this book
(03:16):
is very much I feel like targeting, maybe not CEOs,
I mean maybe CEOs, but also just like women of color,
especially who want to be CEOs and want to be
blowing up that ladder and how to do it in
a way that they're successful. But also what I've taken
away is like, you're not sacrificing who you are or
giving up who your authentic self is along the way.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yes, yes, the book has few key things as ways
to remember this book is targeted. Mandy to people who
are already successful, the people who have made it, who
have a long track record of being right and getting
promoted on that. And yet there are things that none
of us knows at every stage of our career. So
(04:00):
the three things to be aware of one that promotions
at the riskiest time in your career. Two that it
is not power but pressure that corrupts you. And three
that pressure then isolates you from the impact of those
behaviors that you are showing up with under pressure, because
nobody will tell you until it's too late. As women
(04:25):
and women of color, you're likely to receive even less
feedback when things like this happen, and they have the
power then to derail your career.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Maybe I'm reading it through my own lens, but I'm
wondering if like a better way to describe the book
is also maybe how to prevent some of the common
pitfalls that can happen when you are succeeding. And then
I want to hear what have you seen happen? You
say promotions are the most vulnerable or the riskiest parts
of your career. What have you seen happen to high
(04:58):
achieving women their careers when they do get that successful stage,
and then they are, you know, given that opportunity and
what happens next m M yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
So the tricky part with promotions is that, of course
it's a time for great celebration as well, and once
the bubblies settle, the very strengths that have gotten you
to the level at which you're promoted are going to
be seen very differently from the next that are training up.
They're going to be seen less charitably. For example, you're
(05:33):
a woman who pays a lot of attention to detail,
Suddenly you're going to be seen as a micromanager. Let's
say that for's someone who's very calm under pressure. Now
your at risk being seen as backing, passion, detached aloof
not interested. On the other hand, let's say you're super passionate.
(05:54):
Now you're going to be seen as overly emotional, which
we often get feedback on anyhow, So you haven't changed,
but your position has changed. With that positional change, people
are going to view your strengths from a very different lens.
This was the case for one of my clients who
was incredibly strategic. She owned meetings not because she went
(06:19):
in there with guns blazing, but because she watched the landscape.
She understood what people were looking for and then spoke
up and tailored her messages appropriately so people wanted to
follow her. And when she got this big promotion, people
suddenly started thinking of her as manipulative instead of strategic. Oh,
she's watching which way the winds are blowing, what the
(06:41):
senior person is saying. She doesn't make a decision until
she's got it all settled in. She was shocked when
she got that feedback. When I interviewed people on her
team about how they perceived working with her, and they
were talking about how they were not trusting her as
much because they thought she was manipulative. That was really
(07:02):
shocking to her because of course, up to this point,
she had been promoted for that very reason. So then
we had to work on how do you reduce what
I call the power gap, the distance between you and
those who report to you, so they better understand what
you're doing and what your intentions are.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, that really resonates with me because I was, I mean,
I guess I was a younger manager. I was a
senior director. I was managing a team of thirty staff
and like one hundred contractors, and I was unusual in
that I came to that point through an acquisition. I
was at a startup where I was like, I think
I managed two full time staff and then a bunch
(07:41):
of freelancers and then brought into this bigger company given
the gift and the privilege to build a team from
the ground up. And in my mind, I sort of
saw myself as like, I have an opportunity. I'm a
woman of color in this position of power, I can
dictate who gets hired. I'm going to do it the
way that I would love to see it done, which
did involve like a I mean, I was very enthusiastic
(08:01):
about everything, and people saw that as pushy and saw
it as just calm down, like we're going to get
this done. And I was like, I was also I
have like New Yorker energy, even though I'm from the
South and my parent company was in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And they were a bit like what like, let's do
small talk first, and I'm like, no, I need this
(08:22):
this da da dada, and yeah, I mean it was frustrating. Also,
it's really hard to feel misunderstood. And I also felt
like there's a lot of like discourse now about how
we shouldn't have to change the way we are. We
shouldn't have to care what people think. We should be
able to say things the way that we want them
and get stuff done. But in effect, it doesn't always
work best as a leader as a team because it
(08:43):
kind of does matter how people feel about you.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I mean, business, business is personal. It starts there. If
you could be in a room by yourself and get
stuff done and have pizza slid under the door at
meal times, then sure, don't worry about anything else. And
this leads to the point about authenticity. For me, authenticity
is not singular. It does not exist in singular form.
(09:06):
I mean, if you think about it, are you exactly
the same way with your five year old son as
you are in this podcast, as you are with your
best besties, when you go out for an evening, as
you are with your partner, as you are if you
were speaking on a big stage. They're all you, they're
all authentically you, but they're different expressions of you. And
(09:29):
if we were truly wedded to a singular, rigid definition
of authenticity, then it's not just your son. You would
be like your five year old son, and maybe you'd
be throwing a temper, tantrum on the floor, anytime you
didn't get your way.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Oh my children, never ever, of course tantrums. That's bad parenting.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yes, yes, there you go. But yeah, I think that
authenticity can sometimes be an excuse for not growing and
not changing. So it's about how do you keep growing
whilst I think most people when they talk about authenticity,
they're talking about their values. How do you keep your
values intact while continue to grow and rediscover and reimagine yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That's such a good point. One of the best things
I did at that point because I was so frustrated
and I was really feeling challenged, and I asked for
a professional development fund to do I think I did.
It was a week long leadership and development training and
my company, you know, paid for it. And it was
(10:34):
the first time in my career that I because I
was at a startup right there wasn't budgets for management
training and things like that. And then I'm being thrust
into like a much bigger institution and it was great
to have that time just to devote to understanding how I, authentically,
like in my core self, approach things and then how
(10:54):
I can approach them as a leader. And how those
can be. It can still be authentic, but I need
to have a different style as a absolutely, And that
was it really humbled me, and it opened me up
to the idea that I still had lots to learn
and that I needed to be more coachable. I was
resistant to that feedback because just like you said, I
thought that being changement, that I was wrong and I
(11:16):
wasn't good at my job, right, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Right right? Yeah? And good for you that you then
went into that learner mode and opened yourself up for that.
It goes to a point I talk about in the book,
which is around the tool called multiple meanings, that it's
never one story. There are multiple ways to look at
the story, you know. So in your case, one way
(11:42):
to look at it is, yeah, this means I'm a failure,
or this means I'm wrong, they're right.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Or I thought I was going to get fired every day.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know what, if we dream big,
if we play big, of course we might get fired
or we might feel that way. That's a sign that
you're doing something right.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Feeling like you're going to get fired is a sign
that you're doing something right. Man, I was doing something right.
For a lot of it really, like so much of
it is about mindset and looking back. I mean I
thought I was so mature and like so advanced, but
(12:22):
now looking back, I'm like, oh girl, just relax, like,
just give yourself some grace to you made a mistake,
you know. Yeah, I'm curious. So one of the I
mean you mentioned the multiple meetings, what I wanted to
talk about was the idea of pressure because you said
that power doesn't corrupt pressure does. What is the what
are you trying to tackle there, Like in terms of
(12:43):
that idea that when you get more powerful, you're going
to be corrupted, And then like, how does pressure play
a role?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, yeah, it's not power that corrupts you. You're not
getting corrupted when you get more power. You're getting corrupted
when you're under more pressure. And think about this. Just
about everybody I know says they're under tremendous amounts of pressure.
Everything that's going on in the world, in the country,
in your organization, in your life, in your job, there's
a lot of pressure. Have you ever done something when
you're under pressure that you're not proud of? In hindsight,
(13:11):
just about everybody we flip our finger in traffic. When
we haven't budgeted enough time and we're running late and
somebody cuts us off, we raise our voice, maybe louder
than we should have. Sometimes, when we are losing patience,
we provide feedback in ways that may not be as
kind and compassionate to other people. I know for me,
(13:34):
when I came back from parental leave after my first kid,
and the first day after leave, I'm putting on lipstick
for the first time. My assistant calls me, where are you?
Steve expects you in thirty minutes. That's Steve Bomber, the
CEO of the company, and she reads me the memo
as I'm hitting warp speed getting to work. And that
set the tone for the pressure that I had at
(13:56):
work with an infant at home, no sleep, no peace,
no patience, and thinking to myself, I don't have time
to give detailed instructions to people, let alone repeat them.
There'll be time for empathy later on. They're big boys
and girls. Let's go, let's work, Let's get this done
like you like, Let's just go and execute. I started
micromanaging because I was worried myself or my team would
(14:19):
look incompetent to senior executives. And the scary part is
I thought, like you were saying, Mandy, that I was
doing a great job, I was being efficient, when in reality,
my colleague Joe comes to me one day and says,
Pack is crying in his office because of something you said.
How you said it. That's when I realized. When I
(14:42):
went to talk to Zack and apologize, and his eyes
brimmed with tears, he realized, Ah, this is what I want.
How did I morph from being caring and compassionate from
people thinking I'm one of the best bosses they worked
for to this someone that people were afraid of and
really didn't like very much. So it's the same person,
different circumstances. Under pressure, even the best bosses can morph
(15:05):
into the worst bosses.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, so in that case, I mean, you're getting pressure
from the top, and I wonder if also because you're
coming back from parentally, you're not also like trying to
prove yourself a little bit, like not that you've lost
anything since you've gone off, because I do think that there, Yeah,
there's that fear I think as women that we come
back and we'll be underestimated. But how do you get
(15:27):
better about that when it's coming from up top? Like,
did you talk to Steve the CEO about the tone
that he was setting? I mean that sticy.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, No, I wasn't really I don't think it was
pressure from the top. It was pressure from the top
just as part of the job. There was nothing in
how Steve was asking me to do things that needed
to be changed. What needed to change was how I
manage the pressure. Look, you're the pressure is not going
to go away. If you want a dream big, you
want to play big, You're going to be in a
(15:58):
pressure cooker. It's not possible to be pressure free. What
you're after is trying to be pressure proof.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I love that, right, I love a catch phrase. But
there you go, it's not possible to be pressure free.
It's such a it's such a great like I just
want to stop there for a moment because I was
just talking to I did an interview with a financial
therapist but right before this, and she was saying how
as humans, we really don't like being uncomfortable, and we
think something is wrong if we're uncomfortable, and like we
(16:27):
want to fix it and soothe it, and like it
just sounds like what you're describing, you know, when you
are in a big position. Yeah, there's it's like accepting
that there's going to be a very high pressure environment
and it's our job to like learn how to cope
with it in a healthy way so that we can
be better leaders.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And so how do
you do that. One of the things to do when
pressure rises is to do nothing. What I mean by that,
most of us, when pressure rises, want to work harder.
We want to buckle down, work late it, sacrifice dinner,
sacrifice family time, sacrifice self care, and keep going, going, going, doing,
(17:06):
doing doing, Instead, what I ask my clients to do
is a practice called blank space, which is taking two
hours a week where they step back, unplug from everything.
No conversation, no reading, certainly not online because research soul
shows that some of our best thoughts come where in
the shower, on our commutes, when we're working out. That
(17:27):
is when we've switched the active part of our brain.
And when you do that and you're in blank space,
you suddenly realize that all these smaller things that you're
getting stressed out about, that you're generating your own pressure on,
don't matter. It reconnects you to that north star what
you need to push towards. It refreshes your brain. It
(17:47):
gives you a rest and gives you bigger ideas that
you need to go chase, helps you be more strategic.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So what does that look like in effect? Like, go outside,
touch grass, go take a while outside.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, so different people have different ways of doing it.
Go outside, touch grass is great if you want to
do it. One person lay in their hammock for two hours.
Another person wanted to discover all the pie shops in
the city that he lived in, so he would go
order two pies in his two hours and sit there.
Someone else had a hotel that overlooked a mountain range.
(18:21):
He would go order brunch there every Thursday morning. So
it really looks different for different people. Someone else was
at a coffee shop with a box of crayons and
she would just draw.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And oh that's me. I love a doodle. There you go,
a magic marker. You know, I have a thing against
those adult coloring books that are like so tiny and intricute, intricate.
I'm like, yes, this is frustrating me because they feel
like I could finish the whole page.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Get you like, I want to get you.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
A Creola magic marker set and like one of those
chunky picture like coloring books from from the from the
drug store, and that's a their soothing activity, just colored.
That's a picture of this sun. It's like a meditation. Honestly,
it sounds like.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, work is meditation.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It's like a and I think the word meditation can
be intimidating, but it's like in an effect, it's really
just like being present and quiet. And that is so
antithetical to like what we think we need to do
to be successful and to be the boss. I'm the boss.
I should be doing doing, doing, doing, doing right.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, and we forget that they're human beings, not human doings. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, So talk to me about what are some of
the what are some of the biggest mistakes you can
make when you're at like a senior executive level, you're
working your way up and you're you know, the stakes
are getting higher. Others we've talked about needing to have
more time and to cope with the pressure. What are
some mistakes you see happen time and time again.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, So, Mandy, as I wrote this book, it's based
on twelve thousand pages of data. The data I collected
was through interviews over a thousand interviews of people who
worked for my clients. So what's it like to really
work for this person, the CEO? And the number one
piece of negative feedback was this person has a hard
impact on others. And this is where I arrived at
(20:13):
that it's not power but pressure that corrupts. So we
get rude, we get crude, we don't pay attention. We've
talked about that. The number two is around communication and
various aspects of communication. The biggest mistake executives make in
communication is they talk too much. The antidote to that
is what I call exercise shut up muscle. And there
(20:38):
are four steps to that. But one of the steps,
which is you can do immediately and quickly, though not easily,
is to not be the first or second person to speak.
Be the third person, be the fifth person. Because once
someone in a position of power speaks, everybody else gets
(20:58):
busy laughing at it, at it as in, oh wow,
that's so funny, praising it, oh wow, that's so clever.
Nobody's going to disagree with it, and you lose access
to diversity of thought, You lose access to creativity. You
lose the opportunity to grow the people on your team
and in your organization. So shut up. Yes you're right,
(21:19):
Yes you know a lot. But do you want to
continue to build this band club and a sense of
everyone reassuring you how great you are? Or do you
want to grow the entire organization? And oh, by the way,
when you grow the entire organization, more people can step
up and do some things that are on your plate
and reduce pressure on you.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, there's this like sense of when you get to
I mean, I'm just thinking about me as a manager
and how once I was managing such a big team,
I was afraid. I mean I intellectually I knew the
word delegate and you know how, but I was afraid
if I wasn't seen to be having my hands on
a lot of things, that they would think I wasn't
(22:01):
doing a great job. I think there was maybe even
a breakdown in communication between my higher ups, like my executives,
in like being clear about what the expectation was for me,
and like what they were expecting because I let myself
get into such a place of burnout and so much stress,
I mean, and then like and so much fear around him.
(22:23):
I going to be fired, blah blah blah. And after
like months and months and months of this, I walk
into my boss's office and I'm ready to quit. I'm like,
I can't do this anymore. This is too much. I'm
just like so stressed all the time that you want this,
you want that ra And he just is very calm
and he's like, what do you need. It's like it
just sounds like, yeah, there's a lot of things on
your plate. What do you need to get it done?
(22:43):
I was like, what do you He's like, well, you're
not even using your full budget for this. I'm like, well,
I thought if I used if I used the full budget,
I thought that would be like bad because it would
look like I wasn't being budget conscious. And he's like, well,
you're supposed to use the budget to get this, to
get these goals done. Exist Yeah, yeah, it was a bit.
It was a very like meaningful moment for me in
(23:05):
terms of understanding. Yeah, it was. It was meaningful to
me in a couple of ways. But one it was
like I'm in control of figuring out, Like I'm in
this position and they're expecting me to just figure out
how to make it happen. They're not telling me how
to do it, and it's up to me. I've created
this way of doing it that is detrimental to me
and the whole team. And if I want to do
my job well, then I need to come up with
(23:26):
a better plan, recognize that this isn't working, and come
up with a different plan, and then actually know how
to like ask for additional resources and not be afraid
of being seen as weak or unable to do my
job because I needed the extra Yeah, you know, help resources,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yep, yep. Yeah. Talk about multiple meanings and reframing that
from a sign of weakness so actually a sign of
being strategic, a sign of strength. I'm so confident that
I can ask for things and say that I cannot
do this single handedly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, I wonder too, what is the gender makeup of
your clients? Are you mostly working with women? Is it
a mix of men and women? It's a mix, a mix.
Do you find any difference in how women like what
we're struggling with in leadership roles versus men, anything that's
telling about our challenges versus theirs.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Well, first of all, I was very surprised when I
looked at, analyzed, deeply analyze these twelve thousand pages of data,
I did not see gender differences in how they fall
prey to the pressure pitfalls and the power gaps. It
was equally divided amongst men and women. What I do
find common on a gender basis is around strategic thinking.
(24:41):
That women often tend to get feedback that they're not strategic,
but they're actually quite strategic. They're busy caretaking and doing
the less strategic work, and so it's more that they
haven't given themselves time. They haven't carved out the space
and time to do the strategic work. And when we
work on that and I say let's create some blank
(25:02):
space where you can really think the strategic thoughts, they're
often afraid that if I now carve out the time,
I'll actually discover I truly am not strategic. So by
not carving out the time, it's like a muscle. That
muscle hasn't grown, and so they assume that they don't
have it, versus it's an underdeveloped muscle, and you, just
like anything else, you've got to go to the gym
(25:23):
of strategic thinking. So that's one where I think that
a lot of women get feedback that they're not strategic,
but when they do take the time to do it,
they have created transformational business results.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
What even is that word strategic? Like it's so I mean,
I've just used it, Like what does that mean? Like
you're not strategic enough. You're not analyzing results and making
business decisions that are different to improve those results. Like
is that what it is?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yes, And you're not stepping back enough. You're too much
in the fray, You're too much in the weeds. You're
not stepping back enough and anticipating what's going to happen
down the road. So as a result, there's a longer
string of fire drills, or we've missed opportunities in the
market or with our competitors or for our customers because
you didn't step back and think through the bigger picture
(26:12):
and the consequences, not even in the long term, but
in the medium term.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Hmmm. So for your clients who are struggling with that,
when you're in that blank space, then what do you
do to like zoom out? Sometimes for me, if I'm
trying to zoom out, you know, for my for the podcast,
for example, if I want to like take some time
to strategically look at what's the next year going to
look like for Brown Ambition, which I just did the
year editorial calendar. I can't just be quiet like I
(26:41):
need to also in my mind like look at what
other competitors are doing, and look at what's going to
be coming up on the you know, let's say it's
a year of the Olympics. It's not, but you know,
or whatever an election is coming up that may dictate
how I'm going to play in the calendar. So I
need to have like other voices in the mix. Do
you think that that's how full for executives in that
(27:01):
position to like go to a thought leadership conference or
get it, you know, read certain trade publications, listen to
other you know, other thinkers in the space to inform
that strategy.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Absolutely absolutely keeping your radar open to what else is
going on so you're not creating something in a bubble
and not getting stuck in whatever you come up with,
because especially these days, things are changing overnight. So you
also have to be flexible. But to be flexible, you've
got to be well read and up to date on
what else is going on. Otherwise it's going to come
(27:33):
bye to you unexpectedly, so absolutely that would be part
of the process in that blank space. The other thing
that as somebody did very successfully, she would keep a
running list all week long. So let's say her blank
space was on Thursdays, so Friday through Thursday, she would
just keep a running list with a bunch of sticky
notes of Oh this idea, oh that thing, Oh what
(27:54):
about this thing that I read? And in her blank
space she'd bring all these random, random thoughts and sticky
notes to her blank space. Date something magical started to happen.
Is it wasn't about any one of those individual sticky notes.
When she looked at them together, she went, oh, my gosh,
we're missing this huge opportunity in this market. So it
(28:17):
allowed her to instead of just playing whack a mole
with every new idea that pops up, it allowed her
to step back and say, what's the interconnection between these things.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I have a wild ideas trello board like a little yes,
I just literally because I am, I can get distracted,
and I love my ideas. As a mom, like I
have two young kids, and like as a mom, sometimes
all I want is just to be with my own thoughts.
I really think that my brain is a magical place,
and I'm like, I can come up. I'm such a
(28:49):
creative person. I have so many great ideas if I
can just have my brain to myself. But then sometimes
those ideas can go down rabbit holes. Yes, so I
love the posted ideas, just like dump them on a
Trello board. I don't have the blank space date with
myself like where I go back and look at them though,
But at least it's like it gets over that fear.
But I'm gonna forget Mandy.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
That's brilliant. Yeah, So even simply putting the ideas out there.
Now you're in the shower and suddenly you know there's
some blank space right there, and it'll start to Marin.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I took a shower today and I just listened to
a podcast. I know not even my shower is a
blank space. H Yeah. I struggle with like it really
is like a practice to have to just like.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Have quiet absolutely, you know. And here's another thing you
could do. You could start it as a micro habit.
A micro habit is two things. One it's micro. It's
so ridiculously small that it would be absurd not to
do it. And two, did you do it every single day.
So let's say, for example, I don't make blank space time.
I don't have space right now with two young kids
(29:52):
and a full career. What if you took ten seconds
of blank space every day? Seconds is doable.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I'll take it right now.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Great. Yeah, so just set a timer for ten seconds
and that's the way to build that muscle.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
This is what I want to talk about, passion and purpose.
So I want to know what do you have to
say in the book about you kind of get what
you thought you always wanted. You get to this level
of your career, you're doing what you thought it's your passion,
and then you're like, I'm here. I don't know if
I want to be here. I don't know if I
want to be doing this.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yes, this was a surprising finding for me, particularly with
my clients who are north of forty five, so somewhere
between forty five and sixty. They would come to me going,
I'm made. I have the big title, I've got house,
the whatever, big empire, et cetera, and I'm not feeling fulfilled.
I'm wondering, is there all there there is? Is this
(30:51):
all there is? It's not as cool as I thought.
It was going to be they've lost track, They've lost
the plot last track of what really connects them. So
I came up with a tool called a joy line,
which is simply a vertical line, and the vertical line
is chronologically your life. On one side of the vertical
(31:14):
line the things about ten things that have given you
tremendous joy, and on the other side of the line,
about ten things that have leached out joy from your life.
And often simply doing that exercise and writing those things,
the work takes care of itself because people start to
(31:34):
have light bulb moments of oh wow. But if not
look at the themes, what's common to the things that
have given you joy? Is it because you had a
sense of autonomy in those cases and you don't write
now because your board of directors is breathing down your
neck all the time? What else is common to the
things that gave you joy and the things that took
away joy from you? And which of those are you're
finding in your life right now? So you can redesign
(31:56):
your life by looking back through the process of the
joy line.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Is it often about like taking things out you find
or is it people needing to add things back.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
In both both. Okay, first, the first step is taking
things out, just clearing the decks, because there's so much
noise in most of our lives and we haven't even
realized what we've done, and we've packed up all this
junk that is now gunking up our sense of joy,
our sense of passion, or sense of purpose. So first
it's cleaning house because you cannot even see when it's
so noisy and dirty. And then it's about what are
(32:27):
you going to add in that space?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
I don't know, can you see my house right now?
Because it is kind of cluttered, kind of cluttered. Yeah,
it was funny. No, but that's a good analogy because
my husband's always talking about how we need to get
rid of things. We have too much stuff. And I
was like, if we just focused on putting things where
they belong, and we just like for the kitchen, I
didn't wash a single dish. I just spent the day
(32:50):
taking things out of the kitchen that didn't belong there
and putting them where they go, and all of a sudden,
the kitchens clean. That's all I needed to do.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
It was just clean.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
If that's here does need to be here, that's really helpful. Okay,
so everyone should read the book. It's called You're the Boss,
Become the manager you want to be and others need.
I wish I had this book when I was a
baby manager. Before I let you go. I want to
know a little bit more about you and your journey
toward executive coaching. Why did you make that lead?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
When I was running engineering groups at Microsoft, I Microsoft
gave me an eight week sabbatical, and different from how
I usually run my life, which is go go go,
do do do? I actually had plenty of blank space.
I had about five weeks of doing nothing, and in
that I had a really clear realization that it was
(33:38):
no longer a matter of if, but when I would
become a corporate vice president. Now that had been my
career ambition, especially as a Brown woman in corporate America
and especially those days. But once I realized that I
knew the formula, it became a really anticlimactic moment for me.
Why should I spend the next five years of my
life chasing something when I already know how to achieve it?
(34:02):
And then I went, shoot, what do I do with
my life? I've gotten a lot of feedback that I
was a good people manager, and so I thought, let
me experiment with that, and I was fortunate enough that
Microsoft allowed me to do that. It's the only company
I've worked at, and it's it's been. It was really
transformational for the manager who hired me to say, yep,
(34:24):
I'll take that bet on you.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Oh, so that's how you shifted into the HR role.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's how I shifted the role, and that got me
into executive coaching. Understanding all of these people things, but
also organizational systems. And you know, systems thinking is systems thinking,
So whether you're talking about organizational systems or computer software
operational systems, the same principles apply. So even though I
(34:49):
didn't have formal training in the beginning, I was able
to apply some of those principles and my street smarts
from managing organizations and get launched into this career. And
I did that for about six years before launching out
on my own.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And what made you feel like you're ready to go solo?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
I wasn't sure. Again. I loved working at Microsoft. I
had a fantastic job. I had a blank check from
the senior most people had the company to remain there,
and I was seven months pregnant with my second kid.
My first kid was two years old and I thought,
I'm going to miss out on a lot of things.
Now that they're older, I still feel like I missed
(35:27):
out on a lot of things, but at least I
did it on my terms.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
That's really beautiful and very honest. You know. I think
sometimes it's another kind of story that we're told as women,
is like when you have kids, you know, you have
to prepare. People are going to think that you're going
to quit your job, or that you're going to want
to take a step back and like that you're going
to decrease your earnings and all that, and then when
you're in it, it's like when you have kids, like yeah, duh,
(35:52):
Like yes, wouldn't you want to Like that's kind of
like you're doing it right, yes, exactly right, very right. Yeah,
And it's very different when you're in that position. That's
one of the reasons I started my business. I was like, well,
this is great. It's stressful, and you know, but I
can do drop off and pickups and still you know
whatever and play with the kids after school. And I
(36:14):
love that idea that we can start talking about that
as just kind of like a well Yeah, it's it's
just like it it conflicts with something in my brain
from the old days that's like, wait, don't talk about
quitting your job after you have a baby. Like, we're
not supposed to. We're supposed to come back and be
exactly that I am.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Maybe better, we're programmed exactly how we're programmed. And you know,
I Mandy, I had the luxury of having a stay
at home husband.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I got to get one of those. That's nice.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
So I wasn't leaving because of logistical reasons. He's an
excellent father, And it was more of that shouldn't you
want to do this? You're missing out on some of
the things that are most important to you.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Yeah, it's not balance. It's like, of course I want
to be here for the fun stuff, but like I
still love my and I want to be able to
use it, you know. So it's great, but then you
can control the lever.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yes, hence your Trello board.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, I love my Trello board. Airtable's fine, but I
don't know, I'm still like I have a thing with Trello. Okay,
partying words for women of color who are wanting to
become bosses in their own right any like final words
and then let everybody know how they can find you.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Final words would be you are sufficient, you have it,
give yourself the luxury of stepping back, of having some
quiet time, having that blank space, and you will notice
that the answers are in there, just waiting to come out.
You just haven't given them permission to come out yet.
How people can find me? The best would be to
go to my website, which is sabinanoas dot com. I'm
(37:44):
sure it'll be in your show notes and you'll find
a link to ordering the book, but you'll also be
able to download some bonuses that come with ordering the book,
or sign up for my substack pressure Free, which is
again on my website, where you can get additional tips
on how to not pressure free. Did I say pressure fee,
not pressure pressure proof?
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Pressure proof? Right? Don't forget your own tagline? I know, right,
that's a funny human Yeah, yeah, I said the same
thing with like negotiating, I said, like, not to be
fearless about negotiating, but fear proof, Like the fear is
going to be there, you just have to cope with it.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Exactly exactly. I mean, that's the definition of courage, isn't it.
Courage is not when your heart is not pounding. It's
when your heart is pounding and you're still going forward.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
M we didn't even get into negotiating. Maybe another interview
another time. I can't wait to share this book with
my community with BA fam. Here it is again. You're
the boss, Sabina Noaz, thank you so much for joining
me on Brown Ambition.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Thank you, Mandy, thank you
I think that authenticity can sometimes be an excuse for
not growing and not changing. I think most people when
they talk about authenticity, they're talking about their values. How
do you keep your values intact while continue to grow
and rediscover and reimagine yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Heyba fam, I am so happy to introduce you to
my guest today, Sabina Noahz. She is an executive coach,
has worked at some incredible companies like Microsoft, like Google.
Not that brand names matter, Okay, it's nice. It's nice
to know that someone's come from some elite institutions. But
Sabina has written a book. And you know what, My
(00:42):
five year old son loves this book. I've had it
around the house while I've been reading it and he's like,
you're the boss. Like he's just learning how to read.
These are some sight words for him. I was like, yeah, baby,
you know how to say the word boss. But the
book is you're the boss, become the manager you want
to be, and other need being a welcome to Brown Ambition.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Well, thank you so much, Mandy. And I cannot help
but notice, since you mentioned visuals, you're in red, I'm
in yellow.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Are we not a little ketchup? And mustard moment. This
is like a match made in heat. They are who
knew there's some there's a reason that those colors are
so ingrained, you know, in the culture. So yeah, beautiful.
So talk to me about your path from corporate, because
I actually have a similar path. I left corporate in
(01:33):
twenty twenty one and I became a career coach.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
You.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I don't know when you left corporate, but I have
loved that transition was unexpected but also really fun for me.
But I'm curious, what was your path like? Did you
always know you wanted to step away from that traditional
like corporate role and then help executives be better at
their jobs?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh gosh, No, My undergraduate and graduate grease are in
computer science and electronics and systems engineering. And I started
my career at Microsoft in software engineering. Oh okay, yeah,
So I did that, and I managed teams and worked
on products like Windows and MSN and Internet Explorer and
(02:13):
a bunch of version zero products that never went anywhere
for over nine years, and then switched careers into HR
at Microsoft, where I ran the company's executive development, worked
with Bill and Steve running succession planning for the company,
management development for the eleven thousand managers we had and
(02:34):
so on, so it was a whole different career shift.
I did that for about six years, and for the
past twenty years I've been on my own coaching CEOs,
doing leadership training, large keynotes, writing for Harvard Business Review, Forbes,
Wall Street Journal, and then of course, most recently, writing
the book.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Gosh, it took you that long to write a book,
this's your first one? Yes, even too busy doing the work, right, Okay,
that's incredible. Okay, so well you're I mean, you're my
goals then to have a couple of decades under your
belt of making it on your own, all right, So
talk to me about the book. I mean, this book
(03:16):
is very much I feel like targeting, maybe not CEOs,
I mean maybe CEOs, but also just like women of color,
especially who want to be CEOs and want to be
blowing up that ladder and how to do it in
a way that they're successful. But also what I've taken
away is like, you're not sacrificing who you are or
giving up who your authentic self is along the way.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yes, yes, the book has few key things as ways
to remember this book is targeted. Mandy to people who
are already successful, the people who have made it, who
have a long track record of being right and getting
promoted on that. And yet there are things that none
of us knows at every stage of our career. So
(04:00):
the three things to be aware of one that promotions
at the riskiest time in your career. Two that it
is not power but pressure that corrupts you. And three
that pressure then isolates you from the impact of those
behaviors that you are showing up with under pressure, because
nobody will tell you until it's too late. As women
(04:25):
and women of color, you're likely to receive even less
feedback when things like this happen, and they have the
power then to derail your career.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Maybe I'm reading it through my own lens, but I'm
wondering if like a better way to describe the book
is also maybe how to prevent some of the common
pitfalls that can happen when you are succeeding. And then
I want to hear what have you seen happen? You
say promotions are the most vulnerable or the riskiest parts
of your career. What have you seen happen to high
(04:58):
achieving women their careers when they do get that successful stage,
and then they are, you know, given that opportunity and
what happens next m M yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
So the tricky part with promotions is that, of course
it's a time for great celebration as well, and once
the bubblies settle, the very strengths that have gotten you
to the level at which you're promoted are going to
be seen very differently from the next that are training up.
They're going to be seen less charitably. For example, you're
(05:33):
a woman who pays a lot of attention to detail,
Suddenly you're going to be seen as a micromanager. Let's
say that for's someone who's very calm under pressure. Now
your at risk being seen as backing, passion, detached aloof
not interested. On the other hand, let's say you're super passionate.
(05:54):
Now you're going to be seen as overly emotional, which
we often get feedback on anyhow, So you haven't changed,
but your position has changed. With that positional change, people
are going to view your strengths from a very different lens.
This was the case for one of my clients who
was incredibly strategic. She owned meetings not because she went
(06:19):
in there with guns blazing, but because she watched the landscape.
She understood what people were looking for and then spoke
up and tailored her messages appropriately so people wanted to
follow her. And when she got this big promotion, people
suddenly started thinking of her as manipulative instead of strategic. Oh,
she's watching which way the winds are blowing, what the
(06:41):
senior person is saying. She doesn't make a decision until
she's got it all settled in. She was shocked when
she got that feedback. When I interviewed people on her
team about how they perceived working with her, and they
were talking about how they were not trusting her as
much because they thought she was manipulative. That was really
(07:02):
shocking to her because of course, up to this point,
she had been promoted for that very reason. So then
we had to work on how do you reduce what
I call the power gap, the distance between you and
those who report to you, so they better understand what
you're doing and what your intentions are.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, that really resonates with me because I was, I mean,
I guess I was a younger manager. I was a
senior director. I was managing a team of thirty staff
and like one hundred contractors, and I was unusual in
that I came to that point through an acquisition. I
was at a startup where I was like, I think
I managed two full time staff and then a bunch
(07:41):
of freelancers and then brought into this bigger company given
the gift and the privilege to build a team from
the ground up. And in my mind, I sort of
saw myself as like, I have an opportunity. I'm a
woman of color in this position of power, I can
dictate who gets hired. I'm going to do it the
way that I would love to see it done, which
did involve like a I mean, I was very enthusiastic
(08:01):
about everything, and people saw that as pushy and saw
it as just calm down, like we're going to get
this done. And I was like, I was also I
have like New Yorker energy, even though I'm from the
South and my parent company was in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And they were a bit like what like, let's do
small talk first, and I'm like, no, I need this
(08:22):
this da da dada, and yeah, I mean it was frustrating. Also,
it's really hard to feel misunderstood. And I also felt
like there's a lot of like discourse now about how
we shouldn't have to change the way we are. We
shouldn't have to care what people think. We should be
able to say things the way that we want them
and get stuff done. But in effect, it doesn't always
work best as a leader as a team because it
(08:43):
kind of does matter how people feel about you.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I mean, business, business is personal. It starts there. If
you could be in a room by yourself and get
stuff done and have pizza slid under the door at
meal times, then sure, don't worry about anything else. And
this leads to the point about authenticity. For me, authenticity
is not singular. It does not exist in singular form.
(09:06):
I mean, if you think about it, are you exactly
the same way with your five year old son as
you are in this podcast, as you are with your
best besties, when you go out for an evening, as
you are with your partner, as you are if you
were speaking on a big stage. They're all you, they're
all authentically you, but they're different expressions of you. And
(09:29):
if we were truly wedded to a singular, rigid definition
of authenticity, then it's not just your son. You would
be like your five year old son, and maybe you'd
be throwing a temper, tantrum on the floor, anytime you
didn't get your way.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Oh my children, never ever, of course tantrums. That's bad parenting.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yes, yes, there you go. But yeah, I think that
authenticity can sometimes be an excuse for not growing and
not changing. So it's about how do you keep growing
whilst I think most people when they talk about authenticity,
they're talking about their values. How do you keep your
values intact while continue to grow and rediscover and reimagine yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That's such a good point. One of the best things
I did at that point because I was so frustrated
and I was really feeling challenged, and I asked for
a professional development fund to do I think I did.
It was a week long leadership and development training and
my company, you know, paid for it. And it was
(10:34):
the first time in my career that I because I
was at a startup right there wasn't budgets for management
training and things like that. And then I'm being thrust
into like a much bigger institution and it was great
to have that time just to devote to understanding how I, authentically,
like in my core self, approach things and then how
(10:54):
I can approach them as a leader. And how those
can be. It can still be authentic, but I need
to have a different style as a absolutely, And that
was it really humbled me, and it opened me up
to the idea that I still had lots to learn
and that I needed to be more coachable. I was
resistant to that feedback because just like you said, I
thought that being changement, that I was wrong and I
(11:16):
wasn't good at my job, right, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Right right? Yeah? And good for you that you then
went into that learner mode and opened yourself up for that.
It goes to a point I talk about in the book,
which is around the tool called multiple meanings, that it's
never one story. There are multiple ways to look at
the story, you know. So in your case, one way
(11:42):
to look at it is, yeah, this means I'm a failure,
or this means I'm wrong, they're right.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Or I thought I was going to get fired every day.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know what, if we dream big,
if we play big, of course we might get fired
or we might feel that way. That's a sign that
you're doing something right.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Feeling like you're going to get fired is a sign
that you're doing something right. Man, I was doing something right.
For a lot of it really, like so much of
it is about mindset and looking back. I mean I
thought I was so mature and like so advanced, but
(12:22):
now looking back, I'm like, oh girl, just relax, like,
just give yourself some grace to you made a mistake,
you know. Yeah, I'm curious. So one of the I
mean you mentioned the multiple meetings, what I wanted to
talk about was the idea of pressure because you said
that power doesn't corrupt pressure does. What is the what
are you trying to tackle there, Like in terms of
(12:43):
that idea that when you get more powerful, you're going
to be corrupted, And then like, how does pressure play
a role?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, yeah, it's not power that corrupts you. You're not
getting corrupted when you get more power. You're getting corrupted
when you're under more pressure. And think about this. Just
about everybody I know says they're under tremendous amounts of pressure.
Everything that's going on in the world, in the country,
in your organization, in your life, in your job, there's
a lot of pressure. Have you ever done something when
you're under pressure that you're not proud of? In hindsight,
(13:11):
just about everybody we flip our finger in traffic. When
we haven't budgeted enough time and we're running late and
somebody cuts us off, we raise our voice, maybe louder
than we should have. Sometimes, when we are losing patience,
we provide feedback in ways that may not be as
kind and compassionate to other people. I know for me,
(13:34):
when I came back from parental leave after my first kid,
and the first day after leave, I'm putting on lipstick
for the first time. My assistant calls me, where are you?
Steve expects you in thirty minutes. That's Steve Bomber, the
CEO of the company, and she reads me the memo
as I'm hitting warp speed getting to work. And that
set the tone for the pressure that I had at
(13:56):
work with an infant at home, no sleep, no peace,
no patience, and thinking to myself, I don't have time
to give detailed instructions to people, let alone repeat them.
There'll be time for empathy later on. They're big boys
and girls. Let's go, let's work, Let's get this done
like you like, Let's just go and execute. I started
micromanaging because I was worried myself or my team would
(14:19):
look incompetent to senior executives. And the scary part is
I thought, like you were saying, Mandy, that I was
doing a great job, I was being efficient, when in reality,
my colleague Joe comes to me one day and says,
Pack is crying in his office because of something you said.
How you said it. That's when I realized. When I
(14:42):
went to talk to Zack and apologize, and his eyes
brimmed with tears, he realized, Ah, this is what I want.
How did I morph from being caring and compassionate from
people thinking I'm one of the best bosses they worked
for to this someone that people were afraid of and
really didn't like very much. So it's the same person,
different circumstances. Under pressure, even the best bosses can morph
(15:05):
into the worst bosses.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, so in that case, I mean, you're getting pressure
from the top, and I wonder if also because you're
coming back from parentally, you're not also like trying to
prove yourself a little bit, like not that you've lost
anything since you've gone off, because I do think that there, Yeah,
there's that fear I think as women that we come
back and we'll be underestimated. But how do you get
(15:27):
better about that when it's coming from up top? Like,
did you talk to Steve the CEO about the tone
that he was setting? I mean that sticy.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, No, I wasn't really I don't think it was
pressure from the top. It was pressure from the top
just as part of the job. There was nothing in
how Steve was asking me to do things that needed
to be changed. What needed to change was how I
manage the pressure. Look, you're the pressure is not going
to go away. If you want a dream big, you
want to play big, You're going to be in a
(15:58):
pressure cooker. It's not possible to be pressure free. What
you're after is trying to be pressure proof.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I love that, right, I love a catch phrase. But
there you go, it's not possible to be pressure free.
It's such a it's such a great like I just
want to stop there for a moment because I was
just talking to I did an interview with a financial
therapist but right before this, and she was saying how
as humans, we really don't like being uncomfortable, and we
think something is wrong if we're uncomfortable, and like we
(16:27):
want to fix it and soothe it, and like it
just sounds like what you're describing, you know, when you
are in a big position. Yeah, there's it's like accepting
that there's going to be a very high pressure environment
and it's our job to like learn how to cope
with it in a healthy way so that we can
be better leaders.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And so how do
you do that. One of the things to do when
pressure rises is to do nothing. What I mean by that,
most of us, when pressure rises, want to work harder.
We want to buckle down, work late it, sacrifice dinner,
sacrifice family time, sacrifice self care, and keep going, going, going, doing,
(17:06):
doing doing, Instead, what I ask my clients to do
is a practice called blank space, which is taking two
hours a week where they step back, unplug from everything.
No conversation, no reading, certainly not online because research soul
shows that some of our best thoughts come where in
the shower, on our commutes, when we're working out. That
(17:27):
is when we've switched the active part of our brain.
And when you do that and you're in blank space,
you suddenly realize that all these smaller things that you're
getting stressed out about, that you're generating your own pressure on,
don't matter. It reconnects you to that north star what
you need to push towards. It refreshes your brain. It
(17:47):
gives you a rest and gives you bigger ideas that
you need to go chase, helps you be more strategic.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So what does that look like in effect? Like, go outside,
touch grass, go take a while outside.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, so different people have different ways of doing it.
Go outside, touch grass is great if you want to
do it. One person lay in their hammock for two hours.
Another person wanted to discover all the pie shops in
the city that he lived in, so he would go
order two pies in his two hours and sit there.
Someone else had a hotel that overlooked a mountain range.
(18:21):
He would go order brunch there every Thursday morning. So
it really looks different for different people. Someone else was
at a coffee shop with a box of crayons and
she would just draw.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And oh that's me. I love a doodle. There you go,
a magic marker. You know, I have a thing against
those adult coloring books that are like so tiny and intricute, intricate.
I'm like, yes, this is frustrating me because they feel
like I could finish the whole page.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Get you like, I want to get you.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
A Creola magic marker set and like one of those
chunky picture like coloring books from from the from the
drug store, and that's a their soothing activity, just colored.
That's a picture of this sun. It's like a meditation. Honestly,
it sounds like.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, work is meditation.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It's like a and I think the word meditation can
be intimidating, but it's like in an effect, it's really
just like being present and quiet. And that is so
antithetical to like what we think we need to do
to be successful and to be the boss. I'm the boss.
I should be doing doing, doing, doing, doing right.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, and we forget that they're human beings, not human doings. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, So talk to me about what are some of
the what are some of the biggest mistakes you can
make when you're at like a senior executive level, you're
working your way up and you're you know, the stakes
are getting higher. Others we've talked about needing to have
more time and to cope with the pressure. What are
some mistakes you see happen time and time again.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, So, Mandy, as I wrote this book, it's based
on twelve thousand pages of data. The data I collected
was through interviews over a thousand interviews of people who
worked for my clients. So what's it like to really
work for this person, the CEO? And the number one
piece of negative feedback was this person has a hard
impact on others. And this is where I arrived at
(20:13):
that it's not power but pressure that corrupts. So we
get rude, we get crude, we don't pay attention. We've
talked about that. The number two is around communication and
various aspects of communication. The biggest mistake executives make in
communication is they talk too much. The antidote to that
is what I call exercise shut up muscle. And there
(20:38):
are four steps to that. But one of the steps,
which is you can do immediately and quickly, though not easily,
is to not be the first or second person to speak.
Be the third person, be the fifth person. Because once
someone in a position of power speaks, everybody else gets
(20:58):
busy laughing at it, at it as in, oh wow,
that's so funny, praising it, oh wow, that's so clever.
Nobody's going to disagree with it, and you lose access
to diversity of thought, You lose access to creativity. You
lose the opportunity to grow the people on your team
and in your organization. So shut up. Yes you're right,
(21:19):
Yes you know a lot. But do you want to
continue to build this band club and a sense of
everyone reassuring you how great you are? Or do you
want to grow the entire organization? And oh, by the way,
when you grow the entire organization, more people can step
up and do some things that are on your plate
and reduce pressure on you.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, there's this like sense of when you get to
I mean, I'm just thinking about me as a manager
and how once I was managing such a big team,
I was afraid. I mean I intellectually I knew the
word delegate and you know how, but I was afraid
if I wasn't seen to be having my hands on
a lot of things, that they would think I wasn't
(22:01):
doing a great job. I think there was maybe even
a breakdown in communication between my higher ups, like my executives,
in like being clear about what the expectation was for me,
and like what they were expecting because I let myself
get into such a place of burnout and so much stress,
I mean, and then like and so much fear around him.
(22:23):
I going to be fired, blah blah blah. And after
like months and months and months of this, I walk
into my boss's office and I'm ready to quit. I'm like,
I can't do this anymore. This is too much. I'm
just like so stressed all the time that you want this,
you want that ra And he just is very calm
and he's like, what do you need. It's like it
just sounds like, yeah, there's a lot of things on
your plate. What do you need to get it done?
(22:43):
I was like, what do you He's like, well, you're
not even using your full budget for this. I'm like, well,
I thought if I used if I used the full budget,
I thought that would be like bad because it would
look like I wasn't being budget conscious. And he's like, well,
you're supposed to use the budget to get this, to
get these goals done. Exist Yeah, yeah, it was a bit.
It was a very like meaningful moment for me in
(23:05):
terms of understanding. Yeah, it was. It was meaningful to
me in a couple of ways. But one it was
like I'm in control of figuring out, Like I'm in
this position and they're expecting me to just figure out
how to make it happen. They're not telling me how
to do it, and it's up to me. I've created
this way of doing it that is detrimental to me
and the whole team. And if I want to do
my job well, then I need to come up with
(23:26):
a better plan, recognize that this isn't working, and come
up with a different plan, and then actually know how
to like ask for additional resources and not be afraid
of being seen as weak or unable to do my
job because I needed the extra Yeah, you know, help resources,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yep, yep. Yeah. Talk about multiple meanings and reframing that
from a sign of weakness so actually a sign of
being strategic, a sign of strength. I'm so confident that
I can ask for things and say that I cannot
do this single handedly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, I wonder too, what is the gender makeup of
your clients? Are you mostly working with women? Is it
a mix of men and women? It's a mix, a mix.
Do you find any difference in how women like what
we're struggling with in leadership roles versus men, anything that's
telling about our challenges versus theirs.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Well, first of all, I was very surprised when I
looked at, analyzed, deeply analyze these twelve thousand pages of data,
I did not see gender differences in how they fall
prey to the pressure pitfalls and the power gaps. It
was equally divided amongst men and women. What I do
find common on a gender basis is around strategic thinking.
(24:41):
That women often tend to get feedback that they're not strategic,
but they're actually quite strategic. They're busy caretaking and doing
the less strategic work, and so it's more that they
haven't given themselves time. They haven't carved out the space
and time to do the strategic work. And when we
work on that and I say let's create some blank
(25:02):
space where you can really think the strategic thoughts, they're
often afraid that if I now carve out the time,
I'll actually discover I truly am not strategic. So by
not carving out the time, it's like a muscle. That
muscle hasn't grown, and so they assume that they don't
have it, versus it's an underdeveloped muscle, and you, just
like anything else, you've got to go to the gym
(25:23):
of strategic thinking. So that's one where I think that
a lot of women get feedback that they're not strategic,
but when they do take the time to do it,
they have created transformational business results.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
What even is that word strategic? Like it's so I mean,
I've just used it, Like what does that mean? Like
you're not strategic enough. You're not analyzing results and making
business decisions that are different to improve those results. Like
is that what it is?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yes, And you're not stepping back enough. You're too much
in the fray, You're too much in the weeds. You're
not stepping back enough and anticipating what's going to happen
down the road. So as a result, there's a longer
string of fire drills, or we've missed opportunities in the
market or with our competitors or for our customers because
you didn't step back and think through the bigger picture
(26:12):
and the consequences, not even in the long term, but
in the medium term.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Hmmm. So for your clients who are struggling with that,
when you're in that blank space, then what do you
do to like zoom out? Sometimes for me, if I'm
trying to zoom out, you know, for my for the podcast,
for example, if I want to like take some time
to strategically look at what's the next year going to
look like for Brown Ambition, which I just did the
year editorial calendar. I can't just be quiet like I
(26:41):
need to also in my mind like look at what
other competitors are doing, and look at what's going to
be coming up on the you know, let's say it's
a year of the Olympics. It's not, but you know,
or whatever an election is coming up that may dictate
how I'm going to play in the calendar. So I
need to have like other voices in the mix. Do
you think that that's how full for executives in that
(27:01):
position to like go to a thought leadership conference or
get it, you know, read certain trade publications, listen to
other you know, other thinkers in the space to inform
that strategy.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Absolutely absolutely keeping your radar open to what else is
going on so you're not creating something in a bubble
and not getting stuck in whatever you come up with,
because especially these days, things are changing overnight. So you
also have to be flexible. But to be flexible, you've
got to be well read and up to date on
what else is going on. Otherwise it's going to come
(27:33):
bye to you unexpectedly, so absolutely that would be part
of the process in that blank space. The other thing
that as somebody did very successfully, she would keep a
running list all week long. So let's say her blank
space was on Thursdays, so Friday through Thursday, she would
just keep a running list with a bunch of sticky
notes of Oh this idea, oh that thing, Oh what
(27:54):
about this thing that I read? And in her blank
space she'd bring all these random, random thoughts and sticky
notes to her blank space. Date something magical started to happen.
Is it wasn't about any one of those individual sticky notes.
When she looked at them together, she went, oh, my gosh,
we're missing this huge opportunity in this market. So it
(28:17):
allowed her to instead of just playing whack a mole
with every new idea that pops up, it allowed her
to step back and say, what's the interconnection between these things.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I have a wild ideas trello board like a little yes,
I just literally because I am, I can get distracted,
and I love my ideas. As a mom, like I
have two young kids, and like as a mom, sometimes
all I want is just to be with my own thoughts.
I really think that my brain is a magical place,
and I'm like, I can come up. I'm such a
(28:49):
creative person. I have so many great ideas if I
can just have my brain to myself. But then sometimes
those ideas can go down rabbit holes. Yes, so I
love the posted ideas, just like dump them on a
Trello board. I don't have the blank space date with
myself like where I go back and look at them though,
But at least it's like it gets over that fear.
But I'm gonna forget Mandy.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
That's brilliant. Yeah, So even simply putting the ideas out there.
Now you're in the shower and suddenly you know there's
some blank space right there, and it'll start to Marin.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I took a shower today and I just listened to
a podcast. I know not even my shower is a
blank space. H Yeah. I struggle with like it really
is like a practice to have to just like.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Have quiet absolutely, you know. And here's another thing you
could do. You could start it as a micro habit.
A micro habit is two things. One it's micro. It's
so ridiculously small that it would be absurd not to
do it. And two, did you do it every single day.
So let's say, for example, I don't make blank space time.
I don't have space right now with two young kids
(29:52):
and a full career. What if you took ten seconds
of blank space every day? Seconds is doable.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I'll take it right now.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Great. Yeah, so just set a timer for ten seconds
and that's the way to build that muscle.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
This is what I want to talk about, passion and purpose.
So I want to know what do you have to
say in the book about you kind of get what
you thought you always wanted. You get to this level
of your career, you're doing what you thought it's your passion,
and then you're like, I'm here. I don't know if
I want to be here. I don't know if I
want to be doing this.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yes, this was a surprising finding for me, particularly with
my clients who are north of forty five, so somewhere
between forty five and sixty. They would come to me going,
I'm made. I have the big title, I've got house,
the whatever, big empire, et cetera, and I'm not feeling fulfilled.
I'm wondering, is there all there there is? Is this
(30:51):
all there is? It's not as cool as I thought.
It was going to be they've lost track, They've lost
the plot last track of what really connects them. So
I came up with a tool called a joy line,
which is simply a vertical line, and the vertical line
is chronologically your life. On one side of the vertical
(31:14):
line the things about ten things that have given you
tremendous joy, and on the other side of the line,
about ten things that have leached out joy from your life.
And often simply doing that exercise and writing those things,
the work takes care of itself because people start to
(31:34):
have light bulb moments of oh wow. But if not
look at the themes, what's common to the things that
have given you joy? Is it because you had a
sense of autonomy in those cases and you don't write
now because your board of directors is breathing down your
neck all the time? What else is common to the
things that gave you joy and the things that took
away joy from you? And which of those are you're
finding in your life right now? So you can redesign
(31:56):
your life by looking back through the process of the
joy line.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Is it often about like taking things out you find
or is it people needing to add things back.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
In both both. Okay, first, the first step is taking
things out, just clearing the decks, because there's so much
noise in most of our lives and we haven't even
realized what we've done, and we've packed up all this
junk that is now gunking up our sense of joy,
our sense of passion, or sense of purpose. So first
it's cleaning house because you cannot even see when it's
so noisy and dirty. And then it's about what are
(32:27):
you going to add in that space?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
I don't know, can you see my house right now?
Because it is kind of cluttered, kind of cluttered. Yeah,
it was funny. No, but that's a good analogy because
my husband's always talking about how we need to get
rid of things. We have too much stuff. And I
was like, if we just focused on putting things where
they belong, and we just like for the kitchen, I
didn't wash a single dish. I just spent the day
(32:50):
taking things out of the kitchen that didn't belong there
and putting them where they go, and all of a sudden,
the kitchens clean. That's all I needed to do.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
It was just clean.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
If that's here does need to be here, that's really helpful. Okay,
so everyone should read the book. It's called You're the Boss,
Become the manager you want to be and others need.
I wish I had this book when I was a
baby manager. Before I let you go. I want to
know a little bit more about you and your journey
toward executive coaching. Why did you make that lead?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
When I was running engineering groups at Microsoft, I Microsoft
gave me an eight week sabbatical, and different from how
I usually run my life, which is go go go,
do do do? I actually had plenty of blank space.
I had about five weeks of doing nothing, and in
that I had a really clear realization that it was
(33:38):
no longer a matter of if, but when I would
become a corporate vice president. Now that had been my
career ambition, especially as a Brown woman in corporate America
and especially those days. But once I realized that I
knew the formula, it became a really anticlimactic moment for me.
Why should I spend the next five years of my
life chasing something when I already know how to achieve it?
(34:02):
And then I went, shoot, what do I do with
my life? I've gotten a lot of feedback that I
was a good people manager, and so I thought, let
me experiment with that, and I was fortunate enough that
Microsoft allowed me to do that. It's the only company
I've worked at, and it's it's been. It was really
transformational for the manager who hired me to say, yep,
(34:24):
I'll take that bet on you.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Oh, so that's how you shifted into the HR role.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's how I shifted the role, and that got me
into executive coaching. Understanding all of these people things, but
also organizational systems. And you know, systems thinking is systems thinking,
So whether you're talking about organizational systems or computer software
operational systems, the same principles apply. So even though I
(34:49):
didn't have formal training in the beginning, I was able
to apply some of those principles and my street smarts
from managing organizations and get launched into this career. And
I did that for about six years before launching out
on my own.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And what made you feel like you're ready to go solo?
Speaker 1 (35:06):
I wasn't sure. Again. I loved working at Microsoft. I
had a fantastic job. I had a blank check from
the senior most people had the company to remain there,
and I was seven months pregnant with my second kid.
My first kid was two years old and I thought,
I'm going to miss out on a lot of things.
Now that they're older, I still feel like I missed
(35:27):
out on a lot of things, but at least I
did it on my terms.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
That's really beautiful and very honest. You know. I think
sometimes it's another kind of story that we're told as women,
is like when you have kids, you know, you have
to prepare. People are going to think that you're going
to quit your job, or that you're going to want
to take a step back and like that you're going
to decrease your earnings and all that, and then when
you're in it, it's like when you have kids, like yeah, duh,
(35:52):
Like yes, wouldn't you want to Like that's kind of
like you're doing it right, yes, exactly right, very right. Yeah,
And it's very different when you're in that position. That's
one of the reasons I started my business. I was like, well,
this is great. It's stressful, and you know, but I
can do drop off and pickups and still you know
whatever and play with the kids after school. And I
(36:14):
love that idea that we can start talking about that
as just kind of like a well Yeah, it's it's
just like it it conflicts with something in my brain
from the old days that's like, wait, don't talk about
quitting your job after you have a baby. Like, we're
not supposed to. We're supposed to come back and be
exactly that I am.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Maybe better, we're programmed exactly how we're programmed. And you know,
I Mandy, I had the luxury of having a stay
at home husband.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I got to get one of those. That's nice.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
So I wasn't leaving because of logistical reasons. He's an
excellent father, And it was more of that shouldn't you
want to do this? You're missing out on some of
the things that are most important to you.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Yeah, it's not balance. It's like, of course I want
to be here for the fun stuff, but like I
still love my and I want to be able to
use it, you know. So it's great, but then you
can control the lever.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yes, hence your Trello board.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, I love my Trello board. Airtable's fine, but I
don't know, I'm still like I have a thing with Trello. Okay,
partying words for women of color who are wanting to
become bosses in their own right any like final words
and then let everybody know how they can find you.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Final words would be you are sufficient, you have it,
give yourself the luxury of stepping back, of having some
quiet time, having that blank space, and you will notice
that the answers are in there, just waiting to come out.
You just haven't given them permission to come out yet.
How people can find me? The best would be to
go to my website, which is sabinanoas dot com. I'm
(37:44):
sure it'll be in your show notes and you'll find
a link to ordering the book, but you'll also be
able to download some bonuses that come with ordering the book,
or sign up for my substack pressure Free, which is
again on my website, where you can get additional tips
on how to not pressure free. Did I say pressure fee,
not pressure pressure proof?
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Pressure proof? Right? Don't forget your own tagline? I know, right,
that's a funny human Yeah, yeah, I said the same
thing with like negotiating, I said, like, not to be
fearless about negotiating, but fear proof, Like the fear is
going to be there, you just have to cope with it.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Exactly exactly. I mean, that's the definition of courage, isn't it.
Courage is not when your heart is not pounding. It's
when your heart is pounding and you're still going forward.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
M we didn't even get into negotiating. Maybe another interview
another time. I can't wait to share this book with
my community with BA fam. Here it is again. You're
the boss, Sabina Noaz, thank you so much for joining
me on Brown Ambition.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Thank you, Mandy, thank you
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