Podcast Transcript:
Hey Sisters In Courage, Build A Movement Around YOU
Movements consist of key people organized and coordinated to achieve a common goal. In this episode, Gloria invites you to rethink your career as a movement, and to apply movement building strategies to engage your network, define your shared goals, and overcome obstacles to create meaningful advances in your professional life.
Gloria Feldt: Like I always say, greetings, powerful women. You are a movement unto yourself. Hello, and welcome to Power to You. I’m Gloria Feldt, here with secrets and tools to prepare and propel you with training and coaching to harness your incredible power to in your professional lives. I cofounded Take the Lead because I figured out how to crack the code that has been holding women back from equal leadership and pay. My mission is for women and men to hold equal power, pay, and leadership positions by 2025. At the end of each podcast, I’ll share specific tips that will help you lead and succeed.
What do you think of when you think about a movement? Do you think of picket signs? Pink hats? People marching and yelling? Black Lives Matter? Social justice, perhaps? Well, it’s certainly true that we tend to think of movements of being about causes, because they often are. Causes that people feel strongly about. Well, what if a cause you feel strongly about is you? Just go with me for a second.
What if I told you that you can apply the same basic principles used to build social movements to build a successful career? In fact, you can apply movement-building principles to any area of your life. These principles can be summed up as #SisterCourage.
First, be a sister. Reach out and ask for help when you need it. Give help when someone else needs it. Find the people who share your values and concerns, and who value you. Second, have the courage to raise issues that need to be discussed. And third, put the two together with a strategy to take action and you have a movement.
I teach these same principles in my seventh leadership power tool, Create a Movement. Thinking of your professional development as a movement you are creating can truly be a game changer for you. Dr. Nancy O’Reilly illustrates this beautifully in her book, In This Together: How Successful Women Support Each Other in Work and Life, by pointing out the impact of movement building on the individual level and the importance of building that network of support around ourselves and generously helping other women succeed. It’s really all about #SisterCourage.
Think about it. Where do you need to create a movement in your life? Have you established support networks? What can you do in your day-to-day life that prepares you and positions you to get that job, or that client, or that promotion that you want? There’s an often overlooked nexus between sisterhood, individual courage, and the courage and power of women and likeminded men working together to achieve gender parity goals. Sister courage, brother partners too, but let’s focus on how women can work together. Now, if advocating for yourself or for being intentional about building your movement makes you cringe, reflect on the fact that every other group works together to advance its own interests, yet women have been much slower to grant ourselves the privilege of worthiness to put our interests first. And if we are going to continue our progress toward equality and parity in leadership or in whatever profession you’re in, we must commit ourselves to think and act intentionally with sister courage.
That said, women can use to our advantage the fact that we’re more likely than men to attribute our success to luck, or to the help we’ve received from others, or a combination of the two. It’s been said that being underestimated can work to our advantage. It can be a motivator, compelling you to work harder to achieve a goal, to show those who don’t think you can do it, including possibly yourself, that you certainly can. Like Debbie Sterling, the founder of GoldieBlox. GoldieBlox are building toys designed to motivate girls to love science, technology, engineering, art, and math, and all of the things they could do with those skills. Sterling came up with the idea for GoldieBlox after a male professor humiliated her in front of her almost all male engineering class at Stanford. That experience lit a fire under her, and she decided to do something that would get girls as excited about being an engineer and about building things as she was.
Any movement-building process does need some clarity of vision first. What is your goal? What are the various components and tasks? What strengths do you have and how can those strengths be utilized to pull everything else together? Once you have that clarity of vision and you know what you want to accomplish, use the three aspects of movement building to make it happen. Be a sister, have courage, and put the two together with a strategy for action.
Now, these words are carefully chosen. I chose the word sister because individual women who want and deserve the chance to thrive must act like sisters. We must share experiences and support one another because we are women, and because it is in our best interests as unique individuals and as members of a group to do so, so don’t isolate yourself. You don’t have to do it all by yourself. Reach out and ask for help when you need it and offer help when you see someone else needs help. As recent research has confirmed, there is power in the pack. Women who support other women are more successful all around. We all need our girl gang, our coven, our network, our sisters, our mentors, and sponsors. Whatever you want to call it. Consider creating a trusted kitchen cabinet to advise you informally. Consider joining a mastermind group of likeminded women in your field who can build confidence and help each other problem solve.
Remain open to the benefits of working together with others who share your values and intentions, even if you don’t share all of their methods or opinions. Remember the power of the infinite pie. Abundant resources exist if we have the insights to recognize them. Sometimes, we believe that if we give away information or make introductions that this will reduce our power, when in reality, generosity attracts power. It attracts goodwill. So, be a sister. You’ll be building a cushion of support around you and its energy will help to propel you forward even when you aren’t so sure of yourself.
I chose the word courage because making change always takes courage, even if that change is in yourself, especially if it is a change that will challenge your skills and push you, and maybe make you a little uncomfortable. Growing in your career requires setting seriously big goals and going for them. Speaking up takes courage, too. The courage to raise the issues that need to be addressed, to ask the questions that no one else is asking, to overcome the pushback from those who say it can’t be done, or those whose best interest lies in your not being able to do it.
Some things take an extra dose of courage. Changing the gender power balance in the workplace, and politics, or relationships, for example. If you’re looking to garner a position that has usually gone to a man, if you’re a woman, or if there has never been a Black woman in that role to which you aspire, it will take courage to put yourself forward. When we talk about women and people of color having an equal chance, we are talking about the most profound power shift toward equal justice in the history of humanity. You are part of a larger movement when you work to build your career, whether you know it or not. We grow courage muscles by using them, so practice intentionally doing at least one thing every day that scares the hell out of you. And remember, if you are leading a team or a company, people follow people who have a point of view, and who have the courage to stand up for their convictions.
Finally, I chose the words sister courage, putting the two together, because by working together, we become bigger and stronger than the sum of the parts. Does this mean you must continuously give without thought to what you’ll get in return? Not at all. In fact, the opposite. Once you’re clear on your own goals and have found your sisters who share those goals, you can go forward together with clarity about where you all benefit, and clarity about where your paths may diverge. We each bring something unique to the party, and while I’m not suggesting that every act is selfishly transactional, movements actually work better when all parties benefit as they contribute to the larger whole.
So, create your strategic action steps. What destination do you want to reach? What problem do you want to solve? What resources do you need and where will you find them? Gather your facts to support your intentions. Assess your relationships and nurture those that can help you to ascend to the position you want. Bring others into your story so that this movement you’ve been building around yourself will continue as you achieve your goals. Together, we are bigger and stronger than the sum of our parts. That’s the essence of my leadership power tool number seven, take action, create a movement. So, be a sister, have courage, and put the two together into a strategic plan to act with sister courage to achieve your goals.
What are some examples of times you have used these three movement-building principles to lead effectively or to advance your career? I’d love to know that. Let me know how it goes for you.
Until next week, Power to You.
Power to You is produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. Virginia Lora is our producer. Cedric Wilson is our sound designer. For more about my work, please visit gloriafeldt.com, and follow me on social media @gloriafeldt. To learn about Take the Lead and our courses and coaching services, go to taketheleadwomen.com and follow us on social media. You can also send me comments about the show and questions on leadership and power to powertoyou@taketheleadwomen.com. I might even use them on future episodes. Be sure to subscribe or follow Power to You on your favorite listening app, and you’d make me so happy if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts, as those really help us get to know what you like about the show. Thanks.
CITATION:
Feldt, Gloria, host. “Movement Building.” Power to You, Take the Lead Women, July 26, 2020. https://www.taketheleadwomen.com/podcast
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