Elevate with Grace

S2, Ep1 New Season... its time for a brave conversation

• Elevate with Grace • Season 2 • Episode 1

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We are back and excited for the season ahead. 
Each fortnight we are dishing up bite sized, curated content and actionable tips to help focus you on achieving success on your own terms. 

This episode we check in on our word for the year and then dive into a very topical issue of facing into the changes that are occurring in our post pandemic workplaces and homes as we all seek to solve how we learn from this experience and perhaps adapt to a new way of working. 

We encourage you to think about what you need to achieve your goals and start to define what is working for you, how you want to show up, and what changes you are seeking. In this episode we share some compelling figures to take into your next chat and some thought leadership to help see all of your options.

Action challenge:  Let's get curious and courageous about identifying someone in your life, whether that's your partner, your boss, anyone, identifying someone in your life that you need to have some brave conversations with, that would result in you taking a step forward to living life on your terms.

Exciting news we are featured on Feedspots top Australian women podcasts:
https://blog.feedspot.com/australian_women_podcasts/

Links:
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/the-state-of-burnout-for-women-in-the-workplace

https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/women-at-work-global-outlook.html

https://hbr.org/2014/12/rethink-what-you-know-about-high-achieving-women

Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott

Simon Sinek, Infinite Game

http://www.elevatewithgrace.com.au

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Miranda:

Welcome to season two of the elevate with grace podcast, for people who are short on time and long to take steps, to create success on their own terms. This podcast is here for women who feel overworked, underappreciated, and stuck spinning plates with aspirations for more. We take the plethora of Intel out there and curate it down to the highest value Intel

Miranda (2):

combined

Miranda:

with our lived experiences offering bite-sized actionable tips so you can look back at the end of the quarter, end of the year, knowing you are working towards achieving success on your own terms.

Claire:

Hello to everyone out there and hello to my beautiful co-host Miranda. I am Claire Cornfield, and this is episode one, season two of our elevate with grace podcast. When we kick off into a new year, it often comes with reflection and looking inwards and what has changed with both ourselves and also within our worlds with our family, with our friends, our work colleagues, their bosses. We start to think about how we want to do things differently. So what we want to explore over the next couple of podcasts is how to have brave conversations, why they're important, what they're about and what they're not about. Then in the next episode, we'll talk about how to have brave conversations. It's such an important time to be talking about this right now. For those of you who listened in into our first season. One of our key things for each of our podcasts is we like to set an action challenge and for the podcast this week, it's all around. Getting curious and courageous about identifying someone in your life, whether that's your partner, your boss, anyone, identifying someone in your life, get curious about who that would be, that you need to have some brave conversations with, that would result in you taking a step forward to living life on your terms.

Miranda:

If you've just joined us a huge welcome. to season two. If you love this episode, please subscribe and share of course, but also know that there's a ready library from Season one with clear topics for you to utilize what you need. Here you will find our most popular episodes so far episode two, what is holding you back along with episodes, identifying your big picture, a book review on the one thing, taking smart risks, how to make quality decisions, a review of Emma Isaacs book, Winging It cultivating your career success and a great financial chat with Claire. There is so much to share. I hope you enjoy. I am so excited to be kicking off season two. I am super grateful for the break over summer. I feel a collective refocused and calming from all of those around me that've been lucky enough to pause, and I really hope that everyone gets a break soon. Restored and excited to be back excited for future episodes, future action, challenges and articles that we have coming up. And I'm conservatively optimistic for the year ahead. How about you Claire?

Claire:

I like that conservatively optimistic. The COVID pandemic is the gift that keeps on giving even into 2022. But like you, I am feeling pretty hopeful about the year ahead. Everything's a baseline from the two years that we've just been on. So it can only be upwards from here if still a bit conservatively and cautiously. I am really pumped and passionate about kicking off our second season of elevate with grace pods, where we explore the whys, whats and hows of taking actions day by day, week by week towards living a life of success, defined by ourselves and not by those expectations around us. For me, I started the year focused on taking ownership and getting back into my whole of life balance and owning that. With my health and wellbeing, I've been resetting boundaries and all in the help of finding my energy and spark again, after what's been a pretty hectic couple of years. I'm being perfectly honest, I've still got a little bit to do in terms of planning. But I have started thinking about what's my word, what's on my vision board and as always needs a bit of continuous work. But as I keep reminding myself, done is better than perfect so they're kicking off to a good start. What about you? Have you got your word for 2022?

Miranda:

I absolutely have. I think the two weeks break just gave me headspace. I found towards the end of last year, I said no mental load to think of anything except survival. My word of the year is create and I'm looking to create time, create space, create love, create community, create the environment in the world that I want to live in and also to spend more time creating,

Claire:

Create podcasts content!

Miranda:

Absolutely. I first started cultivating a word in 2017 and I've really found so much success in this more so than resolutions. I spoke about this in episode one last year. I think you've got your word and then you can see how that's going to roll out for you into the goals and plans, which of course we've been talking a lot about on Instagram lately. And I really enjoyed planning out the next three to six months. I don't usually try and tackle a whole year but nice to start cultivating the word create. I know you love this practice. So what are you vibing for this year?

Claire:

Last year I had three words, but after our podcast conversations this year, I have come up with one word it's a little bit left of field and creative, so my word for 2022 is Thunderbird. The reason I chose Thunderbird it's because it is a creative mythical spirit animal, and a powerful one that helps you find your way when you're faced with dramatic changes and you need to make important decisions during times of profound crisis, AKA COVID pandemics, it's believed that Thunderbirds coming to the rescue, helping you find stability as a leader and helping humanity create a much needed reset. So that all felt very weirdly aligned with what's going on in the world right now. It's all about being in the driver's seat and enhancing my power center It's about, anchoring myself to that inner power and using it to change my life circumstances and help others around me change their life circumstances, create the energy and freedom to help me live more of what I want to do and success on my own terms. Like you I've got a good three month plan and then a reasonably good six month plan. But at this point in time with the two years, it's been six months feels like a lot. So I'm good with that.

Miranda:

Such a fantastic word. Well done on this finding, that's incredible. Like it's really does speak to this future and I think hopeful.

Claire:

And interestingly, if we think about the reset and the Thunderbird coming, when we need to do big changes and all that sort of stuff, it reminds me of why we're talking about having brave conversations and the importance of brave conversations, because there's a lot of buzz going around right now. We spoke about it in one of our late podcasts in 2021. In terms of the great resignation. Driven by the great reflection. A great reset all of that sort of stuff. I do think it's a big deal in terms of the change and where people's head space are at. Living life in a pandemic, It's the hottest thing that a lot of us have been through. Let's be honest. And so with that comes a lot of, views and changes about how we want to do things and change our life.

Miranda:

It's exciting and it's opportunity to redefine how we work, redefine how we show up is, definitely what we want to talk about today. In these brave conversations, it's going to think about what you want and the why now is, as much as it's out there in the media, and it's a little bit of what collectively the community's doing, there's an opportunity for you to individually think about what does this mean for you? How do you want to redefine how you do things? And it doesn't mean a huge amount of change. It can mean having some brave conversations to tweak. What was 20 nineteens way of working or way of showing up and redefining what that looks for you today.

Claire:

That's one of the things that I really wanted to talk about is the first brave conversation you need to have is with yourself and really. What has the last two years been for me as an individual? And what does that make me feel about certain things and how do I need to tweak and adjust things? Maybe it's not massive. Maybe it is massive. We're all in different headspaces. And so this could be really massive. Life-changing brave conversations. But also there could be tweaks and resetting some boundaries on the home front or the Workfront. Massive, hot topic at the moment that a lot of people talking about return to the office and, what conversations are you having around that? So I think everyone's in different spaces, but the other thing that's important too, we are pretty fatigued. We are pretty tired. And so we need to reignite some of that. Guts and courageousness around having some tough conversations. I think we tend to sit behind zoom meetings. Sometimes it's a bit easier to just go, whatever. I just go with the flow and I can't be bothered and it's all too hard and I'm pretty exhausted. But we are here to have a pretty passionate discussion on why we can't keep doing that. And I think the last thing is One of the major reasons we can't do that and suppress our voice is because of the negative health and wellbeing aspects. A lot of people are experiencing a lot of conversations about burnout and the thing is holding your voice and suppressing your voice and suppressing those feelings. Not having those conversations is really not good for your health and wellbeing either. Nevermind your success on your own terms.

Miranda:

On the topic of burnout, a great podcast that I stumbled across in the last couple of weeks was this McKinsey podcast, it was the last one. December, 2021. They were talking about this study of women in the workforce and how many women were burning out and reaching just an absolute tether. And while it is from a US perspective, it really couldn't be true for the Australian experience. I've heard a couple of nice stories of global companies recognizing the Australian experience and encouraging teams to take it easy. Cause we know particularly Sydney and Melbourne, it has been absolutely tough. Yeah, to deal with this. And I think we dragged ourselves across the finish line. Huge amount of women looking to make change.

Claire:

Yeah, I know. I had to keep, stop walking, to get some of the stats on a name, I have these 100% correct but the women in the workplace report, they do it every year between this report and the previous year's report, something like almost 50% more women are reporting burnout compared to men as relative to the gap, that was between genders from the previous year. So 50% more women have reporting burnout compared to their male counterparts and that women, senior leaders do 26% more to help their employees than their male counterparts in navigating work life challenges of their employees and helping those employees manage their workload and spend 60% more of their time providing emotional support to their staff. They're taking that all on of their employees. Talk about burnout on top of burnout, but the stats were pretty full and actually I was pretty confronted by them. I must admit.

Miranda:

It was, but I also felt like I was in good company. Yeah, it's ah, that, wasn't just my experience. That was just the lived experience. Not just in Australia, but in the U S as well. A Deloitte study conducted last May. So/about seven months ago now found that nearly 80% of women reported an increase in their workload, which we're not surprised by lost their jobs, just stripped down workplaces, you're stretching, but then the work came back the people didn't come back, so we're working in this workforce where we're really struggling to keep up those normal levels of work.

Claire:

Not to mention all of the additional work that we're doing on the home front for those homeschooling. And it just generally.

Miranda:

So back to the WHY now this report identified in may last year, 25% of women were already ready to just leave the workforce and we certainly saw in 20, 20, 90,000 women already had left the workforce. So if we consider another 25%, that is absolutely massive. If 51% were planning to leave their employer in the next two years. So seven months in, it's not surprising. And the reason that we want to talk about brave conversations is that, there is other options maybe you don't always have to leave to make change.

Claire:

Yeah, definitely. Fascinatingly, I was reading another article this time. A HBR article back in 2014. I don't think it would be much different now to be perfectly honest, but the insight was. Only 25% of women relative to their male counterparts at certain levels of management who basically lean in and do more. Only 25% of them rewarded by promotions, recognition, and extra money for all of that effort they put in. The article is called rethink what you know about high-achieving women and what it talks to is the fact that women don't actually check out from their career out of choice to care from the family. It is a massive unconscious bias, according to this article. The reason that women check out of their career is because they can see that they're significantly leaning in. We're all leaning in. We're doing all this extra work. We are taking all this extra responsibility on, and yet we are only getting recognized and rewarded for that and paid for that 25% of the time relative to our male colleagues and peers. That's pretty frustrating. Like it's no wonder that we're getting a bit Jack of this stuff.

Miranda (2):

I can see that, if women are taking 80% more work and they're running at this, they do it working up and down. Then also, if we think back to that season one, episode two, where we're looking at the intrinsic behaviors and what's holding you back. Potentially their needs aren't being met. So yes, the recognition isn't there, but also they're not being able to output their perfect work then making mistakes they're tired. They're compromising their own work values in terms of maybe timeliness or meeting expectations or being there to support their staff. And so they're going, you know what? I can't keep letting people down this doesn't feel comfortable. I'm constantly in a state of discomfort and feeling like I'm not achieving. Why am I here And I think leaving the financial review had an article this week, but I was talking this few staff to do more work the result of their system, those staff leave. So the kind of compounding effort, very few people left spending a lot of plates. And I think we really need to think about changing how we go about this. Personally I think the way we can change it is to have brave conversations to really affect change. Leadership, certainly reading the room, talking to your team and making sure that your opening up to those brave conversations.

Claire:

I certainly think that in a 24 hour, seven days a week world where we always switched on, very hard to discern between what's busy work. What should I be spending my time on? What is the one thing that I needed to get done? There's so many pressures. And I think the brave conversations, and I think later on in the season, we're talking about time and bounds. It's all very linked in from that perspective. I haven't seen the financial review stuff this week, so I'll need to check that=out.

Miranda:

Yeah, that's very good. I think Simon Sinek also put out this week a bit of a view on this period of time and sees it is an opportunity to correct the power and balances and some fairly ordinary work practices that have been leading up to 2020. Asking businesses to really step up and create an environment where people feel the passion feel empowered to work. Of course it goes back to the work around why, making sure that employees are empowered as a leader. Your job is to identify a great skillset within somebody, give them all of the passion, the why they've got the tools, allow them to go and do that job and empower them. And his barista example was quite powerful where it's the same barista was working in two hotels. In one, really engaged, had a great conversation with this barista and asked him about his job And he was so impressed with his work. But that very same barista in another hotel, he said he didn't even feel like he was safe to have his voice. He just came in, did his shifts and left and the same person, but in a workplace that cultivates and looks, the infinite game and supports you as opposed to one that is just very managerial. You've got your manager watching over your shoulder every minute and not encouraging. Be a human being and have those great conversations with people at the coffee machine or wherever that is.

Miranda (2):

I think the way we can change it is to have those brave conversations

Claire:

That is a really good story to demonstrate the employer impact on whether someone is thriving or not in, in a particular role, same job, same role, and then same person just completely different workplaces.

Miranda:

Yeah. It's suggest that people who weren't leaving their job prior to COVID because the job is okay. They didn't want to reset security unless it got really painful. And we certainly see that with people that don't tend to make a change, unless it's so painful whereas I think what the COVID has allowed us to do is realize that, the workplace now has to step up before that Arista needed to work in both of those organizations. Now it's such a labor shortage is only going to work in the places that are good and that are going to cultivate his empowerment

Claire:

I think that's a good segue to get from talking about the reasons why we think talking about brave conversations in terms of more around what a brave conversation is, because I think that one of the key things you mentioned about Simon Sinek about workplaces have to come to the party on this. And with brave conversations, a conversation is between two people so both parties have to come in ready to have that brave conversation. There's a great book that I read years ago called fierce conversations by Susan Scott, and it gives a lot of great tools on what a brave conversation is and how to have one. One of the key critical things is that in order to have a bright conversation, it must be filled with the Goodwill and compassion. It's not brutal honesty. That is not what we're talking about. When we're talking about very conversations, brave conversations involve active listening. It's boots on the ground in terms of being present. It's walking alongside each other in terms of empathy. It's not about, here are my demands. What I want you now to need to do this, that and the other for me. That's not a brave conversation. A brave conversation is also listening to the point of view, whether it's your employer, whether it's your partner, it's about being curious and open-hearted about their perspective as well. It's a two way conversation. And there's some really good techniques in that book on, on how to approach them. And we'll talk more about that next week It's this is the challenge that we're in at the moment and possibly a bit of tension that we're all having is. How do you set up these conversations because they need to be really curious. Both people need to be really open-hearted about that to, to work it out and get progress.

Miranda:

I think the other thing is to remember that people want to hear this. So I think a lot of people go into a brave conversation or a negotiation thinking that it's very one-sided that they need to get their opinion across, or they need to be heard. In many cases, your manager wants to hear what you've got to say, your CEO wants to know what's maybe not working cause very high chances that its not just you. A great example is the remote workplace. The female lead published a poll on LinkedIn around remote working.

Miranda (2):

And what they're asking is would you even consider a job if the workplace wasn't offering fit flexible remote hybrid working and the result was 70% would not even apply for the job. So if you're having a conversation with your workplace about I only want to be in the office for a couple of days a week, and from home. You can bring some of those conversations to the front. And so you're not just talking about what you personally need or that's really important. You're thinking about what the employer needs to hear from you, and also potentially giving them a little bit of context. most people have said that they won't apply for a role if it doesn't even include this. So I really need to bring this into my world because this is something that is important to me.

Claire:

It's getting behind. Why is that your perspective? What is it that you're trying to achieve from that? What do you feel like you're missing? There's got to be some understanding and curiosity around why they're taking that position and how else could those challenges be solved? So that it's a win-win situation for everyone. How do we capitalize on this So we have these bright conversations?

Miranda:

Hopefully you've got great leaders. And I think you'll point, is that getting curious on both sides? So what do you need out of this? Asking the right questions and, remote work is probably a quite tropical one at the moment, but this can absolutely span for a whole lot of things. Back to your point about active listening, there's a really great piece in here where you build your case you've presented, but you haven't come in with a zero sum game where it's if I don't get what I want right now, I'm out, you come in with this, like this is really important and I'm really concerned for you as an organization, that this is a topic that went up to addressing, or we're not dealing with in a way that I think is gonna work. There's no threats. It's like negotiation where you're both looking to get to a point that's comfortable, and the idea of negotiation outcome is win-win and it's a lot kinder to be clear and to communicate what's going on in your world rather than. Just expect that people can read your mind and that, what's going on.

Claire:

I wonder to whether having to do everything in a zoom world, in a virtual world, we can tend to think I don't want to have these conversations sessions now I'll wait till I get back into the office. But. In terms of that book that I mentioned fierce conversations by Susan Scott. I was trying to do a bit of a refresh on that book without having to reread, read the book. Episode 100 of the one thing podcast. So we talked about the one thing podcasts before, he has a conversation with Susan Scott, who is the author of the fierce conversations, and they have a fierce conversation in the podcast. Through the first conversation, he gets really upset. It's a really foreign conversation. It's very interesting, they're actually having their conversation via a virtual meeting tool. And so I was like that blows that kind of argument out of the water that you can't have. So it's about again, it's about the techniques. It's about the planning. It's about both parties. Putting boots on the ground to be present in the moment to have a very curious, 360 situation going on. Otherwise you are going to drive yourself crazy, having conversations with people that are, that have got barriers up and don't want to listen. And so I think that's where, when we talk about our action challenge for this week respect about it at the beginning about getting curious and courageous about identifying someone with your wife. If you may need to have some brief conversations with that is really important when you're thinking about who this person is, that you're going to have that conversation with. It's okay because they, and how you're going to approach that and planning. And we'll talk about the, how in the next episode, but the who, it has, you have to, in my mind, you have to feel that it someone one that it's going to be impactful in terms of success on your own terms that we've talked about. That's obviously important, but the, who has to be very important because it has to be someone that's also able. To step out of their armour, in Brene Brown's terms and also be curious and wanting to learn. I think that's an important aspect of what we're talking about here.

Miranda:

And do you find that many people I've certainly found these people have come to you and they've shared this this maybe they've worked up to a brief conversation and they're sharing it. You like a shotgun, like bam. I ha hold on just one second. Let me just understand. I'm somebody you want to be heard and I can totally hear what you're putting down here, but is this, where is this coming from? So setting up that raincoat conversation in advance to really make sure that you have. You're not yeah. You're not just doing a manager and one-on-one meeting and all of a sudden you're going, here's all my challenges actually going. I'd like to have a conversation with you. This is a concern of mine and this is something I'd really like to have a curious two way conversation about let's schedule some time for that. So setting it up, making sure that when you both go into that meeting, you know where you're coming from. That's definitely totally through

Claire:

that. That's where you have to definitely. Yeah exactly. We're going into the house as we always do. We love the house, we're not there yet. We're so we'll cover that in that next episode in a fortnight's time. So as we mentioned, a couple of times, the action challenge is just to get curious about all this as always, there'll be the content. If you want to go into deeper into some of the content we mentioned, that will be in the episode. Also please check out our website, www. elevatewithgrace.com.au or hop onto our Instagram account for more curated content and thoughts about actionable steps and things that you might want to put in place for success on your own terms. We would love, love, love to hear from you and have brave conversations with you about how you're going. So please drop us an email at elevatewithgrace@gmail.com and please and subscribe and share this podcast with people. If you think that they would also enjoy it. did you have any final comments to say

Miranda:

best of luck, preparing these brave conversations, make sure you write it down, make sure you sleep on it and really have a great couple of

Claire:

weeks. Yes. Have a great couple of weeks. You too Miranda. And I can't wait to chat to you all again in a couple of weeks time. Thanks so much for listening. Thank

Miranda:

you. Thanks Claire.