Classic Episode: Insider Stories and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome with Media Executive Paula Madison
December 15, 2023 • 35 mins
This week we're listening back to our episodes with Paula Madison. Join us for the captivating conclusion of our conversation with media executive and journalist, Paula Madison. Discover her ultimate career goal, insights on overcoming imposter syndrome, how to find your strengths and hear fascinating stories from her time at NBC. Tune in now for valuable wisdom and inspiration from this industry trailblazer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Which one leads to greater power and greater compensation and
I will find interesting. Oh that one right, So that's
how I made decision.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You're listening to Money Moves powered by Green, a finance
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(00:33):
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us in, because this podcast will give you the keys
to the kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundance who
so rightly deserve. Our executive producer had an opportunity to
interview trailblazing journalists and media pioneer PAULA Madison. Join us
(00:56):
for the captivating conclusion of our conversation with media executive
journalist paul Madison, discover her ultimate career goal, insights on
overcoming imposter syndrome, and hear fascinating stories from her time
at NBC. Tune in now for valuable wisdom and inspiration
from this industry trailblazer.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
For me, the calling was never, Oh, I want to
be a GE company officer. Oh I want to be
the first black blah blah blah blah blah. You know,
people don't make themselves the first black or the first anything.
It's the person who puts you in that role, who
then bestows upon you the role, the title of the
(01:39):
first whatever. I've never looked for. Oh, I'm going to
be the first who does that? Right? What I'm moving
towards is ooh, so when I become president GM, I'm
going to get a company car and the allowance for
the car is one hundred thousand dollars every three years. Ooh,
I'm going to get membership in XYZ. Oh it's not
(02:01):
stock options anymore. It's RSUs and hundreds of thousands of them.
That's how I made the decisions about if it's this
role and that role, which one leads to greater power
and greater compensation and I will find interesting? Oh that one? Right.
So that's how I made decisions, And most importantly, I
(02:26):
wanted to know what were the perks of membership in
the club. Right. I know people today today who are
president of this and coo of that and never thought
about going out on their own. It never dawned on them.
And I'm like, I don't how is that possible? I
(02:46):
mean you, it's a life of somebody putting something in
front of you. Oh, if you do this, then we're
going to give you that if you do what about
If I do this, then I have enough and gonna
go off and do my whatever. So to the extent
that I had a goal, my goal was power, meaning authority,
(03:10):
total compensation and being equal in a room. I'm being
equal in the room, So I will admit to being
that person sitting in the room. We're all around the
board table and oh, we need water. I'm not going
to get water my as I'm gonna sit right here
in this chair and somebody's gonna get me water. No, no, no,
(03:33):
we are not doing that, right. And it isn't that
I would never do that, because if I was a
room full of black folks, I'd be like, yo, y'all
wants the water. But the meaning and the significance, you understand,
is so important that if you ever have sometimes that
out of body experience where you're up on the ceiling
(03:57):
floating and watching what's happening below. You really have to
look at it that way. You look at it through
your lens and you look at it how they are
seeing it. So for me, am I chopping it up
with the boys, not really. You know, the annual Big, Big,
(04:18):
Big GE meeting. We're in Boca Raton, the six hundred
top people out of the two hundred and seventy five
thousand GE employees. We gather every year and there's a
golf tournament. They're golfing. They're golfing. I don't like golf,
and I'm not going to pretend to like golf. Right,
question was one year, so what should we do differently?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
But I definitely want to I don't want to skirt
over that because I think that what Elector's getting at
with identity is that you really solidly kind of know
who you are.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I have my own identity.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
You're very clear on that, And I'm curious even if
it wasn't you, maybe it was an employee or a
child or a family member like you have, you had
to help someone figure out that for themselves, And like,
what kind of advice do you give the folks when
(05:16):
they're trying to figure that.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Out for themselves about being themselves and maintaining their identity
and strength. Yeah. I have a grand niece who's just lovely.
She's here. She works in the industry, she's in production.
And she asked me, I'll Paula, you know, have you
ever experienced, you know, imposter syndrome? And I what's that?
(05:38):
And she said, well, you know, you like you don't
really know how to do something and you're afraid that
people are going to find out that you don't know
how to do it. No, I never experienced that because
I don't pretend to know everything. But I'm also not
a fake it till you make it person right. So
for me, it is a function of what are your
(05:58):
strengths and how do you maximize your strengths. So I
was told the next role for you, Paula is president
and general manager of a TV station. My experience all
the presidents and general managers that come out of the
sales division. I don't do sales. I'm in news. What
I was told was the news department is the largest
(06:21):
department in the station. The news department is the one
department that interacts aside from HR interacts with every other department, Right,
you don't really have to come from sales. I said, yeah,
but I don't want to be disadvantaged because I don't
know sales, and I don't know how much of that
background is important to be in a GM. I said,
(06:43):
So what I'd like to do is give up two
weeks of my vacation and I can just hang out
in sales and be a fly on a wall and
sit in the meetings and watch whatever. And the president
TV station's vision looked at me and said, you don't
have to do that, and I said, yeah, but I
don't want to feel like so I right up front.
I put out up front, this is the difference in
(07:03):
my background that all these other people they have that.
What he said was you have somebody to run sales, right,
you have to run the station right. And so for
me in the imposter syndrome realm, my belief is be necessary. Right.
(07:28):
So while I may not have come equipped with that skill,
I came with such skills that other people who might
have had a sales background have no idea how to accomplish.
So the strategy for me is in the terms of
being necessary. I mean, I will tell you that. I'm
(07:49):
also a big believer in if we're facing something that
is could be a little rough or tenuous, let's role play.
You be you and I'll be the other person, and
here's what's come up, and then you say whatever, and
then I'll say, well, let's go over that again. Right.
I've done that with Jack Welch, I've done it with
(08:10):
Bob Wright. I've done it with some pretty big names
in the world of corporate America, and not just because
they were dealing with black people. Right. It really is
finding your place so that when something happens, they want
your advice, and I limit myself. This is another strategy
(08:34):
I can call. I could have called anybody at the
highest reaches of the company and leave a message with
the assistant and say I only need five minutes, and
I would limit it, or I only need ten minutes.
It won't take any more than ten minutes. To this day,
my daughter, who is a forensic psychiatrist who's doing a
lot of work right now, I will text her, Imani,
(08:54):
when you get five minutes, just give me a call.
I promise it won't take any longer than that. And
I think when people understand that you're not going to
spiral on inspiral on inspiral on right, I will present
to you the elements. I will share with you what
I think makes sense. It might be your decision, and
(09:17):
then I'll wait and we'll do whatever. We both decide.
You take my advice or don't, but we will execute whatever.
So what I'm saying here is that I mentioned earlier.
You know I've been My husband accuses me of overthinking,
and I don't know that it's possible to overthink. I
find relaxation in strategizing. I strategize about the next generations.
(09:41):
In my family, we have family meetings, we have family zoom,
particularly during COVID once a week, there were fifteen of
us on the call from two years old to seventy
five years old. And when the kids come on, We're
not the family that goes no, no, no, no. You know,
it's like, you know, you have to make children feel
(10:02):
that they're loved and pause. I don't mean if it's
a major you know, corporate whatever, and your boss or
you're whoever, they don't get it. But in the environment,
in family and friends and whatever, you have to make
room for it. Being a tribe. You have to make
room for it being a group. Maybe not a biological
(10:26):
family always, but certainly a family and spirit. I think
that your.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Super power is deeper than just strategy. It's almost the
ability to not only analyze the situations, but also self
analyzed too. And I guess you know, if you were
to described it as a superpower, like, how would you
describe it?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I think one of my greatest skills is that I'm
really good at reading people. I'm really good at understanding
and listening and then help figure out the next steps.
I spend an awful lot of time right now with
(11:07):
some people who whether they're starting out or or they're
high up, I will spend fifteen twenty minutes sometimes more.
If I started dropping the names of some of my menteg,
you'd be like, and this is just because what I
know is that from speaking to folks, I know that
(11:27):
they haven't had the experience that I've had, which is
being encouraged to be analytical, being encouraged to be strategic,
and understanding that I don't have to do that. You see,
I'll give you an example where years ago, the president
(11:48):
of television station's division at NBC, he called me to
come an interview for a job in New York at WNBC.
And when we sat in the meeting, this man is Jewish.
He said to me, well, what do I say to
the Jewish community when you know, maybe they do some
research and find out that you were once a black Muslim?
(12:08):
And I said, well, it's the nation of Islam. And
what do I say to the African American community when
they asked me, you know if you've been on a
kibbutzum seventeen years old, going to Israel and learning how
to be a Zionist. He just looked at me. I said, so,
here's what we'll agree to or not. I said, you
(12:30):
won't ask me about this ever again. You asked me
here to interview for this job. I have a job,
and I can get other jobs. But if you're going
to go twenty something years back in my history to
ask me something like that, we should just stop now.
I got hired. And the point of that is that
transparency is important. It's important that you lay out up
(12:56):
front that you are a courageous person. I have courage
when I didn't have shit, I had courage. You don't
own me and my mother's constant refrain was she would
slap her chest and she'd say, they can't kill you.
I was like, ma, actually they can. She's like, they
(13:18):
can't kill you. And that's when she said, well, better
let you die, right. It's the owning yourself. You don't
own me. And I actually had a conversation with a
president of NBC or who told me in the midst
of a racial struggle going on in New York City
and it played out on NBC. He said to me
(13:40):
that you don't have the right to say what you
said to Andy Lack, who was the president of NBC
News at the time. He said this to me, you
don't have the right to say what you said to
Andy Lack. We were in this man's office and the
door was open, just him and me. I walked over
to his office door and with all my might, I
slammed it as hard as I could. I slammed it
(14:01):
clothes and I walked over back in front of his
desk and I said to him, if I were to
pull down my pants and show you my black ass,
which I would never do, but if I were, there's
no peacock branded on my ass. He was like, I said,
you're mistaken. You think you have power, and you think
(14:22):
you have power over me. I said, this is my hometown.
This is New York City. I said, I'm from Harlem.
Two phone calls and within three hours, I will have
more than a thousand black people down here, surrounding thirty rocks,
calling for your job. He just stared at me, bubbling,
bursting with furor. He just stared at me, and I said,
(14:46):
it's a contract. You can hire me and I accept.
I can quit and you can accept. Don't be fooled.
I'm not here because you're a letting me be here.
This man was apoplectic. I walked out of his office
(15:07):
and you know what happened. Within six months, I was
vice president and news director. At that point, I was
assistant news director. I didn't even have the big job.
But what's not going to happen is we are not
going to walk up and down these halls with you
thinking that I'm scared. Please, dude, come on, I'm African.
(15:28):
I am scared of what scared of you. I said
to him, you are fat. You are a fat white
man from Iowa in the city of New York. This
is my hometown. And then he had to make me
news director. He tried to sabotage it. But I put
into employ a strategy of zero basing the news department's
(15:49):
fifty plus million dollar budget, and for the first time
in eleven years, we were trending to coming in under budget.
We actually ended the year billion under budget, and I
wasn't trying to be under budget, but by zero basing,
we were able to actually be much more accurate in
our prognostication of what the spend was going to be
(16:11):
and what our needs were going to be.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, So I think what I want to do is
wrap up like the questions with.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Quick fire answers.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Well, no, it's really it's really just a summation almost
leveraging their strengths, because everyone's going to have different strengths
than you have, sure, and they may still be searching
for their strengths. So it's kind of a two part.
You know heard all this, you don't know what your strength.
(16:42):
Maybe give them a sure step and then I'll get you.
I'll give you to you again. But the second part
will be if you found your strength, then maybe what
the first step is there. So we'll start with people that.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Haven't found it yet. I'd say for someone who is
not sure what is or her strength is, and if
you don't feel comfortable zeroing in on it, then go
to people who you trust and who you know have
a certain kind of love for you, who will be
(17:18):
candid and ask them what do you think? It's another
version of how am I doing right? You can't be
afraid to ask that question. You might not always agree
with the answer, but here's what you get the opportunity
(17:38):
to experience. You get to look at yourself from the
outside in through someone else's lens. Right, Because if somebody
said to me, well, you know, you're really mean, I
would actually have to stop and pay attention to that.
If somebody said to me you're a brilliant strategist, I'd go, oh, now. Maybe,
(18:03):
at whatever point in one's development, words have not been
strung together to describe your strength in a way that
you can identify. You need to have your tribe. You
need to build people around you who you can trust
and who you can trust to tell you the truth
(18:26):
and some of the things that they share. You might
not have seen that that was a strength of yours
when somebody tells you that and someone else who you
trust goes, yeah, you do have to pay attention like, oh,
I didn't really realize.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
That, And so now I feel like my strength is
identified by I'm not quite sure how to.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Got to do with it to.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Create the things that I want to create world. So
I'm just curious, what are some of the you know,
ABC steps they're working too.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Well? One of them I mentioned earlier, And I think
that it is about being courageous and having enough courage
to go to your supervisor to ask, how do you
think I'm doing?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
At that point, you have to evaluate yourself. You have
to see whether that person's assessment of you matches your
assessment of you. If somebody were to say to you,
I don't even know why you think you can do
this job. You're doing such a poor job at this job,
(19:46):
what I would want to do is try to understand
that person's motive for saying that. Is that true? And importantly, now, well,
how do I improve? How do I turn that around? Right?
And you may not come to the conclusion that that's
(20:09):
a safe place for you to stay, You may not
come to the conclusion that you belong there, right, But
I am a believer in signposts engaging just how long
you should be in a particular location before you pick
up and move to one other spot. There is a
very very very high ranking person in banking who I
(20:33):
met three months ago, and he asked me, how did
you know that you wanted to do this or that?
How did you know was the next thing you wanted
to do? And I said, well, after getting input from
(20:54):
my direct supervisor and doing my own research, I've got
to figure out, based on what I've done, what's possible
for me as options. I said, have you done that?
He said no. I said yeah, but you're in such
a high rank you've never He said no. I said, so,
in other words, you've been waiting for them to tell
(21:14):
you what they think is next for you. He said,
well yeah, And I said, well, that's really not you
investing in yourself. As my mother said to me years ago,
your father's name is not on that building, so you
don't own that. You're not a part of that family.
(21:36):
You need to find out for yourself where you belong
and what your investment should be in that regard. I
had this conversation with his brother for about twenty minutes,
sitting in a hotel in Dallas. Hotel lobby in Dallas.
I learned the other day he had the conversation, he's
leaving that company where he was because he never had
(22:00):
that kind of conversation. He realized if they were truly
interested in him in his development, he would have And
so you go out. He went out and tested the
market and got the most amazing job. That's, however, many
levels above. What I'm saying is that there is a
(22:20):
certain amount of security in knowing that every day you're
going to go here, and there's this, and that foot
goes in front of that foot, and that foot goes
in front of that foot. I'll go back to what
my father said, if you stay with a company and
work twenty five years to make the white man rich,
I will be ashamed of you. They give you a
(22:41):
gold watch at the end. Why would you do that?
Why would you do that? Why wouldn't you think for yourself,
figure out what your skills are and how those skills
that you have might benefit you, not necessarily your gift
(23:02):
to a company that might not be rewarding you the
way you should be rewarded, particularly as a black person,
particularly as a black person. So I would say that
if you look around and in your company, you're the
only one at here. There's a problem, right, all those
(23:25):
jobs where I was the first or whatever, the only
I had a deal. When I was offered to take
the role as Chief Diversity Officer executive vice president for
NBC Universal for diversity, I want to do that, not
because it was demeaning, but it's like I was going
to retire early. I don't want to do that. But
after don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team nappy
(23:47):
headed host, I was like, oh no, I'm doing that.
We're going to change this up right now. And what
I made is a condition. There were a few conditions.
One condition was I only report to the CEO only.
The other condition was my same compensation as president and
general manager. It will not go down, so stock options,
(24:10):
rsu's compensation, salary, the company car all of that remains.
I don't move into a different compensation level because I'm
now in a diversity role. Right. The other thing I
said that I needed to be was a GE company officer.
At first it was like, well, no, we can't do that. Well,
(24:31):
then I don't need to take this job. I was
made a GE Company officer, and then there was another
position that an African American male who was well regarded
and well respected, had been a vice president for twelve years,
never promoted, and I said, promote him first? Well, why
(24:54):
because how do I take a role that has me
as the chief diversity officer? And then what I've now
got to walk around and convince somebody that this brother
who I know is excellent and who hasn't pushed and
advocated for himself. Okay, maybe that's not his personality, but
if I'm going to step into this role and my
(25:15):
name is here, do it first. And it was done right.
And what I'm saying is leverage. Sometimes you have the
power to make things happen. I mean, that's that's super important.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
A lot of people miss opportunities when they have the leverage,
and they beg for it when they don't.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Some people don't recognize that they have the leverage, and
many people are afraid to recognize because when you have leverage,
that means you got to step up and step into it.
Right If it's always well so and so won't let me,
or I can't do blah blah blah, or I haven't
(26:03):
been given an opportunity, But what happens when the opportunity
presents itself. What happens. Then it's like, this is my
chance because the only thing, what's the worst thing that
can happen, the worst thing that can happen, you lose
your job. We'll go find another job or start your
own business. My strategy was multiple income streams. I have
(26:27):
this job, I have an ownership of a company over here,
I have investments. Right, whoever would dream that it makes
sense to be a black person in the United States
of America and go to work every day for a
(26:48):
paycheck and you have no control over your income other
than you show up, you do work, and they give
you a paycheck. Really, that's how many of us have
been taught. You just want to get a good job.
I don't just want a good job. I need to
own shit. I need to be in charge. I need
(27:11):
to be able to call the shots. And if I
walk into the room and say, excuse me, but let
me need yes, we will do that. I need to
be able to say, you know, here's my sister, my
sister friend who I've had. I put her in charge
of blow up, y'all listen to her. Right. I don't
have to do all of it, but what I have
to do is be secure enough to hire people who
(27:33):
are smarter than I am in areas that I am
not as skilled in. And together the parts of a whole,
we are parts of a hole, right, I like to
think of it is And I used to come up
with these strategies. Oh, what if such and such happens
and the company wants a five percent reduction across the
border for next year, we would do exercises. I would
(27:57):
have my team come up with a five percent reduction,
a seven percent reduction, a ten percent reduction, so that
should they Oh my god, I am such a believer
in preparation. And we figured that out. We got that.
I'm not happy about it, but okay, I got that.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
No matter what, this is great.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But I always asking that in a every interview, is
that if there's anything I didn't ask you and you
would like to share.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Sure, I do have one thing I've been asked throughout
my career. What's the one accomplishment I'm the proudest of.
If there was one accomplishment I'm proudest of, and I
would say being a mother. I think that it's amazing
to be entrusted with the body and soul of a
(28:43):
person who looks to you for guidance and for education
and for you know how to navigate. I mentioned earlier
that I never had a goal of being the first
or the only. I didn't even have a goal of
(29:04):
being a mother. But when I found that I was
going to be a mother, right, I was that person
who pure body ate a certain way, made sure, you know,
in terms of how I was preparing this human being
to come into the world with as many physical, spiritual, emotional,
(29:30):
biological advantages as I could give her. And I just
think as a people, if we could focus on what
strengths were infusing into the next generations, I think that
it would be a lot easier for us to see
what our talents are and our strengths are, and how
(29:52):
to strategize. My family in China has a documented written
history that goes back to the year one thousand and six.
Be see three thousand years going into China. I can
trace my ancestry up until the last generation in my family.
If I go to Jamaica and trace my ancestry, which
(30:15):
I have done and hire genealogists to do, the farthest
back I can get is three generations. Why is that
something called slavery, and when we understand that what we've
overcome as a people and how Gods ancestors have worked
(30:42):
in order for us to be here, it's not that
we can't have fun, It's not that we can have
a life of humor and joy, because we can. But
what we can't do is squander. Make these decisions in
a strategic and fought full way so that what we
(31:04):
know is we're moving the next generations farther up the ladder.
Deb Langford, who I hired she was actually the second
person when I went into the diversity of roll ind NBC.
She's the second person who I offered a position too,
And I waited a year for her contract at Warner
(31:26):
to end. And Deb was so important to me, and
it's still important to me, but she was so strategic
to making sure that I was able to uncover some
of the roadblocks for us as people of color, as
black people to get ahead. One example, I asked, I
(31:47):
assigned Deb to look through the work rules of the DGA.
Right we had the wa Ha DGA. We had a
number of iatse, we had a number of different that
I knew based on experience that African Americans were not
getting nearly as far along because they closed the doors
(32:10):
on many of these opportunities. And what I learned, Deb
came back to me and said, Paula, do you know
that if you work as an AD assistant director on
a if you work as a second AD on a project,
and then the next job you have is a first AD, great,
(32:31):
But if the following position is not another first AD job,
you go back to being a second AD. And I said,
that doesn't make any sense. I mean, somebody hires you
to be the first AD or the second AD. She said, right.
But the way that it works is that we people
of color, we rarely get the opportunity to be a
(32:54):
first AD. We come in a second AD, and even
if somebody who we know puts us on that next
we have to bust back down. So I scheduled the
meeting with the DGA and Deb and I and our team.
I had about twenty people work for me, but our
team that worked on this. We met with them, and
when I explained what a hurdle that was and how,
(33:17):
whether they intended to or not, they were shutting many
of us out. I understand that they changed that rule.
Deb is now running Black Wealth initiatives for JP Morgan Chase.
You know, how do you go from her working in production?
She worked on Fresh Prince of bel Air, she was
(33:38):
working with delivered what one hundred and twenty five executives
of color when she was working at Warner so sort
of two steps under Dick Parsons, and then I hired
her to come and work for me. What I'm getting
at here is what seemingly are disparate roles opportunities that
(33:59):
don't necess sarahly even stay together in the same industry
right now as heading this Black Black Wealth initiatives and
the strategies around multi generational wealth, how to invest which
for a lot of us we don't know. These are
(34:20):
all the things that she's putting in place, and I'm
very grateful to her, and she and I talk about
it because a lot of it came about with her
hanging out with my family and how for us it's
all about that, how do we propel the next generations?
How do you spend invest your money? What is it
that you are trying to accomplish goal wise, and what's
(34:41):
the legacy that you're leaving.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If we helped you
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So take the lessons you've learned from this episode and
(35:08):
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(35:29):
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Which one leads to greater power and greater compensation and
I will find interesting. Oh that one right, So that's
how I made decision.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You're listening to Money Moves powered by Green, a finance
podcast dedicated to dropping all the knowledge and gems from
the world's leading celebrities, entrepreneurs, and experts in tech, business
and more. I'm your host, angel investor, technology enthusiast, and
media personality Tanya Sam. Each week, we talk with guests
who are making significant strides in their fields and learn
(00:33):
how they are making their money. Moose. If you're someone
who's looking to make your money, you you're in the
right place. So open up your notes app and lock
us in, because this podcast will give you the keys
to the kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundance who
so rightly deserve. Our executive producer had an opportunity to
interview trailblazing journalists and media pioneer PAULA Madison. Join us
(00:56):
for the captivating conclusion of our conversation with media executive
journalist paul Madison, discover her ultimate career goal, insights on
overcoming imposter syndrome, and hear fascinating stories from her time
at NBC. Tune in now for valuable wisdom and inspiration
from this industry trailblazer.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
For me, the calling was never, Oh, I want to
be a GE company officer. Oh I want to be
the first black blah blah blah blah blah. You know,
people don't make themselves the first black or the first anything.
It's the person who puts you in that role, who
then bestows upon you the role, the title of the
(01:39):
first whatever. I've never looked for. Oh, I'm going to
be the first who does that? Right? What I'm moving
towards is ooh, so when I become president GM, I'm
going to get a company car and the allowance for
the car is one hundred thousand dollars every three years. Ooh,
I'm going to get membership in XYZ. Oh it's not
(02:01):
stock options anymore. It's RSUs and hundreds of thousands of them.
That's how I made the decisions about if it's this
role and that role, which one leads to greater power
and greater compensation and I will find interesting? Oh that one? Right.
So that's how I made decisions, And most importantly, I
(02:26):
wanted to know what were the perks of membership in
the club. Right. I know people today today who are
president of this and coo of that and never thought
about going out on their own. It never dawned on them.
And I'm like, I don't how is that possible? I
(02:46):
mean you, it's a life of somebody putting something in
front of you. Oh, if you do this, then we're
going to give you that if you do what about
If I do this, then I have enough and gonna
go off and do my whatever. So to the extent
that I had a goal, my goal was power, meaning authority,
(03:10):
total compensation and being equal in a room. I'm being
equal in the room, So I will admit to being
that person sitting in the room. We're all around the
board table and oh, we need water. I'm not going
to get water my as I'm gonna sit right here
in this chair and somebody's gonna get me water. No, no, no,
(03:33):
we are not doing that, right. And it isn't that
I would never do that, because if I was a
room full of black folks, I'd be like, yo, y'all
wants the water. But the meaning and the significance, you understand,
is so important that if you ever have sometimes that
out of body experience where you're up on the ceiling
(03:57):
floating and watching what's happening below. You really have to
look at it that way. You look at it through
your lens and you look at it how they are
seeing it. So for me, am I chopping it up
with the boys, not really. You know, the annual Big, Big,
(04:18):
Big GE meeting. We're in Boca Raton, the six hundred
top people out of the two hundred and seventy five
thousand GE employees. We gather every year and there's a
golf tournament. They're golfing. They're golfing. I don't like golf,
and I'm not going to pretend to like golf. Right,
question was one year, so what should we do differently?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
But I definitely want to I don't want to skirt
over that because I think that what Elector's getting at
with identity is that you really solidly kind of know
who you are.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I have my own identity.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
You're very clear on that, And I'm curious even if
it wasn't you, maybe it was an employee or a
child or a family member like you have, you had
to help someone figure out that for themselves, And like,
what kind of advice do you give the folks when
(05:16):
they're trying to figure that.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Out for themselves about being themselves and maintaining their identity
and strength. Yeah. I have a grand niece who's just lovely.
She's here. She works in the industry, she's in production.
And she asked me, I'll Paula, you know, have you
ever experienced, you know, imposter syndrome? And I what's that?
(05:38):
And she said, well, you know, you like you don't
really know how to do something and you're afraid that
people are going to find out that you don't know
how to do it. No, I never experienced that because
I don't pretend to know everything. But I'm also not
a fake it till you make it person right. So
for me, it is a function of what are your
(05:58):
strengths and how do you maximize your strengths. So I
was told the next role for you, Paula is president
and general manager of a TV station. My experience all
the presidents and general managers that come out of the
sales division. I don't do sales. I'm in news. What
I was told was the news department is the largest
(06:21):
department in the station. The news department is the one
department that interacts aside from HR interacts with every other department, Right,
you don't really have to come from sales. I said, yeah,
but I don't want to be disadvantaged because I don't
know sales, and I don't know how much of that
background is important to be in a GM. I said,
(06:43):
So what I'd like to do is give up two
weeks of my vacation and I can just hang out
in sales and be a fly on a wall and
sit in the meetings and watch whatever. And the president
TV station's vision looked at me and said, you don't
have to do that, and I said, yeah, but I
don't want to feel like so I right up front.
I put out up front, this is the difference in
(07:03):
my background that all these other people they have that.
What he said was you have somebody to run sales, right,
you have to run the station right. And so for
me in the imposter syndrome realm, my belief is be necessary. Right.
(07:28):
So while I may not have come equipped with that skill,
I came with such skills that other people who might
have had a sales background have no idea how to accomplish.
So the strategy for me is in the terms of
being necessary. I mean, I will tell you that. I'm
(07:49):
also a big believer in if we're facing something that
is could be a little rough or tenuous, let's role play.
You be you and I'll be the other person, and
here's what's come up, and then you say whatever, and
then I'll say, well, let's go over that again. Right.
I've done that with Jack Welch, I've done it with
(08:10):
Bob Wright. I've done it with some pretty big names
in the world of corporate America, and not just because
they were dealing with black people. Right. It really is
finding your place so that when something happens, they want
your advice, and I limit myself. This is another strategy
(08:34):
I can call. I could have called anybody at the
highest reaches of the company and leave a message with
the assistant and say I only need five minutes, and
I would limit it, or I only need ten minutes.
It won't take any more than ten minutes. To this day,
my daughter, who is a forensic psychiatrist who's doing a
lot of work right now, I will text her, Imani,
(08:54):
when you get five minutes, just give me a call.
I promise it won't take any longer than that. And
I think when people understand that you're not going to
spiral on inspiral on inspiral on right, I will present
to you the elements. I will share with you what
I think makes sense. It might be your decision, and
(09:17):
then I'll wait and we'll do whatever. We both decide.
You take my advice or don't, but we will execute whatever.
So what I'm saying here is that I mentioned earlier.
You know I've been My husband accuses me of overthinking,
and I don't know that it's possible to overthink. I
find relaxation in strategizing. I strategize about the next generations.
(09:41):
In my family, we have family meetings, we have family zoom,
particularly during COVID once a week, there were fifteen of
us on the call from two years old to seventy
five years old. And when the kids come on, We're
not the family that goes no, no, no, no. You know,
it's like, you know, you have to make children feel
(10:02):
that they're loved and pause. I don't mean if it's
a major you know, corporate whatever, and your boss or
you're whoever, they don't get it. But in the environment,
in family and friends and whatever, you have to make
room for it. Being a tribe. You have to make
room for it being a group. Maybe not a biological
(10:26):
family always, but certainly a family and spirit. I think
that your.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Super power is deeper than just strategy. It's almost the
ability to not only analyze the situations, but also self
analyzed too. And I guess you know, if you were
to described it as a superpower, like, how would you
describe it?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I think one of my greatest skills is that I'm
really good at reading people. I'm really good at understanding
and listening and then help figure out the next steps.
I spend an awful lot of time right now with
(11:07):
some people who whether they're starting out or or they're
high up, I will spend fifteen twenty minutes sometimes more.
If I started dropping the names of some of my menteg,
you'd be like, and this is just because what I
know is that from speaking to folks, I know that
(11:27):
they haven't had the experience that I've had, which is
being encouraged to be analytical, being encouraged to be strategic,
and understanding that I don't have to do that. You see,
I'll give you an example where years ago, the president
(11:48):
of television station's division at NBC, he called me to
come an interview for a job in New York at WNBC.
And when we sat in the meeting, this man is Jewish.
He said to me, well, what do I say to
the Jewish community when you know, maybe they do some
research and find out that you were once a black Muslim?
(12:08):
And I said, well, it's the nation of Islam. And
what do I say to the African American community when
they asked me, you know if you've been on a
kibbutzum seventeen years old, going to Israel and learning how
to be a Zionist. He just looked at me. I said, so,
here's what we'll agree to or not. I said, you
(12:30):
won't ask me about this ever again. You asked me
here to interview for this job. I have a job,
and I can get other jobs. But if you're going
to go twenty something years back in my history to
ask me something like that, we should just stop now.
I got hired. And the point of that is that
transparency is important. It's important that you lay out up
(12:56):
front that you are a courageous person. I have courage
when I didn't have shit, I had courage. You don't
own me and my mother's constant refrain was she would
slap her chest and she'd say, they can't kill you.
I was like, ma, actually they can. She's like, they
(13:18):
can't kill you. And that's when she said, well, better
let you die, right. It's the owning yourself. You don't
own me. And I actually had a conversation with a
president of NBC or who told me in the midst
of a racial struggle going on in New York City
and it played out on NBC. He said to me
(13:40):
that you don't have the right to say what you
said to Andy Lack, who was the president of NBC
News at the time. He said this to me, you
don't have the right to say what you said to
Andy Lack. We were in this man's office and the
door was open, just him and me. I walked over
to his office door and with all my might, I
slammed it as hard as I could. I slammed it
(14:01):
clothes and I walked over back in front of his
desk and I said to him, if I were to
pull down my pants and show you my black ass,
which I would never do, but if I were, there's
no peacock branded on my ass. He was like, I said,
you're mistaken. You think you have power, and you think
(14:22):
you have power over me. I said, this is my hometown.
This is New York City. I said, I'm from Harlem.
Two phone calls and within three hours, I will have
more than a thousand black people down here, surrounding thirty rocks,
calling for your job. He just stared at me, bubbling,
bursting with furor. He just stared at me, and I said,
(14:46):
it's a contract. You can hire me and I accept.
I can quit and you can accept. Don't be fooled.
I'm not here because you're a letting me be here.
This man was apoplectic. I walked out of his office
(15:07):
and you know what happened. Within six months, I was
vice president and news director. At that point, I was
assistant news director. I didn't even have the big job.
But what's not going to happen is we are not
going to walk up and down these halls with you
thinking that I'm scared. Please, dude, come on, I'm African.
(15:28):
I am scared of what scared of you. I said
to him, you are fat. You are a fat white
man from Iowa in the city of New York. This
is my hometown. And then he had to make me
news director. He tried to sabotage it. But I put
into employ a strategy of zero basing the news department's
(15:49):
fifty plus million dollar budget, and for the first time
in eleven years, we were trending to coming in under budget.
We actually ended the year billion under budget, and I
wasn't trying to be under budget, but by zero basing,
we were able to actually be much more accurate in
our prognostication of what the spend was going to be
(16:11):
and what our needs were going to be.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, So I think what I want to do is
wrap up like the questions with.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Quick fire answers.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Well, no, it's really it's really just a summation almost
leveraging their strengths, because everyone's going to have different strengths
than you have, sure, and they may still be searching
for their strengths. So it's kind of a two part.
You know heard all this, you don't know what your strength.
(16:42):
Maybe give them a sure step and then I'll get you.
I'll give you to you again. But the second part
will be if you found your strength, then maybe what
the first step is there. So we'll start with people that.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Haven't found it yet. I'd say for someone who is
not sure what is or her strength is, and if
you don't feel comfortable zeroing in on it, then go
to people who you trust and who you know have
a certain kind of love for you, who will be
(17:18):
candid and ask them what do you think? It's another
version of how am I doing right? You can't be
afraid to ask that question. You might not always agree
with the answer, but here's what you get the opportunity
(17:38):
to experience. You get to look at yourself from the
outside in through someone else's lens. Right, Because if somebody
said to me, well, you know, you're really mean, I
would actually have to stop and pay attention to that.
If somebody said to me you're a brilliant strategist, I'd go, oh, now. Maybe,
(18:03):
at whatever point in one's development, words have not been
strung together to describe your strength in a way that
you can identify. You need to have your tribe. You
need to build people around you who you can trust
and who you can trust to tell you the truth
(18:26):
and some of the things that they share. You might
not have seen that that was a strength of yours
when somebody tells you that and someone else who you
trust goes, yeah, you do have to pay attention like, oh,
I didn't really realize.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
That, And so now I feel like my strength is
identified by I'm not quite sure how to.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Got to do with it to.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Create the things that I want to create world. So
I'm just curious, what are some of the you know,
ABC steps they're working too.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Well? One of them I mentioned earlier, And I think
that it is about being courageous and having enough courage
to go to your supervisor to ask, how do you
think I'm doing?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
At that point, you have to evaluate yourself. You have
to see whether that person's assessment of you matches your
assessment of you. If somebody were to say to you,
I don't even know why you think you can do
this job. You're doing such a poor job at this job,
(19:46):
what I would want to do is try to understand
that person's motive for saying that. Is that true? And importantly, now, well,
how do I improve? How do I turn that around? Right?
And you may not come to the conclusion that that's
(20:09):
a safe place for you to stay, You may not
come to the conclusion that you belong there, right, But
I am a believer in signposts engaging just how long
you should be in a particular location before you pick
up and move to one other spot. There is a
very very very high ranking person in banking who I
(20:33):
met three months ago, and he asked me, how did
you know that you wanted to do this or that?
How did you know was the next thing you wanted
to do? And I said, well, after getting input from
(20:54):
my direct supervisor and doing my own research, I've got
to figure out, based on what I've done, what's possible
for me as options. I said, have you done that?
He said no. I said yeah, but you're in such
a high rank you've never He said no. I said, so,
in other words, you've been waiting for them to tell
(21:14):
you what they think is next for you. He said,
well yeah, And I said, well, that's really not you
investing in yourself. As my mother said to me years ago,
your father's name is not on that building, so you
don't own that. You're not a part of that family.
(21:36):
You need to find out for yourself where you belong
and what your investment should be in that regard. I
had this conversation with his brother for about twenty minutes,
sitting in a hotel in Dallas. Hotel lobby in Dallas.
I learned the other day he had the conversation, he's
leaving that company where he was because he never had
(22:00):
that kind of conversation. He realized if they were truly
interested in him in his development, he would have And
so you go out. He went out and tested the
market and got the most amazing job. That's, however, many
levels above. What I'm saying is that there is a
(22:20):
certain amount of security in knowing that every day you're
going to go here, and there's this, and that foot
goes in front of that foot, and that foot goes
in front of that foot. I'll go back to what
my father said, if you stay with a company and
work twenty five years to make the white man rich,
I will be ashamed of you. They give you a
(22:41):
gold watch at the end. Why would you do that?
Why would you do that? Why wouldn't you think for yourself,
figure out what your skills are and how those skills
that you have might benefit you, not necessarily your gift
(23:02):
to a company that might not be rewarding you the
way you should be rewarded, particularly as a black person,
particularly as a black person. So I would say that
if you look around and in your company, you're the
only one at here. There's a problem, right, all those
(23:25):
jobs where I was the first or whatever, the only
I had a deal. When I was offered to take
the role as Chief Diversity Officer executive vice president for
NBC Universal for diversity, I want to do that, not
because it was demeaning, but it's like I was going
to retire early. I don't want to do that. But
after don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team nappy
(23:47):
headed host, I was like, oh no, I'm doing that.
We're going to change this up right now. And what
I made is a condition. There were a few conditions.
One condition was I only report to the CEO only.
The other condition was my same compensation as president and
general manager. It will not go down, so stock options,
(24:10):
rsu's compensation, salary, the company car all of that remains.
I don't move into a different compensation level because I'm
now in a diversity role. Right. The other thing I
said that I needed to be was a GE company officer.
At first it was like, well, no, we can't do that. Well,
(24:31):
then I don't need to take this job. I was
made a GE Company officer, and then there was another
position that an African American male who was well regarded
and well respected, had been a vice president for twelve years,
never promoted, and I said, promote him first? Well, why
(24:54):
because how do I take a role that has me
as the chief diversity officer? And then what I've now
got to walk around and convince somebody that this brother
who I know is excellent and who hasn't pushed and
advocated for himself. Okay, maybe that's not his personality, but
if I'm going to step into this role and my
(25:15):
name is here, do it first. And it was done right.
And what I'm saying is leverage. Sometimes you have the
power to make things happen. I mean, that's that's super important.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
A lot of people miss opportunities when they have the leverage,
and they beg for it when they don't.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Some people don't recognize that they have the leverage, and
many people are afraid to recognize because when you have leverage,
that means you got to step up and step into it.
Right If it's always well so and so won't let me,
or I can't do blah blah blah, or I haven't
(26:03):
been given an opportunity, But what happens when the opportunity
presents itself. What happens. Then it's like, this is my
chance because the only thing, what's the worst thing that
can happen, the worst thing that can happen, you lose
your job. We'll go find another job or start your
own business. My strategy was multiple income streams. I have
(26:27):
this job, I have an ownership of a company over here,
I have investments. Right, whoever would dream that it makes
sense to be a black person in the United States
of America and go to work every day for a
(26:48):
paycheck and you have no control over your income other
than you show up, you do work, and they give
you a paycheck. Really, that's how many of us have
been taught. You just want to get a good job.
I don't just want a good job. I need to
own shit. I need to be in charge. I need
(27:11):
to be able to call the shots. And if I
walk into the room and say, excuse me, but let
me need yes, we will do that. I need to
be able to say, you know, here's my sister, my
sister friend who I've had. I put her in charge
of blow up, y'all listen to her. Right. I don't
have to do all of it, but what I have
to do is be secure enough to hire people who
(27:33):
are smarter than I am in areas that I am
not as skilled in. And together the parts of a whole,
we are parts of a hole, right, I like to
think of it is And I used to come up
with these strategies. Oh, what if such and such happens
and the company wants a five percent reduction across the
border for next year, we would do exercises. I would
(27:57):
have my team come up with a five percent reduction,
a seven percent reduction, a ten percent reduction, so that
should they Oh my god, I am such a believer
in preparation. And we figured that out. We got that.
I'm not happy about it, but okay, I got that.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
No matter what, this is great.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But I always asking that in a every interview, is
that if there's anything I didn't ask you and you
would like to share.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Sure, I do have one thing I've been asked throughout
my career. What's the one accomplishment I'm the proudest of.
If there was one accomplishment I'm proudest of, and I
would say being a mother. I think that it's amazing
to be entrusted with the body and soul of a
(28:43):
person who looks to you for guidance and for education
and for you know how to navigate. I mentioned earlier
that I never had a goal of being the first
or the only. I didn't even have a goal of
(29:04):
being a mother. But when I found that I was
going to be a mother, right, I was that person
who pure body ate a certain way, made sure, you know,
in terms of how I was preparing this human being
to come into the world with as many physical, spiritual, emotional,
(29:30):
biological advantages as I could give her. And I just
think as a people, if we could focus on what
strengths were infusing into the next generations, I think that
it would be a lot easier for us to see
what our talents are and our strengths are, and how
(29:52):
to strategize. My family in China has a documented written
history that goes back to the year one thousand and six.
Be see three thousand years going into China. I can
trace my ancestry up until the last generation in my family.
If I go to Jamaica and trace my ancestry, which
(30:15):
I have done and hire genealogists to do, the farthest
back I can get is three generations. Why is that
something called slavery, and when we understand that what we've
overcome as a people and how Gods ancestors have worked
(30:42):
in order for us to be here, it's not that
we can't have fun, It's not that we can have
a life of humor and joy, because we can. But
what we can't do is squander. Make these decisions in
a strategic and fought full way so that what we
(31:04):
know is we're moving the next generations farther up the ladder.
Deb Langford, who I hired she was actually the second
person when I went into the diversity of roll ind NBC.
She's the second person who I offered a position too,
And I waited a year for her contract at Warner
(31:26):
to end. And Deb was so important to me, and
it's still important to me, but she was so strategic
to making sure that I was able to uncover some
of the roadblocks for us as people of color, as
black people to get ahead. One example, I asked, I
(31:47):
assigned Deb to look through the work rules of the DGA.
Right we had the wa Ha DGA. We had a
number of iatse, we had a number of different that
I knew based on experience that African Americans were not
getting nearly as far along because they closed the doors
(32:10):
on many of these opportunities. And what I learned, Deb
came back to me and said, Paula, do you know
that if you work as an AD assistant director on
a if you work as a second AD on a project,
and then the next job you have is a first AD, great,
(32:31):
But if the following position is not another first AD job,
you go back to being a second AD. And I said,
that doesn't make any sense. I mean, somebody hires you
to be the first AD or the second AD. She said, right.
But the way that it works is that we people
of color, we rarely get the opportunity to be a
(32:54):
first AD. We come in a second AD, and even
if somebody who we know puts us on that next
we have to bust back down. So I scheduled the
meeting with the DGA and Deb and I and our team.
I had about twenty people work for me, but our
team that worked on this. We met with them, and
when I explained what a hurdle that was and how,
(33:17):
whether they intended to or not, they were shutting many
of us out. I understand that they changed that rule.
Deb is now running Black Wealth initiatives for JP Morgan Chase.
You know, how do you go from her working in production?
She worked on Fresh Prince of bel Air, she was
(33:38):
working with delivered what one hundred and twenty five executives
of color when she was working at Warner so sort
of two steps under Dick Parsons, and then I hired
her to come and work for me. What I'm getting
at here is what seemingly are disparate roles opportunities that
(33:59):
don't necess sarahly even stay together in the same industry
right now as heading this Black Black Wealth initiatives and
the strategies around multi generational wealth, how to invest which
for a lot of us we don't know. These are
(34:20):
all the things that she's putting in place, and I'm
very grateful to her, and she and I talk about
it because a lot of it came about with her
hanging out with my family and how for us it's
all about that, how do we propel the next generations?
How do you spend invest your money? What is it
that you are trying to accomplish goal wise, and what's
(34:41):
the legacy that you're leaving.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If we helped you
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Subscribe and leave us a review on iHeartRadio and Apple podcasts.
Follow us on social media at Greenwood and visit us
at Gogreenwood dot com for more financial tips and remember,
money Movers. If this were easy, everyone would do it.
So take the lessons you've learned from this episode and
(35:08):
apply it to your life until next time. Tune in
next week for our interview with Will Packer. Money Moves
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Make sure to tune in Monday, Wednesday and Friday and
(35:29):
subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood, so
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