#59 -A Women’s Rise to CEO: Leadership Lessons for Aspiring Women with Jennifer McCollum | Empowerment & Career Advice

[00:00:00] Loree Philip: Hi, and welcome to Daring to Leap. I'm your host, Lore Philip. Today, the incredible Jennifer McCollum. CEO of Linkage joins us to unravel the complex world of women in leadership. Join us as we face down career hurdles from proving your worth to the nuanced art of delegation.

[00:00:26] Loree Philip: If you're looking to step up your leadership game, Or find new ways to tackle career challenges with grace? This episode is your guide. Let's dive in.

[00:00:39] Loree Philip: Jennifer McCollum is on a mission to create better leaders and workplaces, particularly by advancing women and promoting inclusivity. Her journey has taken her through organizations like Coca Cola, and she has made history as the first female CEO at Linkage.

[00:00:59] Loree Philip: With over [00:01:00] 25 years of experience in leadership, she has a unique talent for crafting powerful visions and inspiring teams to turn them into reality. She's accomplished speaker and consultant and the author of in her own voice. A woman's rise to CEO.

[00:01:19] Loree Philip: Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

[00:01:22] Jennifer McCollum: Thank you, Lori. It is such a pleasure to be with you today. Yes.

[00:01:26] Loree Philip: Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited because, I interview so many inspiring women entrepreneurs, executives, leaders and experts on a variety of topics.

[00:01:39] Loree Philip: But I love that we can sit down together as. You're a current CEO and talk a bit about that and your lessons along the way and some of the barriers that you are seeing right now in the workforce for women and how maybe we can get past some of those barriers. So let's go ahead and get started. I'd [00:02:00] love to hear just a bit about your journey

[00:02:02] Loree Philip: How did you end up? As CEO,

[00:02:05] Jennifer McCollum: well, it was a, it was a long journey. So I'll give you the very abbreviated version of it. I actually started my career and I, and I had a very big career shift kind of like you did, but in my twenties, I was really certain I wanted to be. First in the media business, I wanted to be a broadcaster.

[00:02:22] Jennifer McCollum: And then throughout the course of my postgraduate work, I was actually on the other side of it in, in the corporation at the Coca Cola company in the public affairs and communications function. So I was good at that. I was traveling all around the world. I was doing press and media relations for the Olympics and the world cup.

[00:02:41] Jennifer McCollum: And it was, it was a pretty. It was a, by all accounts externally, people thought I had the best job in the world, but there was something deep inside of me. And this is figure this out in my mid to late twenties. I wasn't. It wasn't purposeful work for me. I wasn't good at [00:03:00] it. But when I looked out and this was at the Coca Cola company and I saw professionals working with the executives and the leaders and the teams.

[00:03:12] Jennifer McCollum: To make them more effective, to be better collectively than any one of us could be individually. I didn't even know what it was called at the time. It was the leadership and organizational development work. I was so intrigued by it. So through the course of my 20s and 30s, I shifted my career. Coca Cola helped me.

[00:03:32] Jennifer McCollum: Do that to become a leadership consultant. I was an entrepreneur. I had my own consulting firm for eight years, consulting back to the Coca Cola company, leadership, coaching, team effectiveness, organizational vision, and strategy, and I loved it. And then I spent about 15 years working in publicly traded companies, building and running businesses in the leadership space, [00:04:00] helping clients all over the world, create better leaders.

[00:04:04] Jennifer McCollum: And very slowly over time, I got really clear of what I was. Good at what drove my purpose and passion. And I ended up over the last five and a half years or so as the CEO of linkage, a company whose purpose is to change the face of leadership. So it was all of my leadership. Experiences building and running and growing leadership companies, but really honing in on that focus of how to advance women and to create more gender equity in the workplace.

[00:04:37] Jennifer McCollum: And that is very much on purpose for me.

[00:04:39] Loree Philip: Yeah. What a beautiful journey, Jennifer. And what I resonated with this so much because I had a similar sort of moment, series of moments where I realized what I was doing. In my career, although looked great on the outside, as you mentioned didn't feel purposeful for [00:05:00] me anymore.

[00:05:01] Loree Philip: And I'm curious. Sometimes when we get those, inner voices that it's kind of tug at us a little bit like, oh, there's something not quite right. How did you pause and listen to it instead of just say, ah, it's good. I'm great. I'm on this path. Let's just move forward.

[00:05:21] Loree Philip: What, what helped you start to really pay attention to that voice?

[00:05:26] Jennifer McCollum: You're hitting at something really important. And I think all of us have access to it if we can pause and reflect and be, be honest with ourselves to create some self awareness. So again, I was in my twenties traveling around the world doing these incredible global events.

[00:05:44] Jennifer McCollum: And yet deep down, if I was honest with myself, I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life getting more and more senior roles in the communications and public affairs space. And yet my colleagues did. So I started to notice [00:06:00] there's a little bit of dissonance in what is bringing me passion and purpose and what seems to be bringing them passion and purpose.

[00:06:07] Jennifer McCollum: And that started an exploration. And I actually write about it quite a bit in the new book because It's we, we call it the hurdle of clarity. It's, it's sometimes it's easier to know what we don't want or what we don't like whether it's a boss or a partner or a job, right? And I knew, I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know how to find what it is that would bring me joy and would bring me passion and would be aligned to purpose.

[00:06:37] Jennifer McCollum: So here's what I did. First honor and acknowledge the dissonance. My current reality does not seem to be aligned with my vision I'm not sure what my vision for my career in this point is yet Then I started doing a lot of, of exploration. I'm not sure what this thing is, but when I see people and it have, I happen to [00:07:00] have access to them at the Coca Cola company.

[00:07:02] Jennifer McCollum: When I see people operating with teams and leaders and organizational effectiveness, it's lighting me up. I don't have the expertise, I don't have the background, but I started talking to them. At the same time, I started pursuing other paths. Well, what if I were to get an MBA, because then I could shift my career.

[00:07:20] Jennifer McCollum: And I started to explore that. I took the GMAT. When I looked at the curriculum of the MBA course that I did get into, there were things like quant and stats and economics and financial modeling. And, and it was kind of, it important work, but it was soul sucking when I looked at the, when I looked at the curriculum, I thought that's not drawing me.

[00:07:44] Jennifer McCollum: It's not driving me. So I started to spend more and more time with the things that were drawing my attention until I could get clearer and clearer about what I wanted to test. Very luckily Coca Cola had a program, it was an 18 month program that [00:08:00] could help me turn into a leadership and organizational consultant.

[00:08:04] Jennifer McCollum: But I found that because I got really intentional and clear about what I wanted and really honest about where I was today.

[00:08:12] Loree Philip: it's so important, Jennifer. I, We don't ask ourselves enough, what do I want? It's very easy just to go through the flow of life and oh, this is the next step that's right in front of me.

[00:08:25] Loree Philip: Or this is the path that I should take based on what society is telling me. And what I found to be true for myself and I'm curious, and I think this is likely true for you, is that when we do start to listen to that, In our voice and what do I want and getting really clear about it and then start taking steps forward in that path.

[00:08:46] Loree Philip: We have such a big opportunity to let our brilliance shine. You saw where you loved that kind of work and you weren't, I guess, quote unquote, qualified for that yet. You had some skill gaps [00:09:00] to fill, but there was something in you that knew that that's what you wanted to pursue. And now you're here as CEO, the first CEO of this company that you.

[00:09:10] Loree Philip: Run now that is focused in this area that back then was just an idea.

[00:09:17] Jennifer McCollum: Well, and I'll even go a step further there at that time. Now, remember this was nearly 30 years ago. I couldn't conceptualize at that point becoming a CEO of a global leadership development firm. What I could conceive at that time, and this is why it's so important that clarity and finding clarity and evolving vision is an iterative process.

[00:09:39] Jennifer McCollum: Right. And so it's actually something I do very, very regularly with a group of people that can support me and we support each other in finding that clarity. So back then it was, my clarity was around, I want to move into this type of work and I want to do it while at the Coca Cola company. So that was what I did [00:10:00] over the first couple of years.

[00:10:01] Jennifer McCollum: Then they, they it's a long story, but they, they decided to outsource all of the people who had this capability. They didn't want to hold the cost of inside the organization. So then I had to get clarity all over again. And I kind of raised my hand and I said, if, if I start this kind of like you, if I start my own business doing this work, could Coca Cola be my first client?

[00:10:26] Jennifer McCollum: And Laurie, this is when I had tiny kids they were one and two. And I knew at that point I was more clear. I wanted flexibility. So I wanted to do the work that was important to me, but I didn't want to work five days a week and travel all around the world. I wanted to have more control over my time.

[00:10:45] Jennifer McCollum: So I got clarity about what it would look like to be an independent consultant. Then I got clarity eight years later that. I and I had three kids at this point. I actually wanted to be part of building something bigger. So then I moved back into the [00:11:00] publicly traded corporate world to build teams and organizations in the leadership space.

[00:11:06] Jennifer McCollum: So clarity emerged in stages as my life changed throughout my what I call current reality, like children being a massive change in current reality, right? Yes.

[00:11:19] Loree Philip: Yes. I, such an important point, Jennifer, because I think sometimes we get. Bogged down by these big ideas. Like I would love to be CEO.

[00:11:29] Loree Philip: I would love like, what's that aspirational goal for you? And we don't allow ourselves to just. Peek into that first step. What does that first next role look like from where I am today? Not way down here 20 years from now When I have all of the expertise and qualifications to get that big Position that I'm looking for, so I appreciate you sharing that with us.

[00:11:57] Loree Philip: One of the questions that popped up for me while you were [00:12:00] talking is to aspire, to get in, to go through the process to eventually get to where you are today. I can imagine that your inner critic came in to play, somewhere in there in stages and phases of life. How do you advise?

[00:12:20] Loree Philip: Others to tackle their inner critic when it comes up.

[00:12:24] Jennifer McCollum: Well, I love that you raise the inner critic. It's actually one of the first chapters of the book because it is what, what we at linkage call the foundational or the Uber hurdle. That look, we all face it across the spectrum of gender, also across generation and across no matter what form gender, race, ethnicity, disability, we all face it.

[00:12:49] Jennifer McCollum: The, the inner critic of a woman is louder and it can prevent us from taking action. And that's why we call it the Uber hurdle. It's one of the first things we address, and it's [00:13:00] just for your listeners. It's that voice in our head. It's that voice of judgment and that voice of judgment can paralyze us. It can sound like I'm not worth it.

[00:13:10] Jennifer McCollum: I'm not good enough. I'm not ready. I shouldn't ask that question, ask for that raise, take that job. So that voice of inner critic is with all of us our entire lives. The trick. Is becoming aware of it, pausing, reflecting, and I'm going to give you a couple of real examples and then, and then finding compassion, compassion for yourself.

[00:13:33] Jennifer McCollum: If you're in a critic is pointed at you or others, because it can also be the voice of judgment toward others. Okay. So you asked a really important question. What do we do to. We never silenced the inner critic. What do we do to quiet or calm the inner critic? So I'll give you two quick examples. When I was asked by a headhunter, if I were, was interested in in applying for the CEO job at [00:14:00] linkage.

[00:14:01] Jennifer McCollum: My first reaction, and I didn't, I wasn't aware of it quickly enough. My first reaction was, uh, I'm not ready for that job. I have to be groomed first. I have to be a number two. I've only been in publicly traded companies. You don't really manage everything down to the net income line in a publicly traded company.

[00:14:20] Jennifer McCollum: I, I, my kids won't want me to do this because what kind of mother takes a job or you have to commute to Boston from DC. So all of this inner critic was actually paralyzing me from even putting my name in the ring. And I'm going to tell you how I overcome it. I overcame it, but I also want to say that it's.

[00:14:40] Jennifer McCollum: This inner critic, fast forward five or six years, it just surfaced again why it's new, it's uncomfortable. I'm a first time author. So my inner critic was who do you think you are? You're not a real author. You're asking your friends to support you. What if they hate the book?

[00:14:59] Jennifer McCollum: [00:15:00] All of this kind of negative self doubt was creeping in. So it's normal. It's natural at every stage in life.

[00:15:05] Loree Philip: you're absolutely right. That inner critic pops in and it is the most aggressive when we are in that change and in getting outside of our comfort zone.

[00:15:15] Loree Philip: And part of that is our body's natural reaction. Our mind wants to keep us safe. And you've never done this before, Jennifer. You've never written a book. And that's what your mind's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. If I write a book, like, what, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't have the thought patterns. I don't have that experience yet.

[00:15:37] Loree Philip: And so, Our inner critic is there to protect us in such a way that often, like, at some point, it's like, we don't need it. And so anymore, right? We don't need it anymore. It was protected us before. And so I'm curious if you would share the some of the things we can do at that

[00:15:58] Jennifer McCollum: point. Exactly. So the reason I [00:16:00] told those two stories was to talk about two different approaches to, to support you.

[00:16:04] Jennifer McCollum: So the, the first story of the, the CEO, I'm not ready and I need to be groomed. It actually took the, the important part about that is it's not that the inner critic is bad. It's if you're not aware of it and you don't pause, reflect, find compassion and get curious about it. It can paralyze you. It took a couple people in my support network.

[00:16:30] Jennifer McCollum: Now, in this case, they happen to be two men and they were peers of mine at my, my former publicly traded company. They also were looking at CEO jobs in the private equity space at portfolio companies. And as I was sharing with them, I'm not ready. I need to be groomed. I need to be a number two. They, they kind of just sporadically stage an intervention and said, well, wait, wait a minute, Jennifer, if we think we're ready to be a CEO, why do you think you're not ready?

[00:16:58] Jennifer McCollum: And it took that [00:17:00] support structure. And again, it could be peers. It could be mentors or coaches to help me see. That I actually, that inner critic was hurting me and it was going to prevent me from taking the best job I've ever had if I listened to it. Okay. So that was an example of find your people, right?

[00:17:17] Jennifer McCollum: Find the people who will support you and lift you up. Now that equally could have said, you know what? You probably aren't ready. But here are the two or three things that you could do to become ready, which is what happened early in my Coca Cola stage when I was shifting my career. So reach out to those people who will support you and lift you up the second.

[00:17:38] Jennifer McCollum: And I think if you, if you want to focus on your own evolution to identify and, Quiet your inner critic. The second story I told about the book launch when I was doing a lot of book promotion there was one comment I got in a, in a text that actually went to my husband. And [00:18:00] the, the, the text was your wife seems a little out of control with her book promotion in ho and in my humble opinion.

[00:18:08] Jennifer McCollum: And I was in a groove trying to find my way in this book promotion and one text like that created this spike in my inner critic that almost stopped my work forward altogether. And it took me about an hour to understand what was happening. All of this self doubt and self criticism was coming from one text that I read on my husband's phone.

[00:18:32] Jennifer McCollum: But I became aware of it much faster. I paused. I reflected am I a real author? Yes, my name is on a book. Am I lacking confidence because this is the first time I've done that? Yes, that is true as well. So get curious. Well, what could I do now? And so what I did was I I reached out to My support network to say like help me out here.

[00:18:58] Jennifer McCollum: This is how I'm feeling [00:19:00] and it was We're here for you. We're buying multiple books. We're promoting you I'm writing an Amazon review right now and it kind of took me becoming really aware quickly So you reduce the period of self pity and wallowing in it.

[00:19:16] Loree Philip: I love how you brought in the support network.

[00:19:18] Loree Philip: And I don't think, particularly as women, there's this sense of we have to do it all by ourselves. Talk to me a bit about, is that something you've seen in your experience as well? And what can we do to sort of let go of that mindset and shift into a more of, It's okay to get support.

[00:19:42] Jennifer McCollum: So a couple things and you're, I'm glad you're hitting on, on the inadvertently you've hit on the three most significant hurdles that women face.

[00:19:51] Jennifer McCollum: So we talked about clarity. That's hurdle number two hurdle. Number one is called proving your value. And the hurdle number three is making [00:20:00] the ask. So I'm going to pull those two things together. Proving your value is women, especially tend to. put their heads down, work harder and harder and harder. Say yes to more and more.

[00:20:11] Jennifer McCollum: And it could be at work. It could be at home with the kids. It could be in the community to prove how good we are. And we are good. But the, the faulty premise is that if I keep doing and doing and doing, and by the way, we have a perfectionist trap, which sometimes sounds like, and if I do it myself, it's just better.

[00:20:31] Jennifer McCollum: And regardless of whether that's true, It leads to burnout. It leads to this false premise that somebody is going to notice and give me something money, promotion, accolades, respect, and that's a faulty premise because most of the time people won't notice. So what women need to do instead of doing more and more and saying yes to more and more.

[00:20:56] Jennifer McCollum: Is to get really clear about what we want [00:21:00] that goes back to the clarity and really selectively say yes to those things that will drive our passion and purpose and to delegate more and to let go and to inspire others to help and in some cases inspiring others means they'll do it differently. But in many cases, they'll even do it better if we let go and let them do that.

[00:21:21] Jennifer McCollum: And again, this is equally for spouses as it is for peers and direct reports at the office. Now, so that's the, that's the proving your value piece. The making the ask piece, which is hurdle number three is how do we actually leverage and activate our networks, whether it's inside the organization or outside and make very specific asks.

[00:21:45] Jennifer McCollum: Women are very willing to give. So I say we're great at activating we're, we're great at giving to the network. We're less good at activating the network and asking for what it is that we want. So let me just pause there and see if you have any other [00:22:00] follow up or questions.

[00:22:01] Loree Philip: No, this is great. These are the things that I really wanted to talk about.

[00:22:06] Loree Philip: And so before we jump into activating the network, I'm curious a bit about this. I can sense even for myself, there is a resistance. To, uh, delegating, saying no, prioritizing, because I think we all believe it to be a good idea. But in actual implementation in practice, and it's likely a skill, so you have to sort of train that muscle.

[00:22:34] Loree Philip: What is your advice for somebody who's like, okay, I want to do this, but I can't seem to let go?

[00:22:42] Jennifer McCollum: Yeah. And look, since the focus of your, of this podcast is for aspiring women. In the professional corporate world, I will tell you, you cannot get to a senior level of leadership without mastering the [00:23:00] science and the art of letting go of delegating, of inspiring others, of seeking support.

[00:23:05] Jennifer McCollum: So if in your mind you hear yourself saying, Oh, for gosh sakes, it's just, it's just so much easier just to get it done and do it myself as opposed to teaching or telling or begging someone else to do it, I'll just do it myself. If you find yourself saying that more often than not, it's going to be really difficult for you to move up, into greater positions of authority and management.

[00:23:31] Jennifer McCollum: And here's why at some point it gets completely impossible. There's no way that you can manage all of the details for everything. And so the sooner you get practice, and I'll give you a really specific example. Even in my own world about two years ago, we were getting ready to package and sell the company.

[00:23:51] Jennifer McCollum: I was very overwhelmed. We were, I was writing the book. We were running the company in the post COVID environment and getting ready to sell the company. [00:24:00] Strategic planning is something every executive does every single year and many times multiple times a year and it's a process and I as the CEO had run that process every single year at linkage.

[00:24:14] Jennifer McCollum: I'm good at it. I have a process. It's worked in the past. It's not that hard for me, but I looked at it and it's a lot. It's a lot of time and effort, right? Even facilitating the executive team on the process. I looked at my chief product officer who said, I'm actually really interested in running the strategic planning process.

[00:24:32] Jennifer McCollum: It's a capability that I want to build, and I know that you're a little overwhelmed and a lot of the other initiatives, would it be okay if I ran the process? And my first thought was, well, the CEO should really run the strategic planning process. And immediately when I found myself saying that it was, oh my gosh, Kristen, of course you should run the process.

[00:24:54] Jennifer McCollum: Because this is the next level of your development and it takes it off of my plate [00:25:00] and maybe you're going to innovate in ways that I hadn't even imagined. And she did. The document looked a little different. The process looked a little different. But the output was just as good, if not better, than any of the processes I had run.

[00:25:14] Jennifer McCollum: So that's a really tangible example. And I had to let her do it, even if it wasn't exactly the way I did it.

[00:25:20] Loree Philip: I'm glad you shared that example because it makes it real, right? And you're absolutely right. Sometimes we have to, to get through to why do I need to do something? In this case, we're talking about letting go of tasks, processes, things that are You know, bogging us down and getting really clear around why that is important.

[00:25:47] Loree Philip: And that's what you brought in. Like, you're going to need to master this skill to move to the next level. And that's. It's important if that's what you aspire to do. It's also important if you [00:26:00] aspire to have more time and space in your, in your day to day job to actually be great at the position that you're assigned to do and not get bogged down in the details.

[00:26:14] Loree Philip: And,

[00:26:15] Jennifer McCollum: and actually, for some reason, and this is especially true for women, it has become some kind of status symbol to talk about how busy we are all the time. And so when, when women especially come to me and, and, and, and I'll, I often will say things like, well, let's just look a couple of years down the road. If you are wildly successful in your career and how you're leveraging career as one critical aspect of the totality of your life.

[00:26:42] Jennifer McCollum: Paint a picture of what success looks like. And more often than not, women will say, well, I just haven't had any time to think about that. I mean, I'm so busy doing my current work and life and mom and community. And I can't think about the future. And my response to that is always. [00:27:00] I'm really sad to hear that because it's such a disservice to you because we want to help you.

[00:27:06] Jennifer McCollum: We leaders, friends, supporters, the universe. We want to help you conspire to get all that you want and to be all that you can be. But if you're so busy that you can't even think about what your future looks like. Then you, in essence, are making a decision that your current reality is your vision, right?

[00:27:28] Jennifer McCollum: And so I want to move away, especially for women from this, Oh my gosh, I'm so busy as some kind of status symbol. It's actually not. And I'm looking at my calendar now as I transition, actually, I'm transitioning out of the CEO role of linkage into the next CEO role across the next several months. I have this spaciousness on my calendar.

[00:27:49] Jennifer McCollum: And I'm noticing how uncomfortable it is trying to shift my perspective to what a gift [00:28:00] to have spaciousness. And how am I going to leverage that spaciousness to gain clarity and to exercise and to reflect and maybe to do nothing. It's not comfortable for us. No,

[00:28:12] Loree Philip: no, we're, the, especially women.

[00:28:16] Loree Philip: We like to feel like we have everything under control. So we're very used to juggling like five balls at once and. And so it is very uncomfortable to have space, especially in this digital day and age where every single moment is taken up by other people's demands and pop ups and email messages, notifications and social medias.

[00:28:41] Loree Philip: And it's like, I forgot when I had a chance just to sit and breathe for a few minutes and pause. Right. And so I, I definitely think it's not only a skill, but. What I found for myself and I'm also leaning into this, this year an intentional way, in [00:29:00] my intentionality is coming through in creating those moments of pause and before I start something.

[00:29:07] Loree Philip: And it's so it's, it is a bit uncomfortable because I like to just stop something and dive right into the next thing without thought, right? Okay, this is the next thing on my list. I'm pulling it right up. And now I'm taking a moment and say, okay, what am I trying to accomplish with this? Does it still make sense to do?

[00:29:25] Loree Philip: And kind of going through the process instead of just mindly jumping in. And I found it to be quite useful so far.

[00:29:33] Jennifer McCollum: You're raising a couple things. I want to I'm going to get back to, How do you actually make those choices? And it sounds like you are doing it very intentionally. But before I tell you that In addition to, yes, women are multitaskers.

[00:29:47] Jennifer McCollum: We're great jugglers. And in fact, we, we are mostly, but there's this if we're really honest with ourselves, if we are multitasking while we're also trying to be present with our kids or we're [00:30:00] doing the reverse with our staff and we're trying to like check an email or you hear the dings coming in, I was with two CEOs yesterday, women, CEOs of fortune 15 companies.

[00:30:15] Jennifer McCollum: Can I tell you something? I spent 90 minutes with them. They had no cell phones on the table. They were completely present with me. It felt like I was the only thing that mattered to them. This was a really important conversation about a potential job for me. And these women are running multi billion dollar organizations.

[00:30:37] Jennifer McCollum: And it's all public. They make 20 plus million dollars a year themselves. And I'm thinking to myself, They are making me feel like I'm the only person that matters to them in this moment. Do I make people feel that way, whether again, it's at home in the office or in the community. So I want to just offer that up because this false pretense of multitasking does have [00:31:00] consequences.

[00:31:00] Loree Philip: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:31:02] Jennifer McCollum: Okay. So now onto the other thing. Well, how the heck do we decide what to do, what not to do, what to say no to? And there is a framework in the book under that proving your value concept that we just talked about. And, and I think, again, there's this false notion that, well, everything we do is so important.

[00:31:17] Jennifer McCollum: What could I possibly let go of? And so we actually, we have an exercise in the book that says, Look at your calendar can be a day, a week, or a month and start to categorize what, how you are spending your time. It can be at the office, outside the office, and there are four categories and it's, it's actually not rocket science.

[00:31:37] Jennifer McCollum: There are some things that you can easily consult or advise on, but you don't have to do. And so for me, an example of that was the strategic planning process. It wasn't that I wasn't part of it. It's just, I wasn't running it day to day across the course of those. It's actually like a six month process.

[00:31:56] Jennifer McCollum: The second thing is what can you actually let go [00:32:00] of altogether? And so I realized like a very specific example. We have a massive women in leadership Institute, thousands of women come really like top name speakers come and I had been involved in the selection of the speakers and the selection of the award winners.

[00:32:14] Jennifer McCollum: And what I realized is my team was so good at that, that me showing up at those meetings was just extraneous. They didn't really need me. So I pulled myself out of those meetings. If you need me, let me know, but I don't need to be in these meetings anymore. I just let it go. The third thing is, yeah, you gotta do it, but you don't have to use a lot of mental power to do it.

[00:32:33] Jennifer McCollum: So for me, staff one on ones and performance reviews and expense reports, all those things are really important, but I don't have to do them at 120%. It's not hard for me to show up to a one on one. I don't need a ton of prep. Then there's the last category. And that's the one where I want to spend most of my time.

[00:32:51] Jennifer McCollum: And those are the things that I uniquely have to do. Because nobody else can do them. And there's [00:33:00] a small list. Authoring the book became a critical priority. Selling the company. These are things that I cannot delegate. I cannot let go of. But there were, so I had a post, I had four post it notes above my desk the entire year last year.

[00:33:17] Jennifer McCollum: I actually do it every year. I'm getting clarity on it for this year. If it didn't align to one of those four things, I had to question, why am I doing it? So it was just a real visible, all right, so I'm rambling, I'm going to stop.

[00:33:31] Loree Philip: No, no, that's really great. I mean, at some point. Curing the practical tools can be so useful for somebody like that wants to do it, but doesn't know exactly how to execute it.

[00:33:42] Loree Philip: So I appreciate that, Jennifer, and I want to jump back to our earlier conversation where we were about to talk about how we can tap into our network and we talked briefly about how, typically women aren't. Super great at [00:34:00] actually tapping into their network and in going out and getting the support that they need.

[00:34:04] Loree Philip: Can you tell us a bit about how we can start to get better at that?

[00:34:08] Jennifer McCollum: Yeah, and networking has changed a lot across the course of my career. So for women of your generation, it's you're welcome because it used to be. Networking was this big scary thing where you'd have to show up at these really awkward events.

[00:34:22] Jennifer McCollum: I mean, maybe they were on the golf course or in bars, but oftentimes they were in big conference rooms and look, all that stuff still exists, but more and more, especially within, in this LinkedIn and the digital era and COVID actually helped this a lot. Yeah. It's women are actually exceptional at building relationships.

[00:34:40] Jennifer McCollum: Making introductions, receiving introductions, spending time with new people. So that's not the issue. And I call that curating a network. The issue is in activating the network. So when I'm clear about what I want, who, and I'll use another very specific example from my own career right now, [00:35:00] getting on a private and a public board.

[00:35:02] Jennifer McCollum: At this stage in my career is really important to me. So starting a couple years ago, I started to look at inside my organization, outside my organization with my board of directors. I just started having conversations. So how might I go about getting on a private and public board? What's the process?

[00:35:18] Jennifer McCollum: Who's really good at it? How do I network into it? And so I started activating my network to help me achieve that goal. So I think for women, it's. Based on what I want. That's that clarity piece who inside the organization or outside the organization. And in the book, we've got an exercise that categorizes network and a number of different areas.

[00:35:41] Jennifer McCollum: Is it is it a career career focused? Is it part of your strategic network? Is it is it personal? So think about everyone in your network and then ask the question. What do I need? Okay. Not what can I offer that's really important reciprocity the [00:36:00] network, but let me tell you something That's not where women have a problem women give and give and give I want the selfish focus of but what can I receive?

[00:36:09] Jennifer McCollum: So when I ask women to go tap their network and make an ask they often say I can't I can't ask for that they're too busy it's too self serving. And then I flip it and say, Oh, that's interesting. Well, if they ask you to do that or to make a connection or ask for the business, would you do it for them?

[00:36:27] Jennifer McCollum: Oh, oh, absolutely. We have no trouble giving. We have a lot more trouble asking.

[00:36:33] Loree Philip: It's so true, Jennifer. I had all those thoughts too with my network, like they're busy even to reach out and it's like we, we often self select out of so much because we decide we make assumptions on. Other people or circumstances that aren't true.

[00:36:54] Loree Philip: And so, and that stop us in our tracks from getting to where we want to be. [00:37:00] And so I appreciate that. The, this idea of. It's okay to be a little bit quote unquote selfish,

[00:37:09] Jennifer McCollum: Absolutely and women are kind of They're stuck with what what we call internal bias We've got these biases that we're holding beliefs.

[00:37:18] Jennifer McCollum: We hold about ourselves that may not be serving us So for me, it was I can't be a good mom and be a CEO Or it's I can't make the ask of, of another, of a CEO, like a four, the former CEO, like Alan Malali and you and I just talked about that, the former CEO of Boeing, which is your alma mater and I had an internal bias of, I can't possibly make an ask of someone as important as Alan Malali because he's too busy.

[00:37:50] Jennifer McCollum: And if you catch yourself, it's kind of like that inner critic, if you can. Catch yourself in the what is preventing me from taking action. Is it an internal bias? Is it a [00:38:00] belief that I'm holding that may not be serving me? So when I finally did make the ask to Alan Mulally, who, by the way, has mentored me for four years as I've been the CEO of Linkage in helping instill the management Processes and systems that he used at Boeing and Ford.

[00:38:18] Jennifer McCollum: Now, linkage is much smaller than Boeing or Ford, but Alan took the time to mentor me through the process he used. Why? Because he believed in me, but because I took the risk and made the ask. He didn't even know who I was when I approached him at a conference and asked him if he would be willing to guide me through the processes he used at Boeing and Ford.

[00:38:43] Loree Philip: Wow, what a story. I, I, I can't even imagine getting into the headspace of making an ask like that. And you know what? It's, it's a success story because he said yes. And I think what, what happens a lot of [00:39:00] the time is we assume a no, and then we don't even try. But there's, if we do try, there's always a possibility of a yes.

[00:39:09] Loree Philip: And so we're just

[00:39:10] Jennifer McCollum: opening up. I love that you said that. It is 100 percent true that if you don't make the ask, you will not get what you want. Yes. And I'd actually like to challenge a little bit. You said it was a success story because he said yes. Oh. I would actually say it would have been a success story even if he had said no.

[00:39:30] Jennifer McCollum: And why is that? Because the more you gain practice and courage at making the ask, the better you get. And I'll give you another example that the two CEOs that I was talking to yesterday about a potential job. It's not a foregone conclusion that I want the job and certainly not a foregone conclusion that I will get the job.

[00:39:52] Jennifer McCollum: But I know that going through this process is going to make me a better CEO, [00:40:00] business leader, connector even getting access to them as part of my network. And it's going to make me a better person. I'm not sure if it's going to be a success in terms of me getting the role. Or accepting the role, but the process is already successful.

[00:40:17] Loree Philip: Yes. Thank you for interjecting that because it is so true that it's the learning through the journey and becoming the person we need to be through practice is, is. Almost the more important than the actual prize at the end of, of the rainbow or whatever it is that you want to call it and you're right.

[00:40:42] Loree Philip: It was successful because you asked and you got that experience asking and. I bet you'll be a little quicker next time to even ask because of that experience that you had.

[00:40:55] Jennifer McCollum: So all of these hurdles that I write about in the book and the things we're talking about today, they all [00:41:00] get better with practice.

[00:41:01] Jennifer McCollum: And I'll go back to where we started with that clarity story. And I said when I ask women what they want, they answer really in one of two ways. One, usually one is I'm just so busy. We talked about that. I don't possibly have time for it. But the other one is actually even more tragic in my opinion, and they say I'm actually afraid to put it out there because if I put it out there and I don't get it, isn't it worse than not putting it out there at all?

[00:41:30] Jennifer McCollum: And that kind of just comes full circle to what we were just talking about. And if you, if you approach work, we're talking about really life with the mindset of it's actually not the destination of if I don't get it. Is it a travesty? It's the, but what have I learned along the way? And, and who have I amassed with me in the form of network and supporters and allies and sponsors and in, in even.

[00:41:57] Jennifer McCollum: And even if it's not quote unquote [00:42:00] successful in how I thought it was going to be at the beginning, usually something better is going to happen.

[00:42:07] Jennifer McCollum: And I think we're going to close out there, Jennifer. I can't emphasize enough that our, our perceived failures are often openings.

[00:42:18] Loree Philip: To even greater, success for us in other ways and where we need to be. And I'd love for you to share with the audience where they could connect with you, buy your book, learn more about your work.

[00:42:31] Jennifer McCollum: First of all, I would love you to connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Jennifer Sheer McCollum, and I am really good if you connect with me and we can talk back and forth on LinkedIn chat.

[00:42:42] Jennifer McCollum: You can buy the book anywhere. The easiest place to get it is on Amazon. And I just, can I just. Brag for a moment. Cause it just happened yesterday. I found out that I we, this book received the awards called the owl award, the outstanding work in literature for women in business. It was the number one book [00:43:00] selected by book pal and organization who rates books yesterday.

[00:43:03] Jennifer McCollum: I just learned that.

[00:43:04] Loree Philip: Congratulations, Jennifer. That is so great. That is so great. Well, I really appreciate your time, your wisdom and sharing. In a vulnerable way, your experiences through the book and through our conversation. I appreciate this so much. Thank you.

[00:43:23] Jennifer McCollum: Thank you, Lori. This is very much on purpose on mission for me.

[00:43:27] Jennifer McCollum: So thank you for the work you're doing in the world.

[00:43:29] Loree Philip: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, I would love for you to subscribe. If you're already a subscriber, don't forget to share the podcast with a friend. Make sure to tune in next week. We'll be speaking with Charlie Garnum about how we can use human design to unlock our authentic self.

[00:43:52] Loree Philip: I hope you have an amazing week. It's your time to shine. Bye.