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Joanne Lockwood: in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: Bites. And today is episode 220 with the title Empowering
Joanne Lockwood: Women to Rise. And I have the absolute honour and Privilege to
Joanne Lockwood: welcome Dr. Lois Frankel. Lois is a best selling author,
Joanne Lockwood: executive coach and women's empowerment
Joanne Lockwood: advocate. She helps women overcome limiting behaviours and
Joanne Lockwood: succeed in business without compromising who they
Joanne Lockwood: are. When I asked Lois to describe her superpower, she said
Joanne Lockwood: that it is her belief that to those whom much is given, much is
Joanne Lockwood: expected and her commitment to teaching other women how to
Joanne Lockwood: get what they want and deserve. Hello,
Joanne Lockwood: Lois. Welcome to the show.
Lois Frankel: Joanne, thank you so much for inviting me to join you.
Joanne Lockwood: It's a pleasure. And we've already had a good little chat before we pressed the record button and
Joanne Lockwood: you said you're in the U.S. is that
Joanne Lockwood: right?
Lois Frankel: I am. I'm in California. I just recently moved from the Los Angeles area
Lois Frankel: down towards the beach area. I'm in a little town called Dana Point Point, which is a
Lois Frankel: couple of towns north of Oceanside. And just most people know Laguna
Lois Frankel: beach, it's the next town south of Laguna beach, so in California, though originally
Lois Frankel: from New York.
Joanne Lockwood: So you've moved around a bit, east to west.
Lois Frankel: Yes, absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: You hopped over the middle, did you? You didn't get stuck in the
Joanne Lockwood: mountains?
Lois Frankel: I didn't get stuck in the middle. I shouldn't say stuck, because
Lois Frankel: it's. The middle is beautiful.
Joanne Lockwood: Beautiful, yeah.
Lois Frankel: But having grown up in New York, on Long island, when I was offered jobs in the middle of
Lois Frankel: the country, I always declined them because I felt
Lois Frankel: landlocked. So I've only lived on
Lois Frankel: coasts. I lived in New York, on Long Island, I lived in Miami and then I came
Lois Frankel: out here to Los Angeles.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I'm the same. I live not far from the coast. And if I go too far inland, I
Joanne Lockwood: mean, the UK is not a huge place by US standards, but yeah, if I get too far away from the water,
Joanne Lockwood: I kind of feel that uneasiness of not knowing where the water
Joanne Lockwood: is.
Lois Frankel: Yeah, exactly. And it's not to say the middle. There's anything wrong with the middle, because there
Lois Frankel: isn't. It just for me, feels a little claustrophobic, personally, never having lived in the
Lois Frankel: middle.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And also you've got the contrast between the Hustle and bustle and 24 hour New
Joanne Lockwood: York and that more spread out, la, California type environment
Joanne Lockwood: as well. And I noticed that real contrast when I was in New York. You walk everywhere or you
Joanne Lockwood: subway it or bus it everywhere. Everything's really kind of in a compact
Joanne Lockwood: area. But LA and San Francisco and even the whole of California is just more
Joanne Lockwood: sprawled, isn't it? You need a car and.
Lois Frankel: Yeah, it really is. They're like two different cultures. But you know, this country is so big,
Lois Frankel: Joanne, that we have so many subcultures within our
Lois Frankel: United States. So. Yes. You know, New York has one totally different
Lois Frankel: vibe. Los Angeles does. San Francisco does. You know, people who live in San Francisco don't want to live
Lois Frankel: in Los Angeles. People who live in San Diego would never live in San
Lois Frankel: Francisco. So, you know, we each have our preferences, I think, partly based on
Lois Frankel: how we grew up and what our values are.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Now, having been to San Francisco, LA and San Diego
Joanne Lockwood: and New York and Miami, I get it. I get, I get the difference of
Joanne Lockwood: vibe. But you're right, US is such a big place. It's map it onto
Joanne Lockwood: Europe. It's. It's several countries, isn't it? Easily.
Lois Frankel: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah.
Lois Frankel: You can't paint all Americans with the same brush, really, because we're very
Lois Frankel: different from place to place.
Joanne Lockwood: Especially this, in this current climate, we can't, we certainly can't paint
Joanne Lockwood: people with the same brush. Lots of different
Joanne Lockwood: perspectives. So you were infamous or famous for penning a book some 20 years
Joanne Lockwood: ago. Was it Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner
Joanne Lockwood: Office? And I guess that sparked a whole career for you coming out of that book or
Joanne Lockwood: enhanced the career you already had?
Lois Frankel: Both.
Joanne Lockwood: What got you into it?
Lois Frankel: Yeah, I'd say both, because when it first came out, all
Lois Frankel: the. All of a sudden I became an advocate for
Lois Frankel: women. And I was always kind of under the radar as an advocate for
Lois Frankel: women. But the fact is I was an executive coach, so I coached predominantly
Lois Frankel: men because I only worked in major corporations with people who
Lois Frankel: were referred to me by the corporation. So who did they invest
Lois Frankel: in? Men. So that was primarily who I was coaching at
Lois Frankel: the time. So when the book came out, all of a sudden everything
Lois Frankel: shifted. And at first I resisted it because I thought, wow, I've spent, you know, a
Lois Frankel: lot of my career trying to build this coaching business for both men and women
Lois Frankel: and a woman who does marketing and
Lois Frankel: branding. She said, lois, go with it, go with
Lois Frankel: it. Just be glad that you have this wave to take you along into
Lois Frankel: this new area that is consistent with your values and your
Lois Frankel: beliefs. It's just not how you were making your living
Lois Frankel: previously. So did I answer that part of the
Lois Frankel: question?
Joanne Lockwood: Absolutely, absolutely.
Lois Frankel: But when you asked me how to. So that's kind of how I got into this part of
Lois Frankel: it. But. But there's something just before that,
Lois Frankel: too. There's a backstory, and that is, you know, I mentioned during our pre
Lois Frankel: conversation that I worked for arco, the oil company, for quite a few years in
Lois Frankel: Human Resources. And while I was working there, I went to school at night to get
Lois Frankel: my PhD in counselling psychology, because what I really wanted to do my whole
Lois Frankel: life I dreamed of being a psychologist. So with ARCO paying for it, I got my PhD,
Lois Frankel: and then I went to the Powers that Be and I said, you know, you paid all this money
Lois Frankel: for my PhD, and now I. I'd like to be able to use it in the employee Assistance
Lois Frankel: programme. And they said to me, you're doing fine where you are, just stay
Lois Frankel: there. And I think that happens to a lot of
Lois Frankel: women. What happens? As we get more education or degrees or certificates or
Lois Frankel: just experience, people see us for who we are and what we were
Lois Frankel: doing. And I was actually working in Equal Employment Opportunity at the
Lois Frankel: time. I spent quite a few years in eeo, which now it's called dei, but back then we
Lois Frankel: called it eeo, spent quite a few years there and, and realised, you know, I
Lois Frankel: didn't. I didn't spend all this time, energy, going to school at night to be a
Lois Frankel: psychologist, to just stay where I am. So I quit and I started a private practise
Lois Frankel: of psychotherapy in downtown Los Angeles because I realised that I wanted to
Lois Frankel: work with that particular population. I wanted to work with working
Lois Frankel: people. Joanne I did it for about, I'd say about a year and a half, and the moment I
Lois Frankel: wanted to jump across the couch and put my hands around my client's neck and say,
Lois Frankel: how many times are we going to talk about the same
Lois Frankel: thing? I realised I'm probably not cut out to be a
Lois Frankel: therapist. And yet Again, that was all I wanted to do my whole
Lois Frankel: life. So it was like, at this point, left a good job, got a PhD, you know, what am I
Lois Frankel: going to do now? Well, as sometimes life happens to you in the way it should, a
Lois Frankel: woman I had done some training for came to me and said, lois, would you be willing
Lois Frankel: to coach someone? Now, this was 1989. There were not a lot of executive coaches
Lois Frankel: around at the time. There were hardly any, as a matter of
Lois Frankel: fact. And I looked at her and I said, I don't know exactly what you
Lois Frankel: want. And she said, oh, Lois, you've been a therapist, or you are a therapist,
Lois Frankel: you've done training, you worked in human resources, you put them all
Lois Frankel: together, you have a coach. This woman was always on the cutting edge of
Lois Frankel: everything. And I said, sure, I'd love to coach someone for
Lois Frankel: you. I figured it had to be better than what I was
Lois Frankel: doing. And she sent this woman to me because, remember back then, you got sent
Lois Frankel: for coaching because you were somebody who was too valuable to lose and too
Lois Frankel: painful to keep. And she sent this woman to me. And all I knew was that no one
Lois Frankel: wanted to work with her, that she was bristly and nobody wanted to work with
Lois Frankel: her. She comes in, she sits down. Now, remember, there's no coaching models out
Lois Frankel: there yet. So I used my very first coaching client to come up with my own
Lois Frankel: model. And I looked at her and I said, you know, maybe you could tell me a little
Lois Frankel: bit about what it was like growing up in your
Lois Frankel: household. Because I was a therapist. What was I going to
Lois Frankel: ask? And she, luckily for me, she went with the
Lois Frankel: programme. And what she said was, I grew up in a German
Lois Frankel: household. My parents taught me to always obey
Lois Frankel: authority. Don't waste time, keep your nose clean, don't gossip, don't get
Lois Frankel: involved in other people's business. You know, that Teutonic, that whole
Lois Frankel: Teutonic attitude. And it was very clear to me why people didn't want to work
Lois Frankel: with her, because she was doing all those things she learned in
Lois Frankel: childhood. And Joanne, that became my coaching model, that became my coaching
Lois Frankel: question. Tell me, what were the rules you learned in childhood that you had to
Lois Frankel: obey in order to get love, attention and
Lois Frankel: affection? In every household, there are rules and sometimes they're
Lois Frankel: explicit, sometimes they're implicit. In this German household, they were
Lois Frankel: quite explicit. So what she was doing was over relying on the behaviours that
Lois Frankel: she learned in childhood were appropriate, not realising they now were
Lois Frankel: getting in her way. And that actually formed the basis of my very first book,
Lois Frankel: which was called Stop Sabotaging Your Career. And it was for both women and
Lois Frankel: men. And in that book, I really talked about the seven primary reasons why I saw
Lois Frankel: people falter in their careers. And it was from these old
Lois Frankel: messages. Now, I want you to fast forward about 10
Lois Frankel: years. Now, I've been in coaching for about 10 years, coaching both men and
Lois Frankel: women, primarily men. But I was working with this one woman who was sent to me for
Lois Frankel: coaching because she was a little bit on the aggressive side of
Lois Frankel: assertive. We know what we call those, right? They're called
Lois Frankel: bitches. So she was sent to me for coaching because people found her kind of
Lois Frankel: bitchy. I worked with her for about two or three months and one day I went in for a
Lois Frankel: coaching session and she said, before we get started, I just want to tell you I
Lois Frankel: was invited to sit on the executive committee of my company and I went to give her
Lois Frankel: a high five and she stopped me and I said, what? And she said, you know, I've been
Lois Frankel: to those meetings, Lois, they're a waste of
Lois Frankel: time. And what popped out of my mouth was, honey, you got to quit being a
Lois Frankel: girl. Because what I realised was that she was acting like she was taught in
Lois Frankel: childhood that you have to be twice as good. You have to work twice as hard to be
Lois Frankel: considered half as good. Right? You know, you're never as good as
Lois Frankel: men. You have to just work, work, work, work, work, and maybe you'll get
Lois Frankel: recognised. When that popped out of my mouth, you know, honey, you gotta quit
Lois Frankel: being a girl. All the mistakes I saw women make because of how they were
Lois Frankel: socialised. I mean, up till now I was talking about family messages for both
Lois Frankel: girls, but now I started thinking, wait a minute, but girls get unique messages
Lois Frankel: in addition to the family messages. They get messages about be nice, be kind, be
Lois Frankel: helpful, be, you know, all these things, and that's what gets in their
Lois Frankel: way. And after I left my coaching session with her, I outlined all of what I was
Lois Frankel: calling quit being a girl that the publisher renamed to Nice Girls don't get the
Lois Frankel: Corner Office. And so that's really how this transition
Lois Frankel: happened.
Joanne Lockwood: Fascinating, fascinating. So you mentioned the seven things that tend to
Joanne Lockwood: get in the way. Out of the seven, is there a top one or are they all
Joanne Lockwood: pretty insightful?
Lois Frankel: Well, of course, I think, as the author, I think they're all pretty insightful, but I think the primary one
Lois Frankel: is building strong, mutually rewarding
Lois Frankel: relationships. And you're from Great
Lois Frankel: Britain. So in that book, I used examples of real life people who
Lois Frankel: derailed in their careers because they either didn't listen,
Lois Frankel: they didn't have strong relationships. And the example from Great Britain that I used was Margaret
Lois Frankel: Thatcher. If you read Margaret Thatcher's biography, you
Lois Frankel: learn that she grew up in a household. She was taught, Margaret, always think for yourself,
Lois Frankel: don't do things just because other people are doing them. Be
Lois Frankel: independent. She learned those lessons well and look at how they brought
Lois Frankel: her to Prime Minister of Great
Lois Frankel: Britain. But those messages also derailed
Lois Frankel: her. That my understanding and you know, you'll have to tell me if I'm wrong because as an American
Lois Frankel: looking in, or from what I've read, Margaret Thatcher derailed because of the poll tax controversy,
Lois Frankel: that Margaret Thatcher wanted to put a tax on everyone who
Lois Frankel: voted. And everyone else, her advisor said, you know, Margaret, this is not a
Lois Frankel: good idea. We don't think that you should do this. And that's when, if you recall
Lois Frankel: the famous line, you turn if you want to, the lady's not
Lois Frankel: for turning. That told us everything we needed to know about
Lois Frankel: her. It also tells us everything we need to know about why she
Lois Frankel: derailed. Because she wasn't really able to take in information from other
Lois Frankel: people. She didn't have those kinds of relationships that would support her in the long
Lois Frankel: run. She was a lone ranger. And so Joanne, let me ask you, would you agree with
Lois Frankel: that?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I mean, I was, this was what, late 70s,
Joanne Lockwood: and I was probably 16 years old or something at the
Joanne Lockwood: time when it all came off the rails, but I remember it quite
Joanne Lockwood: distinctly. And we had the miners strike, we had a lot of political unrest, all as a
Joanne Lockwood: result. And the Iron lady character that she had
Joanne Lockwood: defeated the striking miners, it defeated a lot of
Joanne Lockwood: things. But you're right, the poll tax became this kind of the hill she died on, I guess you would call
Joanne Lockwood: it. Fundamentally, it wasn't a bad
Joanne Lockwood: idea. Before the poll tax, you were kind of taxed as a household based on the size of your
Joanne Lockwood: house. And what she was trying to say, well, it's only fair if we base it on the number of people who
Joanne Lockwood: are eligible to vote. So it's almost like usage
Joanne Lockwood: based. So water metering, electricity, gas, so metering based on
Joanne Lockwood: usage. And so fundamentally it's a very conservative model and it meant
Joanne Lockwood: trying to create fairness. But unfortunately what happened was it meant the people who are very, very
Joanne Lockwood: rich with very, very big houses paying lot tax, only one person living in it
Joanne Lockwood: ended up being much, much better off because they were only paying for one
Joanne Lockwood: person. And people with five people living in a small council supplied house were ended
Joanne Lockwood: up paying five times the amount than they were before. So fundamentally
Joanne Lockwood: it advantaged the rich. And I think that divide was
Joanne Lockwood: lost on her. And I think you're right, she probably didn't listen to the
Joanne Lockwood: people around her counselling on it. And she was so set on not turning and not you
Joanne Lockwood: turning.
Lois Frankel: Yes. And that's a great example of someone who could have a fundamentally great
Lois Frankel: idea. But I think it was the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, who said, it's a
Lois Frankel: curse. Right. May you have a wonderful idea and not be able to convince anyone of
Lois Frankel: it. And so she really suffered from that and from what you just described, which I
Lois Frankel: hadn't understood before, it had a chilling
Lois Frankel: effect. What seemed to be neutral on the face had a chilling effect on people who
Lois Frankel: had less. And don't we see that happen even now in all kinds of
Lois Frankel: ways? Chilling effects. And I know we'll probably get to that a little bit later,
Lois Frankel: but, yes, that had a chilling effect. So as a result, she
Lois Frankel: derailed. So she was the opposite of a nice girl,
Lois Frankel: Right. She wasn't somebody who would go along to get
Lois Frankel: along. She wasn't someone who suffered from the disease to
Lois Frankel: please. So really, that first book, Sabotaging Your Career, was for both men and
Lois Frankel: women, and I saw both men and women having difficulty with that particular
Lois Frankel: behaviour. However, in Nice Girls don't get the Corner Office,
Lois Frankel: it's. It's kind of the opposite. It's not quite the opposite, because when they
Lois Frankel: change the title from Nice Girls from what I my working title, Quit Being A Girl,
Lois Frankel: to Nice Girls don't get the Corner Office, I said, you realise I'm going to spend
Lois Frankel: the rest of my life saying, you can be nice and can be
Lois Frankel: successful. And they were probably right because it sold a lot of
Lois Frankel: books. And, you know, it's intriguing, it piques curiosity, but also a lot of
Lois Frankel: people have told me I didn't buy the book because I thought you were gonna say you
Lois Frankel: had to be mean and nasty when nothing was further from the
Lois Frankel: truth. Because if I had the opportunity to coach Margaret Thatcher, I wouldn't
Lois Frankel: tell her to stop doing anything. And this is also kind of the basis of all my
Lois Frankel: coaching. Don't stop what you're good at, add new behaviours that are going to
Lois Frankel: create balance. And in Margaret Thatcher's case, given the opportunity, which
Lois Frankel: I never would have had anyway, I would have told her to
Lois Frankel: stop. Do more listening, ask more questions and more consciously decide the
Lois Frankel: hill that you're going to die on. When it comes to Nice Girls don't get the Corner
Lois Frankel: Office, All I'm saying is you can't be that nice little girl you were taught to be
Lois Frankel: in childhood and expect to achieve your adult
Lois Frankel: goals. Just like this client who was finally invited to sit on her executive
Lois Frankel: committee. She was obviously implementing some of the things we talked
Lois Frankel: about. You know, I talked to her about, you need to listen
Lois Frankel: more. You know people, we live in a society where we expect certain things from
Lois Frankel: men and certain things from women. And when you're not delivering those things,
Lois Frankel: people are going to react negatively to you and you don't have to deliver
Lois Frankel: them. I'm not saying you have to change one iota. I tell my clients this all the
Lois Frankel: time, don't have to change one iota. But look at the playing field you're on and
Lois Frankel: what does the playing field want from you? And if you want to win on that field, you
Lois Frankel: may need to learn a couple of new skills.
Joanne Lockwood: What you're saying to me sounds like what we would describe these days as emotional
Joanne Lockwood: intelligence. Having that self awareness
Joanne Lockwood: of. And you also. The other thing you said was build stronger
Joanne Lockwood: relationships. And that's the kind of the bookends of emotional intelligence, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? By being self aware, self regulating, the end result is you build stronger relationships through
Joanne Lockwood: being adaptive and understanding the game you're playing. Really?
Lois Frankel: You're absolutely right. We know that emotional intelligence is the sine
Lois Frankel: qua non for success, right? You can have a huge
Lois Frankel: IQ but a low EQ emotional quotient and you won't be
Lois Frankel: as successful as someone who has a lower IQ but a higher
Lois Frankel: eq. And we see that happen all the time, people who are not rocket
Lois Frankel: scientists rising to the top of their
Lois Frankel: organisations. And that's again because as you said, emotional
Lois Frankel: intelligence is about self awareness, self regulation, social
Lois Frankel: skills, the ability to show empathy. It's about all those
Lois Frankel: things. Now ironically, Joanne, all those things are things that come naturally to
Lois Frankel: women. And so women tend to be more emotionally intelligent than
Lois Frankel: men. They tend to be. When I was coaching more men, I used to do what
Lois Frankel: I called the feminization of leadership, that men had to learn to
Lois Frankel: be more like women if they were going to be successful. They had to learn to care what other people
Lois Frankel: think, to listen more, to show more empathy,
Lois Frankel: right? They had to become more self aware, see themselves as others see
Lois Frankel: them. If they wanted to be successful leaders, that's exactly what they had to
Lois Frankel: do. Now what we know today, the pendulum is swinging back because you
Lois Frankel: have people like Mark Zuckerberg saying men have gotten too soft, we need to really
Lois Frankel: toughen up, you know, leadership. We need Men to be tougher
Lois Frankel: leaders. You see, our own Secretary of Defence, Pete
Lois Frankel: Hegseth, I can never pronounce his name and I don't really
Lois Frankel: care. Saying that women don't belong in. Don't really belong in the
Lois Frankel: military.
Joanne Lockwood: Right.
Lois Frankel: So we've seen the pendulums shift, but I believe that emotional
Lois Frankel: intelligence will always be the sine qua non for
Lois Frankel: success. It always has been, it always will be.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I don't see many wars being fought by women in the world or
Joanne Lockwood: started by women or propagated by women. Women are often the victims or the
Joanne Lockwood: targets or the. Or the people who are most affected by
Joanne Lockwood: conflict. These scenarios. And Margaret Thatcher wasn't for
Joanne Lockwood: turning. There's a lot of politicians who have the same sort of impact as
Joanne Lockwood: well. They think the biggest and loudest is best.
Lois Frankel: Exactly.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah.
Lois Frankel: And you know, it's interesting because I did a little talk the other day and somebody said that they
Lois Frankel: thought the military style of leadership, loudest is best, top
Lois Frankel: down.
Joanne Lockwood: Right.
Lois Frankel: That tough kind of leadership is the best. And I said, not
Lois Frankel: anymore. I mean, when I was growing up in the corporation, when the
Lois Frankel: boss said jump, we said, how high? If you say jump today,
Lois Frankel: people don't say how high. They say, why? Why do you want me to do
Lois Frankel: this? What's in it for me?
Joanne Lockwood: Right.
Lois Frankel: It's a discussion. And so, as I explained to this gentleman who said he thought
Lois Frankel: military leadership was the best, I said, it's only good in an emergency
Lois Frankel: situation. It's only good when you need someone to say, take that
Lois Frankel: hill. It's not good in MO and probably 90% of leadership
Lois Frankel: scenarios. It doesn't work. And it particularly doesn't work in this day and
Lois Frankel: age. And it's precisely. I'm glad you went there, Joanne, because it's precisely
Lois Frankel: why I say if ever we've lived in a time that cries out for women's leadership, that
Lois Frankel: time is now. Because you look around the world and you see war, poverty, famine,
Lois Frankel: corporate greed. We're not at the helm. You know, I said to a friend the other day,
Lois Frankel: what do you think would have happened if Netanyahu and Donald Trump were replaced
Lois Frankel: with two women? Would we be at war? And she said, oh, no, definitely
Lois Frankel: not. We would be at the negotiating table. And I believe that with all my heart that
Lois Frankel: we need, just as you're saying, we need more women in significant leadership
Lois Frankel: roles if we want to change the world. You may have read the
Lois Frankel: book. There's a book I wish I wrote. It's called Gather the Women, Save the World by
Lois Frankel: Jean Shinoda Bolen. And she talks about how if we have any hope of saving this
Lois Frankel: world, it will be because we bring women together in leadership
Lois Frankel: roles.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think I completely agree with that and I'm sure, hopefully you'll agree with what I'm going to say is
Joanne Lockwood: that we need a balance, don't we? We need, we need that, both that masculine and feminine
Joanne Lockwood: energy to balance out those perspectives. So it's not one or the
Joanne Lockwood: other. I think, I think what we need to do is we need to bring the skills, bring the emotional
Joanne Lockwood: intelligence. And we can't also say that there are men who don't have emotional
Joanne Lockwood: intelligence. It's not a, a purely female
Joanne Lockwood: trait. In terms that we can. We always used to argue that women had no leadership
Joanne Lockwood: capability. It was a man's job to be, to be a leader. You know, the army, the, back in the
Joanne Lockwood: 1800s and the 90s where women's role was to, to walk around looking pretty all the
Joanne Lockwood: time. There was no, there's no expectation that women could do
Joanne Lockwood: anything. But yeah, I think it's just trying to find that, that natural
Joanne Lockwood: synergy between the, between the, the thinking styles and the emotional styles, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it?
Lois Frankel: Absolutely. And I'm with you. It's about balance. You know, the Native Americans had a
Lois Frankel: word for it, it's called Koyaanisqatsi. And it's about world
Lois Frankel: imbalance. And I think that's exactly what has to
Lois Frankel: happen. And we are totally out of balance right now. And I think that's why so many
Lois Frankel: people are suffering. There's too much suffering in the world because we are out of
Lois Frankel: balance.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, there's too many conflicts at the moment that are
Joanne Lockwood: bouncing and bumping off each other with an agenda that nobody really
Joanne Lockwood: understands. Is it about money? Is it about power? Is it about
Joanne Lockwood: oil? Is it about what's it all about? And it comes down to
Joanne Lockwood: a certain group of people who may well be described as men without
Joanne Lockwood: enough female influence. And I think if you look at some of the administrations around the world, they are male
Joanne Lockwood: dominated. Those cultures and societies do not respect women's
Joanne Lockwood: opinions. And it's. And we see some of the areas of the world, Afghanistan, places like that, rolling back women's
Joanne Lockwood: rights even further. That's a really sad state of
Joanne Lockwood: affairs. And we can't solve that problem today. But yeah, it's. You're right,
Joanne Lockwood: it's. We need that energy, we need those, that thinking. And wars would be
Joanne Lockwood: less. Well, wars would be different. Wars would be
Joanne Lockwood: different. We've probably still. They'll be bitchy to each other, but they might result in
Joanne Lockwood: not talking to each other for a while or something else happening. But we certainly wouldn't be launching missiles as a first
Joanne Lockwood: reaction.
Lois Frankel: Exactly, exactly. Did you read the book the Chalice and the Blade by
Lois Frankel: Riane?
Joanne Lockwood: No, I haven't. Not.
Lois Frankel: I think it was Riane Eisler. I think Eisler was the
Lois Frankel: author. And in this book she talked about the fact that we know that
Lois Frankel: there were matriarchies throughout
Lois Frankel: history. And we know that because when you look at their graves and the
Lois Frankel: burial sites, the, the ores, the iron and the ores were used to create
Lois Frankel: chalices that you drink out of to create ornamental things because
Lois Frankel: that's what was surrounding the women in these
Lois Frankel: graves. Right. And then when the, the. I think they were Nordic, but I
Lois Frankel: don't want to. I don't want to. I'm not sure I can swear to
Lois Frankel: that. But somehow as people came from the north and invaded, they came
Lois Frankel: and they took those irons and oars and they made weapons out of
Lois Frankel: them. And we saw it move towards patriarchal
Lois Frankel: societies. So this whole notion of the Chalice and the Blade, it's
Lois Frankel: exactly what you're saying brought that to
Lois Frankel: mind. That would there be wars? Yeah,
Lois Frankel: sure. But would they look different?
Lois Frankel: Probably. They'd probably look a lot
Lois Frankel: different. And missiles would not be the first thing we'd think to use
Lois Frankel: our resources for.
Joanne Lockwood: I think we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be bombing or killing women and children even by
Joanne Lockwood: mistake in that situation. And there'd be a lot more value to human
Joanne Lockwood: life. I think that's the sad thing is it's the innocence, innocent people that get caught up in
Joanne Lockwood: all this. The people who are inadvertently becoming human shields or human
Joanne Lockwood: victims of over exuberant
Joanne Lockwood: casualties. Acceptable losses, I think they probably call it
Joanne Lockwood: and.
Lois Frankel: Right.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah.
Lois Frankel: You know, I think it was Golda Meir who said a leader who
Lois Frankel: doesn't. Isn't cautious about sending their people into war
Lois Frankel: doesn't deserve to be a leader.
Joanne Lockwood: No. If people are expendable, they become.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And I think that takes us back to the concept of the emotional intelligence, the need
Joanne Lockwood: to balance that out. And I've got a good friend who actually, she's been
Joanne Lockwood: on this podcast. She was a Tornado fighter pilot and she did tours of
Joanne Lockwood: Iraq and she used to fly these tornadoes and she, she, she fought in combat as well as a, as
Joanne Lockwood: a female fighter pilot.
Lois Frankel: Tornado or torpedoes? Tornado.
Joanne Lockwood: Tornado. Tornado. Tornado, yes. It was a European
Joanne Lockwood: fighter.
Lois Frankel: Oh, okay.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And they still Fly them today. So yes, it's a. I think there's different
Joanne Lockwood: configurations. One is a combat fighter and the other configuration is a bomber that
Joanne Lockwood: had a sort of dual depending on the model and depending on the
Joanne Lockwood: configuration. And I listened to her, I've listened to her podcast, I've listened to
Joanne Lockwood: her an audible book as well. And her experience in the military really, really did sort
Joanne Lockwood: of shine to like the title of her book is An Officer Not a
Joanne Lockwood: Gentleman. So she talks about what it was like to be one of the first female fighter
Joanne Lockwood: pilots and the bias and the prejudice she faced trying to break into that man's
Joanne Lockwood: world. And I listened to it and I was in the military, I joined from school and I did three
Joanne Lockwood: or four years in the military when I was younger. And I remember my experience of being
Joanne Lockwood: that very much you were shouted at, it was commander control, this is the way it had to
Joanne Lockwood: be, jump how high, that types of things. But I listened to her story and she was probably
Joanne Lockwood: in the military 20 years or maybe 20 years after me. The way she described it was very
Joanne Lockwood: much more enlightened and there was a lot more emotional intelligence, a lot more
Joanne Lockwood: proper, what I would call modern day leadership thinking in there rather than just
Joanne Lockwood: shouting at each other. And I saw that as a real difference in the way she described
Joanne Lockwood: it. Okay, she was an officer and I wasn't an officer. So yeah, they do talk
Joanne Lockwood: differently. But I did notice a shift in the way that leaders, certainly in the UK
Joanne Lockwood: military are being nurtured and developed now.
Lois Frankel: I love the title of her book, An Officer Not a
Lois Frankel: Gentleman. And I absolutely agree with you in terms of this whole notion of how are
Lois Frankel: you going to bring the best out in your troops? That there is a philosophy that
Lois Frankel: says you must be a leader for your time. So, for example, you couldn't take
Lois Frankel: MacArthur and put him in charge of the troops today because he would not be
Lois Frankel: effective. And it's exactly what your friend is saying, is that in times of
Lois Frankel: danger, right, when danger is imminent, you have to be more command and
Lois Frankel: control. But you have a whole generation of people in the service today that just aren't going
Lois Frankel: willing to do that. They're just not going to follow because you said that they
Lois Frankel: should. So I agree with her wholeheartedly.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, go back to the First World War, if you weren't prepared to go over the top and
Joanne Lockwood: run and fight, then you were shot as a deserter or something
Joanne Lockwood: else. But I hope we would no longer do that in a version of
Joanne Lockwood: society. Maybe some societies might do, but so Human life is valued differently than it was
Joanne Lockwood: 100, 150 years ago.
Lois Frankel: You know, Julian, I'd like to think that, and I think we have moved in that direction, particularly
Lois Frankel: as we've seen more women enter business, more women enter the political
Lois Frankel: arena, not enough, but more. And so I'd like to think
Lois Frankel: that. But then when I look at what's going on in the world today, it doesn't seem that that's
Lois Frankel: true. Does it seem true to you that. That we are valuing human lives
Lois Frankel: more?
Joanne Lockwood: No. I mean, now you call it al. I would like to think
Joanne Lockwood: that we probably have that aspiration more than we ever
Joanne Lockwood: did. We probably think about it, but the reality probably is that acceptable
Joanne Lockwood: losses, acceptable things happen. I think we probably, the
Joanne Lockwood: people who rationalise it, they still rationalise it in a need based
Joanne Lockwood: sort of decision. Sorry, we had to take that target
Joanne Lockwood: out. Sorry, there were children.
Lois Frankel: Collateral damage.
Joanne Lockwood: Collateral damage. The, the means lead to the end. We were trying to
Joanne Lockwood: achieve. And. But then I don't think it's fair to say that women wouldn't make that
Joanne Lockwood: decision. But most people from the outside looking in wouldn't make that
Joanne Lockwood: decision. So somehow the inner circle making these decisions, their echo
Joanne Lockwood: chamber is almost. It becomes their operating procedure is acceptable
Joanne Lockwood: and they are, they're not getting challenged enough. Is that the issue?
Lois Frankel: Well, the inner chamber is primarily Caucasian men, isn't
Lois Frankel: it? And so if we look at it that way, they haven't changed that
Lois Frankel: much. Because, look, we talked a little earlier about the erosion of DEI,
Lois Frankel: right? And it quickly eroded, more quickly than I thought it could have,
Lois Frankel: given how far we'd come, which tells me it wasn't on a strong base to start
Lois Frankel: with and that Caucasian men only went along with it because they had
Lois Frankel: to. So when you talk about this, you know, the way that you describe this, I
Lois Frankel: think it's that. And I don't mean to sound. I know this sounds horrible to
Lois Frankel: say that it's Caucasian men, but that's who's in the echo
Lois Frankel: chamber. I mean, when I picture who's in there, I picture Caucasian
Lois Frankel: men. And so I'm thinking, so what's wrong with this
Lois Frankel: picture? If there were more people of colour, if there were more people,
Lois Frankel: people, more women, right? If there were just more people who were
Lois Frankel: different of every kind, lgbtq, if there were more people like that in
Lois Frankel: that echo chamber, I think it would create that balance that we talked
Lois Frankel: about earlier. Does that make sense? You look like you might be
Lois Frankel: disagreeing with me or maybe you just.
Joanne Lockwood: No, I agree completely. And I think. Sorry I was nodding in
Joanne Lockwood: my head, probably not nodding outward. So, yeah, you're right. There's still this perception
Joanne Lockwood: that hiring for DEI or hiring for difference is hiring for second
Joanne Lockwood: best. And we saw that rhetoric coming out of the new administration
Joanne Lockwood: in states where there was a plane crash or something, and it came down to the
Joanne Lockwood: fact if that had been a white man flying that plane, it wouldn't have
Joanne Lockwood: crashed. So we should not allow women to fly planes because we can't trust
Joanne Lockwood: them. Yet you can put autonomous
Joanne Lockwood: cars on the road in San Francisco and say that, okay, it still caused 800 serious
Joanne Lockwood: accidents, but it's better than a driver doing
Joanne Lockwood: it.
Lois Frankel: You know, it's, again, collateral
Lois Frankel: damage. It's collateral damage to the
Lois Frankel: technology. Right. It's the technology, what's most
Lois Frankel: important. And we don't hold the technology back because of collateral
Lois Frankel: damage. We don't stop wars because of collateral damage. There's something faulty in that
Lois Frankel: thinking.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, but what you were saying there about, or we were saying together about, you know, hiring for diversity, hiring for second
Joanne Lockwood: best, there was this perception. And what you said, immediately someone said, took the clothes off and said, it's
Joanne Lockwood: okay. You don't have to be nice anymore. It's so difficult being nice to everybody
Joanne Lockwood: now. I can just go back to being me and being abrasive and dismissive and thinking
Joanne Lockwood: in that way. It's almost like a relief to the people who
Joanne Lockwood: had. Who had the power.
Lois Frankel: Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Because how did it get eroded and in
Lois Frankel: some cases obliterated so quickly? We're talking about within months, within
Lois Frankel: days. Yeah, yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Right.
Lois Frankel: Yeah. It's like. And it's because people never really bought into it to begin
Lois Frankel: with. Human beings. I don't know that human beings really want
Lois Frankel: equality to begin with. And I'm thinking
Lois Frankel: about. This is a little bit of
Lois Frankel: a. Kind of tangential, but I think it fits in here. And you can certainly let me know if it
Lois Frankel: doesn't. They did this study once where they brought together all these people who won the
Lois Frankel: lottery. Okay. So all these lottery winners came together at a
Lois Frankel: cocktail party. By the end of the cocktail party, the lottery
Lois Frankel: winners were divided by how much they
Lois Frankel: won. So the people who won the most gravitated
Lois Frankel: towards each other and formed one group. The people who earned the least
Lois Frankel: gravitated towards each other, formed another
Lois Frankel: group. And it kind of speaks to how human beings tend to
Lois Frankel: segregate and find ways to separate from each other rather than
Lois Frankel: find the similarities. You know, and again, there's the saying, you know, in the End, we're all more
Lois Frankel: alike than we are different, because all the research does show that we're all more alike
Lois Frankel: than we are. There's more difference within any one group than there is between
Lois Frankel: groups. So again, it kind of speaks to our desire to
Lois Frankel: segregate and to find ways to say who's up, who's down,
Lois Frankel: who's in, who's out. Right,
Lois Frankel: yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: It's a very human thing, though, isn't it? If you go back forty, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand years
Joanne Lockwood: ago, anybody who came from over the hill generally wanted to do you
Joanne Lockwood: harm. They didn't come and say, hi, how you
Joanne Lockwood: doing? Can we have a coffee? They wanted to take what you had, your women, your food,
Joanne Lockwood: your children, whatever it was, and destroy you to empower
Joanne Lockwood: them. I think we still have that protectionism. If you're different, you're from over the
Joanne Lockwood: hill, therefore you must mean me harm. Affinity bias and in group and out group,
Joanne Lockwood: I think that's still part of our psyche and that's what we've got to try and fight
Joanne Lockwood: against. You're different. I don't trust you, you're not
Joanne Lockwood: me. And we also have this bias that we think we are
Joanne Lockwood: better than other people, and people who are more like us must also be better than
Joanne Lockwood: other people. And that's an inbuilt bias. People don't see
Joanne Lockwood: that within us. We still believe that I'm right, I have to be right, I want to be
Joanne Lockwood: right.
Lois Frankel: Yeah, that's well put, Joanne. That's actually really well put about over the
Lois Frankel: hill. It's like we're tribal. We're still tribal, aren't
Lois Frankel: we?
Joanne Lockwood: We are, we are. And, you know, we've become us and you become
Joanne Lockwood: them. And it's. We see it all the time. As soon as you are able to them somebody or other,
Joanne Lockwood: somebody, you can then use dehumanising language. If you dehumanise, the empathy
Joanne Lockwood: goes and you just look at the rhetoric that comes out of certain politician's mouth, how
Joanne Lockwood: everybody this person doesn't like has a bad name and that bad name
Joanne Lockwood: sticks. You become Sloppy Joe or you become Crooked Hillary or whatever it
Joanne Lockwood: is. So you lose the human factor. You just become this
Joanne Lockwood: label. And it's easier to demonise a label than it is to demonise a human, a
Joanne Lockwood: person. And I think that's what's going on. You see. You see the language that's being used and it's
Joanne Lockwood: designed to divide and
Joanne Lockwood: dehumanise.
Lois Frankel: Absolutely. What's that saying? Defamation precedes
Lois Frankel: annihilation?
Joanne Lockwood: Yes. And you look at the history, certainly in Nazism and how that
Joanne Lockwood: worked. You create by that. Was it the seven stage of genocide or whatever it may be, or
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it is, you just gradually erode somebody, dehumanise them and then you could do
Joanne Lockwood: what you like. Once you don't see that person as a human, it's no different to slaughtering
Joanne Lockwood: a cow for food, is it? You don't have any feelings for it, it just becomes food or becomes
Joanne Lockwood: vermin. And once you get people into that category, there's no
Joanne Lockwood: breaks. But going back to what you're saying earlier about the privilege and the
Joanne Lockwood: differences, I was thinking about, if you've ever seen the video, the privilege race,
Joanne Lockwood: where the people line up on the start line, they take a step forward or they take another
Joanne Lockwood: step forward of this and they take another step forward and at the end of it, so I think
Joanne Lockwood: there's a school somewhere and they. They line everybody up at the start line and they ask a
Joanne Lockwood: series of questions. One of the questions is, do you have your own mobile phone
Joanne Lockwood: contract? Do you have a book at home? Are you at college because you're intelligent or
Joanne Lockwood: because you got a scholarship for playing sport or something like
Joanne Lockwood: this? And then what they did is they look, they asked the people at the front to turn around
Joanne Lockwood: and look at the people at the back. And generally it was people who are of
Joanne Lockwood: colour. No socioeconomic state was rooted at the start
Joanne Lockwood: line. And then the people of the college goers, the privileged people, were generally
Joanne Lockwood: leaps and bounds ahead and when they turn around, they look and you can see the shame almost
Joanne Lockwood: in people's eyes that they had so much advantage and some people
Joanne Lockwood: didn't. But what always strikes me when I look at that video is that nobody ever says, I need
Joanne Lockwood: to go walk back, I need to. I need to cede my privilege. I need to cede all the benefits I've
Joanne Lockwood: got and come and join you. That's the trouble with our society, is we all want betterment
Joanne Lockwood: for ourselves or for our children, our children's
Joanne Lockwood: children. And we're not going to say, oh, no, no, you have that job, you have that extra
Joanne Lockwood: money. I'll give you all my money. We want to be worried about the rainy day, aren't
Joanne Lockwood: we? We don't live in a sufficiency world, we live in a gluttony
Joanne Lockwood: world. We always want a bit more, just in case. A bit more just in
Joanne Lockwood: case.
Lois Frankel: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I'd love to see that video.
Joanne Lockwood: As a matter of fact, if anyone's listening, to this, just go into YouTube and type
Joanne Lockwood: privilege Walk, I think it is, or Privilege Race.
Lois Frankel: Okay.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a lot of variants. It's often used as a. Well, it was in the DEI sort
Joanne Lockwood: of coaching space. Whether you can still find this online, I don't
Joanne Lockwood: know. But some very good videos.
Lois Frankel: You're right about feeling as if you never have enough,
Lois Frankel: right? Because money is not about money. It's not about having
Lois Frankel: enough. It's about keeping score, particularly for
Lois Frankel: men. All right, it's about keeping score. So look at somebody like Elon Musk
Lois Frankel: who has. And I could name all these other people too, who have more money than
Lois Frankel: they're ever going to need in their entire
Lois Frankel: lives. They could take. If you have $20 billion, you could take a billion and
Lois Frankel: you could solve world hunger. But does it
Lois Frankel: happen? No. And that's the other interesting thing, is there
Lois Frankel: was. I recently read an article about how women are much more philanthropic
Lois Frankel: than men. Look at what named MacKenzie. I can't think of her first
Lois Frankel: name. Bezos's ex wife giving away all of that money,
Lois Frankel: right? It's like we see this happen over and
Lois Frankel: over. Gates wife giving away money, giving it away to good
Lois Frankel: causes. But we don't see that happening for the richest of the rich because
Lois Frankel: it's not about the money. It's about keeping
Lois Frankel: score.
Joanne Lockwood: A sitcom, I think it's. I think you call it a sitcom on. I think it's Apple TV called
Joanne Lockwood: Loot.
Lois Frankel: Yeah, I've heard of that.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. It's about this. This woman who gets divorced and gets
Joanne Lockwood: half of her husband's billions in a divorce settlement. She then decides it's going to spend the rest of her life
Joanne Lockwood: giving it away. And it sort of plots that the comical,
Joanne Lockwood: satirical way that she gets thwarted and how power gets
Joanne Lockwood: behind each other to try and prevent her giving it
Joanne Lockwood: away. Being. Being a genuinely sort of philanthropic
Joanne Lockwood: billionaire. It's almost like society goes around and saying, you can't give your money away because you're going to give
Joanne Lockwood: us a bad reputation. And it's quite, quite comical to see that, that if you've got that
Joanne Lockwood: much money, and you're right, you can never give it away. Bill Gates is giving away money like hand over
Joanne Lockwood: fist and he's still a billionaire. You cannot give it away quick enough to make a
Joanne Lockwood: difference.
Lois Frankel: You can't. You can't. And, you know, I just read something yesterday that said, you
Lois Frankel: know, consider this. What if after somebody has a billion dollars,
Lois Frankel: they. Their taxes go significantly up,
Lois Frankel: right? Once you reach a billion, your taxes are like significantly more
Lois Frankel: the taxes on that billion could really help everyone
Lois Frankel: else. Like you're saying, you know, what about the people who are less
Lois Frankel: privileged? It would really help them. But we're not willing to go in that in this
Lois Frankel: country. We're not even willing to like increase taxes on businesses or the
Lois Frankel: wealthy. We're not willing to do that. Those initiatives somehow don't
Lois Frankel: get very far.
Joanne Lockwood: No, I read a story. Maybe you can help on this one. One of the things that Nixon was
Joanne Lockwood: going to do was introduce universal basic
Joanne Lockwood: income. UBI was it? And he was, I think, one vote off or something, getting it
Joanne Lockwood: through. And then obviously Watergate and everything else crumbled
Joanne Lockwood: around. But he at that stage recognised, even Nixon recognised, that people
Joanne Lockwood: need sufficient to live on. And there's this myth that poor people don't know how
Joanne Lockwood: to manage money. Poor people are better at managing money than rich people who
Joanne Lockwood: squander it on stuff and nothing. And rich people waste more money than poor
Joanne Lockwood: people ever have. So there's this myth that if you give people universal basic
Joanne Lockwood: income, they will squander it. We want to keep the poor, poor and needy to make
Joanne Lockwood: sure that they're grateful and work so that rich people who have money don't need
Joanne Lockwood: to work. And because they're, and I think that's the divide in society, we want to
Joanne Lockwood: create this divide. If, if, if poor people didn't need, didn't need to work, what
Joanne Lockwood: would they do all day? Yeah, it's. They don't know what to do with
Joanne Lockwood: leisure. And it's. I, I think it's, there's this disconnect in society where we
Joanne Lockwood: gotta try and plug those holes. I mean, we can't solve that today, obviously, but
Joanne Lockwood: that's some of the fundamental problem, even going back to what you're saying
Joanne Lockwood: about the gender divide. And it's making sure that women have something to
Joanne Lockwood: do.
Lois Frankel: Absolutely, I'm with you. Absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: How do you move the mindset? You obviously coached a lot of men, a lot of
Joanne Lockwood: women, and you said that quite often they have this, a common
Joanne Lockwood: blocker, which you find you almost wanna, as you say, get off from your chair, go
Joanne Lockwood: over the couch and give em a shake and say, come on, how do
Joanne Lockwood: they overcome those blockers? Is it a kind of epiphany or is there a way
Joanne Lockwood: of coaching people through this?
Lois Frankel: Well, you know, it's like the old joke. How many psychologists does it take to
Lois Frankel: change a light bulb? It only takes one, but the light bulb has to really want to
Lois Frankel: change. Right. And so it's the same thing when you're Coaching people, what's in
Lois Frankel: it for them? People don't change because it's a nice thing to
Lois Frankel: do. Most people, I should say most people, they don't change because it's a nice
Lois Frankel: thing to do. They do it because there's something in it for
Lois Frankel: them. So it's always about finding where is the
Lois Frankel: leverage. And the leverage is different for
Lois Frankel: everyone. I remember coaching one man when he got his feedback because, you know,
Lois Frankel: we've always used 360 feedback to hold up the mirror to let people say, here's how
Lois Frankel: people see you. Okay, this one man started
Lois Frankel: crying. And I mean, he was tough and he started crying and he said, I, I consider
Lois Frankel: myself a Christian. And the fact that people see me like this, I'm not acting very
Lois Frankel: Christian now, that was the leverage for him,
Lois Frankel: okay? That was the epiphany for him. I think once people have the mirror held up and
Lois Frankel: they can see how other people see them, how they experience them, then they can
Lois Frankel: make some choices about what's in it for me to
Lois Frankel: change. So that was that it in that case. In another case, it was quite the
Lois Frankel: opposite. I was coaching a man who was sent to me for coaching because his company
Lois Frankel: said he wasn't an adding enough value, that he would never disagree with
Lois Frankel: anybody. He was, you know, he was acting more like a nice girl,
Lois Frankel: right? Never disagree with anybody, always very nice, very
Lois Frankel: pleasant. Everybody liked him. But when things tough, things had to be said, he
Lois Frankel: wouldn't say it. And so when I asked him the coaching question, tell me about what
Lois Frankel: it was like growing up in your house and what were some of the rules for
Lois Frankel: membership. He said, I, I grew up in a very religious household and I was taught to
Lois Frankel: always turn the other cheek. And I said, that's a good thing to learn, isn't
Lois Frankel: it? At the same time, if you always turn the other cheek, then some things that
Lois Frankel: shouldn't happen are going to happen. And you need to be able to find your
Lois Frankel: voice. You know, I go back to, it's not stopping what you're good
Lois Frankel: at. It's about adding behaviours. And in this man's case, I needed to help him
Lois Frankel: develop some new skills for being able to disagree without being
Lois Frankel: disagreeable. Because that's what was important to him, was to be
Lois Frankel: likable. I want everybody to be likable. Hey, you know, likable is necessary for
Lois Frankel: success. Being likable is necessary, it's not
Lois Frankel: sufficient. And so, and that goes back to that emotional
Lois Frankel: intelligence. So it is about finding the
Lois Frankel: leverage. For some people, it's about getting a promotion you know, I could be
Lois Frankel: coaching a woman and she says, you know, I want to get this
Lois Frankel: promotion. And I said, well, in order to get that promotion, you're going to have
Lois Frankel: to speak up more in meetings, you're going to have to speak louder, you're going to
Lois Frankel: have to speak earlier. Are you willing to do those
Lois Frankel: things? If you want the promotion, you're going to do
Lois Frankel: it. If you don't, why change? There's no need to
Lois Frankel: change. So you know, to answer your question, it is always about for each
Lois Frankel: individual, it's different and it is finding that place that this is changing is
Lois Frankel: valuable to me. I am going to get something out of it, of
Lois Frankel: it. And I think most people don't just change for the sake of
Lois Frankel: changing. It's too hard, it's too hard. Why should
Lois Frankel: they? Did I answer that question?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. As you were talking there, it's going through my head about that word
Joanne Lockwood: likable. And I came to the realisation about 10 years ago that a lot of these things
Joanne Lockwood: are in my own control to be likable. I control whether I'm
Joanne Lockwood: likable. That's for me. If I want to be likable, I could do something about
Joanne Lockwood: that. If I want to be worthy of respect, I can do something about
Joanne Lockwood: that. If I want to be loved, I need to be lovable. So all of those basic things are in
Joanne Lockwood: my control. And if I, if I'm self aware enough to know that that's what I want to
Joanne Lockwood: achieve, I could be likable, I could be lovable, I could be worthy of respect
Joanne Lockwood: because I'm now empowered. That's on me. And I think the other thing that you
Joanne Lockwood: picked up on there is I don't like it, I don't like everybody, therefore I don't
Joanne Lockwood: have expect everyone to like me. And that's fair, it's a fair
Joanne Lockwood: swap. I don't have.
Lois Frankel: But that's really hard for women. I think that's really hard for most
Lois Frankel: women. I think most women do have this disease to please and they want
Lois Frankel: everyone to like them. You know, I always say I'm a recovering nice
Lois Frankel: girl. It's like I make a lot of the mistakes still and I catch
Lois Frankel: myself and it's hard for me to say difficult things, to have a difficult
Lois Frankel: conversation with someone. It doesn't mean it stops me from doing it, it just means it's hard to
Lois Frankel: do. But I know what the payoff will be, that there'll be a positive
Lois Frankel: payoff. And so, you know, this whole thing about this need to
Lois Frankel: please. I used to have a Little saying in my office, it was from Quincy
Lois Frankel: Jones and it said, not one bit of my self respect
Lois Frankel: depends on your opinion of me. And that's the place I think we
Lois Frankel: all need to get. And it sounds like, Joanne, that's where you are, that not one bit of
Lois Frankel: your self respect depends on someone else's opinion of you, that you
Lois Frankel: are in control of your self respect. You get self respect because you respect
Lois Frankel: yourself. That's what I'm hearing you say, correct?
Joanne Lockwood: Absolutely. And I had to do the work myself. I had to realise that this was in me and
Joanne Lockwood: how I show up is in my control. And I think I've seen others who I think pick up on the
Joanne Lockwood: words you said earlier about I believe I'm a Christian, therefore I'm a good
Joanne Lockwood: person. You are a good person who is a Christian rather than a Christian who is a good
Joanne Lockwood: person. I think sometimes your faith can justify your actions and believe you're
Joanne Lockwood: doing for righteousness. And you can look at wars we've been through, we've talked
Joanne Lockwood: a lot about wars and they're done because you believe you're righteous and you
Joanne Lockwood: believe you are fighting for good. And I think if we stop and think I'm a good person
Joanne Lockwood: who happens to be a Christian and not use Christianity or whatever faith you may
Joanne Lockwood: have to justify your actions is a good thing. And that's, that's probably the
Joanne Lockwood: fundamental here, is you don't have to be likable because you're a Christian, you
Joanne Lockwood: can be likable because you're likable.
Lois Frankel: Well said, well said. You know, and I think for women, again, going back to
Lois Frankel: women and this whole likability thing, this nice thing, the problem is, is that we
Lois Frankel: get such reinforcement in society and negative
Lois Frankel: reinforcement when we're not nice, which that does not happen to
Lois Frankel: men. Men can be not nice. And sometimes it'll just be, you know, guys will be guys, or
Lois Frankel: that's just him or, you know, blow it off or, you know, he'll get over it, whatever it
Lois Frankel: is. When a woman has an off day and she is not nice, that
Lois Frankel: dogs her, that follows her. And so the rules
Lois Frankel: are really different for women. And that's what makes it so hard that, you know, it's interesting
Lois Frankel: because for years I've been saying that little boys and little girls get different messages in
Lois Frankel: childhood. I realised that now little girls get similar messages
Lois Frankel: to little boys. You know, daughters get messages about, you can be anything you want, you can
Lois Frankel: do anything you want, the sky's the limit, don't let anything hold you
Lois Frankel: back. Little girls are getting that message. Now the problem is as soon
Lois Frankel: as they get out into society, all bets are off because you have the
Lois Frankel: media, you have educators who are not educating that
Lois Frankel: well. You know, you have all of this coming at little girls
Lois Frankel: that say, but how are you supposed to be. A woman came up to me after I did a keynote and said
Lois Frankel: that she had a five year old daughter and she sends this daughter off to school every
Lois Frankel: day with a fist bump. Be smart, be kind, be healthy,
Lois Frankel: okay? Be smart, be kind, be
Lois Frankel: healthy. She comes home one day and she hadn't eaten her lunch and she said, what's the
Lois Frankel: matter? You didn't like what I made you for lunch? And the five year old says, no, mommy, it's not that, it's that
Lois Frankel: I'm getting fat. Where does a little girl who gets
Lois Frankel: all the right messages come home with that
Lois Frankel: message? And so that's just one small example. What about what you see
Lois Frankel: in magazines? What about what you see on the
Lois Frankel: Internet? The Internet is so unhealthy for
Lois Frankel: children. It is just plain unhealthy, especially for little
Lois Frankel: girls.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, you're right, you're right. Certainly that body consciousness, self image stuff,
Joanne Lockwood: social media, Instagram, all that kind of new Snapchat, Y type social media now
Joanne Lockwood: it amplifies this negative talk. And in the old days you could, you go
Joanne Lockwood: home from school, you shut the front door and you're safe. Now you go home, shut the front door and
Joanne Lockwood: you're less safe in your bedroom than you ever were. And I think that's, that's what we've got to try and remember
Joanne Lockwood: here. But it's the problem where we going back to
Joanne Lockwood: this nice girls don't get the caller office. Women trying to compete in the male environment
Joanne Lockwood: and losing because if women compete in a female environment, they
Joanne Lockwood: win. You know, I look at my daughter, who's what, 34, she works as a,
Joanne Lockwood: a manager of a, an early years
Joanne Lockwood: nursery care establishment. This is a global organisation, they're based out of the States and they've
Joanne Lockwood: got nurseries all over the uk. And she's a manager of one of these
Joanne Lockwood: offices. Her profession or her sector is female dominated because
Joanne Lockwood: it's children, it's care, even though there are men. I'm not saying there aren't men in it, but she's able to
Joanne Lockwood: thrive as a manager of this because her area manager, her people around her are all
Joanne Lockwood: women. So she's thriving is the challenge we need to solve,
Joanne Lockwood: really. Getting more female investors, getting more female money to promote, amplify and create
Joanne Lockwood: female led Businesses and female led organisations so that women
Joanne Lockwood: can succeed in those environments? Or should we be fighting in those male environments trying
Joanne Lockwood: to get in there and change the rules? Or is it both?
Lois Frankel: Oh, that's a lot to unpack, Joanne. So sorry, but let me start
Lois Frankel: with. I don't think it's about creating all
Lois Frankel: female environments for women so they can thrive because that
Lois Frankel: means that would suggest that every female, female led environment or
Lois Frankel: primarily female environment would be a healthy one. And that's not necessarily the
Lois Frankel: case. I look at someone like Martha Stewart, I would not
Lois Frankel: want to work in her environment. Look at, you know, the Devil Wears Prada,
Lois Frankel: right? I would not want to work in that environment. So it's not about
Lois Frankel: women create better environments. They don't always create better
Lois Frankel: environments. It has to be. I think part of it for your daughter is that
Lois Frankel: that field attracts a certain kind of person, woman or
Lois Frankel: man. And so you're getting certain values in those
Lois Frankel: roles. And I think it's more the field necessarily than it is just an environment
Lois Frankel: of all women. Although with that said, we do know that
Lois Frankel: girls who go to all girls schools and graduate from all girls high
Lois Frankel: schools and I don't, I'm not sure about, I think in the past when they graduated from all
Lois Frankel: girls colleges as well, they were more likely to become leaders later
Lois Frankel: in life because they weren't competing against
Lois Frankel: men. And so when I said there's a lot to unpack, that was one thing of what you
Lois Frankel: said. And then the other piece was, or you said, are women competing against men in the
Lois Frankel: workplace? Well, women are just competing to get their fair
Lois Frankel: share. It happens to be that men are the ones who hold the purse
Lois Frankel: strings, are the decision makers, whether they're going to get it or not. And I don't like to see it as women
Lois Frankel: are competing against men. That's not how I see it. I see it as women are
Lois Frankel: competing for their fair share. And in order to do that they can't be more
Lois Frankel: like men. But they have to embrace that they
Lois Frankel: have rights and that they deserve certain
Lois Frankel: things. And once they get that, then they're gonna be more willing to ask for
Lois Frankel: what they deserve, ask for what they've
Lois Frankel: earned. And I think that's the place they have to get to within
Lois Frankel: co ed environment. Right. The fact is, is that there are men and women in the
Lois Frankel: world. I don't want to create these separate
Lois Frankel: entities. I want to create equality wherever we
Lois Frankel: go. And that can be in an environment where there's both men and women working,
Lois Frankel: only women working, only men working. I think there needs to be, because even
Lois Frankel: within those environments, there are differences. I mean, I can't imagine being
Lois Frankel: like, you know, for example, I can remember when I worked at ARCO and some of the guys who I
Lois Frankel: knew there who were gay, it was a predominantly male environment, but it didn't
Lois Frankel: mean they were thriving. Because you have to remember this is back in the 80s
Lois Frankel: because they were not treated equally. It is every step of the way for me,
Lois Frankel: it's about ensuring the playing field is equal, is
Lois Frankel: even. And at the same time, as you said, it's about
Lois Frankel: recognising I have control over whether I'm going to be treated
Lois Frankel: equally or not. Am I asking for what I want? Am I acting
Lois Frankel: like I belong at the table? Am I saying the tough
Lois Frankel: stuff? Am I making tough decisions? Am I doing all those
Lois Frankel: things? And if I'm not doing all those things, then I am sabotaging
Lois Frankel: myself. And you don't do those because you compete against
Lois Frankel: men. You do those things because that's what it takes to be successful in most
Lois Frankel: businesses. Does this make sense?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And as you talk about, I was going to spare my mind is I don't perceive
Joanne Lockwood: that men actively consider competing against
Joanne Lockwood: women. I perceive men are so caught up with competing with other men,
Joanne Lockwood: they're not actually competing with women, whereas women are competing with
Joanne Lockwood: men. So it's almost like I just think of a football
Joanne Lockwood: analogy. So England always think Germany is their biggest competitor, and there's this feud
Joanne Lockwood: going on. Germany don't care about England. They care about the
Joanne Lockwood: Netherlands. They want to beat the Netherlands. So it's almost like we care about beating Germany, but Germany
Joanne Lockwood: don't really. Don't care about beating us. Men are so preoccupied with competing with each
Joanne Lockwood: other. Women are just a casualty in that fight, whereas women are actively
Joanne Lockwood: competing in that space, I think is how I would perceive it.
Lois Frankel: I think that's a good point. I think. And in most situations, that's absolutely
Lois Frankel: 100% accurate. And yet my mind went to Donald Trump and Hillary
Lois Frankel: Clinton.
Joanne Lockwood: Yes. Yes.
Lois Frankel: When they were competing with each other or with Kamala Harris and Donald
Lois Frankel: Trump.
Joanne Lockwood: Right.
Lois Frankel: When they were competing with each other. When men do compete with women, it
Lois Frankel: becomes personal.
Joanne Lockwood: Yes.
Lois Frankel: You know, it becomes a personal competition as opposed to a professional
Lois Frankel: one. You know, when men compete with other men, they don't make it
Lois Frankel: personal. They make it about, you know, can I get more
Lois Frankel: sales? Can I get a bigger piece of the business? Can I have, you know, more people
Lois Frankel: reporting to me than you. They don't make it that, you know, you're a
Lois Frankel: bitch.
Joanne Lockwood: All right, just let me push back on that then, using that specific
Joanne Lockwood: example. So you mentioned Kamala Harris and you mentioned Hillary
Joanne Lockwood: Clinton. How did Donald Trump treat Joe Biden
Joanne Lockwood: then? I don't think he treated Joe Biden any differently to Hillary.
Joanne Lockwood: Kamala. Really?
Lois Frankel: That's a good point. That's an excellent point. Yeah. And that's
Lois Frankel: how Donald Trump treats everyone, that it is a zero sum game
Lois Frankel: and there's winners and losers and there's only room for one winner and that's
Lois Frankel: me.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, exactly.
Lois Frankel: So, yeah, that's an excellent point. I don't know this and that's why I'm actually going to ask
Lois Frankel: this question. I'm going to ask a do you think question which I normally tell women, don't ask, don't
Lois Frankel: do you think questions unless you really want the information. I really do want this
Lois Frankel: information. Do you think that Donald Trump does this because of
Lois Frankel: his malignant narcissism and do other men do the
Lois Frankel: same thing to other men? I don't know if it's a Donald Trump
Lois Frankel: thing.
Joanne Lockwood: I don't recognise his behaviour in anybody I've ever come across to
Joanne Lockwood: that. To that extent. I don't think it's
Joanne Lockwood: a. I don't. I don't see it being represented anywhere
Joanne Lockwood: else. I think it's a particular type of personality trait, radical
Joanne Lockwood: narcissism or borderline personality disorder, however you want
Joanne Lockwood: to describe it. I don't see it as being a common trait amongst even
Joanne Lockwood: famous. Was it. What's it called? Founder of Apple or Apple,
Joanne Lockwood: Jobs? Yes. I mean he was famously quite narcissistic and
Joanne Lockwood: aggressive and things.
Lois Frankel: Yes.
Joanne Lockwood: But I don't think.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. The current president is as more so
Joanne Lockwood: is a more extreme version of that, isn't he?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah.
Lois Frankel: You know, that's the difference between narcissism and malignant
Lois Frankel: narcissism. Right. We all need to be a little
Lois Frankel: narcissistic. We ought to be successful. We need to think something of
Lois Frankel: ourselves. And I think that kind of narcissism we see in leaders at all levels
Lois Frankel: and a bit of it is healthy. I think, you know, healthy narcissism is a good
Lois Frankel: thing. The problem, you know, is when it goes over healthy into
Lois Frankel: malignant, when it is really harmful to them and to other
Lois Frankel: people. Right.
Lois Frankel: And. And I don't. I guess I could go on and on about that and I don't want
Lois Frankel: to.
Joanne Lockwood: The self. Self belief of being untouchable
Joanne Lockwood: being. You know, I know people joked about him seeing himself as the king or the
Joanne Lockwood: emperor or the Dictator is that sort of self belief that everybody else will agree
Joanne Lockwood: with you even when they don't. And I think that's, that's the unhealthy bit is
Joanne Lockwood: where you, you don't allow discussion or dissent or collective
Joanne Lockwood: thinking. You know, we started this conversation off by the ability to sort of
Joanne Lockwood: engage with others ideas. That's the whole power of diversity, the whole power of
Joanne Lockwood: thinking more than just yourself. This person is obviously has a plan and I'm sure
Joanne Lockwood: he's surrounded by people going please don't do that, please don't do
Joanne Lockwood: that. And he does. And I heard a story that the reason that things like Starlink and
Joanne Lockwood: Tesla have been a success whereas X hasn't been, is that in those other
Joanne Lockwood: organisations Musk was surrounded by people who said no or not actually no, but
Joanne Lockwood: they just filtered out the silly ideas. But with X he had nobody around him
Joanne Lockwood: filtering those ideas out and you saw a different
Joanne Lockwood: perspective. I think you go back to that factor
Joanne Lockwood: thing. You need to surround yourself with people you can trust to tap you on the
Joanne Lockwood: shoulder from time to time and go, probably not a good
Joanne Lockwood: idea. And then you actually listen and have that emotional intelligence to
Joanne Lockwood: realise that. I think that takes us full circle back to the Thatcher analogy at the
Joanne Lockwood: beginning. What's your thought of them?
Lois Frankel: I absolutely agree that the best leaders trust the wisdom of the team
Lois Frankel: and they know that collectively when synchronicity kicks in,
Lois Frankel: it is far greater than any one individual's
Lois Frankel: contribution. And so it's that, you know, it's the synchronicity as you get
Lois Frankel: that going. Good leaders know that's what you want to have happen because
Lois Frankel: you're only as good as yourself. Your team is exponentially better
Lois Frankel: when you capitalise on all those differences. And it's what makes it so important that
Lois Frankel: the team have differences.
Joanne Lockwood: Right?
Lois Frankel: Like think about the Myers Briggs. The Myers Briggs is something I used to do in my team building
Lois Frankel: exercises and I used to break them into groups based on their Myers Briggs
Lois Frankel: types. And I would say, okay, tell me how you would handle this
Lois Frankel: situation as a group, as a Myers Briggs type. And it became very clear
Lois Frankel: that if you only hired people exactly like you, your type, you would
Lois Frankel: be limited in how broadly you could break down a problem and
Lois Frankel: solve it with different kinds of resources. Like I always say, I don't want
Lois Frankel: people all like me on my team. I want, I know that I'm not a
Lois Frankel: shark. I know that I'm not a shark. I wanted sharks on my team
Lois Frankel: because I knew that they would bring more balance, that
Lois Frankel: hey, I'm the counterpart to that. I know that it's not. I trust that that's not going to get out
Lois Frankel: of hand or I hired more people who were smarter than me in certain
Lois Frankel: areas. That's the trick is understanding that
Lois Frankel: there's always gonna be greater and lesser people than yourself. And so, okay, let's bring them together
Lois Frankel: and let's really get teamwork going in
Lois Frankel: synchronicity. Because the wisdom of the team always exceeds the
Lois Frankel: wisdom of any one individual. There's exercises that show
Lois Frankel: that. If you've ever done any of those, like lost at sea exercises, you know, those kinds of
Lois Frankel: exercises, it proves it over and over.
Joanne Lockwood: I think. I suppose in my own leadership experience, I realised early on that
Joanne Lockwood: if I was the smartest person in the room, there was a
Joanne Lockwood: problem. Yeah, I need to get more people in the room. If I was the best at anything, I
Joanne Lockwood: needed to get more people. I mean, the skill, the best leaders, the best skill they can have
Joanne Lockwood: is bringing the people on board and creating motivation and direction and empowerment
Joanne Lockwood: and other things. And that's more of a facilitation role to
Joanne Lockwood: allow the team to succeed and
Joanne Lockwood: thrive. And all you're doing is playing blocker or enabler and opening
Joanne Lockwood: doors and stopping things going wrong or asking for money or this sort of
Joanne Lockwood: thing. So I think as soon as you think you're the best at something,
Joanne Lockwood: you're not being a leader at that point, being the best.
Lois Frankel: No, no, you're not. What was that book by Jim Collins that talked about the different levels
Lois Frankel: of leadership and he talked about level five leadership that really you want, you know,
Lois Frankel: as leaders we want to achieve level five leadership where it's not about us, it's really
Lois Frankel: about everybody else and it's about us putting everybody else together in a way that
Lois Frankel: works. That's where our wisdom comes from as leaders is seeing how do I put together a
Lois Frankel: team that's going to have all of the resources needed to exceed to
Lois Frankel: excel?
Joanne Lockwood: Yes, Lois Frankel, on that, on that note, yeah, it's been
Joanne Lockwood: fascinating. How do people get hold of you?
Lois Frankel: Oh, people can get hold of me. My suggestion would be to connect with me on
Lois Frankel: LinkedIn. Dr. Lois Frankel Frankel. And the reason to connect with me there is because
Lois Frankel: I post interesting articles, resources, things like that that are career
Lois Frankel: related. And so, you know, just connect with me and you'll get some of these little tips
Lois Frankel: as you go along through the week. Or you can connect with me through my website,
Lois Frankel: drloisfrankel.com My books are available on my website lists all the books
Lois Frankel: drloisfrankel.com or you can just Google my name on Amazon and all the books come
Lois Frankel: up. There's a Nice Girls series we've been talking
Lois Frankel: about. Nice Girls don't get the corner office. There's Nice Girls Don't Get
Lois Frankel: Rich. Nice Girls Just don't get it. Nice Girls don't speak up and stand
Lois Frankel: out. So there's a series of books.
Joanne Lockwood: Is there going to be a final book? Nice Girls actually do get everything they
Joanne Lockwood: want. If they want it. There must be.
Lois Frankel: No, but if you act like the nice little girl you were taught to be in
Lois Frankel: childhood, you will never achieve everything you
Lois Frankel: want. The final book would have to be Adult Women Get Everything
Lois Frankel: They Want because that's the goal is to add adult behaviours
Lois Frankel: to your little girl repertoire.
Joanne Lockwood: Is that divorced, independent, older women get everything they
Joanne Lockwood: want.
Lois Frankel: I write about that in Nice Girls Don't Get Rich.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, let's not ruin it. Then People can get a book to find out the answer to that
Joanne Lockwood: question. Lois, thank
Joanne Lockwood: you. It's been fascinating. I've really loved our conversation.
Lois Frankel: I have really enjoyed it too. Joanne, thank you for the
Lois Frankel: invitation.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest
Joanne Lockwood: gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the
Joanne Lockwood: cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a
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