How to Turn Vices Into Career-Advancing Virtues
Episode Stats
Summary
What if the traits you ve been taught to suppress your entire career are actually the very qualities that separate those who get what they want from those who stay stuck waiting for recognition that never comes? In our conversation, Jenny Wood explains how traits that have a negative rap can be used for positive ends that advance your career.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:11.480
What if the traits you've been taught to suppress your entire career are actually the very qualities
00:00:15.640
that separate those who get what they want from those who stay stuck waiting for recognition
00:00:19.520
that never comes? Today on the show, Jenny Wood argues that most of us are living in what she
00:00:24.140
calls an invisible cage created by an overabundance of caution and that the biggest lie you've been
00:00:28.700
told in your career is to keep your head down and let your work speak for itself. Jenny is a former
00:00:33.540
Google executive who developed a career development program used by 56,000 people in nearly 100
00:00:38.140
countries. And she's the author of Wild Courage, Go After What You Want and Get It. In our
00:00:43.520
conversation, Jenny explains how traits that have a negative rap can be used for positive ends that
00:00:47.740
will advance your career. We discuss how being shameless, reckless, nosy, manipulative, obsessed,
00:00:53.700
and more to help you overcome your success hindering fears, take bolder action, and achieve
00:00:58.460
your goals. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash wildcourage.
00:01:21.220
So you were a successful Google executive. While you were there, you also developed a career
00:01:27.100
development program that helped employees advance their careers by learning how to advocate for
00:01:32.760
themselves, stand out for the crowd. So you've made a career for yourself by being unapologetically
00:01:37.900
ambitious, like going after what you want. Have you always been like that? Were you like that as a kid
00:01:42.620
or was there a moment in adulthood where that switch finally flipped and you're like, all right, I'm going to
00:01:47.480
start turning my ambition into action? Ooh, there was a moment, Brett. There was a moment. And it was in
00:01:53.340
2011 on the New York City subway when I was riding the subway home from work and about 20 feet away
00:01:58.860
from me stands this really good looking guy. Gorgeous blue eyes, thick brown wavy hair, the whole works.
00:02:05.320
And even though I wanted to talk to him, something held me back. You know, like things you would normally
00:02:10.560
think about some stranger on the subway. What if he's a convicted felon? What if he's married? What if a hundred
00:02:15.100
people stare at me on this packed train? So I sit there, I do nothing while the train passes stop after stop
00:02:21.260
after stop, and his life, frankly, passes me by. But I'm so taken by him that I make a deal with the universe.
00:02:27.340
And I say, if he gets off at my stop, then maybe I'll try to strike up a conversation with him. And if not,
00:02:32.560
c'est la vie. Well, he gets off at the next stop, which was not my stop. And just as the doors are about to close,
00:02:39.260
I feel this wave of wild courage wash over me and push me out of my subway seat and off the train.
00:02:46.400
I chase to catch up with him, tap him on the shoulder. I say, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you,
00:02:51.360
but you were on my subway and I thought you were cute. You're wearing gloves, so I can't tell if
00:02:55.780
you're wearing a wedding ring. But in the event that you're not married, any chance I could give
00:02:59.720
you my business card? And then I wait for what feels like forever for him to take my card,
00:03:05.360
thinking this was a terrible idea. But he does take the card. He calls the next day.
00:03:10.940
We go on a date a week later. And we've now been married for 11 years with two small kids who are
00:03:16.480
nine and seven. I love that story. I love how you started your book off with that story. Because
00:03:22.140
that really captures the title of the book, Wild Courage. So I mean, what were you like before that
00:03:26.020
moment? Were you sort of just someone who played it safe, tried to stay in the background?
00:03:29.280
Yeah, I was a confident Google employee on the outside, but scared and timid on the inside. Always
00:03:36.200
worried about what my boss was going to think about me walking out of our Tuesday one-on-one.
00:03:40.280
Always concerned that nobody would forget that one client presentation I flubbed. Always nervous
00:03:45.120
about when I eventually had direct reports and indirect reports as a Google exec, what they thought
00:03:49.640
about me and how they were going to score me as a leader at Google. Because there's a lot of upward
00:03:53.220
and sideways and downward feedback at Google. And it's funny, I just yesterday, I gave a keynote to
00:03:58.960
a Google team that happens to be led by the guy who hired me at Google almost two decades ago.
00:04:05.120
And he's like, Jenny, it's so interesting and wonderful to see you come into your own. Because
00:04:08.800
when you first started, you had a hard time having a perspective. You had a hard time sharing your
00:04:14.440
thoughts. I knew that you had smart ideas, but you were too nervous and timid and held back to share
00:04:20.060
those out loud for business impact. And I was like, wow, it's so interesting. Because sometimes I think
00:04:24.820
people push back on me and they're like, it seems like you were just born this way, Jenny.
00:04:27.980
You seem really confident. You could sell ice to Eskimos. And it was such an interesting
00:04:32.440
moment when I was doing this talk and getting this feedback from the guy at Google who hired me to
00:04:38.280
realize like, yeah, I was not born this way. And you don't have to be either. You might not be a
00:04:43.100
subway chaser, but wherever you are sitting right now, there is something that you want.
00:04:47.840
And wild courage is what closes the gap between what you want and what you get. And it's the set of
00:04:52.780
tools that help you go after those things and get them. And it can be learned. It is not an innate
00:04:57.920
skill. It takes practice. It takes reps. It takes building the muscle of wild courage.
00:05:02.720
As you described yourself in the book before you made this jump to wild courage, you remind me of a
00:05:08.140
like, I was like this in high school too. Correct me if I'm wrong. This sort of describes you how you
00:05:12.240
were in high school and college. Like you worked hard. You were quietly ambitious. You kind of just
00:05:16.900
like, I'm going to work really hard, do my best. And then I'll just wait for people to notice.
00:05:21.860
Yeah. And then if people notice me, then okay, that's fine. But if they don't, I'm just going
00:05:26.420
to stay in the background. I think there's a lot of people like that. They're really conscientious.
00:05:30.120
They do good work, but they wait for people to notice before they actually put themselves out there.
00:05:36.820
Absolutely. I was like that. I would almost take it a step further and say that I was really
00:05:41.680
hesitant to stand out, even to acknowledge my own ambitions or share them.
00:05:45.220
Yeah. You have this great line in the book that says, most existential anxiety in life
00:05:49.900
isn't about a lack of ambition, but an overabundance of caution.
00:05:54.680
So the book's called Wild Courage. What makes wild courage wild?
00:05:59.340
Well, wild courage consists of nine traits that create the bars of an invisible cage that keep
00:06:05.800
you small, that keep you quiet, that keep you following instead of leading. And my goodness,
00:06:10.940
do they raise eyebrows? They are weird, selfish, shameless, nosy, obsessed, manipulative. That's
00:06:19.520
a spicy one. Brutal, reckless, and bossy. And those are not traits we typically think we want
00:06:26.940
to aspire to. So that is the wild piece of it. Okay. So your traits of wild courage are weird,
00:06:32.380
selfish, shameless, nosy, obsessed, manipulative, brutal, reckless, and bossy. And what you do in
00:06:40.340
the book is you reclaim these words, which they typically have a bad rap, and you reframe them
00:06:45.580
with new definitions and lay out how they can be used for positive ends. And you say people can use
00:06:51.820
these traits to overcome the three fears you think hold people back. It's the fear of failure,
00:06:57.240
the fear of uncertainty, and the fear of judgment of others. So let's talk about some of these traits.
00:07:01.780
The first one is weird. This is all about standing out. Why is learning to stand out
00:07:07.100
such an essential skill and trait to develop if you want success in life?
00:07:11.200
Yeah. Well, I mean, the world is just too busy and competitive for you to be invisible and make
00:07:17.780
a dent in your career or in your life. So weird is about having the courage to stand out and be
00:07:25.620
authentic because within your so-called weirdness lie your greatest strength. So hone every ounce of
00:07:30.640
weird you've got. And that might be what I call playing it hot, which is respectfully disagreeing
00:07:35.900
with your boss in a one-on-one or sitting in the front row of your VP's presentation or being the
00:07:40.520
first person to raise your hand and ask them a question. Or actually, you referenced this program
00:07:45.560
I started at Google called Own Your Career. That was kind of weird. I played it hot. I did not ask for
00:07:50.920
any permission. This was not my full-time job. I ran an operations team that sat between sales and
00:07:55.840
engineering and helped drive billions of revenue for the company annually. But people would come
00:08:00.020
to me for mentorship. And this guy came to me and he was asking, you know, it was like one of the many
00:08:05.560
people who came to me for mentorship and was asking, hey, how do you navigate entry level to
00:08:10.020
executive here? And I was like, okay, let me just scale this. Let me write down 10 tips that made me
00:08:15.500
successful here. Everything from navigating politics to stakeholder management to influence skills
00:08:19.980
to getting promoted. And I'll just put together like a quick training. I'm sure that, you know,
00:08:25.280
maybe 30 people will come. Well, 2,000 people came to that first training and that grew into Own Your
00:08:30.280
Career, which was used by 56,000 people in nearly 100 countries. But here's the thing. I was playing
00:08:35.260
it hot. I was being weird. I was not in HR. I was not in people operations. I just decided to go for it
00:08:42.980
without asking for permission from anybody or running it up the flagpole only for it to die in committee,
00:08:49.160
right, of approvals. I didn't ask HR. I didn't ask legal. I didn't ask comms. And then all of a sudden,
00:08:54.280
I was writing emails that went to 56,000 people at Google. So it's because I played it hot. I just went
00:08:59.080
for it and I begged forgiveness, not permission. And there are so many smart, talented people sitting
00:09:02.960
on brilliant ideas that never see the light of day because they're waiting for permission or waiting
00:09:08.000
for perfection, quite frankly. And they don't just start and put something out there like 10 bullets
00:09:12.720
on a document, hoping that maybe, you know, two dozen people will come. And then it ends up
00:09:16.960
being a lot bigger than that. All right. So being weird is about embracing your quirks,
00:09:21.680
sharpening them into strengths, standing out in a good way. It's all about leaning into what makes
00:09:26.680
you unique. And then playing it hot is a stance towards life where you show up with your weirdness
00:09:33.580
with boldness and energy instead of, you know, trying to play it cool and blend in. There's risk
00:09:39.660
with this though, with playing it hot, because people could just think you're weird in an off-putting
00:09:45.240
way or, you know, you might step on some toes, but the benefits will typically outweigh
00:09:51.120
Yeah. Let me touch on that for a moment because this is critically important. When I was launching
00:09:55.400
this book, you know, Kim Scott was a big mentor of mine. She's like, Jenny, this is your time
00:09:59.240
to beg, right? This might fall a little bit more into the selfish or shameless trait, but
00:10:03.600
she's like, this is your time to beg. I had built relationships with a lot of authors and influencers
00:10:07.620
and I asked maybe a hundred of them to help promote the book, whether it was sharing it
00:10:12.480
on social media or on their blog, or if I could be on their podcast, or it's actually probably
00:10:17.680
closer to 200 or whether they'd write a newsletter about it. And there was one very, very famous
00:10:23.120
author. And if I said the name, I will not for their privacy, but if I said the name, every
00:10:26.700
single one of you would know it. And this person not only said no, but also ended our friendship
00:10:32.240
and our mentorship relationship. And man, did it sting. I lost sleep over it. This was
00:10:37.260
just a couple of days before a pub date. And it was a time when I needed to not be losing
00:10:41.000
sleep and it stung. But if I had used that rejection as an indication to just start playing
00:10:47.420
it cool and not asking for help or not being weird or not shamelessly putting myself out
00:10:52.640
there, then this book would not have been nearly as successful as it has been. And so even
00:10:58.000
though the outcome wasn't what I would have wanted, and it really felt like a punch in the
00:11:01.780
gut, and it still hurts to this day. It still hurts to be told no from someone you deeply
00:11:06.100
respect and admire because you've played it too hot. But it doesn't mean that the decision
00:11:10.840
was bad. It was just the outcome that wasn't ideal. And so I still carry that play it hot
00:11:15.080
mentality with me because 80% of the other people said yes, we'd be thrilled to help.
00:11:20.080
And then 20% said no respectfully. And this was like the one outlier who said no in a way
00:11:24.400
that was painful for me. But it's okay because we push past those painful moments and we keep
00:11:28.800
doing great things. Besides playing it hot, another way you suggest you can be more weird
00:11:34.300
is sharpening elbows. What do you mean by that? Yeah. Well, this is an example of when I was at
00:11:40.720
Google and the most senior leadership team, kind of the equivalent of the C-suite of this org of
00:11:45.280
Google, was meeting in London to decide a reorg and the fates of the people below them. Now, the people
00:11:50.120
below them, myself included, were not invited to London for the actual meetings. But lo and behold,
00:11:55.760
a bunch of us showed up in London to rub elbows. That's what I call like sharpen our elbows to be
00:12:02.480
in the same proximity, to have coffee chats, to be present. And again, like if you want to be
00:12:07.220
invisible, you can, but it's not going to help your career because being in the same room,
00:12:12.120
if you're not invited, you know, if you don't have a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,
00:12:15.280
as they say. But I think just showing up makes a big difference. It's like the classic line,
00:12:19.460
80% is just showing up. And it was astonishing who decided to fly to London and who decided to not
00:12:24.920
and what the outcomes looked like. Because politics are real. Relationships are real. And
00:12:28.700
again, it goes back to the biggest lie you've been told in your career is just keep your head
00:12:33.040
down. Your work will speak for itself. It won't. At the end of each chapter, you have a section on
00:12:37.060
what you call trait traps. And this is how the quality you're talking about in that section
00:12:42.860
can turn into a weakness. And for the weirdness section, you say the trait trap there is when you
00:12:48.300
start thinking of weirdness as being rude, annoying, just obnoxious. So the takeaway for
00:12:56.320
weird is that you want to be weird in a good way. Just by doing the things that other people aren't
00:13:01.920
doing, doing things that might be unusual or unusually bold, you're just standing out from
00:13:08.540
the crowd, but it's in a good way. You're not being obnoxious about it. Let's talk about another
00:13:13.200
trait and that is selfish. Nobody wants to be known as selfish, but let's talk about this first.
00:13:19.700
How can selflessness be harmful? Because I think that's a good way to start this question.
00:13:25.440
Yeah. Well, I mean, if you give everybody a leg up at your own expense, you'll end up getting
00:13:30.320
trampled. So start showing up for yourself. I redefined this as the courage to be your own
00:13:35.220
champion. And even when I was running the Own Your Career program, I feel like I took my eye off the
00:13:42.120
ball on my core job a little bit. And I was almost over-delegating to the leaders who reported to me.
00:13:48.760
And then I had one conversation with my manager who's basically like, Jenny, get your eye back on
00:13:53.660
the ball on your core job. And then it even meant that I had to kind of reshift some of the priorities
00:13:58.160
to either peers who I delegated to or direct reports because I had to look out for myself.
00:14:03.520
I needed to maintain a good performance score so that I could continue bringing this good work to
00:14:06.960
the world. And it's tough. It's tough, especially as a leader, to be selfish and say, my career
00:14:13.860
matters too. But at the end of the day, I deeply believe that as much as your manager is supporting
00:14:19.660
you and your career, they're going to put their career first. And they should because if we're not
00:14:26.240
showing up for ourselves, then who is? And for the parents out there, you might say, oh, well,
00:14:31.700
if I were to ask you the question, who's more important than you? Start showing up for yourself.
00:14:36.120
And if you were to say, oh, my child is more important than I am. But does your child need
00:14:39.640
a martyr who's exhausted and depleted and hungry and sleep deprived? Like, no, go to that yoga class,
00:14:45.640
go to that golf, you know, Sunday regular session that you do with your buddies and take the time
00:14:51.240
that you need so that you can replenish and show up for the people in your life in a thoughtful and
00:14:54.820
intentional way. All right. So being selfish actually allows you to serve better. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:59.960
So what does positive selfishness look like for you? Well, it's saying yes to the big and no to the
00:15:05.320
small, at least in a work context, but also in a life context. So what's big? The Q2 strategy project
00:15:12.360
that your C-suite really cares about. What's big? Improving customer satisfaction by 12% quarter over
00:15:18.480
quarter. Again, in a work context, what's small? Being the 18th person to reply all on the happy
00:15:24.360
birthday Jimmy email. Give him a high five, you know, when you see him at the water fountain.
00:15:28.580
What's small? Attending every single meeting where you neither add value nor derive value. And how often do we
00:15:34.440
do that? And what's small? Being the person who always takes notes in the meeting or always raises
00:15:38.500
your hand to lead the wellbeing pillar. Like, yes, these things are good for community, for culture
00:15:42.720
building. Yes, it's nice to occasionally plan the company picnic for the summer. But if you did it the
00:15:47.980
last several times, if you took notes the last several meetings, then those small actions constitute
00:15:53.540
what I call nap work, not actually promotable. So avoid more than 10% nap work because no one ever gets
00:16:02.660
promoted for being responsive to email. And yes, do a little bit of it. But if you notice that
00:16:07.080
you're dialing up to 30%, 40%, and granted, this stuff can be easy, it can be simple. Sometimes it
00:16:12.640
avoids the big scary projects of, you know, the customer satisfaction increase. But if you do too
00:16:18.300
much of it, it's just not going to serve you well. So I say don't nap at the office because you want to
00:16:23.900
do the big work that moves the business. Because what moves the business is what moves your career.
00:16:28.220
And same thing in your life at home also, right? Like, what are the things that you need to respond
00:16:32.500
to on a given day? And what are the small things you can avoid? And maybe it is not responding to
00:16:36.820
every text that comes in, right? Yeah, that nap work, I can see that can be a trap for people in
00:16:41.520
their career. Because often nap work, it's easy, and it's concrete, and it's actionable. It's like,
00:16:46.340
oh, I'm doing something. But if you look at it, it doesn't really move the bottom line on things.
00:16:51.380
And so I see someone put someone in a position where like, I just do so much for the company.
00:16:54.960
No one appreciates what I do. But you're doing stuff that, you know, it's nice, but it's like
00:17:00.000
not necessary. Yeah. I mean, it invites more work, but it doesn't invite more responsibility.
00:17:05.180
Yeah. So say yes to the big, no to the small. But a lot of people have a hard time saying no.
00:17:12.440
Any advice for people who have a hard time saying no to that sort of rink-a-dink stuff because
00:17:18.660
it makes them feel bad? Yeah. So two tools are the agenda of vendor and the power postponed.
00:17:24.140
Because nobody wants to say no and then feel like a jerk. But there are so many ways you can say no
00:17:28.980
and not feel like a jerk. In fact, I do have a freebie if people want it at itsjennywood.com
00:17:33.440
slash say no. It's eight scripts, tools, tricks to say no to meetings, projects, and favors. Because
00:17:37.980
we get them all the time and we feel guilty. We don't have the wild courage to say no. And then
00:17:42.800
sometimes a yes turns into like 20 other yeses, right? It's like, can you do this quick thing? Okay,
00:17:46.900
cool. Now can you, you know, schedule this thing as a result of it? Oh, we've got to reschedule it. Now
00:17:50.980
we've got to, you know, inform this one person. So like one little yes can turn into 20 different
00:17:55.620
yeses. But you can use the agenda of vendor, which is, you know, let's say for example,
00:18:00.980
someone asks you to hop on a call. You could say, I'd love to get a better sense of, you know,
00:18:06.940
what you want to cover. Could you send a quick agenda first? I mean, if you push back and that's
00:18:10.560
why it's the avenger, the agenda of vendor, if you ask them for an agenda, they're going to have to
00:18:15.060
think real hard if you really need to have that meeting. And by the time they put together that
00:18:19.420
three, five point agenda, they might just realize that can be solved over email, right? How many
00:18:24.200
times have we been in a meeting that really should have been an email? And then another one is the
00:18:28.700
power postpone. So I'm planning to take a sabbatical coming up here for six weeks. And so that's a natural
00:18:34.220
power postpone where I say, I can't meet now, but I can meet in about eight weeks. And then sometimes it
00:18:40.080
just resolves itself. Or if they really, really want to have that meeting or you have you on that
00:18:44.480
project, then they can wait. But oftentimes it just disappears. And those are two of the eight
00:18:49.780
very practical tools I share with people to thoughtfully say no without feeling like a jerk.
00:18:55.460
Yeah. The asking for an agenda, I've used that a lot in my career. So I'll get people who will email
00:19:00.260
me like, Hey, you know, I got this thing. I'd love to hop on the phone to talk about how we can
00:19:04.680
partner together. And it's like, what does that mean? Like, okay. So I send an email like, Hey,
00:19:09.240
this sounds great. What are some concrete ideas you have right now on how we can partner?
00:19:13.260
And then they're like, Oh, I don't know. Okay. Well, you know, once you have some ideas,
00:19:16.980
maybe we can hop on the phone then. But when they're asked is kind of vague, it's like, well,
00:19:20.660
okay, I'm going to have you be a little more specific so we can figure out if there's actually
00:19:23.520
something here for us to do. Yeah, definitely. Or another version of it is, you know, I'd get tons
00:19:27.460
of people who'd reach out to me and say, Hey, you know, my nephew would love a job at Google,
00:19:31.320
right? It's always someone's nephew would love a job at Google. Another strategy here is yes,
00:19:37.080
if or yes, when yes, we can do that. If you put together three job wrecks that look interesting
00:19:42.900
to you, or yes, we can do this when you send me your idea of like the perfect job or something
00:19:47.120
like that. So again, it's similar to the agenda vendor, you're not specifically asking for an
00:19:50.560
agenda. But you're saying yes, we can do it if you do this or when you do that. So yes, if or yes,
00:19:55.400
when to also see if that meeting really needs to happen. Another tactic you have for being more
00:20:00.920
selfish in a positive way is win W I N N. What's that? I love this one. I'm so glad you're bringing
00:20:07.620
it up. So this is play to win what I need now W I N N as you said. And this is about being selfish
00:20:15.140
about how circumstances might change. And there's this wonderful story about a session singer for
00:20:20.880
Pink Floyd named Claire Torrey. A session singer is someone who is hired for a very small fee to come in
00:20:26.660
and sing backup vocals or something as part of a track for one individual song for a band.
00:20:32.340
So in London, Claire Torrey came in, she was paid 30 pounds to sing these backup vocals for the great
00:20:38.920
gig in the sky on a Pink Floyd album. And so she collected her 30 pound fee and went home and didn't
00:20:44.580
even know that the song had made the album until it came out. Well, it turns out that album went 14 times
00:20:51.380
platinum, a little bit more than, and her vocals are legendary. If you know the song,
00:20:56.520
it makes the song. And so she played to win. She said, you know, what I need now is to sue Pink Floyd
00:21:03.700
and ask for a much significant part of the royalties and a songwriting credit. And then,
00:21:11.120
you know, she was really smart and selfish to do that. And Pink Floyd was smart to settle out of
00:21:16.080
court for an undisclosed sum. So we know what might that look like for you. Maybe your company has just
00:21:21.200
gone through a reorg or layoffs and you're now doing the job of two people and you're overworked and
00:21:26.200
overwhelmed and feel like you're underpaid. Well, what I need now might be giving yourself the
00:21:31.800
advice that you might give to a friend, which is put together three slides, go to your manager,
00:21:36.400
explain the work that you're doing, ask for a new title, ask for a raise. And we selflessly say
00:21:41.980
things like, Oh, but I'm just happy to have a job. Or, you know, what about Alan and Sarah and
00:21:46.900
Louisa? Like they're doing hard work too. What about their raises? Well, being selfish is standing up for
00:21:51.500
yourself. And sometimes what I need now is the permission we need to recognize that it's okay
00:21:56.600
to ask for something when the circumstances have changed. Yeah. I mean, companies or CEOs,
00:22:02.960
they play to win. Heck yeah, they do. And that's why they're so successful. Yeah. You know, they never
00:22:08.220
think, well, you know, we promised this guy this job for a long time. It's like, well, okay. The
00:22:11.800
situation now is like, we're losing money and we had to make cuts to keep this company afloat. That's the
00:22:16.980
situation now. So we got to make the cuts. I'm sorry. It's not personal or anything. They're playing to win.
00:22:21.700
Yeah. One of my best managers, Mike, said to me in a one-on-one when I was really being a
00:22:26.660
workaholic and not taking any vacation. He's like, Jenny, you are capped out on vacation.
00:22:31.240
When is your next vacation going to be? I'm worried you're going to burn out. And I said,
00:22:36.000
I know, Mike, I'm just so passionate about this project and this new team. And I just,
00:22:40.380
I love Google so much. And he was like, I think about my saying this and like, what a ridiculous,
00:22:45.480
it's not that Google's an amazing company. Like, don't, don't get me wrong. But what a funny thing to
00:22:49.380
say to justify me not taking vacation. And I will never forget his retort back. He said,
00:22:54.680
Jenny, that is great. But I want you to remember that Google doesn't love you back.
00:23:00.500
And just like you said, Brett, like they're going to be selfish. Any organization is going
00:23:04.100
to be smartly selfish if there's a financial crisis and they have to have a riff, a reduction
00:23:08.140
in force. If they need to shift priorities and take a big project away from you. If they need to
00:23:14.020
freeze hiring, if they need to pause promotions or give, you know, lower raises or bonuses,
00:23:19.320
like they will be selfish left, right, and center. So you can be selfish too. But there's this power
00:23:23.720
imbalance, right? Where, you know, we look to our companies or we think that our boss's boss has so
00:23:28.020
much authority and that we can't ask for what we want. But the best leaders, the future leaders are
00:23:33.380
the ones who ask for what they want because you're displaying future leadership skills.
00:23:40.900
Yeah. I mean, you want to, with all these traits, be expanding the pie and not redividing the pie.
00:23:47.040
So I do advise people to look for ways that are mutually beneficial as opposed to,
00:23:53.920
you know, for example, when I needed to be a little bit more selfish about my career and kind
00:23:57.080
of get my eye back on the ball, if I was going to insert myself more in a project that I delegated
00:24:02.480
to a peer or a direct report, I would think about something else that they could do that would bolster
00:24:09.720
We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:24:14.440
And now back to the show. All right, let's talk about shameless and shameless. This is all about
00:24:19.480
leaning into your strengths and not being afraid of showcasing them. It's all about having some
00:24:24.860
What do you think holds people back from promoting themselves?
00:24:28.660
I mean, I think that this is the biggest challenge with wild courage. I do. I think that people feel
00:24:34.320
insecure. They feel rife with imposter syndrome. They feel like they don't deserve it as much as
00:24:39.300
somebody else. They feel like they don't have the skills that somebody else has. There was a moment
00:24:42.520
in a meeting that I was leading where there were maybe 20 people in the room and this guy came in
00:24:47.300
and he's like, this is a shameless plug, but I put together this spreadsheet that might help you.
00:24:51.280
And he shared it over the group chat. The emojis go flying. The chat explodes. Oh my gosh,
00:24:56.700
this is going to be so helpful. This is going to save me 20, 30 minutes every time I need to
00:25:01.440
create this project proposal for clients. And yet he led with, this is a shameless plug.
00:25:07.420
And it's like, what's the shame in that? You're sharing something useful and helpful and a time
00:25:11.780
saver for people. And yet we hesitate to share our wins. And I think one of the most helpful
00:25:17.360
tactics here is to make it consistent, make it a system. If for example, you shared every Monday,
00:25:23.400
what I call a shameless Monday email with your boss with four bullets, two things you're proud of that
00:25:28.620
you did last week and two things you're excited about for next or for this coming week, that is
00:25:33.500
so powerful. First of all, it makes it a lot easier to put together your performance review at the end
00:25:37.420
of the quarter and your accomplishment bullets. But it also just systematizes talking about your wins
00:25:43.240
and it becomes more natural. It becomes more of an update. There's a huge positive externality of
00:25:49.200
then they might CC their boss. Or if you're a leader, you could share this with your team and CC your
00:25:53.740
own boss. And then you're sharing with your team, your priorities, which people love to know what their
00:25:57.080
boss is up to that day. So the shameless Monday email can be really effective as you lean into
00:26:02.520
your strengths and not be afraid to showcase them. I think that's a powerful idea because your boss
00:26:07.180
has no clue what you're doing. He might have like a little bit of a clue, but he probably doesn't know
00:26:11.960
everything. So this just makes it more explicit. Yeah, definitely. You also read the power portfolio.
00:26:16.780
What's that? Oh, I love the power portfolio. So the power portfolio is made up of your power assets.
00:26:22.200
And just like a financial portfolio, you want to have a mix of soft skills and hard skills or
00:26:28.300
of business skills and people skills like you'd want to have a mix in your financial portfolio of
00:26:31.920
stocks and bonds. So these are the three strengths you have or the three things that you bring to the
00:26:36.580
table that can move the business forward. So I had a coachee named Martina and she came to me with
00:26:42.720
three power assets. She said, mine are communication, organization, and supporting others on launches.
00:26:49.820
And these were okay, but they needed tweaking because again, we want a mix of business and
00:26:54.900
people skills. So yes, people skills matter, but managers and leaders want to know what business
00:27:00.740
problems you'll solve because that's what their boss is grading them on. So that's why you want to
00:27:04.860
diversify your power portfolio and aim for a mix here. So we tweaked it. So communication became
00:27:09.980
executive communication. Organization became project and program management, which she was phenomenal at
00:27:15.820
and supporting others on launches became go to market strategy. Again, same ideas, different word
00:27:20.840
choice, higher impact, shameless, right? But it's just being more, more powerful in your language.
00:27:27.640
And again, like organization versus project and program management does have a very different
00:27:34.000
je ne sais quoi. To me, organization sounds weak. It sounds feminine. Not that that's a bad thing,
00:27:39.480
but you know, in the context of wanting to show your leadership skills and show more of the value
00:27:44.740
you bring to the customer project and program management just sounds a lot more powerful.
00:27:48.940
And so we strengthen them by doing that exercise. But even aside from your specific language choice,
00:27:54.960
a lot of people I think don't know their strengths at all or their talents and can't articulate them
00:28:01.580
in a bit of an elevator pitch. Like some people might just draw a blank. If I say, what are the three
00:28:06.240
things that I mean, often I will say execs draw a blank when I say, what are the three things you bring
00:28:10.500
to your team? And they really have to think about it. So it requires writing down maybe 20 things
00:28:14.900
that you think you are pretty good at, things you'd love to do as a child, things that, you know,
00:28:19.300
you've helped move the business forward on in the past. It might require bringing them to a coach or
00:28:23.520
a mentor or a boss and triangulating it with other people think, and then you can whittle it down to
00:28:27.480
three. And I imagine after you whittle it down to the three, you need to figure out what are some
00:28:31.780
things that like concrete things I can show that showcases that I have these traits,
00:28:37.340
like be able to show that to people. Hey, I'm great at this thing. Here's what I've done.
00:28:42.700
Oh, absolutely. Like if you're talking about these in a resume or again, an accomplishment bullet,
00:28:47.320
preparing for a performance review or promotion, you want to use what I call ROI, not the classic ROI
00:28:52.600
return on investment, though this does give you return on career investment. It's role, objective,
00:28:57.340
and impact. What was your role in this go-to-market strategy? What was the objective? You wanted to,
00:29:02.080
you know, launch the product with, you know, 10 million users in the first year. And what was the
00:29:06.540
impact? You exceeded that goal and launched it to 11 million users in the first year. So,
00:29:10.880
and also double your numbers in any context, double your numbers, or even going back to,
00:29:15.800
and when I say double your numbers, I mean, you know, in that example, I used 10 million,
00:29:19.220
maybe you could say 10 million by day 90, like use physical numbers. It is so much more powerful.
00:29:25.520
They don't have to be fancy, like revenue growth percentage or, or actual dollars. It could be,
00:29:31.340
I cut this email sequence down for onboarding new clients from five emails to three, making it more
00:29:37.760
efficient. Or I'm 70% of the way through the fall athleisure line competitive analysis, right?
00:29:44.720
Even just saying I'm 70% or I cut this down from five emails to three has a big impact on showing
00:29:51.280
the concrete, the tangible value that you bring to the table. So double your numbers anywhere you can,
00:29:57.760
whether it's in your, your shameless Monday email or a resume or accomplishment bullets or your,
00:30:02.960
your power portfolio, when you're talking about your strengths in the specific situations with ROI,
00:30:10.880
How are you being shameless with the promotion of this book you're doing?
00:30:14.500
Well, a big part of promoting the book is having companies buy the book in bulk. So there are books
00:30:20.180
that are sold one at a time and there are books that are sold 500 at a time because this book is so
00:30:25.020
much about, it's about wild courage in all areas of life, but there's a bias toward professional
00:30:29.680
wild courage and really thriving within your company, within your organization and not saying,
00:30:35.680
Hey, go quit your job and, you know, be a solopreneur, be an entrepreneur. It's really helping you, um,
00:30:41.380
feel engaged, feel happy, feel successful, feel motivated within your organization, which companies
00:30:46.180
should love and want to buy. Right? So I think this has the potential to be the kind of book
00:30:49.800
that people buy 500 at the time. Um, so how am I being shameless? I recognized that opportunity
00:30:55.760
and I sent about 300 emails to leaders, friends, acquaintances, you know, second degree connections,
00:31:02.460
subject line. Are you interested in buying 200 copies of wild courage? And then I put a bunch
00:31:08.940
of details. I'd happy to do a 20 minute complimentary fireside chat if you did. And I sent the first
00:31:13.720
hundred and Brett, I thought that by the end of the day, those checks would just be rolling in for
00:31:19.300
those bulk purchases. But as it turns out, the budget is not always there. The timing's not
00:31:23.940
always right. There was a lot of ghosting, a lot of rejection. So shameless in this context is having
00:31:29.580
the courage to just keep going despite all of that rejection. And, uh, and this was a different than
00:31:36.880
the rejection of the one person who cut off our friendship. This was like rejection at scale because
00:31:41.640
there were so many people. I mean, I probably didn't hear back from 90% of the people in that first
00:31:45.720
hundred. So what did I do? I tweaked the offering rather than 200 copies in the subject line. I put
00:31:50.940
50 copies rather than overwhelming them with too much information about the details of how this
00:31:55.560
partnership could work and me coming to do a fireside chat. I whittled it down to just a few
00:31:59.540
sentences. So you can use that rejection and tweak, dial your shamelessness up and down to what might
00:32:06.120
better appeal to the audience. Well, this kind of ties in nicely to one of the other traits are
00:32:09.700
being reckless. Like you've been reckless with your being shameless. Yeah. Let's talk about that.
00:32:14.580
What does healthy recklessness look like? Well, it's the courage to err on the side of action
00:32:19.060
because better to learn from your mistakes than waste time predicting the consequences of every
00:32:24.660
decision. Think fast and fearless. And if you're on the fence, do it. And for all of you overthinkers
00:32:30.500
out there, for all of you pro con list makers, and like me, left brain thinkers who are in a lot of
00:32:35.960
analysis paralysis, just thinking about like, what's the worst that could happen, right? I mean,
00:32:40.480
even leaving Google for me took a lot of recklessness. And it was hard for me to get to
00:32:46.260
the point where I knew I wanted to leave. And that was a moment where I felt my eyes fluttering closed
00:32:50.060
when I was driving my son back home from choir practice because I had just taken on too much.
00:32:54.640
I had my day job. I was running the Own Your Career program. There was all this external interest
00:32:58.220
that was budding about my work, including this book. And I was also trying to be a wife and a mom.
00:33:02.620
It's like five roles. And I was exhausted. I was struggling with lowercase a anxiety.
00:33:07.740
I was oftentimes up between 2 and 5 a.m. And I just was totally sleep deprived and physically,
00:33:14.920
emotionally, and mentally unwell. And so I reached the moment where I felt my eyes closing as I was
00:33:20.180
driving Ari home from choir that it was probably time to go. But it took me about 12 to 18 months to
00:33:25.840
muster the courage to do it. And that's because I wasn't reckless enough. And so I think I was caught
00:33:31.460
in truths and tales. Truths are fact. They're verifiable facts. You know, this microphone I'm
00:33:36.720
speaking into is black. I'm, you know, holding a piece of paper in my hand. But tales are the
00:33:42.580
stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the facts. And so part of recklessness is separating
00:33:47.820
the truths from the tales. And so I really struggled with that leaving Google. You know,
00:33:51.600
the tales I told myself were, I'm going to have no identity if I leave Google. Another tale,
00:33:55.840
what if we run out of money and have to move out of our house in Boulder by all the trails that I
00:33:59.520
love so dearly? Another tale I told myself as my parents are going to be disappointed in me
00:34:03.820
because I'm the breadwinner for my family. But then when I broke it down to actual truths in that
00:34:09.500
situation, a truth would be, yes, I'm not going to get a paycheck every other week with the Google
00:34:14.780
logo on it. A truth would be, you know, I can find other ways to have a new identity. A truth would
00:34:19.860
be my parents have always supported me and are supportive of me leaving Google as well. So that helps you be
00:34:25.700
reckless when you separate the truths and the tales and really break it down to fact versus fiction.
00:34:30.720
So another thing you talk about in this reckless section is this react framework. What's that and
00:34:35.380
how can that help you overcome failures so you can maintain that bias towards action?
00:34:41.120
Yeah, well, sometimes failures are not big colossal, you know, I lost the project or I lost the deal.
00:34:48.680
Sometimes a failure is just a moment that happens that's cringeworthy during the day. And
00:34:52.520
we've all had those. And one of mine was when I sent an email intended for six people to I think
00:34:59.660
it was 23,000 people at the time. That's how big Own Your Career was at the time. And I sent it instead
00:35:05.640
of to the volunteers working on Own Your Career, I sent it to the entire Own Your Career alias.
00:35:10.260
And Brett, this was an unintelligible email. It was just a subject line that was three sentences long
00:35:16.220
with nothing in the body. And it was a testimonial of someone who had said they loved the Own Your Career
00:35:21.520
program, and that they'd gotten promoted as a result of it. And so the subject line was just
00:35:27.180
Titi Akinsanmi, which is the person's name, but it's a really unusual name. And then I had typos
00:35:32.100
in the subject line. And this went to 23,000 people, including many in the Google C-suite.
00:35:36.160
So I was mortified. Like I press send and then I slowly dragged the mouse to the unsend only to
00:35:42.320
not get there in time. And here's what happened. So react is how I overcame that horrible moment of
00:35:49.180
mini failure. It stands for recognize, empower, apologize, celebrate, and trust. Recognize that
00:35:56.860
not everything you do will be perfect. E, empower yourself to own it quickly and clean it up. Take
00:36:01.240
a deep breath. It happens to everyone. And so I really just had to like put on my big girl pants
00:36:06.300
and say, I can clean it up. I can recover from this. And then I did. A is for apologize. I directly
00:36:11.800
apologized to Titi. She was not intending for her feedback about Own Your Career to get broadcast
00:36:16.440
to 23,000 people. C is for celebrate. Celebrate the unexpected goodness that comes out of a mistake.
00:36:22.640
I got hundreds of pings and emails back and not a single one of them said, you jerk. I can't believe
00:36:28.340
you distracted me with this nonsensical subject line. No, everybody was checking in on me. Everybody
00:36:33.880
wanted to take care of me. Everybody wanted to help me and empathize with me. And they all said things
00:36:38.660
like, Jenny, I promise nobody cares about this like you do. Nobody's paying attention. Everybody
00:36:44.020
understands this. It happens to everyone. They were so empathetic. So that's celebrating the
00:36:48.000
unexpected goodness that comes out of a mistake. And that's also the T is trusting that your fellow
00:36:52.820
employees will have your back. And by the way, the other part of C, celebrate the unexpected goodness
00:36:57.640
is I wrote up this React framework. I then shared it with the whole Own Your Career alias and said,
00:37:02.060
here's how I recovered from this mistake. And it ended up being the most popular tip of all time that I
00:37:07.240
had ever sent. So it just goes to show you that you can make lemonade out of any lemon. And that's the
00:37:13.100
React framework. All right. So reckless, just take more action, have a bias towards action,
00:37:17.360
and you can overcome those little setbacks and failures. It's not a big deal. It's not going to
00:37:21.180
be a career ender for you. Another trait is being nosy. And I love this section because you start off
00:37:27.180
that section talking about how your grandmother was nosy and how that probably saved her life during
00:37:33.740
World War II. What happened there? Yeah. So my grandmother was in hiding during the Holocaust in
00:37:38.520
Budapest, Hungary, and she left to get a bucket of water for the other people in hiding with her.
00:37:45.340
And she walked down the street and somebody from the Aero Cross Party, which was sort of the Nazi
00:37:51.260
equivalent ruling party in Hungary, rounded up her and some fellow Jews at gunpoint. And they marched
00:37:56.700
them to a building and they had them against a wall. And my Bubby, my grandmother, I called her Bubby,
00:38:03.640
knew that there was no getting out of this. Like she was doomed. The options were basically she was
00:38:09.620
going to get marched onto a train and taken to Auschwitz, like so many other people had,
00:38:15.000
or she was going to have a summary execution and get shot right there against the wall. And there
00:38:19.320
were literally dead bodies in the street when this was happening, as she told the story to me in
00:38:23.280
Hollandale, Florida at the age of 93, when we were recording her Holocaust survival stories.
00:38:28.080
And her only option, she told me, was to get nosy. And so she asked the soldier, this scared,
00:38:36.700
terrified, timid soldier, a question. And she asked, you know, what would happen if I were to step out
00:38:42.420
of line? And she wasn't necessarily looking for the answer. She was looking for his reaction. And he
00:38:48.700
answered with the Hungarian idiom, which I will translate to English, which equals,
00:38:52.540
is the mademoiselle so stupid or just pretending to be? And it was a little bit of a jokey answer.
00:38:59.340
She saw a lightness in his voice. He almost cracked a smile and she really saw his nervousness. And it
00:39:04.580
made her realize that she had a small window here to step out of line because he didn't yell at her.
00:39:10.740
He didn't, you know, hit her with the gun. He didn't cock the gun. And so just by being nosy,
00:39:15.520
having the wild courage to ask a question, it was the only way she was able to survive that scrape.
00:39:20.220
So she stepped out of line and started walking down the cobblestone street. And she said she
00:39:26.860
remembered hearing the click of her heels every time she took a step as she just kind of slowly
00:39:31.080
breathed in and breathed out and hoped that nothing would happen. And it didn't. And she returned back
00:39:35.520
to the attic safely. And so she really only survived because of her nosiness, because she had the
00:39:40.220
courage to ask a question. So this is all about asking questions, what it means to be nosy. I mean,
00:39:44.060
why do you think people have a hard time asking questions in their career?
00:39:47.420
Sure. We think it makes us look stupid or uneducated or unknowledgeable or think about
00:39:52.900
how many times, you know, for those of you who work in an organization that has a ton of acronyms,
00:39:58.600
right? You think, oh, well, it's too late. I'm already in this role for four months. I can't ask
00:40:02.460
that basic question. I can't ask that simple question again. But nosy is the courage to get
00:40:07.640
insatiably curious because curiosity drowns out fear and pulls you toward what is most exciting to you.
00:40:12.580
So use it as a compass. And curiosity shows leadership. It shows ambition. It's a great
00:40:16.940
way to overcome nerves at a networking event rather than feeling like you have to impress somebody.
00:40:21.940
Go ask them a bunch of what and how questions like, what was the most interesting session for
00:40:26.580
you so far? Or how long have you been in the industry and what brought you here? Or how have
00:40:30.880
your peers been responding to these sessions? Or how are you using AI right now? Like what and how
00:40:36.120
questions are so powerful and they take the pressure off of you in any kind of new relationship or
00:40:41.320
networking situation or a meeting with a mentor where you feel like you've got to be all buttoned
00:40:46.520
up and prove yourself, just start asking and start listening. And even the best leaders, you know,
00:40:52.040
going back to the person who's a few months into the role and they're like, oh, I'm too far in to ask
00:40:56.220
what that three-letter acronym stands for. But the leaders who we admire most are the ones who have
00:41:01.820
the confidence, the shamelessness, the boldness, the recklessness to say, hey, what does PRT stand for
00:41:08.980
on this slide? I just want to make sure that for everybody in the room who's new, we redefine that.
00:41:13.960
And everyone like sighs a sigh of relief that somebody finally, you know, had the boldness to
00:41:19.320
redefine that acronym of the thousands that are used at the company. And when it's a leader who does
00:41:24.060
that, I really admire it. You also talk about how you can use nosiness or asking questions to turn
00:41:30.060
envy into a springboard to success. What does that look like?
00:41:34.280
Well, you know, we've all got those people in our life who we're jealous of. It could be a friend,
00:41:38.820
it could be a colleague. And I say use envy as your engine and steal their blueprint. So,
00:41:45.560
you know, there was someone named Molly who I just deeply admired. She was a peer of mine. We were
00:41:49.260
always competing for promotions and I always thought she was like three times as good as I was. But
00:41:54.060
instead of being jealous and having it create a scarcity mindset for me, I thought of it as an
00:41:58.860
abundance mindset where I could learn from her. I could get deeply nosy and I could kind of like
00:42:03.700
discover her recipe for XYZ skills. So she was really good at project management. And
00:42:08.540
anytime we were launching a new program, she would have this awesome Gantt chart,
00:42:14.100
which had all of the dates and the accomplishments that needed to happen over a six month period of
00:42:18.260
time. She was really good at communicating next steps. She was really good at delegating. She would
00:42:22.060
bold the person's name in each email and put a deadline for what needed to happen next. She would
00:42:26.100
thank everybody and be very positive and empathetic. And so rather than just be jealous and say,
00:42:31.780
Oh, why am I not good at Molly? Like I resent her. I just went to her and I said, Molly, could I do
00:42:36.800
three 20 minute sessions with you where you review some of these project management skills with me
00:42:41.140
and I can basically steal your blueprint? And I would write down these things on an index card and I
00:42:47.140
would put them by my desk and I would use her strategies. Or I did this with another manager,
00:42:52.060
Ted, who was just such a phenomenal presenter and never said, um, in his presentations. And so then I
00:42:57.300
would gamify it for myself and I'd say, I'm going to count how many times Ted uses, um, in a 10 minute
00:43:02.520
presentation and I'm going to try to beat it. So again, rather than being jealous, I used envy as
00:43:07.160
my engine and I would steal their blueprint. And that is rooted in being nosy. It's being curious
00:43:11.820
versus jealous. This reminded me of Plutarch, the famous Roman biographer, philosopher guy. He talks
00:43:18.140
about two types of emotions. There's envy where you see someone who's better than you and you just feel
00:43:23.320
bad and you want to bring them down. And then he says the opposite of that is zeal. It's where you
00:43:28.000
admire someone's excellence and then you want to imitate it. I love that. So, so curiosity being
00:43:33.820
nosy can lead to zeal instead of envy. I love that. I really like that. I love that. Let's talk about
00:43:39.120
being manipulative. You had an instance where you use manipulation on a past AOM guest and that's
00:43:45.680
Vanessa Van Edwards. She talks about charisma. How did you manipulate Vanessa into helping you achieve
00:43:50.860
one of your goals? Yeah. Well, I really wanted to meet Vanessa. Like I'm, we, you know, we, we haven't
00:43:57.360
talked about obsessed, but like, I'm obsessed. I want to meet the best people. I want to do the best
00:44:00.800
work. I want to help people in the most high impact way. And I knew that part of that was building those
00:44:05.180
relationships with authors so that I could partner with them, you know, around time of book launch and
00:44:09.360
also just learn from each other and enjoy each other's friendship and, and, and, you know, mutual value
00:44:14.300
exchange. So I was headed to Austin for some work meetings. Someone had just introduced Vanessa
00:44:19.440
and me over email. And so I said, I'm going to be in Austin Thursday through Sunday. I would love to
00:44:24.820
take you out for coffee. And she said, Oh, what are the chances I'm actually going to be out of town
00:44:29.400
those exact dates for a keynote? And so I think a lot of people would just take no for an answer and
00:44:34.620
be like, womp, womp. Okay. Another time. And of course, another time never comes, but I wanted to
00:44:39.040
capitalize on this opportunity. So I said, what time does your flight depart on Thursday? And she said,
00:44:46.680
it departs at 3 PM. Well, my flight was scheduled to get in later than that, but a quick little
00:44:52.020
switcheroo flight change and $60 to Delta airlines had me coming in before her flight. So I can meet
00:44:58.040
her. And I said, what are the chances I get in at one o'clock? And so what if we met right by your
00:45:02.720
gate for coffee? So, you know, did I lie? Um, yeah, sure. Liar, liar, pants on fire, but I will stand
00:45:09.340
behind that lie all day long that I wasn't actually originally getting in at 1 PM. And maybe,
00:45:15.560
maybe I even said, I was getting in at one to just make sure it worked for her before I made
00:45:19.020
the flight change. So I think I actually did lie about the time my flight landed before I made the
00:45:22.880
change. But I tell you 60 bucks to meet Vanessa van Edwards in person, it's a bargain at twice the
00:45:28.740
price. And so we feel like everything has to be coincidental or just has to work out or fate. But
00:45:35.560
man, I just believe that serendipity isn't found. It's made and manipulative reclaimed is the courage
00:45:41.720
to build influence through empathy and to build lasting relationships. Because whether you're
00:45:45.580
selling a product, an idea, or yourself, the ability to win friends, allies, and supporters is
00:45:51.160
all about mutual benefit. So figure out what people want and go get it for them. In fact,
00:45:56.920
something happened this morning where I got an email from the person who ran the PR campaign for
00:46:03.380
the book. And she said, actually, I got an email a couple of weeks ago, but I totally forgot to
00:46:07.980
responded and said, Hey, would you be willing to write a testimonial for me on LinkedIn? So I would
00:46:11.740
call that nosy, right? That's great. And then I forgot to respond because I've had a lot going on.
00:46:16.200
And then she followed up. I'd call this bossy. She said, Hey, I hate to nudge you, but I'd really
00:46:20.720
appreciate this review on LinkedIn. Any chance you could do that? And so what I think would have made
00:46:26.540
it even more powerful is if she'd been manipulative and said, and by the way, I've drafted a couple
00:46:32.640
sentences for you that you can tweak as you see fit. Because when I talk about manipulative and how
00:46:37.660
it's all about finding mutual benefit and figuring out what people want and getting it for them,
00:46:42.300
what I want is time back. So I love doing favors for people, but they take time. And so had she
00:46:48.100
been manipulative and said, I've already written it for you, that gives me what I want, which is
00:46:52.200
time back and makes it a lot easier for me to say yes. So I did say yes, but now I have to do the work
00:46:56.640
and it's still something I have to add to my to-do list. So that's where manipulative can be such a good
00:47:01.140
thing and win-win and expand the pie, whether you're changing your flight to meet somebody because
00:47:05.460
relationships should be high reward, but also high investment or asking someone to do a quick
00:47:10.680
favor for you like my PR person did today. Yeah. So being manipulative, it's all about just being
00:47:15.040
influential. That's what it's all about. And your definition of just being influential is like,
00:47:19.700
you know, thinking win-win, finding out how you can get what you want and need and while at the same
00:47:25.040
time delivering what someone else needs and wants. It reminds me of this famous quote from Dwight
00:47:30.520
Eisenhower about leadership. And he said, leadership is the art of getting someone else to do
00:47:35.200
something you want done because he wants to do it. Oh my gosh. That's so beautiful.
00:47:39.880
Manipulative, but like that's just leadership. That's being influential.
00:47:43.740
Yeah. Yeah. So last one, you talked about obsessed. You're obsessed with meeting Vanessa
00:47:48.300
Van Edwards. That's another one of your traits of wild courage. What does positive obsession look like?
00:47:54.040
Well, it's pushing, persisting, performing, because frankly, none of these traits will serve you if you
00:47:59.060
don't learn to deliver, not for some company, but to achieve your own ambitions. So obsessed for me,
00:48:04.080
it was I wanted a job at Google in 2006. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed and I submitted my
00:48:09.180
application online, having no clue what the job was that I submitted it for. But I discovered there
00:48:14.340
was maybe sort of possibly a formatting funkiness when I uploaded my resume and whether there was
00:48:20.280
or wasn't, when I didn't hear back from Google, I used that as an opportunity to print out that
00:48:24.740
resume on a piece of paper and hop in my mom's 10 year old Honda stick shift and drive to the Google
00:48:30.540
office and sit there on the couch until someone came out and talked to me. And I remember the
00:48:35.460
receptionist, it was a shared office space was like, no, it's not really protocol for Googlers
00:48:39.280
to come out and talk to you. You can drop the resume here. And I just like firm as a tree rooted
00:48:44.100
to the ground, you know, with my smile kind of like cheeks quivering as I kept that smile on.
00:48:49.260
I was professionally persistent and said, oh, it's okay. I'll wait. I really do need to talk to
00:48:54.100
somebody because there was a problem with my resume. And there's this study that says people
00:48:57.860
defer to because it was a study about people standing in line to make Xerox copies. And
00:49:02.560
someone from the back went to the front and said, I need to go to the front line because I need to
00:49:06.200
make copies. Just because they said the word because they were more likely to be let into the
00:49:10.440
line, even though of course, everyone was there to make copies. But the research suggests that people
00:49:14.620
defer to the word because XYZ. So I said, because there was a problem with my resume, I need to speak
00:49:21.000
to someone. And eventually someone named Elizabeth came out and I talked a little bit about how I had just
00:49:25.860
come back from working abroad and backpacking through South America, which I understood were
00:49:30.640
very Google-y, you know, skills or things that people did to be kind of well-rounded and global
00:49:35.220
citizens. And then, then and only then did I hear back from Google once I showed up. Actually,
00:49:41.520
not even then. I, I didn't hear back. I didn't get her business card. And then I tried every single
00:49:47.020
permutation and combination of first initial last name, first name, last name, just last name at
00:49:52.200
google.com. Her name was Elizabeth Kelleher. So I emailed E. Kelleher, Elizabeth Kelleher,
00:49:57.680
Liz Kelleher, you know, Elizabeth at google.com. And, and then finally I found the right combination.
00:50:03.520
And when I followed up, I, then I heard back. So that is my flavor of obsessed and it's okay to be
00:50:09.420
obsessed. It's okay to stick your neck out. It's okay to show that you want something deeply because
00:50:14.080
people like enthusiasm, people like energy, people like positivity. And that's what I was trying to show
00:50:19.800
because it didn't work. Just submitting my, my application online. Silly protocols and rules
00:50:25.380
are there to deter the deterrable, but I just decided I was going to be undeterred and I got
00:50:29.600
the job and here we are almost 20 years later. Yeah. You got to play it hot. Don't play it cool.
00:50:34.460
Definitely. So we've talked about these different traits. Is there one you think that people would
00:50:38.620
get the most benefit from working on or like the one that people struggle with the most that if they
00:50:43.140
started working on a day, they'd see a lot of ROI? I think shameless, you know, I think there's
00:50:49.120
just a lot of change in the world right now. A lot of economic uncertainty, a lot of change with,
00:50:53.860
you know, the onset of AI, a lot of layoffs, a lot of reorgs. And that's hard. You know,
00:50:58.240
there's this moment where my husband and I were living with my grandmother on her pullout couch
00:51:03.520
in Manhattan while we were job hunting. And John shared some unfortunate news. He, we sat down to
00:51:09.200
dinner. He said, I've been part of a major company restructure and I got laid off today. Well,
00:51:13.580
I'm crushed as a newlywed, but I look across the table at grandma Lila, who was like a total
00:51:18.980
spitfire at four foot 10 and 90 pounds. She was not just shameless. She was unstoppable.
00:51:23.500
And she said, John, no, it's just an opening offer. Don't sign the paperwork. And John and I
00:51:29.880
look at each other trying to silently communicate what we're thinking. And then finally John sighs
00:51:33.560
and says, uh, I think a layoff is like a one-sided thing, grandma. They say, you don't work here
00:51:40.000
anymore. And I say, okay. And that's when grandma Lila sighs and says, well, sure, it would be more
00:51:45.920
comfortable to take no for an answer, but don't let fear shape your decision. Don't let shame shape
00:51:52.980
your decision. You both want something, right? They want to get stuff done, even though they can't
00:51:56.380
afford to pay you. And you want a job because it's easier to get a job when you have a job.
00:52:01.260
So, so finally John relents. And the next day he goes to his VP and he halfheartedly offers to stay
00:52:07.380
on for 10% time and pay while he job hunts. And shockingly they accept. Now I'm not sharing this
00:52:15.740
as some influence tactic per se. The point is grandma Lila's lesson. Don't let fear, don't let
00:52:26.860
Yeah. And it worked out for your husband because he, he got some time off. He had a little money to
00:52:31.560
live on, kept his benefits. And then a few months later after this crisis that this company was
00:52:37.260
going through, he kind of abated the company hired him back full time. And it was all because he's
00:52:42.480
willing to do something we think of as a bad thing. It'd be shameless. Like he had to be
00:52:47.020
uncomfortable and ask for something that apparently wasn't an option. Well, Jenny, this has been a great
00:52:53.000
conversation. Where can people go to learn more about you and your work?
00:52:55.980
Well, the book's available anywhere, electronic, you know, ebook, audio book, hardcover, Amazon,
00:53:01.340
anywhere books are sold. And then you can find me on itsjennywood.com. And I love helping
00:53:07.520
organizations with keynotes. I love helping execs through one-on-one coaching. I do some small group
00:53:11.800
coaching and I would love to be in touch and help you find your wild courage wherever you are and
00:53:16.840
whatever you are chasing. Fantastic. Well, Jenny Wood, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:53:22.740
My guest today was Jenny Wood. She's the author of the book, Wild Courage. It's available on
00:53:26.060
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about her work at our website,
00:53:29.560
it's jennywood.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash wild courage where you find links
00:53:34.940
to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM
00:53:46.700
podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast
00:53:50.260
archives as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much
00:53:53.620
anything you think of. And if you haven't done this already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute
00:53:57.320
excuse me to know the podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already,
00:54:00.660
thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think
00:54:03.960
would have something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,
00:54:07.260
I'm Brett McKay reminding you to not listen to anyone podcast with Put What You've Heard