Welcome to the Sword of Sure Podcast. Where doubt looms, fear whispers, and the only way forward is through. I'm Samar Carbo and if you've ever felt like you're just sort of sure about what you're doing, you're not alone. This is where we face the uncertainty. Push past the hesitation and keep going anyway way. So take a breath, step in, and let's move forward together.

Hello and welcome to the Sword of Shore podcast. As you may have heard in the beginning, my name is Samar Carbo and I am so excited to bring this conversation to you. This one's with Lori Adams Brown. She'll do her own intro, but she is the host of a podcast and an international speaker and we are lucky to have her on the podcast. If you have your own story of imposter syndrome or self doubt to share, go ahead and shoot me an [email protected] let's have a listen.

My name is Lori Adams Brown. My podcast is called A World of Difference. We bring our differences around the table to make a difference together across industries. Anyone from someone working in an enterprise global business like I currently do, or someone working in an NGO anywhere around the world, or somebody working in government or education, academia really essentially, we have conversations where we bring our differences to the table and our different perspectives are our superpowers that we bring and help each other see something from a different angle and even instigate conversations that can continue on after the podcast as people share those episodes with people in their lives, maybe in their workplace or just loved ones, to have these conversations about how to go deeper in ways we can make a difference together around the world.

Is there a time, sort of in that trajectory where you were possibly starting out or maybe even in the middle, where you were in a room and you wondered if you belonged there, if you if you felt the onions, that feeling of imposter syndrome coming on.

And I do a lot of training around how to cultivate belonging in a workplace and I I advise our president and our COO on best ways to implement that and carefully cultivate that. I do have created a key leadership program where we have manager training and training for our executives and even individual contributors on how everybody in our workplace can cultivate that belonging and that psychological safety. So all that being said, I certainly believe that there were times earlier in my career where I didn't experience that level of belonging that I would have needed in order to completely thrive and for my voice to be taken seriously and for my expertise to be welcome. And I little bit struggle with the term imposter syndrome. And it's only because as my perspective has unfolded over the years as a woman in business and certain male dominated industries, I often really look at it through the lens of every good work culture should be cultivating psychological safety because, well, Google's project Aristotle identified that as the key to successful teams. So cultivation of psychological safety really is kind of everything when it comes to leadership development and team development. And so if there's an absence of that, I tend, especially when it comes to a woman coming into a male adoption in an industry, for example, I tend to not want to say that woman is broken and needing fixing because our culture at large tends to say that quite a bit to women. When you write leadership books as a woman, often publishers will push your book into a self help category, whereas men tend to get put straight up into the leadership category. And so I just, knowing those narratives exist, knowing I face those kind of bias in my own journey in male dominated industries, I, I would certainly say there have been times where I doubted myself, where I minimized myself, where I made myself small to be more palpable toward a system that was made by men for men over time and hadn't really changed those systems or modified it to a modern workforce. But I wouldn't necessarily call it a syndrome that I experienced as if that's something more pathological or something more that needed a version of medicalization. When I hear syndrome, it seems as though the treatment needs to be a long, lengthy process to help that person. But in most of the circumstances in which I found myself doubting myself or making myself feel smaller or responding to sort of tone policing on occasion, I really don't think I would label it as imposter syndrome as much as really an unfortunate situation in which a culture had a work culture had either brought me in to a system and a team where it had been mostly men and I was often the only woman in the room. But what we see, and my background's in sociology and so I'm much more fascinated by how systems and people and groups work and in cultures and as I am in terms of a psychological lens. And so I highly benefited from the psychology lens. I have benefited from amazing therapists over my career who've helped me in different moments. But I guess because I see it more through the lens of the system, mostly looking at a system that if there are women, for example, in an industry that is more male dominated, who tend to keep feeling as though that something they would label as Imposter syndrome or others might label it that way. That to me is more a system problem that can be fixed as opposed to fixing that particular woman. And so I guess all that to say is, you know, what if imposter syndrome in women isn't a flaw to fix, but a symptom of systems that were never designed with us in mind. The workplace was built by and for a homogeneous workforce. In a lot of situations, leadership norms reward traits aligned more with traditional masculinity and leaving others feeling like outsiders. Even now we only have about 10 ish Percentage of Fortune 5 hundreds are CEOs are women. Not because women aren't qualified, but because the pipeline isn't sort of getting in there. And so I guess it's, you know, reframing it, I guess from, is what I would say sort of challenging that in certain environments where imposter syndrome isn't a personal defect, in a lot of situations it's more of a predictable reaction to exclusion. And maybe in those situations I think I would more label what I experienced as systemic exclusion syndrome where I did have self doubt about myself or didn't have opportunities to be heard because of that.

That's really well said. Well, obviously I, I did not know that only 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are female. And perhaps it's just my rose colored glasses speaking as the son of a CEO female, but, but I, I just, that was very eye opening for me and even seeing it as pathologizing and, and perhaps medicalizing something that is largely women and minorities that feel this, this is, you know, I mean, when I have men on the podcast, I have to sort of reframe so that they even understand what I'm talking about when I say imposter syndrome. And, and just hearing that. Well, obviously as a psychological sociological background, you're able to talk about it in a much smarter way and much, much more educational way than I've heard. So maybe you have to change how I talk about that.

Well, I, I always welcome any pushback. I feel like the cultivation of psychological safety means we don't always have it all exactly right. We, we need people around us who see it differently. This is the whole point of my podcast where I see the world in a certain way because of my birth order and my own family, the country and the cultures in which I grew up in Costa Rica and Venezuela and international schools with friends from all over the world and teachers from all over the world. But even that was limited in terms of how I could see the world because we're all limited. And so the cultivation of psychological safety. The reason I think Google's project Aristotle flagged it as a key to successful teams, is that you don't get stuck in a group think with it. It allows leaders to cultivate an environment where if you say something and it seems slightly off to someone else, they feel safe to push back or question it or say, hey, could we reframe that? It seems as though this would be a better way of wording that. And in workplaces, we can get stuck in a particular way of working and innovation won't thrive if we can't continue to expand. So especially in Silicon Valley and this, in a tech company where I work and other tech companies, we have had to cultivate this, or we can't keep changing in a way that the world and work is rapidly changing. So we have these outdated systems. The issue often lies with that outdated system, not in women's confidence. For example, I think that, you know, even we'll see things sometimes around, well, women aren't getting promoted to CEO because they're not asking for it, or they don't have the confidence. Or maybe people will say, you know, equal pay doesn't exist because women aren't as good at negotiating. They, they tend to not ask. Well, there's a lot of factors going on in there, in the research. There's some great research out of Stanford and different universities that have done some research on this. But essentially what we're seeing is that women are asking, but are being penalized for asking, and so losing some likability speaking. So women showing ambition because of our narratives in society doesn't get viewed as favorably as a man showing ambition. And we raise little boys and little girls on the playground very differently. And so even early on, you'll see some of these studies that show little boys will be trained by a lot of people in their sphere, whether it's their teachers or their parents or people they interact with, to be more aggressive, to be more ambitious, to keep pushing and push the same thing again and again and again, again until they get it. Whereas women are often socialized to be more, you know, carrying the emotional weight of all of their relationships, to be very reciprocal, to be very transformational instead of transactional, to not ask, to not be deal making that. That seems frowned upon or inappropriate, and then that they do lose likability points, often even at young ages, for showing ambition, for showing, you know, even aggression. Like some people will say, for example, that movie the Devil Wears Prada, it wouldn't Even be a movie if it was about a man.

Right.

Because the reason it's a movie is because it's a woman and women aren't supposed to do that. Right? Yeah.

It would just be a workplace.

Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah.

Yeah. And I, I, and I love the, the, the way you come at it. It's, it's sounds almost like a freedom fighter. It brought, brings to mind, and I'm a student of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Speeches, so it brings to mind some of his rallying cries of just freedom, give us the things that you gave yourself so freely. And it sort of brings to mind though, obviously the whole system is wrong for, for imposter syndrome. And I don't disagree. I know you were welcoming pushback, but I don't disagree on that. But if they're not willing to budge in a moment, do you have any advice then for somebody who is in sort of the throes of that? Is it just to get out of that culture and find somewhere more welcoming, or is there another solution?

You know, I think it sort of depends. And so if we're talking women and minorities in a system that wasn't built for them, I think the different, if you're a white man in a system that was built for white men, then that's, I feel like a different conversation. Very likely. One of the things I've noticed personally, anecdotally in my own leadership journey around the world, as well as the leadership development programs I have implemented, is oftentimes that system will, and I've seen this more than once, there will be a young white man who is seen for his potential. Because narrative wise, that's what we often hear about, that's what we experience often. And that's what the research shows. You know, you have two resumes, and if it's one is a woman's and one is a man's, everything being equal, the man's will be seen for potential and the woman will have to have all the experience and sometimes more. And so when women don't, for example, apply for a job unless she has 100% of the qualifications or at least 80% or more, whereas some of the research shows, and of course not all men will only will apply if they have only 20% of the qualifications. And so I think maybe if a man is experiencing imposter syndrome and he applied for a job and he only had 20% of the qualifications and then he got it, well, maybe he is feeling that he has some skills gaps, because he does, he does have a lot to Learn. And so just being proactive to learn that and not to lean on the privilege of being a man or the privilege of being a white man to continue to help him coast through. Because what I've seen over time and more than one occasion is sometimes you'll have a man that gets all the way to like a vice president role. And he's been shoulder tapped for multiple levels of leadership, maybe even skipped entire levels of leadership, but not had leadership development that needed to necessarily happen along the way to help him gain the skills to be able to handle a robust role like a vice president role. And therefore he gets in that role. And he's missed so much of what he should have learned along the way, both through experience and gaining those skills. So in that case, maybe that is a better way to word it is imposter syndrome. And that system that holds women and maybe minorities back as well is the same system that's pushing people ahead too soon before they're ready. Now, if the conversation is around somebody who, who is feeling they're the only in the room, maybe they sit on a corporate board and they're the only black man, for example. Everyone else is a white man. And there's an issue that comes up around, maybe it's tariffs, maybe it's geopolitical shifts and, and, or maybe it's conversations around DEI on boards. You know, all these things are happening right now. And maybe this one black man is the only voice giving a warning of risk management, of a direction. He sees this going from his unique perspective of information he's gathered throughout his expertise and his career. And he isn't being heard because everybody else is going a different direction. That might make him feel a little bit of imposter syndrome. Whether that's right or wrong, or maybe it's only self doubt, maybe it really is. That system really should have had more than just one black man. Because when you're the only voice and there's research around specifically women in this situation. Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book, I think it's the Rule of Thirds. I can't remember exactly what he calls it, but you need about 30% of women on your board before even that voice of a woman can be heard. Because so often we are told in our society in very subtle ways to not listen to women and to prefer listening to men. And it's very subtle. So, you know, several years ago I looked at my bookshelf and I realized the majority of my books are written by white men. So I had to be very proactive to rectify that now. And when it comes to podcasts, I intentionally listen to more women podcast hosts, even though when I started podcasting only 15% of podcast hosts were women in the United States. Incidentally, in France it was 85% women. So I don't know what it is about the US that we're a little worse on this, but all that to say I think it sort of depends on who I'm giving the advice to or who I'm talking about imposter syndrome with and what that system looks like as to how my advice might be different.

Is there anything else that you haven't been able to say that you would like to add for the podcast? And there's no right answer there either.

I think that, you know, a lot of people are pivoting in their career and that's something that I've done in my career pivoted years ago from nonprofit into business and did that for values aligned reasons for myself and for a particular reason. I wanted to be a purpose driven business woman who's helping to change some of these systems and to help what, you know, leadership is changing and I wanted to be a part of that and a thought leader in that and also an executive leading in a global company in this way. And so I have a course called Mastering the Career Pivot. It's you can find it on my website, loriadamsbrown.com if you go there and it's career Pivot or you'll see it up on the website. It's something that I've created to help people get started in what this could look like for themselves and using some tools that helped me years ago. And also once I mentioned I work in talent development. So I'm involved in some of the acquisition and some of the things that are changing these days and how jobs are, are getting put out there and how to get a job and so talk a little bit about informational interviews and that type of thing if that could be helpful to anyone. But I'd love for you to come listen to a World of Difference podcast too to make a difference with us and our difference makers. Yeah, you can find us at www.our World of Difference podcast.com awesome.

And I'll make sure that gets into the show. Notes. Well, Laurie, it has been an immense pleasure speaking with you and I, I just could not have hoped for a better episode. Thank you so much.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks, you too. Bye bye now.

Truly a great conversation with Lori Adams Brown, the host of World of Difference podcast and obviously a change maker in the world. There's one thing I want to highlight and then we're going to get on out of here. At one point you may have noticed you can go back and listen to it once again, but Laurie said imposter syndrome is not a personal defect. It's a predictable response to exclusion. Go ahead and stick that one in your cap. Think about it a lot, where I'm sure going to be getting deep into what that all means in future podcasts. If anything that was said today struck a chord with you, please go ahead and leave five stars and share with a friend. We'd love to let more people hear what's going on here at the Sort of Sure Podcast. And once again, if you have a story to tell, shoot me an email at sort of surepodmail.com thanks so much friends. Later days.

Sam Sa.