Business as Usual: EDGE Women's Leadership Program

 

Transcription: 

Good afternoon, everyone, Audrey Russo here presidency of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. It's Friday, Friday before Thanksgiving, another beautiful COVID sunny day here in Pittsburgh. And we're thrilled to wrap week up with a dear friend and colleague, a full man, I'll do a nicer intro to her in just a moment, I just want to set the table so we can get some of the housekeeping out of the way. Jonathan kersting is joined with us and he's going to be monitoring the chat. And he is vice president of all things media and marketing at the Tech Council. And I want to give deep appreciation, deep appreciation, excuse me to Huntington bank, they have been our partners right from the beginning. And if you don't know them, get to know them. They're amazing civic stewards. And we've we've muted you by the way, you don't want to hear what's going on in the background. And hopefully, my own dogs will behave as well. But we also have a chat, and you'll have an opportunity to ask our guests chrystia fomin. Any questions? Almost any questions? Actually, right, Christy, I'm pretty thrilled to wrap the week up and have a little bit of a deep dive with Christy. So if you don't know her, she is the founder and CEO of a company called edge leadership solutions. But that doesn't really talk about a little bit more about what she does. And that's what we're gonna do today. So Christy, welcome. I want to give you a proper welcome. Rocks about your Well, before we talk about your business, what we like to do, and what I like to do is find out who is Christy, who is Christy the woman? And how are you holding up during COVID as well. So tell us a little bit anything that you think would be relevant for our audience to know about you?

Well, I am taking a look at the participant list. And I'm seeing some of my edge sisters on here. So I would be remiss if I did not answer that question in the way that we in edge, as edge women always answer that question

Ah,

with not what I do, but who I am. And so what I say when folks ask me, what I do is I say I challenge the status quo. Everything I do, I believe in thinking differently. And so I'm a leadership coach, and my role and the company's role is to bridge the gap between the genders and the generations at work helping companies engage their talent pipeline. So that's what I do, and why I do it.

And and that's, that's pretty incredible. How did you get to this point? Were you always an entrepreneur? Or were you, you know, how did you get to the point where you said, This is what I'm gonna do? This is what I'm going to plant my flag and say,

so what's interesting, and you know, it's not what I have always done. But when you said, Adri, you know, have I always been an entrepreneur, I smiled, because my very first job was, was being a clown in high school. So I'll take you back to high school. And, you know, all of my first jobs were Dairy Queen, or McDonald's, and I decided to start a business doing children's birthday parties. I can't believe I'm saying this out. Actually, I have this story. Very few people. So you're getting the real Christie element story. But so I started a business doing children's birthday parties, and I dressed up as a clown. And I taught myself how to do face painting and balloon animals. And I could make $50 in an hour when my friends would take them a week to make $50. So I think I've always had a little bit of that entrepreneurial spirit.

But wait, what was so clown? Like, can you tell us what kind of clown joke you might have done? That was a big hit? Oh, my gosh, um,

I don't know. I don't think I had I didn't have jokes so much. I was a very happy clown. So right. They're happy clowns. And then they're clowns. I was a happy clown. Um, and I was about, you know, just entertaining the kids at the party. So we would sing songs and dance and then there would be face painting and balloon animals, of course. Okay,

so we're gonna have to meet someday and do some balloon animal workshops.

I wonder if I would still remember it.

I do agree. So I thought I would do that. That's a great story. So So you had the bug in you. You were a little bit of an entrepreneur Did you ever but you did do some work in in corporate company.

I did. So my and actually the story of why I'm doing what I'm doing now actually started in my I call it my first career. So my first career was sales. I worked for Johnson and Johnson and bear so big medical equipment, sales companies, and j&j right out of college hired me I went to Duquesne and graduated from Kane and j&j in their sales organization had an amazing mentoring program, where good sales reps, mentored new hires, good division managers, all the way up to our CEO was involved in this mentoring program. So it was an amazing opportunity for me, you know, 22 years old today. And I found that I loved being a part of that mentoring program. And I loved helping new hires get settled in there, get settled in their new jobs, establish credibility and visibility with their clients and their team. And so I got into my 24 year old head that this is what leadership was, right? It was helping people, it was helping develop people. So I should be a sales manager. I'm in sales. I love this whole leadership thing. I the next step for me as a sales manager. So Jay, and Jay had the philosophy that in order to move up, you had to move out. And I'm a pittsburgher. Born and bred I grew up in mckees rocks. To be honest, I've never had any interest in leaving this town. So I knew I couldn't stay at j&j. So I went through a recruiting firm and landed a bear. And at there as a sales manager, so this is really important. Hear me, when bear interviewed me, they knew I didn't have any management experience. But I was a decent enough salesperson, I guess that I convinced them that I could do it. And it didn't even take me a year to go down in flames. Because if you think about it, the qualities that make someone a good salesperson, make them at best a C minus sales manager. And later on, when I found myself in the construction industry, you see this with engineers, too, right? Just because you're a great engineer does not mean that she's a great manager of engineers. And so I say, I'm lucky that bear didn't fire me,

because they

absolutely could have you guys. I was probably the worst sales manager ever. I just wanted everybody to like me, I would do your work if you couldn't get it done. Because, you know, that's what I would do. I needed to have the results to show my boss, so I'll take care of it for you. Oh, was it was atrocious, really terrible. But so this goes back to your question. What I learned in that, think about what happened to me at bear? Was that my fault or the company's fault? I'd say it was a little bit of both. Here's the great nation that hired me in a role I had never done without developing me into that. And here's me, typical millennial overselling myself, right, like, I can do this. I got this. So in that moment, I got to be really passionate about early and mid career leaders, and how do we own our careers? And how do we develop ourselves because we can always trust that our companies are going to do it.

So that's, that's sort of interesting. So you fast forward. So you start this company. Yeah. And you work talk a little bit about what you know what the company is why someone would use your services.

So edge leadership is actually my second company after what happened in bear happened. Ultimately, I ended up leaving health care, and sales and starting my first coaching and consulting company at the ripe old age of 27. Because I was really passionate about Alright, I thought I had it figured out, I knew there was a gap. So I was going to create a company to do that. And I was incredibly lucky because I was an employee at bear that they were my first client. So how many 27 year olds can start a business and have a client like that right off the bat, I did that business for I want to say like three and a half years and then ultimately was hired by mascara construction to close down my business income in houses their head of organization development in in house coach and spent seven years there before I launched edge in 2013. So edge, what I would say is at the heart of what we do is we grow the person to grow the leader. And what I mean by that is we are ever all of our programs are every bit as much personal development as they are professional development, because that to me was what I experienced that was missing, right? leadership development needs to be turned inside out the internal source from where our external behaviors are born.

So it's all one. That's really what

we are. I mean, gosh, guys, this year of all years, we're seeing it right. Like we've said for years, you know what happens at work comes home every day to my husband, Kevin and my 17 year old daughter, Elena, and you better believe that what's happening at home comes to work. And now this year, well, dude, it's I'm in the same room. Right? Like my personal and professional life has never been more blurred. Mm

hmm. How are you holding up with that, by the way? Me personally? Yeah, you personally.

So what I will say is it has been an amazing year from a business standpoint, and has been a really hard year, from a personal standpoint really hard. You know, like many companies, we've reinvented ourselves this year and some really beautiful ways as the leader of that company. And as someone who still delivers for clients, it has made the workload for me quite overwhelming at times. On a personal front. I am. I've struggled with family members. I've struggled with boundaries. I've struggled with weight. I'm, you know, I've struggled with my health. And three weeks ago, I lost my grandma, who was like a mother to me. So it has, it has been a year, I would say, of overwhelm and grief, in a lot of ways. For me,

Wow, thank you for being so candid. And I think that's important for people to hear. I really, that's one of the things I really appreciate about you. And the work that you do is that your candor is really, it's right there. So and I think that matters, that matters in terms of your work. And it matters in terms of just being a leader. And many, many of us forget that, that we don't that our job is to carry everyone else all the time each and every day. And as a result, you crash and burn, you just eventually crash and burn. Because you know what? We're mere mortals. Right?

Right. And I you know, the other thing that I wanted to underscore what you just said, Audrey and I would share this with everybody here in the virtual room. Um, you know, I was I allowed myself to be vulnerable there. Because vulnerability is so key for us as leaders, you know, I'm have the privilege to be mentored by fabulous thought leader named Dr. Bernie Brown. And if you don't know who she is, you guys, I'm gonna say Google her. Her TED talk on vulnerability is one of the top five most watched TED talks on earth actually. And what I learned from her around vulnerability is that it feels like fear. So as I was saying that to you, and I could feel my words get caught in my throat, I was afraid. I don't know everybody that's on this call, right? I don't know, you know, who's listening. So vulnerability feels like fear, but looks like courage. Right. And as leaders, it's I don't know about you guys. But it's the first thing I look for in a leader when I'm going to follow, but it's often the last thing I'm willing to share.

Very, very interesting. So so let's let's dive into the Bernie Brown, the Dr. Bernie Brown, What's your relationship there? And I'll have Lexie put a link out to some of her work, or at least her homepage. So if people don't know about her,

yeah, so I'm Rene Brown. If m is an amazing thought leader in the space, I say she's an accidental organization and development and leadership development leader, I don't think she ever expected when she started doing her research into vulnerability, that there would be such an important space as it relates to organizations and the impact that she can have there. I was selected to be a part of an inaugural group of global coaches to to be trained by her in her work in early March of 2018. And she has since now trained hundreds of coaches. But I was a part of that very first group. I am actually it's funny, there's, if you had our website on the blog, there's a story of the went the first time that I actually met her in person and how I totally fangirled and lost lost my stuff. That's what I will say last my stuff just to be in her presence, because she's just a total badass. I don't even say that on here. But I just say that, um, but she, she owns that word, you guys, she absolutely owns that word. And, and so I'm trying to think what else? What didn't I answer Audrey?

She's at the University of Texas, right? She's at the faculty of the University of Texas, Houston, maybe University of Houston.

Oh, it's maybe Houston. Okay. I know that she's actually still doing research. And,

and you guys, I will tell you, she's getting ready to launch and what will be our seventh book. So um, she has six New York Times bestsellers. And the book that is going to come out next is on emotional agility. So she's taking emotional intelligence to the next level up. You know, as leaders, it's not just about being intelligent, you know, around emotions, it's being able to recognize not only what emotion I'm in, but to sit in empathy in the emotion that you're in, which is actually an incredible skill this year of all years for leaders. You know, when people ask me, what's the number one skill that I think leaders need right now, it's empathy. But how do you teach empathy?

Ask how did how does your business actually impact this? Can you can you let us dive in a little bit so that you're

absolutely in

the house?

What I will say I will come back to the empathy at a high level. What we do at edge leadership is twofold. We do group coaching experiences, and we do one on one coaching. So and all of that is 100% virtual. So in that way We were really very much prepared for 2020 tailor made, I would say, in a lot of ways, because I've been trying to teach our clients for the last eight years that coaching over zoom works just as well as coaching in person. And so a lot of executives were like, No, no, you need to come to my office, I need a coach in front of me. And I'm like, well, that just limits you to the coaches who can drive to your office, there are amazing coaches all over the world. You know, why don't why don't you play with this. So group coaching, one on one coaching, I could certainly go into more on that later. But what I will say is in the group coaching space, we have six to nine month programs that are at the early career, the mid career, the managing director level, and then this year to answer your question, Audrey, and the C suite level. So one of the ways that we pivoted is we noticed that a number of our clients and our clients are usually fortune 500 companies, a number of our clients weren't spending as much at the high potential on the mid career levels. But given what was going on in the immense pressure, and I'm sure every leader on here would agree the immense pressure that leaders at those higher levels were feeling and then throw into it, the global civil rights movement and social justice. And now let's talk about what does it mean to be anti racism, right, anti racist, you know, all of these things, the skill that comes out of it all, is empathy. And so what I will tell you, and I'm going to totally give him a shout out right here is, um, we have a gentleman, a CEO here in our city named Steve mal Knight, who is the newest.

He's been on our show.

Hi, guys know how awesome he is. We've had the great pleasure of doing his mid career leader cohorts. So similar to what we do with you guys, Audrey at the tech Council for all women at Duquesne light we do for coed leaders at the mid career level. And so Steve came to one of our virtual graduations of one of those cohorts last spring. All right, so this is a chance for me to be vulnerable again, all right. I'm just kind of throwing this out here. And he called me up and said, Oh, my gosh, I love what you know, your company did for our mid career leaders. Can you build something like that at the C suite for my team? And I said, No. Because we've never done that, right. Like our expertise is early career leaders and mid career leaders like C suite and an intact team that. And in fact, I said no to him three times. Before he, um, I don't know if we'll give him credit. He convinced me. And I said, All right. So I've never done it before. You know, we've never built anything like this before. Let's build it together. And the one of the huge competencies in this six month program that we've been doing with his team since July they graduate in December is empathy. And so this goes back and it ties into Bernie Browns work. Because we know that empathy is important, but we don't know how to teach it. Right? And it is absolutely according to Bernie Browns research. And the data all shows that empathy can be taught, empathy can be practiced, and we can get better at it. Some people may have a natural gift towards it, but you can learn. And if ever, there was a time to learn, now's the time. Wow.

So you're, you're on the board. We're going to talk about some of the edge work. But I want to jump to the question talk about you're on the board of Eton park their Hospitality Group. Right. So can you shed a little light on that experience and why it's so important in terms of including, I mean, I don't know if it was an all male board. I don't know any of the history there. But I'm, you know, I'm sure that the added perspective and making sure that they get feedback from a whole bunch of diverse customers, right, because we're all customers of Eaton Park, but can you talk about what the goal is because you've spoken to groups where they're working on women on boards?

Yeah, absolutely. Um,

it'll be another good opportunity for me to practice vulnerability.

Actually, I'm just giving you every time you

are and I'm telling you what, Audrey, I'm stepping into it, because if you guys leave here with nothing, except for that there's power and being vulnerable to your teams and your people. Then I'm living my purpose today. And so I was so two things I had. I've been on a lot of not for profit boards. And, and I continue to do that. But as I i door was open to me by a fabulous woman that most of you know named Laura Ellsworth. And an organization had come to her. They were looking for someone to chair a national not for profit, called 2020 women on boards, and she was unavailable and had suggested that they talk with me so I became the Chair of that great organization for four years. And that's where my eyes were really opened to the lack of women represented women represented on fortune 1000 company boards. And of course, you know, in the s&p 500. And you know, you could just keep going down lack of women just about everywhere. And as I started to dig into the research and see why that diversity of thought was so important across the gender spectrum, I became very passionate about it, here in the Pittsburgh region and across the country. And it was during that time, and I did not realize it at the time that I was being recruited by the folks at Eaton Park. So they were a client of mine. And I remember having dinner with some of the Broadhurst family. And I was thinking that they were inviting me to pick my brains, about, you know, what I knew in this area. And, um, you know, they were looking for a woman on their board. And it wasn't till I came home, and I was telling my husband, Kevin about He's like, babe, I think they're thinking of you for the board. And I'm like, now I'm 40 years old. Right? You know, like, Who's below that? I know, there are some companies that are innovative, and they're putting millennials on their board, but I don't have any board experience. And that's exactly what they were doing. So I give them you know, tremendous credit for that, while also recognizing because I think this story is important for other women to hear is that sometimes we have advocates that we don't know we have, right? And sometimes we need to trust that other people think we're ready, even before we think we're ready, you know, so there is power in leaping at those opportunities.

So, you know, we have worked with you. So it for those of you who don't know, we have, we have our own edge program, I think we're in our baby, or fifth year right, of doing this. And to tell you the truth, Christy will know that I was very apprehensive about this right at the beginning. And and that's for a whole other conversation. But there were men on our team that were pretty passionate about saying that we really need to work with you and do some experimentation. So can you talk about your experience in terms of working with the tech council? And our members? And because this is not this is across companies? Right? So yes, that conversations about intra and inter company participation. So what kind of feedback and what learnings Have you had, as a result of that?

Um, oh, gosh.

So what I will say is that, while this is our fifth year, we're partnering with you guys, for our open enrollment edge program, we had one year prior to it where we did it on our own. And if it hadn't been for you guys, we still wouldn't be offering it because it was just too heavy of a lift for my team, to handle both the delivery of excellence in programming, and the administration coordination sales piece, you know, that you and your membership brings. So for us, it was absolutely an important partnership. When I think about what we have learned over the last five years, you know, 99% of all of our programming is inside organizations, you know, where companies hire us to work with their women leaders or work with their high potential leaders or their you know, C suite leaders or just, you know, cohorts of all male leaders in the spirit of, you know, men being more inclusive in organizations. And what I love about our partnership, is that now we get to impact organizations that couldn't afford to bring us in house. Right, so the small to mid sized companies who maybe don't have 24 leaders spread out across the globe or the you know, the region where everyone course, now, the fact that we're all remote, it's different, but we're everyone used to just be in the office. Now we can connect peers together across companies and across industries, to share best practices because that's what the group coaching model is. It isn't about our coaches coming in and being gray haired experts to PowerPoint, your folks. Our job as coaches is to create the space for the participants to learn from one another. And the beautiful thing about you know, what we do together here with a tech council with women in technology, keeping in mind that we try to keep every cohort about 75 to 80% women in technology, but then be thoughtful about interspersing other women from other industries so that we have great diversity of thought, you know, for so a woman in construction or manufacturing can contribute to a woman you know, in another industry and learn best practices there. So it's been it's been an incredibly fulfilling partnership. I would say on my end, I hope it doesn't end anytime soon. And it allows us the value true value for me is it allows us to impact women That we couldn't have impacted before. And I think I think, Audrey, we've raised the bar for women's leadership in Pittsburgh. I mean, there were a couple of programs doing what we were doing when we came into the market. And I think and they have shifted, since we've been in the market, I think we've made a huge, we've created a ripple effect in the city that whether women come to our program or go to another program, and their development is better because of it.

So people just just click if people want to know more about leprosy, we'll put information out there. But it's a nine month cohort, there's a process you have to go through before you actually can join the cohort. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to apply. It's a journey. We've had lots of partnerships, and Christy just put some information out there. And so yeah, we lot we just launched, we have a few minutes, but we just launched this program. That's called launch Li un CH, it's an acronym. And we have quite a few of the edge women joining us. And it's really around mentoring young women, meaning, you know, your daughter's age, if not younger, so 1617. And for the parents of daughters, okay, for the parents of daughters, and I know you are a parent of a daughter, what are some of the most important skills that we can help teach and prepare for them as they move as they move forward.

So two things come up for me, and I will say that, I think that so the advice I'm about to give is, of course of value for the parents of daughters. And as my own daughter is teaching me gender is on a spectrum. Right. So um, you know, for those, those kiddos that, you know, maybe don't fit in the male or the female, binary, and, and for those that do, you know, for those cisgendered kids, the most important thing that I'm seeing my daughter, Elena is teaching me and she 17 is the ability to name what we're feeling right now in this year, be able to identify how we're feeling, and to have someone that we can go to who will sit with us an empathy. You know, I can't understand what it's like to be a 17 year old right now to have my junior year taken away from me to be in remote school to not be able to see my friends when my peers are everything to me. And what I'm learning as a parent is I can't fix any of that for Elena, what I can do is that I can sit in empathy with her beside her, I mean, Rene Browns definition of empathy is, is basically imagine as if the other person, so I'm going to say my daughter, right, my daughter is sitting in the dark. And as parents, we want to come in and we want to turn on the light bulb, we turn on the light, they turn it off, we turn on the light, they turn it off, right, empathy is sitting beside them in the dark, until they're ready to turn on the light. And so I think the number one skill that if we can be teaching our children right now is identifying how they're feeling. You know, are they frustrated? Are they overwhelmed? are they feeling inadequate? Because they aren't in school, and the rules have changed? are they feeling sad and depressed, anxious, scared, you know, being able to name what they're feeling, and then to be able to communicate that to someone in their life, whether that's a parent or grandparent or a friend, and to have that person acknowledge how they're feeling? I don't think there's anything more important than that.

Can you be too empathetic?

Can you be too empathetic? So there is a misnomer out there. That empathy is taking on another person's emotion. That is not what empathy is. Empathy is. So if I'm sitting with you, Audrey, and you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed as a CEO, right, empathy is is sitting beside you and listening. And then identifying to a time that I felt stressed and overwhelmed and supporting, it's not taking on your stress and overwhelmed.

Do you see the difference? Fix it it's not trying to fix it

not empathy is not problem solving. There is a place as leaders for us to problem solve. There is also a place where we don't fix it and there In fact, there's a great video out there just Google empathy the nail, I think you should find it and it's a video and it's it's you know about busting gender stereotypes, but there's a woman sitting there and she's complaining about the pain in her head. And the man is like, um, she's got a giant nail out of her forehead. He's like, just take out the nail. And she's like, no, my my sweaters are snagged my Had hurts and he's like, just take out the nail, right? That's the difference between empathy and problem solving.

You know, sometimes people aren't ready to take out, that doesn't mean that we can't support them. And that doesn't mean that we're going to take the nail out of their head and put it right here in the middle of our forehead either.

That's great. That's great. We've put the video out there. Thank you, Lexi, for getting it.

Thank you.

It's a fun one. You

enjoy it. Thanksgiving is coming up. How are you taking care of yourself? And what are some parting words of wisdom for the rest of them out here. So I

am, I'm taking care of myself by taking some time off of work next week. So that is important. We also are lucky enough to have our family has a little cabin up at seven springs. And so I'm going to head up there by myself. So I'm an introvert. And I say I play an extrovert on TV, but I'm absolutely an introvert. So how I take care of myself is just being alone. So I'm going to spend some time alone next week. And my parting words, you guys,

um,

my parting words,

I want to reiterate something that I said earlier, and that is the importance as leaders of practicing vulnerability. You know, I feel like a lot of us, myself included, back in April, we're realizing the challenges that our people in our teams were facing and how overwhelmed they were. And then somewhere in July, we all started to get used to this new normal, right? And the workload, I don't know about you guys, but in my company, the workload went right back up, the expectations went back up. And we haven't been doing as much checking in on our folks as we could be. And I'm so I'm going to leave here, as I'm saying this out loud. I'm realizing it's actually a call to action for myself today. You know, but the invitation I have for you is think back to what you were doing in April, with your teams and your friends, and check back in with folks, and simply not to try to take on their overwhelm or their stress or their emotions, but to sit and practice sitting in the dark with them and letting them know you care.

Well, that's it. You've heard from Christy Uffelman, we put links out there we put told you about our own edge program. She shared some things about herself that if any of you know her didn't know. And if any of you have never met her before you have a peek inside of the heart and brain of crystal filament. So I want to thank everyone. Take these words. I'm going to take them as a to do list as well to remind myself and Jonathan, what do we have up next week? Next week, giving it's gonna be a short week, but we are kicking off in style because we have Tobii Dynavox stopping by a technology that's literally giving people a voice. I cannot wait for this right. Abs have severe communication impairments. It's really exciting. They were born in Pittsburgh, right? They were in Britain in Pittsburgh. kick butt here. We love it. Great. All right, everyone. Stay safe. Have a great weekend. Thank you Christy for taking the time with us.

Absolutely.

Me you guys. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai