Helen Krug von Nidda: What If Success Still Isn’t Enough?

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice and wisdom of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host, Coco Selman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

Today we have a fulfillment gap bridge builder in our midst.

Dr. Helen Krug von Nieder is an executive coach, keynote speaker and an organizational consultant who spent more than 25 years in HR and leadership development across the United nations system and global corporations.

She earned her doctorate from from Columbia University while still working at the UN, spent 18 months planning her leap and then resigned to launch her own coaching practice with Helen where the UN became one of her very first clients.

Today she teaches at Stanford University, has taught at Columbia, coaches leaders at Nordisk, LinkedIn and Dell to keep talented women from walking out the door.

Her new book, closing the fulfillment gap, how to design the work life you want introduces the move M O V E framework and offers a clear research backed path for any woman ready to build a career and a company she will never want to leave.

So welcome Helen.

Thank you Coco.

It is such a pleasure and delight to be here.

Thank you so much for that lovely introduction.

So tell us, what's a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?

Ooh, I love this question.

Because one book that absolutely continues to be almost a bedside book is the book by Sally Helgeson, the how women rise 12 habits break the 12 habits holding you back from your next promotion, job or raise.

And I have loved that book.

One for myself to kind of look at, like what are the habits that I tend to default to?

But also I've used it so often in my coaching and retreats around the things that we tend to do that we don't even notice that hold us back.

So that's the one that's my pick in terms of the book that I always default to in supporting women.

Yeah, I don't know this book.

I'm going to have to pick this one up.

So How Women Rise.

Oh yeah, How Women Rise.

I do know, I do know this book.

She co wrote it with Marshall Goldsmith.

Yes.

It's just really easy to digest and you can totally relate to different aspects of the book.

I love it.

Wonderful.

Well, okay, so we like to get straight to knowing Our guests.

And so tell us, Helen, about three moments in your life that have shaped the human being, the person, the leader, the woman that you are.

I think for the first one, I'm going to start with the decision to leave Switzerland, which is where I grew up, to move to New York.

And the reason I want to talk about that is because I left a very lovely, pleasant lifestyle and a great job working for the World Wildlife Foundation.

I was head of recruitment there, Loved it.

And I moved to New York for a three month assignment which was meant to continue with a deployment to Darfur during the Darfur crisis.

So I had 90 days on a short term contract.

But I was so determined to get myself to New York by any means necessary that I made the decision to leave the security, the stability of my time and life in Geneva to embark on this 90 day job in New York at the UN which turned into a 10 year experience at the UN.

And for me that was a real sort of watershed moment because, and many people were telling me do it like, why would you leave?

It's not safe, you don't know anybody in New York, the whole thing.

But I went for it because I knew I wanted something bigger.

And that was one of my first lessons of just saying, you know what?

Sometimes you just really have to follow your gut and know that you will work it out.

And I did.

So you moved to New York and you went to Darfur with.

I actually didn't end up going to Darfur because so many crisis.

Well, there was crisis going on that I ended up moving on to a different, as they call it, a desk at.

And so supporting other regions.

And so I didn't end up having to leave, I just ended up extending it.

It was also too dangerous to deploy.

So things just got moved and I ended up staying in New York and then worked for different UN agencies.

So all in all it was about 10 years.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

I mean I could have a whole conversation about your years.

10 Years at UN I can't even imagine.

So tell us, keep us going.

Next moment.

Well, the next moment, you know, this to me is another thing around like being at the UN and then deciding that I love the work that I did in hr, but I wanted to know more of the research around it.

So I went back to school at 50 to pursue my doctorate and that was really hard because quite frankly, I didn't think that I had the brain capacity, as it were, to, you know, recall information, to write papers to, to study.

And, and again, it was one of Those things like really the stretch goal in finding it to be so rewarding.

I was so scared to go back to school because I worried how would I be looked upon.

I was one of the older ones in my doctoral program.

It was at Columbia and what a privilege.

And it shaped me in a couple of ways.

One of them was, first of all, knowing that we are eternal learners.

And I just so enjoyed being back in school.

And it reminded me of that time that I really enjoyed.

I was one of those kids that loved going to school.

Then also just what I learned about myself because I was studying education, so my doctor was in education.

So adult learning and just who we are becoming and the different experiences that we have as an adult was fascinating to me in conversations with my peers and my teachers.

So it was just firing on all cylinders.

And I love.

So that was also very transformational because I feel like it slowed me down in a way and made me think about my work differently.

Before you always climbing, climbing, climbing.

And this one was more about how do you enhance your own learning experience.

So I wasn't planning for achievement, as it were, but more sort of planning for my own fulfillment.

Oh.

And so it's.

There's a connection, right?

Connection.

Because that's where the idea started coming from is in this period when I was studying, I was like, ah, there's more.

There's more.

Yeah.

Well, I love the distinction you make here between just climbing up and climbing towards something that's fulfilling.

And, And I hear it too, even when you decide, I, I want to leave my safe spot in Switzerland and move to New York City and you know, move from one place to the next, go work at the un grow.

And it.

I love the.

I mean, I'm thinking I'm 51, I'm imagining myself going back to.

I have thought about going back to school, but it is, it's like a big.

It's courageous to go back and see.

Do you think I can go back and do that?

Apa style writing?

What does this even mean?

And all this technology.

So then, so what did you take from that?

Like, it sounds like it was a learning experience for me.

It was a discovery.

It was all of a sudden like, oh my gosh, like here I am now, you know, early 50s, and here are things that matter.

Here's what I just knowing myself gaining that awareness because I feel like we're often in this hamster wheel and you're just doing, doing, doing, and you become the job.

So that's your identity.

And this was really unpacking it because the professors were really showing us different aspects of adult learning and how we become who we are.

And I was like, this is fascinating.

My other moment, which is very different.

And I do know that the first two that I gave you is because I was single at the time.

I mean, married for the second experience, but we don't have children.

So there's also that aspect of just how much freedom I can have to make these pretty wild choices.

So the third one, which is different, this one makes me a little bit emotional, but I'm going to go there anyway.

So my mother has dementia and I'm an only child.

And that experience is teaching me so much.

The whole, the compassion, understanding, learning to understand someone's behavior and approach through a very different lens.

Learning to lose and yet love the person that, you know, has been extremely difficult, as I'm sure some listeners may have had that.

And that, to me, is transformational.

I am still in it and I'm far from the other side of it because there's anger, resentment, and then there's love.

And it's, you know, it's all of those.

So it's teaching me to be whole.

Incomplete and whole.

Yeah.

And to accept.

Yeah.

And to accept that.

To accept where I'm in perfect and not to feel riddled with guilt, which is how I felt a lot of the time.

Because how do I address it?

What do I do?

Should I be there every day?

Like, it's just been a lot of things.

And so this is a huge piece for me at the moment.

I bet it is.

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm so sorry.

That is, like, as hard as it gets, you know, it really is.

And the layers of, you know, how to process what to do and, you know, what's enough and what's not enough and where are your needs and the truth that there's never going to be a moment where they're just happy again, where you can't solve it.

You can't solve it.

You really can't.

Just so hard to sit with.

It is so hard.

My heart goes out to you and to everybody who goes through this kind of thing.

It wasn't dementia for me.

It wasn't.

That drove me into healthcare, into home health.

But caring for other members of one's family, caring for loved ones is a very big deal.

And your topic is about fulfillment, but sometimes there is a connection.

Right?

So, okay, so talk to us now about the fulfillment cap and what brought you to writing this.

Incredible.

And where is your mother?

Is she sorry she's in London now.

Sorry, I moved her request.

Yeah, she doesn't want to be there anymore, but.

Oh, geez.

But she's.

Then we are currently going through a lot.

I also want to add that it's currently she still recognizes me and all of that.

So we have conversations and she received the book and she's read it.

She told me she's read it.

And that in itself is the most beautiful thing.

If I have one reader and that's my mother.

Yeah, that will have filled my heart.

That's a big deal.

So talk to us about.

So you were at the UN and you decided to move on and work for yourself.

And during that journey you decided to write about fulfillment gap.

So talk to us about what the fulfillment gap is.

So I was at the un, but I've always been in hr.

And again, when you're in human resources, you get the complaints.

You're not going to get the, the rock star moments.

You get some of those.

But I was noticing that because I'm also a coach, that yes, I would get lots of women, particularly coming to me with their concerns.

And it was hard for me to solve for them in the context of work.

I could do some of it, but I wanted to do more and do better, which led me to go back to school and study education.

And that was extremely helpful.

And as I was exploring what I found fulfilling or what fulfillment was about and how to support individuals, my thesis grew from that.

My research became focused on how do some women find fulfillment in the workplace, in their work and life?

And so that was my thesis.

How did women learn to recreate their work lives to find personal fulfillment?

Great.

And so from that, that was a four year process of just doing the dissertation, all the work.

But alongside that and coaching, it really became clear that that was what I wanted to focus on.

And what I found from my research and my coaching conversations is that whilst our mother, my mother's generation sort of had this opportunity gap, you know, we, yes, they had options, but my mom was in the same job for 30 years.

So we have a few more opportunities now, not that many, but we face a fulfillment gap.

So we've gone from that gap to this, meaning that accomplished women, you know, who have access for talking about, with women who have a college education and hopefully, you know, have healthy families and all of that are still not fulfilled.

Yeah.

So something is missing.

Right.

And I think that part of it around like, oh, we're calibrating for achievement, but achievement, but not really fulfillment is what I was Noticing in these conversations.

And so in the discussions and the research, I found there were four main areas that women who were thriving, were kind of focused, focused on or at least had had that be part of their flywheel.

And that's, that's the sort of the premise of the book, which is this framework called move.

MOVE because I wanted to remember it when I was doing my defense, so it had to be easy.

And also because it's a nice, I thought acronym and I love acronyms.

So the MOVE framework is how I you how I would talk about the, the fulfillment journey.

M stands for motivation.

Sort of.

This is the bit about what is it that I want, what I want, what do I want to experience in this life?

Meaning what are my values?

That's the M, what are the skills that I love in action?

The O is now the flip of what were the obstacles, right.

Whether they're systemic barriers or self limiting beliefs and being like, what are the opportunities that I can support?

Right?

And women learned to find opportunities.

They learned to reach out to the network.

So that's the M, the O, the V was having a vision.

Do you have one?

Do you have a clue?

Or are you just kind of like, I have no idea.

Well, that needs to be identified.

It can change, but you at least need to have a North Star.

So the MOV and the E, which was the most important that the women were thriving had was the encouraging community.

So I used E because to me the encouraging part was what was most important.

Not just that you have people around you, but that you have people that care, that provide support, whether it's friends, neighbors, the barista, your children.

And so the MOVE framework in a way is the foundation and a bit of a flywheel in terms of looking at where might you want to start to look for more fulfillment, which one needs attention, might just need to focus on opportunities.

Maybe you just need to work on your vision.

But knowing that is a helpful starting place, as I noticed with the women that I spoke to who had done that.

And you know, it also helps as you're talking through it helps me see that when I'm not thinking about what I am motivated towards, what I care about, when instead I'm thinking about what's wrong with my life or what things I have to complain about or what things aren't going right, like that's where I'm getting stuck.

And you said it, it's like one of my.

When I'm focused on opportunities versus obstacles, right?

All these are all the reasons why I can't move to New York City.

These are all the reasons why I can't take this job at the UN These are all the reasons why I can't figure out a solution with my mother, like, versus, okay, here's how I can.

And then, you know, envision.

I, I find I like this because the example you're giving is like, if you're not having a vision, you're focused on all the bad things that happened in the past.

Right.

You're like stuck.

And then if you're, if you don't have a community, it means you're stuck with people who are just commiserating with you.

Right.

This is exactly it.

Right.

But it's so easy to be in these like, stuck models because it's easy to be in the discomfort that, you know, and to dare to kind of look at it through a different lens, a perspective, talk to someone that you don't know.

And that's kind of my point is that like most of us, if we're not conscious, we'll be in that place where we're just not focused on the values and what we care about.

We get, we go to work, we get around the water cooler and next thing you know, we're all complaining about Joe, who's not leading us very well, and the system that's broken, the tariffs and the economy.

There's.

Where do you talk about what's the better place you can go?

Energy.

Do you not find that the energy then dissipates?

Because if you're all things that we likely don't have access or options to change, like the tariffs, that's probably not something you can typically change immediately.

So that is energy that is going out of your own soul in a way when you can redirect that to what is actually in your circle of choice and options.

Amazing.

So talk to us about some examples about how you, and help us as you go through, you know, find ways to use it for ourselves.

So I'm going to use the example of one of, I'm changing the names obviously, but let's just call her Jane, who came to me, who was highly demotivated because she had just finished an 18 month MBA program.

Okay.

And was assuming she was working as a manager in like a sustainability company.

And she just assumed that she would be getting a raise because she now had put in 18 months as, you know, year and a half, excellent title.

And her boss was like, that's, that's, that's great.

And you get like a tiny, tiny bump, like maybe 3% raise and she was spitting mad because it just felt like she wasn't being recognized.

So that kills your motivation.

It made her very unclear in terms like, what were her values?

And you.

If you think about motivation, motivation is really driven by what do you value?

What's important to you?

So she values recognition.

And her boss told her, like, that's very nice, but you're not getting one this year.

Maybe next year, no title.

So she was so bummed.

So we said, okay, fine, let's just go back and figure out, like, what are the values that you have?

So we know that recognition is important to you.

Why?

Because she wants visibility.

Why is that important?

She'd like a bigger title.

So from that, we moved into, okay, so knowing that what are the opportunities that you maybe haven't thought about before, you were likely focused on just getting through your mba.

Now you've met a whole new crew in your MBA program that are not part of your organization.

So what is the network there?

And she started actually tapping into that new MBA program, which is a whole new group of people, and speaking to them about like, well, she wanted to speak more.

She wanted to be on panels.

She's in the sustainability field.

There aren't that many women in positions.

I'm watching LinkedIn, which she wasn't on that much.

I told her, you need to get yourself on there in this field.

She started speaking first on a panel, then she opened an event.

And so it raised her motivation.

She had a whole new network through opportunities, and it helped her get clear on her vision because she was like, okay, this is actually something that's important to me is speaking because she was thinking about her daughter, who was only, I think, nine at the time, and how she wants to be a beacon of light for her daughter.

And so I felt like her vision got strengthened because she thought about who else's journey she's changing through her own work.

So we use move to kind of work through that and started first of all with why, what was happening and what could she be focused on?

And I can see how then everything's different right now.

She's out in the world.

She's not dependent on this boss to give her a raise, make her feel good.

She got the raise in the end.

Yeah, of course she gets a raise.

And then she probably had another thing.

Is I was like, remember, that was not.

I mean, yes, that's a big project, but she also had other ideas that she's working on with her husband, like a bit of a side hustle.

I'm like, well, remember, there's also an opportunity.

There you go.

And you can do your job with your ICE codes because you just finished your mba.

Where else can you use the skills that you've also just learned?

And so that was helpful for her to get clarity and almost have someone she could download her information to.

Yes.

And so you've been in the HR world for your whole career, Right?

Yeah.

So many of our listeners are founders who.

And executives who are hiring and growing teams.

Yeah.

And losing a great woman leader can really set a company back.

And from the work you've done with your broad experiences, what can founders and women executives do within their company from day one so that more of these talented people choose to stay and be.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, the such a great question because most people that become that our founders are obviously technically brilliant and I assume.

But not many people are people managers.

Understandably.

Where do you get that experience from?

That's right.

And so one thing to remember is that at the end of the day, as humans, we have this basic need by Jennifer Wallace wrote this beautiful book called Mattering.

Ah, yes, about.

Right.

Yeah.

It came out this year.

Earlier this year.

And it's really about the fact that we humans want to feel valued and add value.

And the simplest thing you can do as a leader is quite frankly, a simple check in.

How can I support you?

You know, what is going on with you?

How does this look for you?

Paying attention to your employees is the better way.

You don't have to do anything dramatic, but they need to feel like they matter in the context of the work they're doing.

And I know that not everybody feels like the warm and fuzzy, but you don't have to be warm and fuzzy to simply ask, you know, how can I best support you?

One of the things I've found too is when everybody has a clear picture of what their job is and what they're expected to do or their goals, and you check in with them on a regular basis, they get to know they're doing their job.

They get to feel that meaning in action.

They get to feel significant and important.

They're doing something that matters and they're valued.

You know, I feel like sometimes we don't get really clear about people's roles and that's a disservice to them as well as to us.

Exactly.

Because then they can't at that point, they don't know where they add value if they don't know what they're meant to be doing.

So you're right.

Like this Whole check in and making sure that are we on track?

How can I better support you?

Is anything unclear?

Paying attention is really the baseline when people work remotely now.

Right.

Because it's very hard to have those spontaneous check ins.

So you really have to carve out the time to say this is a conversation where we get to check in about X.

Right.

Which is very different than another type of conversation which may just be singularly, you know, work related or target related.

And so.

Okay, so how are you.

So I'm curious, so your title is Chief Executive Optimist.

How do you practice what you preach and what you teach and how do you keep your own work life fulfilling and sustainable?

So first of all, I have a morning ritual which my friends just crack up about.

You know, I think, I think you might know that I'm a chocoholic, but I'm actually a hot chocoholic.

So I have to have a hot chocolate every day.

No matter if it's 90 degrees and Fahrenheit outside.

I don't care.

I never miss a day.

Love it.

It is a ritual for me.

So that my anchor.

So that's like the little thing that I do that I'm like, oh, it's my 10 minutes.

But I make one for my husband.

And I love that.

The other thing is, I think, thankfully I definitely tend to, I think I was born more optimistic.

Just generally, you know, like that's my default.

I tend to be a fairly joyful person, but it also comes to me through sports a little bit like some running.

And also I love to take advantage of New York City.

Yeah.

Going to the theater, like if I hit like a busker on the subway, I am stopping to hand over a few, few dollar bills and I'm listening.

Yes.

Do get a lot of joy in the smaller moments.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I think that's where, you know, again, it just feels, it continues to fill my cup.

Every song.

Not all days, by the way, are that I have many not non days like that.

But I do think I tend to pay attention to where I am because I chose the city for a reason.

It gives me joy.

That's great.

And so tell us a little more about your company with Helen and what that work is that you do.

It kind of morphed.

So my company was called.

Right.

Or is still called Rise Collective, which was more around three buckets.

It was around coaching, facilitation and training.

But then I realized I was finishing off my studies that really what I want to focus on is specifically coaching senior Women.

So I do a lot of work around just one on one coaching, but I also focus a lot on group cohort coaching because the power for me of connecting with others beats all of it.

And so with Helen does I do group coaching around like a three to six month journey around just kind of figuring out the next chapter.

And then the other piece that I'm very excited about, of course, is the speaking.

Being able to hold space, come into organizations and do speaking and share the work of fulfillment.

Because I see fulfillment as a career strategy.

That's really what I'm noticing, is that you can look at it and it's also a retention tool for organizations.

Totally, totally.

To me, that's the key.

You know, when you, you can't always just pay people more money or give them more benefits and all the things that you wish you could, but you can create spaces of meaning and purpose, celebration and yes, fun.

It doesn't have to feel woo.

I'm like, this is very strange.

And by the way, just as I was finishing off my manuscript, this research came out from the Oliver Wyman institute.

They surveyed 300,000 people and they asked like, what were the most important needs?

And hey was obviously number one because we need safety.

But fulfillment was number two.

It used to be sort of number seven and eight and it jumped to position number two, which says a lot about where we are today as society.

Looking for more work, life, enjoyment and contentment.

Yes.

In our day to day because we spend so many hours.

I love that.

And so for everybody who's listening, be sure to pick up Closing the Fulfillment Gap because it really helps you design the life, design the work life you want.

And I know you're doing all kinds of great programming to help people get there.

And you're speaking all over the place right now.

I know that.

I feel like you're, you're just everywhere with your book and you know, and just around town.

So it's really great to see all the goodness.

So, Helen, can we move now to our fast fire round?

Where are we?

All right, so five questions and five words or less.

Okay.

And so these are just meant to be fun.

So the word your clients would use to describe you.

Joyful.

Just one word.

Yeah.

First question you ask a stuck client,.

What do you want to experience in this lifetime?

So not what you want to do, but what do you want to experience?

What do you want to experience?

So one sign.

It's time for change.

Yeah.

Yearning.

Looking at others and yearning.

Yes, I love that.

A title for your next chapter.

The Magnetic rocket.

I love it.

That's amazing.

And your wish for women at work?

Oh my goodness.

Oh, my wish is for women to put themselves first, to invest in them, their fulfillment journey as a way in service of supporting others, family members, friends and all of that.

So to invest in putting their fulfillment first.

I love that.

And you have been such a example of that, of following your own desires and being willing to, to move literally and figuratively and hearing those heart pulses from within and not turning them down and saying, oh, I'll stay where I'm safe, but I'm gonna try something new and I'm gonna learn and grow.

Make sure everybody you pick up.

Closing the fulfillment gap.

How can our listeners and viewers learn about you, your company and how they might want to work with you?

Absolutely.

The best place is just to go to my website, which is with helen.com.

Everything is there, the Insta link, the LinkedIn.

I'd love to hear from you in all the work and all the articles and things like that.

So meet me there.

I'd love it.

Yeah, you'll find in our show notes, you're going to find Helen's LinkedIn.

You're going to find with helen.com you'll find, find that she has a place where you can book a call with her.

You can, you can get her book.

She has a substack and she's launching a new program called Career Ally.

Ally, yes.

Online program.

Yeah.

So and so like you know people who might want to be interested in that, there's a sneak peek about that.

Do you want to say anything more about that or is that like left for later on?

Well, just for now because it is a collaboration with a dear friend, Maria and we were looking at ways to support with like an online option for those that really kind of want to do it on the go.

Yeah.

So it's again it's another exploration through it through a slightly different lens that just still takes you to fulfillment at the end of the day.

So there's something for everyone.

Well, thank you so much Helen for being with us today on the Wisdom of Women show.

Thank you for sharing your path, your stories, your vulnerabilities and of course your book.

And we really appreciate your wisdom and experience on the show today.

Thank you so much Coco.

This was so much fun.

To all of our world changing listeners.

Be sure to follow like or share the Wisdom of Women show on whatever your favorite listening or viewing platform is.

And just remember the world is made better by women led business.

So let's all go make the world a better place.

Cheers.