Empowering Women in Leadership: Insights from Lori Adams-Brown

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.

I am so honored to be with a powerhouse advocate and executive leader in the technology and global space.

Today you get to meet Laurie Adams Brown, a global talent development expert dedicated to fostering inclusive, high performing teams worldwide.

As the director of Global Talent in Silicon Valley, Lori's passion lies in crafting leadership strategies that boost employee engagement and drive business success.

From Silicon Valley to Singapore, she advises CEOs on talent development, retention and strategic planning with her innovative key leadership strategy, significantly enhancing engagement across APAC Europe and the Americas.

Lori is fluent in six languages.

Oh my goodness.

And raised in Costa Rica and Venezuela.

Lori excels in adapting initiatives to diverse cultural contexts.

She also hosts a podcast called A World of Difference where she explores global workforce trends and serves on the Silicon Valley Executive Board of How Women Lead.

So we get to do that together.

And she champions women's representation on boards of all kinds.

So welcome Laurie.

So happy to have you.

Thanks, Coco.

It's an honor to be here with you today.

Tell us, what is a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?

Well, I'm probably not alone in mentioning the legendary Brene Brown.

I have her book here on my desk.

One of her many books, Dare to Lead, Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts really impacted me.

I'm a reader.

You can probably see my bookshelf over here.

I've always been a huge reader.

I read a lot of books by women.

I made a conscious decision years ago when I was living in Singapore to read more books by women authors.

I realized years later, after I did my master's degree, how many of my books were actually written by white males.

And I began to realize, wow, that's really limiting my understanding of how to lead, how to do the work that I do in this world.

Many of us came across Brene Brown when she did her famous TED Talk, which went very viral.

But I think what I appreciate about this book in particular is it really transformed a lot about my approach to leadership.

It really emphasizes vulnerability, which is not my favorite.

Some people just naturally are very vulnerable and my personality Type is like, I want to not share too much about myself because people might use that against me.

But in fact, her research shows a lot around vulnerability and teaches on it.

Not only is it courageous to be vulnerable, which I think is part of leadership, but she shows the strength of vulnerability and the power of empathy and building strong, resilient teams, which is something I'm increasingly leaning into in these days when it comes to high rates of burnout.

Not only here in tech and Silicon Valley, but I lived in Singapore 10 years.

There was a lot of productivity emphasis at the expense of wellbeing.

And then I spent years in Indonesia working in disaster relief, which has also a high burnout rate.

But I just think her words, the way she expresses things in this book, is very clear.

And I've used it a lot in the training I've done in my current workplace as well, globally.

I love that.

You know, I am a big fan of Brene as well.

And actually I was just looking around to see if I have a copy of her book right here, because I usually do, but, you know, she's got several.

And Dare to Lead is certainly one of my favorites.

And I think you're so right to bring out the importance of vulnerability and why we have to understand people's circumstances around burnout.

Because in healthcare, for example, I'm in the healthcare field and the burnout is so tremendous.

Not enough nurses, not enough doctors, and constantly new regulations and cuts of rates and at the same time, new challenges with technology coming in and there's fear with that.

So the burnout is just tremendous and it's everywhere.

And we need to lead differently in an environment where there's so much burnout and where people have a choice about what they do with themselves.

Right.

Because we don't all just have to go work and put up with toxic environments.

No, absolutely not.

And I think that women often feel stuck.

I have been in a situation before where I felt stuck, both because that income was providing for my family and I was in a toxic work environment years and years ago.

I remember that feeling of feeling stuck.

And I think one of the biggest things we can tell each other is that you're not stuck, but also support each other because it's not an easy decision to leave.

And I would never want to blame someone for not leaving, which we often do in domestic violence situations as well, because finances are a huge factor.

And your livelihood tied to those finances, whether it's through a spouse or through a boss and an employer, is a huge.

That feeling of feeling stuck really traps a lot of people.

I felt trapped by that for a long time until I was able to escape and find work that's been way more fulfilling.

I've been able to help others not have to work in a situation like that.

I do my very best to create psychological safety and encourage our managers and executives to do that as well.

It's so important to create that psychological safety.

Not only is it human, but if you don't, you're not going to be able to do much of anything.

Studies have shown that neurologically we don't perform as well when we don't feel safe.

We absolutely don't.

Yeah.

I actually wrote an article on LinkedIn about that this week.

I called it the 3B's of burnout and released a little podcast episode about it.

I just saw a lot of.

We're recording this before Inauguration Day and MLK Day, and I feel like in my circles a lot of people are involved in the.

The both of these fears and people are tired.

A lot of the people doing the work of advocacy politically, socially, even in our corporations, which there is such a Venn diagram of intersection of all of those, I feel like women of color in particular, just they need a rest.

Burnout.

And the research shows this too.

It's both an individual responsibility, but increasingly, I think we're becoming aware of the collectivist nature of it, that if you don't have a support system that really supports your wellbeing, no amount of bubble bath is going to really help.

You need a support system that enables you to both make the right choices for yourself and even have the opportunity to thrive.

And so going forward, I think a lot of people in the US Context where we're recording this are saying, you know, it might.

It's going to probably be a struggle of sorts going forward this year.

We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but we do know a lot of the people who have been working for change, for wellbeing for all of us are feeling a bit deflated.

And there could be legislations or laws or even people in positions of power.

You know, the word oligarchy was mentioned in Biden's farewell address.

And so I think that facing that type of situation here in the US Context, our risk of burnout is even higher.

We're recording this on a day where we just had this morning.

I know this won't release until later, but this morning we had great news from Joe Biden where many of us, I said, oh no, not nonprofit board called justice revival based in D.C.

and we've been working for years stepping into a over 100 year history in the US of the equal Rights Amendment.

Women have fought for many years for this.

Our ancestors, we are hoping, are cheering us on even in this moment.

Finally, Joe Biden, on his last working day in office has declared that he recognizes the Equal Rights Amendment as the law.

This is the first US president to do so.

Even though the 28th amendment has done all and more than it needs to do to be published now, all that needs to happen is for the national archivist to publish it.

It doesn't look like by the end of the day that she's going to do that, but the President could order her to do so and then it would be fully published.

And so I was on a call earlier where women are sitting on the National Archivist steps today.

People have been arrested in recent days over this.

Officially.

This is both shameful a citizen I've lived around the world where this has been.

You know, even in Afghanistan, women were given equal rights years ago, though they've been rolling them back with the Taliban, of course.

But it is shameful that in the United States we still don't have that.

And I just feel that the risk of burnout for women who are holding all the things both at work in our high powered jobs and the emotional labor of work and community, home and family, friendships, unpaid labor women do in our faith based spaces and our PTAs and communities and then this most basic of things not being able to be recognized, human equal rights for women, the fact that it's an afterthought on the last day of a presidency's office and that this is where we are, I just think more than ever it's important for us to care for one another.

So I even told my team of direct reports that I lead this week, started a conversation on how can we better care for each other.

How can I care for you as your manager?

How can we set the tone more for our global workforce going forward this year?

I just think, yes, it's an individual responsibility.

And I wrote about the three Bs of burnout prevention that I practice.

One would just be making sure that I set boundaries for myself.

That's a word a lot of people don't like, but it just means I'm clear about my on and off times so that once I'm clear.

And once again, Brene Brown, one of her quotes that I love is clarity is kindness.

When I'm clear with my people.

You know, there's exceptions when there's a special project going on or we're coming to crunch time, I'll definitely work outside of those hours.

But generally my pattern is here's when I'm on, here's when I'm off.

The research shows all of us do better when we are not doing 50 hour weeks.

There's a Stanford study I quoted in the LinkedIn article I wrote that says 50 hours plus you actually are less productive.

But 40 hours or less, you're more productive.

So I just think productivity is something we all want.

I do what I can do for myself and expect my team to do that to you.

And then another thing is I.

Another book I've been reading is about Hygge.

It's this Danish concept of coziness.

I have a little candle lit.

This is a soy candle we got at the winter fundraiser that Julia Castro Abrams gave us all in San Francisco with the How Women Lead winner.

It was all about light.

And I have spent most of my life in the tropics, right?

I moved to Silicon Valley a few years ago.

To me, this is cold.

I know you're probably not going to think that because you know where you live, the darkness that I'm not used to.

In the tropics, you have 12 hours sunshine every day.

But in the tropics especially, we just take light for granted and warmth.

I've had to learn some skills on how to be in the darkness, how to be in the cold, both literally and figuratively as we move forward.

This year I'm leaning into this Danish concept of Hygge and reading about that because they're rated the happiest country in the world almost every year, even though they have very little light this time of year.

They do light a lot of candles.

They do drink a lot of warm dreams, especially coffee.

So you'll see me with my coffee mugs and I have a little cozy blanket here as I'm recording with you.

It's this concept of paying attention to your body.

So one of the B's is body awareness.

How does my body feel?

Do I feel tense?

Are my shoulders tense?

Am I holding my breath?

What do I feel in my gut right now?

And these are things that I haven't spent a lot of time paying attention to.

Especially when I did disaster relief, it was just go, go, go.

But the more I become aware of my body and the research shows this helps all of us the more we can be cultivating resilience to prevent that burnout.

Then, along with the whole concept of hygge, the last B is to be cozy or just to be.

I had a therapist years ago when I was in the aftermath of that toxic work environment.

She said, lori, I want you to sit in your office chair for 30 seconds a day and just be was the hardest thing anybody ever assigned me to do.

It was really hard because I think I'm not a big.

Like, I don't struggle with settling down and sitting still, but my struggle is not to think too much.

I'm just a thinker.

So when I'm at work, I'm thinking, oh, how can I get this to move forward?

And what should I do here?

And here's this idea.

So to sit there and just be and not have an agenda in my brain for 30 seconds was really hard.

I'm still working on it.

But Those are my three Bs of burnout prevention that I wrote about on LinkedIn.

If they can serve anyone, hopefully they do.

It's totally serving me.

I love it.

Well, I'm just so grateful to have you here because you're modeling with what you do with your team.

Like the vulnerability of knowing that you get burned out and that you're not always connected to your body, which I'm not either.

And at the same time, this is what we need to do to cultivate our own well being and our own resilience.

And as leaders, you're just talking about, I love what you said.

This question, how can we care for each other?

How can we care for each other?

I like to think of repetitive within a culture, within a company, like, what are those repetitive mantras that help everyone remember this is how we operate.

And when things are hard, we don't say, well, how do we get more out of you?

Or what did you do wrong?

Or when things don't work and when the results aren't there, what do you turn to instead?

And that question of how can we care for each other, wow, that's really profound and deep.

So thank you for that.

And then this idea of, I love this, I'm just, I'm just owning it here.

The idea of boundaries and clarity is kindness.

And I don't know about this Hygge Danish thing, so you're gonna have to tell me how I can find out about that.

Right.

And body awareness is really, you know, we're talking about women.

And this is the wisdom of women show.

So much of our wisdom comes from our bodies and yet we get so cut off.

I know I.

I spend time where I'll be really working hard all day and at the end of the day I feel like I'm a little head on a stick, right?

Like, where's the rest of me, right?

And then I realize all at once I have to pee and I, I'm starving and I'm freezing.

You know what I mean?

Like, all of a sudden the body comes back and, and that's not good for us.

It's not.

I have a long history of not being aware of my body and like, getting to the.

Even in college, I would meet my college boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband at the end of the day after all my classes, I'd be like, I've got to go to the bathroom.

He's like, what?

And I'm like, I haven't gone to the bathroom all day.

He's like, what is wrong with you?

But I'm such a go, go, go person, getting things done and productivity and it's not ultimately good for me.

It doesn't set a good example.

Been hard work for me.

But I am determined this year to do better.

That's all we can do, right, is do our best.

So I'm curious, I know you have such an impressive set of experiences around the world and leading in corporate environments and in really, you know, also emergency environments.

You developed a key leadership strategy that you've implemented.

Tell us what that is and how this strategy fosters inclusive high performance teams and maybe an example of its impact.

I was fortunate to be invited to the current company where I've been working for a couple of years to develop an entire strategy around talent development globally.

And I got to build my whole team, develop the strategy and even sign a contract with the center for Creative Leadership.

We've partnered with them, which is an outstanding organization.

And coming up with this whole key leadership strategy.

One of the things I did early on I learned from my mentors and I also mentor others on is one of the keys to leadership is listening.

Well, especially when you first come in.

I don't know if you've been in those organizations where somebody comes in and they're making decisions that are major day one or even week one, without really getting a pulse on what's happening.

You can't substitute good listening in that regard in my perspective.

So I came into the organization where I work.

In the first 30 days I was meeting with as many people as I could, setting up meetings globally, virtually even on Microsoft Teams with Leaders at different levels and locations in our regions worldwide, from Asia to Europe to the US As I did that, a pattern started to emerge of what would be important to start with.

And then also I got our global survey that our company did and found areas of opportunity.

Those matched up with what I was hearing, which was really just very obvious.

I think communication within organizations is.

And I think in a world where there's so much information coming at us non stop, especially in a tech industry where I work, we are bombarded with information and understanding that our brains are all unique, our neurological systems are all unique.

And there's some great research out of Stanford that shows how, you know, it's so unique that it's as unique as our fingerprint, which is really mind blowing.

When you think about your personality, the cultures that have formed you, the languages that you speak, your mother tongue and all the others, if you speak multiple ones, the teachers that you had and the birth order that you're in, all of these things give us a unique filter.

I have fraternal twins born the same day, six minutes apart, and they're nine.

They're yin yang, like right brain, left brain.

They're totally different.

Even though they're experienced in our home, in the same family, they're very different human beings.

Both wonderful and yet very different.

When I look at our leadership strategy, I wanted to make sure we took into account that level of inclusion.

One of our highest values is diversity, equity and inclusion.

I know that's very controversial nowadays and people are saying it's over, but for me, just our differences are so obvious and beautiful and needed.

So we know that disrupting groupthink is important by having different perspectives.

This is kind of the nature of my podcast.

I love learning from people's different perspectives.

They form me as a person and I think that we learn how to make better decisions when we listen to each other.

Core to the leadership strategy has been a course that I've rolled out globally and we're doing it in multiple languages.

It's in Mandarin and then have it in Spanish as well.

Listen to understand.

And so we talk about listening for facts, feelings and values.

People typically listen for one and not the other two.

So we're really missing 2/3 of what people say.

We talk about body language, 55% of our communication is body language, and only about 7% is words.

This is a seminal study done by Dr.

Albert Mehrapian, who discovered this.

When we realized we so heavily focus on words and that's only 7%.

We're really miscommunicating quite a bit.

When you add in global cultures and different ways people think and different values, different fingerprints of our neurological systems that filter the information coming at us is significant.

So our role, our locus of control, really is to do our best job of communicating clearly, communicating well, and paying attention to the facts, feelings and values.

I take our company employees through an exercise and they practice that, and it's still a work in progress for me.

I don't have a PhD in listening, just FYI.

It's hard both at work and home and in families.

As a sister, as a daughter, as a friend.

I work on it as a leader and as somebody who's working with our managers and our executives to listen well, because we miss things.

And when we miss things, business decisions get made, and they may or may not be the best decisions for both our customers, our employees, and organizations as a whole.

Foundational to this key leadership program has been our Listen to Understand course.

Then we move on to better conversations.

Every day we walk through a model of how to have hard conversations with feedback and how to do that well.

We have something called direction, alignment, commitment, where we get really into the nitty gritty details of where are we in our team?

What is our big opportunity?

Is it that we're not focusing much on direction?

Some people don't know where to go.

Are we not aligned?

How committed is our team with each other?

People come out of that exercise by doing some small groups and some introspection, and we work through it together about three hours.

And then people come out with their big opportunity for growth.

We're rolling out new things this year around burnout, prevention and how we can work better together in that way.

And then a new new manager training that we're piloting in the UK and then going to roll out globally.

So, yes, another part of it is called Fundamental 4, where we walk through the four fundamentals of leadership based on the research.

All these things are really exciting.

I've seen some people get great promotions based on coming through this.

In our company, we saw our metrics increase.

We had 8 out of 10 leadership categories we were working on this past year.

I was pretty proud of that.

Anytime you see manager satisfaction increase, which we did, that was huge for us, it's outstanding.

I just think it's great that your company, and if your company is doing it, other companies are doing it too, are giving space.

We need to always look for places where we have opportunity.

Right.

And there are some places where there may not be the investment in this kind of work.

Whereas strong forward leading companies, the companies that are going to really last through all the things that are coming out in the future, through the ups and downs of politics and cybersecurity issues and beyond.

We need to have this humanity in place that we can understand our teams and our constituents.

I just think it's really incredible.

Laurie, you're one of those people.

I can tell you're.

You are living your work, your unique value, your superpower in action.

It's no wonder you're on so many boards because these are important skills of board directors.

I do want to come back to a couple of these things.

You have listen to understand facts, feelings and values.

When we're with our children or we're with our girlfriends, we're more in tuned with the feelings and the values.

But then when we go to work again, we compartmentalize.

This is what we do at work too.

Right.

We're going to notice how people feel and what they value.

I'm curious if you could give us one or two tips on better conversations from your better conversations every day.

What are some of the things that you advise at work?

Yes, I think that it's building on the whole listening to understand.

Not that any of us really masters that completely, but once you sort of understand the work you're needing to do there and you've got that clear in your mind, then you have opportunities all the time to when something happens, maybe on your team, maybe you're in a situation where you're an executive and meeting with the board, for example, and somebody on your team interrupts somebody else there.

You know, women often get interrupted quite a bit.

And research shows that men somehow are socialized to not even notice that.

And actually I would say even women are probably not always noticing it.

But when they often do research on it, it's that women are often interrupted or their ideas are mentioned by a man and then he gets the credit for it.

So that might be a situation where there needs to be some feedback after that meeting between two executives.

The important part of that conversation is to think through it ahead of time, maybe even write it out.

So I have our work Leadership Summit participants take a few minutes to on their own, write it out like a situation they need to have a conversation with somebody about.

And so the model is sbii and so you write out each of those things.

S is the situation you want to mention.

This specific situation as clearly as you can.

Because if you don't, people can't recall a memory of what they did or didn't do.

If you just say generally, oh, you interrupt all the time.

Well, it's hard for somebody to change that behavior if they can't recall a time they did it.

You're helping them recall it.

So they're not expected to do that hard work because they don't necessarily know what you're thinking.

Right.

So it's clear.

It's like that meeting on Tuesday at 11.

Right.

Just be very specific.

And then behavior is the b.

So the behavior they exhibited, the behavior was they interrupted.

Right.

And just very clear.

And then here's where you talk about the impact.

You just say the impact it had on you.

If you've ever done couples therapy or any of that kind of stuff, just basic relationship therapy, they often tell you, you can't change the other person.

You can only change yourself.

Right.

And so you can mention how you feel.

So I feel statements.

It's kind of similar to this.

It's.

That impacted me because my words didn't matter when I was interrupted or whatever.

Whatever the impact was on you.

Or that impacted me because I couldn't mention this metric that I was going to share with the board because I got interrupted and I never had a chance to say it.

And it affected our team and my perspective.

So you just mentioned the impact on you, and that's where you pause before the next.

Here's the part where a lot of us don't do this, but it's very impactful.

You ask for their intent with a lot of curiosity because we don't know.

And just like I mentioned, that filter, it's different.

Right.

My two twins might see the same situation in a different way.

Unfortunately, if we had a car accident happen in front of our house today and we happen to see it at our window, the police might want our perspective as a witness.

They might also want witnesses of passersby.

And we might all have seen it a little bit differently because of the angle our views, our, you know, what point of the accident we happen to kind of see.

All of that might be slightly different, which is why they call witnesses on a stand that are more than one to sort of get an average sense of direction from the multiple perspectives.

Right.

And so that's why it's so important that when you do give feedback, you give somebody the opportunity to say, here was my intent.

Because it will often be an aha moment for you and this light bulb over your head that It'll illuminate a part of it you didn't see and also allow you to have a moment of compassion for maybe what they were going through.

And those different perspectives are really key.

And so this model has been researched and been quite successful, and we are rolling it out with people learning it in our company.

I'm really hoping that's leading to the better conversations that we're wanting globally.

That's so great.

And I'm just noticing, as you talk about that last piece, that intent, when you're giving somebody the opportunity.

Right.

You're not attacking them.

Right.

You're just, this is what I experienced.

What was what, you know, what was happening for you, what was your intent?

And then it's like, it's disarming.

It's softening.

And then you might discover they're gonna.

They might tell you something that could turn it all around for you, help you discover that whatever way it hurt you, it wasn't about you or whatever.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, more honesty, more.

I just think it's great.

So, wow.

I could just keep on going and going here.

We could talk about all sorts of things.

I want to make sure.

I just love this leadership philosophy that you have.

I'm so grateful that you're having the space and the opportunity to develop it further.

I definitely want to come back again and talk about it now.

You're very involved.

I want to make sure we talk about this.

You were very involved in women's advocacy and representation.

We talked a little bit about that in all kinds of places.

Right.

We're talking about government earlier.

I know when the boardroom is important to you.

Can you tell me, as an advocate for women's representation, what are some of the critical steps organizations can take to support and elevate women within their organizations and how we get more women also on boards.

Yes.

I would say reading books by women, listening to women, is not just the work for men, but for women, too.

Like I mentioned, this was an intentional choice I personally made.

There will never be a time where I'm not also listening to men, because they just.

They are the default, it feels like.

And when it comes to writing books or even podcasting, when I started podcasting, I was told in the US at least 85% of podcasts were hosted by men and only 15% by women, which really shocked me because I was, you know, the stereotype we often say is women talk more than men.

Although we've been told that's actually not true.

But I thought, well, one space we should Be able to have at least representation.

That's 50.

50 should be podcasting.

But incidentally, we don't, at least here in the US interestingly, in France at the time, it was flip 15% men.

I thought that was fascinating.

When it comes to advocating for women, having them in the.

The spaces where we see equitable treatment, whether it's the Equal Rights Amendment, whether it's equal pay for equal work.

In California, we've done a lot of work on that.

I think grateful to the first partner of California, Jennifer Newsom, and a lot of her work and multiple organizations around this.

One of the things I'm noticing, because here in Silicon Valley, we've been in the news a lot lately about masculinity and corporations, and there's a lot of talk about even toxic masculinity.

What is masculinity?

Instead of that approach, I think it's important to talk about humanity.

What is humanity?

Right.

I mean, your gender is important, and the way you live in the world and the way you're perceived in that culture and their views on gender obviously, is huge and all of that.

I have an undergrad in sociology.

I very firmly understand this is important.

At the same time, for me, being human leaders is where I want to emphasize we have a lot of AI that's beautiful in helping us transform everything.

The company I work in, we're involved in AI.

I personally use it in talent development.

It's been very helpful to me as a podcast host as well.

I partner with AI in many things, and yet I don't expect AI to be my best friend.

I don't go to AI when I need a therapist.

Right.

There's a human element that we need to increase with our leaders.

I believe very strongly that even in business, when we focus on humanity, treating each other with both human rights, which is the very low bar, basic.

It's a human right to be free from degradation.

Women or men or anyone should not have to be degraded in workplaces, faith spaces or in our communities.

Right?

And so this is a basic human right that's global.

If we don't have equal rights enshrined in the US Constitution even now, what is holding people accountable to treat people with humanity, well, then we have to do that work until it's there legislated.

Our corporations, our organizations should lead the way.

My understanding from the men that are in my life, I'm a daughter, a sister to two amazing brothers.

I've.

I'm raising some boys.

They're great.

They're amazing.

My husband's amazing.

I have so many amazing men in my life, and they would also prefer that I was treated with equal rights as their loved one.

It actually benefits them monetarily when my salary is equal for equal pay because I bring home more money for my family, right?

And my kids, my boys would appreciate that.

My husband, my brothers, my father, all of us, we would all be excited.

The scarcity mentality that I see creeping in increasingly in our conversations geopolitically, and that is very prominent here in Silicon Valley with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

It's been in the news.

I just think we need to reframe.

We need to see that, we need to have that sbi.

We need to have an understanding of the intent and the impact by listening to each other.

Because I just don't imagine men who are saying these things are really cognizant of the fact that the women in their lives, these are who they're speaking about, these are the ones that are going to ultimately be facing the decisions that are being made.

So I just would love to see us be more human leaders and increasingly be human.

That means daring to lead.

Like Brene Brown says, increasing our vulnerability, our empathy.

That doesn't come naturally for everyone.

Some of us have to work hard on that.

But it's a skill we can learn.

And we're better humans.

We're better leaders in all of our spheres, whether it's business, tech, politics, education, being a friend, being a family member, community member, everything increases.

The scarcity mentality says there's only one seat, and if you give it to somebody else, then you don't get it.

But there's always room for more.

If we understand that in abundance mentality, when women rise, we all rise.

There's a lot of research around that.

I worked in microfinance and nonprofit.

Even there, it's very clear.

Women spend on their families.

We buy for our.

I mean, we just are often socialized in this way.

And so when we rise, we all rise.

And so instead of saying, oh, we're giving this to a woman, that is a seat that should have belonged to a man.

I see that and I hear that now, and I think, wow, that's the same thing Ruth Bader Ginsburg was told when she went to law school.

If she took that seat, it belonged to a man.

We need to get away from thinking that seats belong to men only, that they're the default.

A man needs to be honorable to give that up for her.

No, that's not the conversation.

That's just an empty seat that could belong to anyone.

And it's not lesser for a woman to get it.

In fact, we know that women on boards really increase the profit that recalls happen faster.

Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote about this in his latest book where he talks about this.

A third of your board is women.

That's like a magic number or percentage where you start to see some real gains for the organization, that it's an advantage to be inclusive in this way.

That's an advantage to listen to each other and to be human.

Who are we at the end of the day, if we become like the robots, right?

And I just think they're going to outshine us.

We don't need to compete with AI, right?

Let AI do its thing.

And we need to.

I think in talent development, I hear this question a lot being asked of me and being talked about, and people will say, is AI going to take over our jobs?

Right?

And I hear a lot of people saying, well, the person who knows AI is going to take over your job, and I would just add the person who's human and a human leader and being the kind of human leader that encourages people around them to also be human and also knows AI will take over your job, right?

Because that is, to me, the future of work.

The more human we are and we partner well with AI.

I think that's the approach and that's whether you're a male, female, however you identify, just be human.

Just be human.

So that's just so much wisdom for us all to take in and digest.

You're really incredibly brilliant, Lori.

Anybody who's listening, who needs support, director or advisor, should be calling you because this is the kind of very balanced, thoughtful leadership, human leadership, as you put it, we all need in this complex world.

I'm just so honored to have you here.

I would love, as we start to close here, for you to tell us about your podcast, A World of Difference, what it is and what your mission and vision with A World of Difference.

Well, I like you, love podcasting.

I think it's a great medium to interact with people and hear different perspectives.

So essentially it's a podcast where we bring our differences around the table to make a difference together.

I interview authentic leaders with real life experience that are leading all across industries.

It could be in tech, entrepreneurship, academics, politicians, people working in Africa to bring water, all kinds of things.

My history is that I worked in nonprofit for a number of years and was in Indonesia working in the province where the big tsunami hit.

We just had the 20th anniversary on December 26th, 24th.

That experience where I became a liaison with the UN efforts there.

I was one of the only expats who'd ever lived in Aceh province and worked there prior to the tsunami during the civil war time.

It was a moment where getting together with different people around the world, seeing all the different NGOs globally in perspective, and coordinating that.

My part was being a bridge builder with the Indonesians and the nonprofit NGO workers, trying to bridge those two cultures and speak on behalf of the Indonesian organization I was working with.

And so, as I saw that happen, I began to realize that we can do so much more together.

We honestly can.

I was able to stay there for not only the disaster relief period, but for five years and to see some rebuilding happen.

And as tragic as that was, and as heartbreaking as it is to this day, one of my best friends lost her baby that day.

We lost an entire family we were friends with.

There were some heartbreaking things that we walked through.

I will never say that it was.

You know, I can't even compare to what it meant to be from that land, to have your whole history there, for all of your relationships to be there.

But even just as an outsider, how much heartbreak I still carry from that.

And yet the beauty of it to me was that people came to help, and people came to do what they could, imperfectly, often.

And so I think that's what my podcast is about.

I'm listening to people, I'm learning.

It's.

I get books from publishers saying, would you read this advanced copy?

Sometimes I think I want to ask this author question, so I bring him on the podcast.

That's fun for me.

At the end of the day, I'm just putting out in the world these different people leading authentically, often imperfectly, but trying to make the world a better place.

In a time where I think we need that more than ever.

I would love for you to come listen to the amazing people we have on and to join the conversation with us.

Oh, that sounds great.

So if everybody would just.

Just hop on over to A World of Difference.

You're on all the platforms, right?

And find your favorite platform and.

And be sure to listen.

Lori, as you have now discovered, is brilliant and has so much to offer.

I feel like this was a whole master class in leadership and.

And in connection.

Right?

How.

How to be a good listener, how to be a good leader.

I'm honored that you could be with us here today, Lori.

I'm honored as well.

Thank you, everyone, for listening, and I'd love to hear from you.

You can always find me on LinkedIn.

Also, congrats Coco on your book release.

I'm very excited for you and the work that you're doing.

It really is just making a world of difference.

Thank you Lori.

So for everybody listening, please be sure to like and follow our show the Wisdom of Women show on whatever platform you like to listen in.

And if you are ready to infuse more wisdom into your business, be sure to take the Growth readiness quiz at www.aforceforgood.biz quiz and uncover where your insight is most needed.

The world is made better by women led business.

Let's all go make the world a better place.

Thank you.