The Problem is The Solution: Better Results through Better Questions

Thursday is the best day of the week. At least according to Jess, who had her perspective permanently shifted by a high school biology teacher's grocery store metaphor 25 years ago. But why do certain random moments stick with us so powerfully? How do offhand comments from adults shape children's entire worldviews?

This episode dives deep into how our perspectives form and evolve through seemingly minor interactions. We explore parenting moments where asking thoughtful questions reveals surprising truths—like when Lisa's five-year-old daughter claimed she had "no friends" but was actually struggling with the complexities of navigating different friendship dynamics. The power of a simple "tell me more" creates space for understanding that problem-solving never could.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Lisa unpacks her experience being repeatedly interrupted and cut off during professional meetings as the only female manager in her organization. We examine the double standards at play when well-intentioned advice like "limit yourself to two questions" would ultimately reinforce the very inequality it aims to address. The "likability trap," unconscious bias, and the exhausting mental calculations required to navigate predominantly male spaces reveal how workplace dynamics reflect broader societal patterns.

Whether you're navigating parenthood, leadership challenges, or simply trying to understand why certain days feel different than others, this episode offers thoughtful reflections on how our perspectives shape—and are shaped by—our daily interactions. Join us for an honest conversation about finding authenticity in a world that often encourages us to make ourselves smaller.

Tune in next week as we unpack unexpected career transitions and how we can decide to move forward in choice.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Jess and Lisa
• 1:26 How Different Days Affect Your Week
• 3:35 Why Thursday Is the Best Day
• 8:57 The Power of Questions in Parenting
• 17:14 Navigating Conference Season
• 27:00 Workplace Dynamics and Gender Bias
• 40:41 The Value of Being Authentic
• 51:32 The Questioner's Dilemma

Transcript

Jess: 0:21

We're Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our forties living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership and everything in between.

Lisa: 0:30

We're navigating the messy middle of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone along the way who just gets it makes the journey less hard.

Jess: 0:39

So each week, we'll share something from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that, as we process and reflect, it'll inspire you to do the same wherever you are.

Lisa: 0:53

Hey, welcome to lots to unpack there, yeah. I thought I'd do like a little intro today like a like a welcome thing. We don't normally do that, but I thought welcome.

Jess: 1:05

Here we are, here we are.

Lisa: 1:07

Yeah, I think we do have the little blurb that goes yeah, we have an intro, but we don't have like a hey, welcome. Today is today? I don't know, today is today, right, I don't know, but it's good to see you. It's good to see you too.

Jess: 1:22

What's what's going on today? How are you doing?

Lisa: 1:26

I'm doing well. It's been a really quick week. When I think when you have a day that's different, like really really different than your normal schedule, it can actually end up feeling like your week is shorter because that day almost doesn't fit in the paradigm of your normal, especially because my life is so regular, I want to say like very sort of regimented in that way, and so when I have a day that is like totally different, it just it very it kind of speeds up the week a bit, I think, even though that day felt like a million years, because I went to a conference and the conference was very, very long. The conference itself went from 7am to 5pm, which is too long. It's too long. I think we can objectively say that's too long for a conference to go.

Jess: 2:16

People cannot see my face right now, but I'm just shaking my head. I don't. That's way too long.

Lisa: 2:23

It was. It was just a long day and long sessions and long everything. I think there were some good takeaways, but but yeah, so having that whole day kind of just like throw out my usual routine, just sort of I don't know, just sort of changed the dynamic of my week. What about you?

Jess: 2:40

Yeah, I think I know what you're saying. I experienced that if there's a holiday in the middle of the week, where it's like you work Monday, tuesday and then there's a holiday and then you work Thursday, friday, it always felt like two different weeks, like I just had two really short weeks that happened in the span of a week.

Lisa: 2:59

Yeah, and then like you almost get two Mondays like two ramp up days, and I feel like sometimes having that break in the middle of the week makes the Thursday like assuming that the Wednesday is the day you have off the Thursday harder than the Monday, because at least when you're there on Monday you can be like it's a kind of a two day work week and you can kind of like be happy about that. But then when you come back it's like oh so.

Jess: 3:21

I prefer to think of it as two Thursdays instead of two Mondays. Two Thursdays, right, because Thursday is my favorite day of the week.

Lisa: 3:33

And so have we. Have we talked about that? Maybe you and I have, maybe briefly.

Jess: 3:40

Thursday is forever my favorite day of the week since high school. When I was in it was summer school honors biology. My teacher said so. First of all, summer school is was so weird. I mean, it was all day in a single subject, all day. That is weird. Yeah, from eight to four to cram an entire semester's worth of material into however many weeks. Summer school was Right, and while we didn't have to do summer school most summers, there was one summer we did have to. It was just a requirement, but it was so weird. I guess high school is not usually like that, where you have mandatory summer school to be able to do the things.

Lisa: 4:20

I had summer school, but that was only because I took a year off of school, and so I had to do summer school in between my junior year of high school in order to make up for the time that I was gone. But I don't think that's normal either, right?

Jess: 4:35

And I don't think I put together that. That happened for you, so maybe that's something you can just put a pin in to unpack another time. Like I remember it. Now I'm putting it together, but yeah, so summer school, I did honors, biology one summer, which was great. I had a blast, I loved my classmates.

Jess: 4:53

But the teacher was a little kooky and he said it's Thursday. Thursday is the best day of the week. And we're like what are you talking about? It just feels like Groundhog Day in here, because we are in here every day, all day with the same people. And he said no, no, no, no.

Jess: 5:11

It is like being in the grocery store Monday. You're at the back of the line, you're looking ahead, you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to take forever. Look at all the stuff that people have in their carts on the belt ahead of me. And then you go about the day and you get closer and closer and Thursday is when you say I'm next, and it's the anticipation of being next that is so exciting, because then, once you're there, you're getting your stuff on, you're paying, you just want to get through it and get to the weekend. And this it totally reframed my view of Thursdays, and ever since then. So it has now been I don't know 25 years.

Jess: 5:53

Since that moment, I have thought of Thursdays as the best day of the week, because it's I'm next Monday and Tuesday. You know, you're like gearing up, you're ramping up, you're getting in your groove. Wednesday You're kind of in your groove. Thursday is the first day where you are rocking and rolling. It's adjusted, you're ready to go, it's super productive. And then Friday comes and it's like can the weekend just get here? I love Thursdays because they are pure. They are a pure day of days.

Lisa: 6:26

Wow, that is a very powerful metaphor. Yeah, yeah, rich, rich, it was I don't know.

Lisa: 6:37

Looking back at that moment I was thinking like how many freshmen in between freshmen and sophomore year, people were buying groceries to really resonate with that metaphor, but it worked and I mean there must have been at least some amount of like general knowledge of the grocery store for that to have resonated at all with you.

Lisa: 7:00

And, like you said, 25 years later here you are still grasping at that and it really makes me wonder whether it was a seminal you know fantasy to kind of attach to or whether it was a seminal time in your life and you're just attached to it because of where you were at that moment in time and how, like I don't know, some part of you was developing and some part of you was like I don't know, some part of you was developing and some part of you was, I don't know like it. High school summers in high school are kind of considered to be like some of the most I don't know, baseline or foundational of our lives, and I just wonder whether or not it was just part of like you in that time of your life like like kind of like I don't know, foundationalizing that's not a word, but you know what I mean.

Jess: 7:51

I yeah, I don't know, because there were a lot of things from that time in my life that didn't land. It could have been right place, right time. I mean, I don't think when I think about summers, I am not thinking about the high school summers because I was in school for the entire time. I mean, I think I took maybe two vacations when I was in high school during the summer and that I can remember or that really stand out to me. But but certainly there was something about this Maybe it was even just the introduction that you get to choose how you perceive a day of the week that stuck with me.

Lisa: 8:22

Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, that's what I mean by foundational. I mean you looked at me like that was crazy.

Jess: 8:31

Yeah. I don't know I was like was it foundation there? There are a lot of things from high school certainly that have impacted who I have, who I am becoming and who I have become up to this point.

Lisa: 8:41

Sure Whether or not you want it to. A lot of times there are many things that you're like. I'd rather that not inform who I am as an adult.

Jess: 8:48

Sure, sure, but it is. It could be, I don't know. I don't think he was trying to be, I don't think he, like, was trying to impart this deep life lesson.

Lisa: 8:58

But again, here we are, 25 years later, and I mean, we know as adults, especially as adults with kids, that like let's be honest, adults talk shit all the time. We're constantly saying stuff that we're just we're just saying out loud and it's going to land on somebody younger than us and you have no idea. And this is something I think about a lot and I probably I really wish I didn't think about it as much as I did. It's like I wonder what random thing I'm going to say to my kids today that's going to make some sort of like unintended impact on them, positive or negative.

Lisa: 9:33

Because there's so many things like that from my adolescence that like nobody intended that to be something that was important in my life or that just kind of kept coming up again and again and again.

Lisa: 9:46

There's so many memories that we forget. There's so many important things that we forget, and yet certain things and everyone has these things they just keep coming up in our lives. They won't fade into the dark recesses of our mind and be forgotten. And so I think about that when I'm talking to my kids, and most of the time I try to be fairly level-headed, say good, fact-based things, but like most people, I probably say a lot of stuff that is just my opinion or my random thought of the day that my kids are going to take as pure, or my like random thought of the day that my kids are going to take as pure, unadulterated, uncut fact and like move about their world that way. I know that I had so many of those things. By the time I got to college. I had collected this trove of totally false things that adults had said to me that I just assumed was complete and total, like real, like based in reality information, and it was not. It was based on opinion.

Jess: 10:51

I'm sure that I have these too, but I'm wondering do you have do any examples?

Lisa: 10:54

come up for you. Oh of like things that people said to me when I was a kid.

Jess: 10:58

Things that you believe were just absolutely true, and then you found out later that they were totally not.

Lisa: 11:03

I feel like I have forgotten a lot of them now but as I went through, okay, here's one. That kind of it sort of resonates. My mom told me and to give a little context here for the listener, my mom has always been the loudest voice in my head. She has always been somebody who could say things and have the mean really, really, really deep things. So there's probably a million from my mom, but one that I remember is that she said to me when I was in high school and I thought, oh, super great, I'll just completely disregard these relationships and go to college never speaking to any of these people again, because I'm going to meet the most amazing life altering true friends.

Lisa: 12:04

In college I did do the first part. I did not get to the second part because the people that I met in college now, granted, I did college a little bit differently because I wasn't there most weekends. I didn't make any friendships with anybody with whom I'm still in contact, so that I'm sure that is true for many people. It was definitely not true for me, but I took it as gospel, like that is what happens your high school friends they go away and you meet your real friends and then that's who you have for life. College friends Great.

Jess: 12:36

Yeah, I kind of have. It is interesting that definitely didn't hold true for me. I mean my high school best friends, hopefully some of them are even listening to this podcast. They are still daily fixtures in my life and maybe that is a very rare.

Jess: 12:52

I, I. I had a couple of close friends that I was in a singing group with, and I think I'm still connected to a couple of them, but I didn't take very many of them with me into young adulthood and certainly not into where I am now, at least not to the extent that my high school friends came with me.

Lisa: 13:23

Right, I do think I will say I think it is rare to have as many my high school friends came with me. Right, I do think I will say I think it is rare to have as many close high school friends as you still do. I think that is rather rare in one's 40th or fourth decade, 40th year, fourth decade, but I don't think it's. I don't think it's entirely rare to have high school friends that you're still friendly with or friends with even so. Yeah, so I mean, that's, that's just an example. I'm sure there are many, and not all, from my mom, I'm sure there are many, oh, I know that.

Lisa: 13:56

So my, my dad as well, I would say a lot of stuff that now, as an adult, when I talk to him, I'm like that's just, that's just you talking. When I talk to him, I'm like that's just, that's just you talking, there's, there's, there's nothing. That's purely his opinion on things. And I just didn't, I didn't know how to differentiate that. I think when I was a kid, I think my parents just held that weight for me and I I don't even know how common that is, but even even all the way through high school, all the way through my teenage years I was like no, my parents know everything.

Jess: 14:28

I definitely did not think my parents knew everything, but I took some of the things that were shared with me. I just took them at face value and said like oh, okay.

Jess: 14:38

Yeah, that's how the world works, whatever, yeah. And I remember going on some sort of camping trip. My dad was driving and there were all these signs that said watch for falling rocks. And I asked him what does that mean? And he started telling me this legend of a person called falling rocks Fox, who was the prodigal son who was lost forever. And something in my mind clicked in a weird way and I said, dad, did you just make that up? And he said, oh for sure, yeah, that was all made up.

Lisa: 15:16

You think he was just bored driving and just wanted to entertain himself.

Jess: 15:20

Yeah, yes, I do.

Lisa: 15:21

And that is exactly something that I would do, and probably do multiple times a week to my kids, and I'm like, maybe be a little bit more careful, lisa, about what you say. I, when I was growing up, I went to a small school and we had husband and wife who were both teachers and they had kids who went to that school too, and I remember them telling me once that they had told their kids that there were two U's in the alphabet one directly after Q and then the one in the regular spot. Just to see what he would do with that information and, to be fair, I did review them, so I thought that was pretty cool at the time.

Jess: 16:05

Now, that I have kids. I was like.

Lisa: 16:07

I don't think I would ever consider doing that, but yeah, so some some parents abuse that power for their own entertainment on varying levels, and some probably have no idea that they're just spewing baloney to their children.

Jess: 16:23

That, I think, is probably the more likely scenario. Adam Grant has a book called Think Again. Fabulous book, but it kind of points out where are these things that you just kind of heard once and believed to be true forever, and I have since reading it. I have been a lot better about just telling my kids I don't know or why do you think that is, and just kind of exploring it from a philosophical perspective and that seems to be working well for me.

Lisa: 16:54

I mean, I think it's one of the best lessons as a parent is to just be a really good question, asker. Back to your kids. I feel probably the best about my parenting when my kid, one of my kids, comes to me with a problem or a situation or even a question themselves and I respond with a question that helps them clarify. I mean, it's literally what coaching is. You know this, you're a coach. But like my middle daughter came to me today and she's been because she's five she has a lot of big feelings and a lot of I've noticed moods. It's like it's a new thing for her. There's moods involved and her main mood is grouchy and so I asked her today.

Lisa: 17:41

I was like we've been awake for 30 minutes. At that point there was nothing that had happened. That kind of like would precipitate this grouchiness. And she said I'm just in a bad mood. And I was like, okay, great, what's going on? And she was like, well, I don't have any friends. And there was a part of me that wanted to refute that claim and literally name her like 10 people off the top of my head that she plays with and enjoys every single day. I'm including her best friend, who lives directly behind us, 50 yards. And instead I just asked a question and I just said that's interesting. Tell me more about that. Why do you think that is Come to find out? Her actual issue was that sometimes she's playing with multiple friends and doesn't know how to deal with competing priorities, and so I was like.

Lisa: 18:40

I was just just in asking, like maybe one or two at the most questions got me from. I'm grouchy Cause I don't have any friends to. Sometimes, when I'm playing with my friends, I don't know how to play with them both at the same time and I feel torn between them.

Jess: 18:55

Wow, yeah, what. What an impressive and powerful thing for her to walk away from that conversation with.

Lisa: 19:05

I mean I wish we had honestly had more time to unpack it in that moment, which of course we didn't, because it's the morning and you're just pounding on the gas to get out, to get out of the house. But but yeah, I was. I was really impressed, kind of, with myself. If I'm going to pat myself on the back for not taking the bait and I think we get such beautiful bait sometimes from our kids, oh yeah, and you really want to chomp down on it for whatever reason, whether it's them acting a certain way or saying a certain thing or being some way to you or the other kids in the house, whatever.

Lisa: 19:38

So I was really proud of myself for not taking the bait, but then, but then so amazed at the outcome being so drastically like something that I could really help her with, cause I can't. I can't help her if she has a delusion in her head that she has no friends when in fact she has tons of friends. There's literally nothing I can do about that. But being torn between two friends that are very different from each other and you play together often totally something I can help with if she wants that help, and so I was like it was just it was so amazing to kind of like take that very quick but very kind of like significant journey with her in this brief conversation.

Jess: 20:18

I'm thinking about what would have happened, how the conversation might have gone, if you had gone into. No, you have tons of friends. What are you talking about? You have so-and-so who lives behind us and across the street and this, what about this person from your class? And you're totally solving a problem that isn't the problem that she needs to solve Exactly.

Jess: 20:37

Exactly and it might feel like for her. I wonder how she would be feeling, whereas you asking the question left her the time and space to then get validation about how this issue that she's actually having is it's a real thing, right that she'll probably have for the rest of her life. I mean, I think about even now when I have two friends from kind of different universes where we're in group together and I think, oh gosh, this is weird, my universes are colliding.

Lisa: 21:09

How do I Tough navigation, especially if you're somebody who and I think everyone does this to a degree but code switches between groups of friends, or if you know someone from work versus knowing someone from your personal life. Those worlds colliding can be really really dramatically different if you're a different version of yourself at work, which I think a lot of people are, you know so, and for her, for for my daughter, one of her friends is younger than her by a year and one of these friends is older than her by two years, and so there's a big span of difference in age which I think is probably the exact same parallel as for us having people from different parts of our lives. So it was, it was really cool, and I think I did kind of end it with like I can completely understand, you know, validated it and just said like let's talk about this more later and we can kind of come up with some strategies. So but yeah, just like it made me really realize the power of the question.

Jess: 22:11

Absolutely. Dr Becky Kennedy says one of the first things you can say is wow, thank you so much for sharing this with me, and I think that's really powerful to just acknowledge that that took some gumption to even come to you to talk to you about this thing. It validates that it's super important to them, even though they may already be feeling the pressures of it's not that big a deal, it's fine.

Jess: 22:38

And then to approach it from a partnering perspective instead of a fixing it perspective, is really, you're also modeling for her how she might be able to show up for her friends. I think many of us are kind of natural problem solvers, and maybe the reason we are natural problem solvers is because that's what was modeled for us. Every problem that was presented to us was a problem to fix. Yes, and that's just not always the case.

Lisa: 23:07

Yeah, yeah. So that was like a little bit of a proud parenting moment and just a proud of of her moment for kind of having that realization at all, just saying like sometimes this is tricky for me, sometimes this is hard and knowing the two friends of hers as I do, I can, I can totally understand why that's a tricky situation for her. Very, very different personalities. You know very different tone. So so yeah, that was just a just a cool power of the question.

Jess: 23:38

I love that. Yeah, I'm trying to think how my week was. We kind of went into unpacking kind of automatically, which I love. I love unpacking that.

Lisa: 23:48

For all of our listeners. That was a mini spontaneous unpacking. I hope you enjoyed it.

Jess: 23:54

It sure was. So, as maybe people have guessed, today is Thursday. We do usually record on Friday, but because it's Thursday, it's my favorite day of the week and I'm feeling pretty great today, on Friday. Well, so I don't know. It's different since becoming an entrepreneur.

Jess: 24:16

I think, in a lot of ways, my Thursdays kind of are my Fridays, because I want Friday to be the wrap up day, where I'm not trying to build something new right before the weekend. I like to be able to kind of wrap it up and enter the weekend. But tomorrow I'm going to a women's leadership conference that I'm really excited about, very nice, and so I think that's going to be a very different vibe, kind of all together. You had your conference in the middle of the week, I have my conference at the end of the week lots of conferences this week.

Lisa: 24:46

This is a very popular week for conferences right, because I mean.

Jess: 24:50

I had to a conference on Saturday.

Lisa: 24:52

Right, I had, I had sorry, four one so far, I've only skipped one of them.

Jess: 24:58

Yeah, it is a lot that maybe some part of the the spring thaw is giving time to people to get you know you've been doing all of this, thinking for the last couple of months because you haven't been able to to do and get outside, and so now it's a time to start implementing and set up new systems for the rest of the year.

Jess: 25:21

I was chatting with a friend last night at dinner who said I just forget that there's this period of time between, like January and right about now where everyone is just a little bit sad and it's a little bit cold and you can't get out and do the things that you want to do.

Lisa: 25:40

He said, it gets me every time. Oh, that I mean yes, and I think you have glimmers of it right, Because every once in a while you'll get this warm weather, and then everyone will be like woohoo, we're done, Like let's go out and let's be all together again, and then everyone just goes right back into kind of like deep depression mode when it goes back inevitably to cold weather, which it has.

Jess: 26:03

I think it's so much worse to go to have those glimmers and then go back and then say, if you could, because then you know what you're missing it's. I think when it's just a period of cold you can kind of forget that you're missing and then it comes back and it's so nice.

Lisa: 26:20

Yeah, I talked about this about. I talked about forgetting what the sun felt like and that it was so transformative for me right when I finally did feel it and I have been out a lot more since then, but not yesterday, definitely not downpour thunderstorm yesterday. Yeah for sure, we sure we're good, we're going to get there before too long. It's coming, yes.

Jess: 26:43

Hopefully, as I look out of my tiny window, my door outside my office, and I see a gray sky and wind. Yes, so maybe not today.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Not today, but we're going to get there.

Lisa: 26:58

Well, I think, uh, I think it's my turn. Is it my turn or is it your turn?

Jess: 27:03

Okay, If you have something to unpack, let's unpack it. I have something that we could unpack, but it's a little bit more abstract, I think.

Lisa: 27:10

I think I do. I I apart from my mini spontaneous unpacking about the the questions this morning, I had kind of an evolving scenario. So a couple. No, last week this is a work-related one, in case you're wondering Last week I was in a big call that is a global call.

Lisa: 27:28

It doesn't involve that many people, but they're from every region that our company operates in and we talk about investigations that are ongoing. As I work in security and I very rarely speak in this call because my program does not do investigations and so there's usually very little for me to provide in terms of an update. But occasionally I will have questions if it pertains to my program, and a while back a few months ago, I asked a couple of questions because one of the investigations was about a case that we had sort of started, and so my question was clarifying what the next few steps were for the investigator. That's the purpose of the call, and I immediately was I'll be I'll use dramatic language because this is not an official sort of transcript but jumped on by that person and his manager for asking pointed questions about a case that.

Lisa: 28:32

I was not, I was. Very quickly it was apparent that I was not supposed to be asking such direct questions about what the next steps were and what the plan was, things like that. I didn't feel like I was out of line, because that's the majority of the questions that are asked and, you know, mentioned it, my manager was there as well, and so he kind of saw it and he and I kind of talked about it later. So fast forward to last week, same sort of thing. There's an ongoing case that does pertain to my program and they they gave the case update and I was asking a few clarifying questions and it was about four minutes until the end of the meeting and this was the last case to cover because it was the very, very last one of the of the meeting and so I was asking a couple of clarifying questions about it. What the next step? Same same sort of questions that under you know, my knowledge, that was what the purpose of the meeting was for and was interrupted and cut off and told you need to take this offline, which, for anyone who doesn't know corporate speak, that just means have another meeting about it by yourselves, not in this group setting. And there was. It was too much too, too in the weeds for what we're supposed to be covering in this meeting. That person who interrupted me continued to ask the exact same questions of the people after interrupting me for several minutes, including going multiple minutes over time. And so I these are different people, by the way, different, different interrupters and, and so you know, I commiserated with some people on my team who said, yeah, you know, they'll do that from time to time and stuff like that. And I started to think about it a little bit more, because I don't talk. If I talked every single time in a meeting and this didn't happen every single time, it would be less of a pattern, right, and so I can be empathetic and think, okay, I can understand why that manager did that. He's trying to defend his person. There's a longstanding history here that does not include me, about these two teams getting along. I can be empathetic to that.

Lisa: 30:41

And in the second case, that person had just come back from a nine-month leave of absence. As a manager probably wanted to reassert some level of like, authority and dominance in the space after being gone for so long. I can empathize with that. And so I went to my manager and I said I would really be interested to know what the purpose of that meeting is, because it seems to me that I must have a different definition than everybody else, because I'm asking questions that I feel like are very much in line with what the purpose of the meeting is and I'm kind of getting shut down. This has now happened more than once. Kind of getting shut down. This has now happened more than once and, you know, my manager completely validated the whole purpose of the meeting being exactly what I thought it was supposed to be, and I said so.

Lisa: 31:29

My concern is actually that I'm going to kind of suffer reputationally as someone who does not warrant a voice in this meeting, because this has now happened multiple times by people senior to me or at least on my same level. One of the cases was somebody senior to me, one of the cases was somebody who is more or less on my same level, and my concern is that I'm going to be seen as not an authority or not somebody to be trusted, respected, whatever the case may be. Not an authority or not somebody to be trusted, respected, whatever the case may be, because this has now happened multiple times and my manager, very thoughtfully and nicely started to brainstorm ideas for how we could maybe combat this, and his suggestions included working one-on-one with those individuals, which I already do, and limiting my questions to two. And at first I was like, okay, limiting questions, that makes sense. And then I was like, whoops, no, it doesn't, because nobody else limits their questions to two. And so I was actually really proud of myself because in that moment I was able to think through that and I said does anyone else limit their questions? Doesn't that just put me on sort of that same uneven footing as not having the same space to ask my questions and get the answers that I'm looking for in that forum? And I could see that he was like, whoa, yes, it does. And it was actually really funny to be in this scenario where we were kind of real time dancing around these issues.

Lisa: 33:06

In the case of these scenarios, both of the people who interrupted me were men, and of course I am not.

Lisa: 33:15

I am a female and so, while I don't think that played necessarily a part to it, the optics of it and if we're really considering optics and not that there's malintent, which I don't believe there was in either of these cases if we're really looking at optics of it. That definitely plays a part, and so me limiting myself to two questions, when I very, very rarely talk in this meeting as it is, is only just furthering that perception that I shouldn't speak as much as other people do. So, like I said, I was, I was kind of proud in the moment being able to kind of work through that with him and have him sort of reciprocate like, oh, you're right, that does kind of still limit your voice, and so then we didn't really get to any conclusion with what to do about it. So anyway, this is what I was just unpacking and this is. We didn't really get to any conclusion with what to do about it. So anyway, this is what I was just unpacking and this is all very recent.

Jess: 34:09

Like I said, I think I spoke to my manager yesterday and all of this happened like last week. So it is really interesting. I appreciate that you're not attributing malice here, and yet I wonder how much of this is unconscious. That's why unconscious bias is unconscious Right and how. I think, if you're looking at it holistically, the optics, the gender piece that's just at play in our larger society system seems relevant as a consideration. It might not be the reason Right. Seems relevant as a consideration. It might not be the reason right, but it does make me wonder. If you were a man asking those same questions, would you have had the same response? Or is there some legitimate feedback in here for you? Is?

Jess: 34:57

there a way that you're asking the questions that's maybe not landing in the right way, or in a way that's clear what your intent is in asking which like, goes to kind of the next level.

Lisa: 35:11

If we want to walk down this path of what's what you're ended up, your intent or your desired result, versus the kind of execution of that, and that is, do I need to change the way that I ask questions compared to my male peers because they're going to be perceived differently in the way that I ask them just by virtue of the fact that I am coming from a place where maybe they don't think that I have the right to be asking pointed and direct questions about something?

Lisa: 35:44

And I hear, like I said, I hear pointed and direct questions being fired off every which way by other people. And I do work and I think I mentioned this in the very first episode but I do work in a very male-dominated field of security first episode. But I do work in a very male dominated field of security and so it is much more common for men to be in leadership positions and in places of authority, and I am the only female manager for my entire organization, so naturally, that is, I am already kind of put as a little little bit, little bit different.

Jess: 36:22

There really is a lot to unpack in here. I was listening to a podcast yesterday, Hidden Brain, and the guest who was talking I think. The episode is called Dropping the Mask and it talks about these different ways in which we adapt ourselves to fit our environment when we don't feel safe that we can show up authentically. And of course there's the denying aspect, where you just pretend like that part of you doesn't exist. And then there's passing where you just kind of maybe you've accepted this about yourself, and then there's covering.

Speaker 1: 37:03

I think those were the three things and then covering is where you minimize.

Jess: 37:10

You're actively downplaying a certain part of art, right, exactly so. They gave the example of Margaret Thatcher, who went to elocution coaching to be able to hide her working class accent, and FDR, who was very strategic in how he was photographed, and the ways that he showed himself so that his disability wasn't apparent.

Jess: 37:33

And so I think this comes up probably a lot in the workplace as a woman, where maybe there's a perception that if you have kids you're less committed to being a working individual, and so women in those cases might only talk about their work accomplishments to basically allow people to forget that they are also mothers who have these outside responsibilities.

Jess: 37:59

Been there, done that for sure, yeah Right. And so I don't know how directly that plays into what you're experiencing, but it sounds like in this modification of yourself, it's almost a way of making yourself smaller, to fit into a space which is absolutely counter to what you wanted to work on, which was picking up the space that you deserve to take up.

Lisa: 38:24

Yes, exactly, and that's why I felt like this really dovetailed nicely with that, because it almost is a point-counterpoint discussion of like. Well, there might be reasons outside of myself why I don't take up space. Take up space, and when I see these moments of opportunity to take up space, there's a real decision tree action at play, because the likability trap exists. It definitely exists in a space that is predominantly male, where they expect you to be a likable person as well as a competent person. That is the expectation, and not just if anyone wants to read about the likability trap, there's lots of books that cover it, but Lean In by Sheryl Sanderson, we'll link it.

Lisa: 39:15

Sandberg, there you go. Talks about it a lot, because the likability trap does not exist only in men. Talks about it a lot because the likability trap does not exist only in men. Women also expect other women to be likable in the workplace as a main facet of how they show up, and so, while I definitely never try to be in any way abrasive or gotcha with the people that I'm talking to, if I have a legitimate question that is pertinent and is, you know, tied to my program or tied to the greater discussion, I am kind of and I'm very, I'm so aware that I have to say it in a way that doesn't, you know, ruffle feathers, that I have to say with a big old smile on my face, and I have to do it in a way that disarms people and it's just so much.

Jess: 40:07

we talk about the hidden load that people carry and this just adds so much mental load to that what should otherwise be a very straightforward interaction, and yet we add all of these layers, not for no reason.

Lisa: 40:18

We add them for very good reasons. But you know, all of these layers then exist and add to the weight of that thing where it would be. You know the weight of a feather. It ends up being the weight of a stone by the end because you've added so much into it. And you're controlling your face and you're controlling your voice and you're controlling your tone and you're controlling, you know, the I don't know the all of the. You're almost kind of like tricking yourself in the back of your mind to say or maybe not tricking yourself is the wrong word, but like you're convincing yourself. I have no malintent with this question. You're even saying that to yourself as you're speaking the words. Don't be offended by my question, don't be. Don't think that I'm coming after you. You know I'm even. You can hear the affect in my voice just there. It gets a little higher, it gets a little sweeter.

Jess: 41:19

I mean, it's no wonder that we, as women leaders, get stuck in this spot of wanting to control other people's perception of us because, we're basically told you are responsible for how other people receive you, and that is not, it's not fair. I mean to say it that way. Is is definitely absurd, and I don't think very many people are actually saying those words, but that is what. What it means in effect, when you're saying say it a certain way.

Lisa: 41:51

And that was exactly what my manager was saying. He was saying you need to get them to trust you more so that they don't interrupt you and cut you off in meetings. Like maybe that is a good, maybe that is a path, but like is that really the answer that we want? That the other person who's sort of being wronged in the situation has to work harder to get those other people who are doing the wrong thing to come on board with them. I mean what he was saying was get them to like you more essentially Right.

Jess: 42:19

Right, essentially I have I'm thinking about this from kind of two different experiences in my life that are similar in some ways and very different in others. The first was when I had a boss who cut me off repeatedly, skipped over me in meetings, was just very dismissive. He was the worst boss I have ever had in my life and he and I did not get along and there's so much that we can unpack in that all unto itself. But I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder and he did it one time and I said did you notice that you skip over me in meetings and that you interrupt me when I talk? He said what? What are you talking about? I said, yeah, it's happened several times now and I'm just wondering what's going on with that several times now and I'm just wondering what's going on with that. And he was able to confront that he had been doing it because he didn't trust me. And then we were able to get to a better place of trust where I did need to have that feedback.

Jess: 43:23

I was in a new environment that I didn't understand and it was good advice to kind of just like hang back and observe and see what you can see before jumping in and wrecking up the place, basically, but give myself time to observe the whole picture, and that has helped me, I think, in my leadership journey, even though there are so many other lessons that you know came from that bad experience.

Jess: 43:52

And then the other one is was when I had a very wonderful manager who was probably my, my best and favorite manager, and we were in I don't I don't remember all of the context, but it was the feedback, was basically like you might want to give context for why you're asking your question, because you are seeing things that other people might not see and you need to bring them along with you. And that was that. May have even been over the course of several interactions where I would ask a question, and I think I went to her and I said what is going on? Because people are making faces when I ask these questions like what, what do I need to be doing here, cause?

Lisa: 44:37

you're 10 steps ahead of everybody probably.

Jess: 44:40

Well, I, I don't know it, it did. I think there was a bit of an abrasive quality where I, they didn't know me yet they didn't know me in that situation, and so again, kind of similar to get to read the room a little bit, providing just an ounce of context of hey, I'm curious because of such and such, what is the next step with that? Just so I can you know, give the why in there, and I think that is honestly probably good practice for everyone to do.

Jess: 45:11

It's like my husband and I talk about the advice often given to little girls about how they need to smile more, and it just drives us crazy because everybody needs that advice. If you're going to give that advice, you better also teach that to little boys who are, you know, not otherwise hearing it, because it's just part of being in society with other people is to be friendly, likeable, to not be a jerk. Because you know you, you do get a reputation and then people don't want to work with you and then right, and I think that that definitely does speak to trust.

Lisa: 45:46

I mean, it goes to like a deep anthropological sort of background of like people who could do you harm maybe don't smile at you typically, unless they're psychopaths. So yeah, but yeah, I mean, nothing gets me riled up more than being told to smile, which I was told a lot in the early days of my government work, and I I didn't know what to do with it then, so I would just do it. I would just kind of do it and like be like okay, this makes you happy, right, okay, good. And then it really started to turn on me after a certain amount of time. I don't hear it nearly as much in the corporate space as I used to, but I, you know, I've also been working for almost 20 years, so there's a lot that's happened in those 20 years in a good way. You know, we've come a long way and in many ways objectively push the, you know, envelope towards the right way.

Jess: 46:40

So anyway, so yeah, so what are you going to do that? That is my burning question. Now that you've done this unpacking you, you're kind of figuring out how you you figured out in real time, I'm going to take the advice, sort of agnostic, of the situation.

Lisa: 46:58

So I I'm going to continue having one-on-ones with these people because it's the right thing to do for my program and because it makes us a better organization and because it makes me and them more informed and more connected. I don't think I'm going to do anything about the situation. I'm not going to limit my questions. I am going to continue. If I feel the need that I have a pertinent question for the group in real time, I will ask it. And I think that everybody should edit to some degree the number of questions that they're asking. If you get to a certain number, you should probably say let's talk. You know, let's, let's go have a conversation about this, Cause it seems like there's a lot of things that we need to communicate. But that is a group thing and I think if that's going to come from anyone, that's going to come from my VP, who's responsible for that meeting, to say you know, as a group, let's sort of limit our questions. So, but I am not going to edit myself in that way.

Jess: 48:07

I forget the name of the phenomenon, but it's like voice amplification or something, where you have somebody else in the room who said, oh, and like Lisa was just saying, I'm curious about whatever Do you know what I'm talking about and what that thing is called.

Lisa: 48:24

I consider that in some ways allyship. To some degree it might be allyship with like a little lowercase a, but I consider that to be a really, really like non-intrusive way to kind of ally with somebody and say in a, in a self-power way, like you cut this person off. They were saying something. I'm going to reiterate what they were saying and attribute it to them and the attribution piece, I mean that's a whole other thing we can unpack. But like I don't think there's a single woman in corporate America that has ever existed that has not had something they've said attributed to somebody else If it was a guy. This used to happen to me all the time in my previous work.

Jess: 49:08

That terrible boss. He and I would be standing there and I would say something and he would literally say that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Those were the words that would come out of his mouth and then, not even 30 seconds later, would say the exact same thing to the exact same person and claim it as his own idea. And I was like in bizarro land. It was so. It as his own idea, and I was like in bizarro land. It was so. It was beyond words there. As I said, there were so many leadership lessons from that. But I'm wondering do you have anybody who's in that meeting with you who might be able to observe, notice, validate that this phenomenon is happening and maybe not rep like? I don't think you need somebody to rescue you, but it might be helpful to kind of reiterate that you serve to take up space.

Lisa: 49:56

My VP is in this meeting with me most of the time. He wasn't in the one last week, unfortunately, but he is in this meeting most of the time and he did thank me for making him aware of it and he said I'm going to be more keen to see when this is happening in the future, and I was really appreciative of it. And he said I'm going to be more keen to see when this is happening in the future, and I was really appreciative of that, and that's, you know, something he is really good at doing is like saying like, ooh, I missed that. Thanks for letting me know, I will keep an eye out for it, and I do believe he will keep an eye out for it in the future. I don't know what that's going to translate to. Hopefully it will never come to that, it will never happen again.

Lisa: 50:29

But if it does and he is there I'm interested to see how he will react to it, because that might be a whole nother a whole nother unpacking Because, like I said, there are so many political dynamics at play in this global meeting, as there often are in global meetings where various stakeholders are coming together so that are completely, completely agnostic of me. I have no part to play in any of that, but I'm caught in the crossfire sometimes.

Jess: 50:58

So oh, if there could be a definition of caught in the crossfires. This is it. This is it acting out as a, as a woman who's in a leadership role in a male-dominated industry. Yeah, and then you have the global dynamics kind of at play too. Yes, it's really intersectional.

Lisa: 51:18

It is funny If I take a slight diversion to a cultural side of things. There's lots of cultures because this is a global meeting and one of the people who sort of perpetrated this last week is dutch, and the dutch are particularly known for their directness. It's one of the like the. I didn't know this until I started working with people from the netherlands, but they're known, sort of in a very proud way, of being no nonsense like. I see this cultural one-upsmanship between different cultures who all claim this, who all claim to have this nature, and I can see them trying to out direct each other.

Jess: 51:59

And here you are, as a woman from the US who's showing up direct and they're like no, you don't get to play in this game Right, and it's true.

Lisa: 52:09

You know, if there was an Olympics for directness, I don't know that America would come in gold on all that.

Jess: 52:14

But oh gosh, perhaps something to unpack another time. Yeah.

Lisa: 52:19

So anyway it was. It was a really, really interesting thing to kind of watch and I was really happy with the discussion not necessarily the outcome of the discussion with my VP, but with kind of recognizing things in real time that we were both doing to kind of like almost play into this super longstanding narrative. And then we were like whoops, we're walking down the wrong road here. Let's, let's pivot though.

Jess: 52:44

Okay, yeah. Well, we are just about at time here. Is there anything you want to take and wrap up from today's conversation?

Lisa: 52:54

I don't know. I feel like the theme of this entire discussion was asking questions and ways that it can go right and ways that it can go wrong. Right, so I am ultimately a questioner, and so it does not surprise me in any way that many of my highs and lows would be found through asking questions.

Jess: 53:18

Yeah, yeah. I feel like there's probably a bigger metaphor there about how showing up in that way like you have to take the good with the bad To be consistent in who you are. That means that sometimes you're going to get the benefit of it and sometimes you're going to get the brunt end of it.

Lisa: 53:38

Gretchen Rubin talks about in her podcast with her sister, the Happier podcast, questioner fatigue and how people who are married to or in close relationships with questioners tend to fizzle out in their I don't know excitement over being in those relationships because the questioners overwhelm them with.

Jess: 53:59

It's like when the kid just keeps asking why, why, why, why, why and you're like I don't know and now we know what you do?

Lisa: 54:07

is you ask them a question back?

Jess: 54:09

That is what I do anyway.

Lisa: 54:10

Exactly, the problems are our solution.

Jess: 54:15

Exactly, the problem is the solution. I think that's probably my takeaway from today.

Lisa: 54:21

Well, thank you. Thank you, it was good unpacking with you.

Jess: 54:24

It was good unpacking with you. I will see you next week.

Speaker 1: 54:31

Check you next week. Check you next time. Miss dive deep into life with jess and lisa. Tune in every week. You won't want to miss dive. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa, thank you.