This week’s guest, Lisa Gable, has spent her entire career in rooms and roles where the people around her aren’t used to working with someone like her. Find out how she’s excelled, how she’s helped organizations everywhere do the same, and her message for the next generation of leaders and game-changers.
Transition, Turnaround, Partnership and People (ft. Lisa Gable)
Whether you’re changing the course of a 500+ person organization or helping transform the life of a single marginalized person, leadership is everything
OPENING QUOTE:
“If it’s too hard, if it just keeps being too hard, that means something is wrong, because nothing should be that difficult.”
—Lisa Gable
GUEST BIO:
Lisa Gable is the CEO of FARE, Food Allergy Research & Education, a U.S.-based organization dedicated to increasing education about and research into food allergies worldwide. Lisa has previously worked in the Reagan administration in the White House, worked directly for the CEO of Intel, and served in various positions in the Defense Department, as U.S. ambassador to the World Expo, and as US Representative for Women at the UN.
Learn more about Lisa Gable:
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[5:22] – Leaders Listen
Engaging different perspectives is essential for leadership
According to Lisa, one of the strongest attributes a leader can have is to incorporate the points of view of everyone within the organization and allow those perspectives to help guide the direction of that organization. Without input from the people that make a company run, the company will be directionless and lacking buy-in at every level.
[10:51] – If It Stays Hard, It Needs to Go
Friction points in business are a sign that something isn’t working
Oftentimes, ambitious people who come up against an obstacle take it as a challenge, one that can be overcome if you just keep pushing, keep attacking the problem, and never give up. But sometimes the answer is that if something is consistently hard, the best solution is to eliminate it. Nothing should be that difficult.
[19:03] – When Layoffs Happen
What no leader wants and every leader must face
You see the true quality of an organization and its leadership not by how they get people into the organization, but how they treat people when they have to put people out of the organization. Some handle this process much less effectively and humanely than others
[23:47] – Let Facts Be Your Stature
Be bigger than your size
Lisa Gable worked at the Pentagon as a 5’5” woman weighing less than 100 pounds. So, she let her experience and data stand up for her. She did her homework, understood the details, and didn’t try to compete by being the biggest or loudest, but by being the most prepared.
[35:24] – The Power of Mentors
When someone like you achieves your dream
Lisa Gable says that ‘leadership is not a moment, it’s a movement.’ If we want to keep seeing more women and people in marginalized groups succeed, we can’t just provide mentorship until they reach the level of higher education and then abandon them. Mentorship should be an ongoing part of career development, and those of us who have had success owe it to others to help them along their path.
RESOURCES:
FOLLOW:
We'd love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode. Feel free to DM Chris on social or shoot him an email at chris@chrisroebuck.net.
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CREDITS:
Lisa Gable:
If it's too hard, if it just keeps being too hard, that means something is wrong because nothing should be that difficult.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to Perspectives from the Top. I'm Chris Roebuck, global keynote speaker with unique leadership experience from military, business, and government, best-selling author, and your guide to greater success. Together, we'll discover powerful insights from the world's leading thinkers, doers, and trailblazers, the must-know trends, thought-provoking revelations, and practical actions you can use immediately. This is your exclusive and personal shop of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to you and all of our Perspectives from the Top community around the world. You know, it's really great to share the insights of such successful people with you to help you get to where you want to be. Now today, we have a guest who started her career in the Reagan White House, then became a troubleshooter for the CEO of Intel, moved back into public service advising the Bush administration in the Defense Department, was US ambassador to the World Expo, US representative for women at the UN, back into business as head of public policy for PepsiCo, and then on into not-for-profit, becoming CEO of Food Allergy Research & Education in US.
Chris Roebuck:
But that last role, as we will hear, was interesting, to say the least. So it's my great pleasure to welcome to Perspectives from the Top the brilliant Lisa Gable, CEO of FARE. Welcome, Lisa, to Perspectives from the Top. First question that I ask all of our guests, which gives a real insight into how they got to where they are now, is that I found with most of them lurking somewhere in their dim and distant past is a mentor, an ex-boss, a friend, a family member, or somebody who inspired them early on to help them start the journey to where they are now. Did you have somebody like that, that set you off to where you are now?
Lisa Gable:
I absolutely did, and I was so fortunate that when I was working in the Reagan White House back in the '80s, I had an opportunity to meet Barbara Barrett, who would later become ambassador to Finland, as well as secretary of the Air Force. Barbara and I developed a relationship. We were waiting for my boss, who was head of presidential personnel, downstairs in the White House for two hours. And so here I am, I'm 24 years old, talking to this person for two hours and wondering what I talked to them about, because they were obviously someone who was up for a major position. And at the end of the conversation, she said, "I want to stay in touch with you. In addition, I want you to meet my husband. His name's Craig Barrett, and he is senior vice president of manufacturing at Intel Corporation. And at some point, you have to meet him." And so Barbara and I got together once a month while she was in Washington during those last few years, and she introduced me to Craig. He would later become chairman of the board and CEO of Intel.
Chris Roebuck:
And as we... Well, as I know and you know, but the listeners don't, you then ended up at Intel as his troubleshooter.
Lisa Gable:
I did indeed. So Craig brought me on board. Basically, it was a funny situation. Here I am, I'm very young. My first jobs are at the Pentagon under Ronald Reagan and at the White House. I pack up my bags after the inauguration, where I was working with Shirley Temple Black on diplomatic issues, and I head out to Chandler, Arizona. And Craig kept saying... He goes, "Don't you want to see what it looks like before you move here?" And I was like, "Oh, it's a resort town." Well, what people don't realize if they're in Arizona today is that back in 1989, it was no way, shape, or form a resort town. Basically, Chandler was the Intel manufacturing plant, some sheep farms, and a lot of empty buildings due to a crash in the real estate market.
Lisa Gable:
So Craig brought me into this manufacturing center. Somebody took me to the side after my third day and said, "You really need to dress down. We don't dress like people do in Washington." And I really got my introduction into the manufacturing process, and I learned how to apply statistical process control, quality improvement processes, understanding variables in manufacturing to basically solving problems in business, government, and philanthropy. Whatever issues were ones that Craig was dealing with for the day, whether it was export controls or K through 12 education, I learned how to apply his thought process to problem solving.
Chris Roebuck:
Which was exactly what he wanted you to do. So you alluded to the White House, to Intel, and also will come onto all the other roles you've had since then. But over that vast experience, you've obviously seen great leaders, not so great leaders, and some probably quite frighteningly bad leaders. Have you deduced over that experience that there are things that leaders consistently do, if they're good leaders, to get the best from people? And leading on from that, how do you find that you can get the best from people?
Lisa Gable:
Well, you have to look at things from the other person's point of view. And so someone who is willing to spend the time listening to someone, hearing what they're saying, incorporating their point of view into how you position the place you want the organization to go is really, to me, one of the strongest attributes the leader can have. And how do they get that? They get that by walking the floor. The people that I am close to... And I've worked for a lot of billionaires, and CEOs, and US presidents, governors, but the people that I am close to leave their ego at the door and they walk the floors.
Lisa Gable:
That means that they're spending time down in the cafeteria, obviously pre-COVID, going from desk to desk, making the time to pick up the telephone, and not just ask the most important people in the room for their opinion, but actually seek input from the people on the manufacturing lines. I had a wonderful opportunity to work with Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, who is the honorary chair of Toyota Corporation, and Dr. Toyoda would show up without an entourage. He's 85 year old, one of the most amazing manufacturing gurus in the world, and he would spend time talking to everybody, hearing what they said, listening to them. And he didn't discriminate according to what somebody's paycheck or background was.
Chris Roebuck:
That's really, really insightful, because interestingly, in a previous series of interviewed, I interviewed a guy called Andy Palmer, who used to be COO of a small Japanese car company called Nissan, and then became CEO of Aston Martin. But he started his career not at university, but at 15 on a production line in a car factory in UK. And every day, he would spend time on the production line either in Nissan or in Aston Martin, because exactly what you said, that he could then build a human connection with the people who were actually on the front line.
Lisa Gable:
Absolutely. It's so important. And to be honest with you, you can look at things like statistical process control, you can look at the data, you can look at the matrix, but until you actually go down on a manufacturing line... And I've always worked with manufacturers, car manufacturers, auto, food and beverage. Until you go down on the line and you actually see how that equipment works, what it takes to take a product from start to finish, understand the time period that it takes to get on the truck, what are the barriers to entry to getting that product to the consumer as quickly as possible, until you... I had met him actually through a personal connection. I had never worked with him. But what I understood about Michael Dell is that he had the dashboard loaded on his own computer, and he would go in and look at what people were saying on Facebook. He would respond to people personally. He would monitor what they were saying on Twitter. He wanted to hear the customers' pain points.
Chris Roebuck:
Yes, it's the power of the fact that you can have all the stats you want, pages of it on the boardroom table, and you can sit around the boardroom table and look at it. But actually, what is happening on the production line is the real world, and the stats don't necessarily reflect that. There was a global insulation company, I did some work with their top leaders, and their factory in Italy... The manager looked at all the stats and couldn't understand why with these particular shift managers on the production line, when they changed between different products, the change over time was significantly less than it was with other shift managers when they did changeovers. And in the end, he looked at all the statistics and thought, "These don't give me the answer." So he took the two shift managers out for a meal in a local restaurant and said, "Guys, how do you do this?" And they'd been in the business for years, and they'd actually found a fast workaround that the technical experts had never even thought up.
Lisa Gable:
Right. It's the person who has to deal with the pain. It's their pain.
Chris Roebuck:
Precisely.
Lisa Gable:
The companies feel the pain, because they feel it financially. They feel it in performance. They can see shifts in their culture. But the reality is it is a true pain point for the individual who can't get their day done in the way that they need to get it done, to go do the other things that they have obligations for in their life. It is that simple, and I think that we try to make it way too complex. And instead, I used to... Craig would have me call the Intel customer service hotline. He wanted me to experience the pain. And US cable companies have very bad reputations for their customer service hotlines, because the pain is so high, and therefore the guy who's out there in somebody's house is going to have a lot more of an opinion than somebody sitting in headquarters.
Chris Roebuck:
It goes down to the simple cost-benefit analysis of the employee or the customer. Is what I am getting back from this organization or this boss or this chief of executive worth the pain I am receiving on the other hand, in terms of the balance?
Lisa Gable:
Absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
The fundamental "What's in this for me" question.
Lisa Gable:
Well, and just how difficult is it making my life? Life does not need to be as difficult as we make it. And that is another thing I learned a lot with working with the various companies that I've worked with, is if it's too hard, if it just keeps being too hard, that means something is wrong, because nothing should be that difficult. And yes, as you're going through technological transformations, there will be things... There are natural progressions that happen. There will be periods of time. But if that angst and that stress level does not go down after a period of time, that means there's an underlying cause of a disease that's permeating your inability to be successful.
Chris Roebuck:
And in the current context of what we have seen during and after COVID in relation to some degree to changes in the customer perspectives and also what is now being called the Great Resignation from jobs, the fact that COVID has made people think really deeply about what's important, what their perspectives are. And I've said in articles they are thinking more deeply about what they are prepared to tolerate from bad bosses and bad organizations. And I think post-COVID, your comment about the pain, they're not prepared to tolerate as much pain before they say, "That's it. I've had enough." Do you think that's a fair assumption?
Lisa Gable:
I think it's a fair assumption. I think it's a mixed bag with the Great Resignation. There are definitely people who are saying, "You know what? I've given my all to this organization. I'm not getting back what I need," or they're recognizing that there are different attributes and aspects to their life that are making their life complicated, and so they need to get rid of some of the complication. They need to get rid of some of the obligations. And having a boss who calls you 24/7, that's never a pleasant situation. Someone who doesn't understand the constraints that you're working through because your schools just recalled the children and sent them all home, because somebody tested for COVID, or whatever the reason was. But secondarily, I also think that there will be a point where people recognize they have to go back to work because they need money.
Lisa Gable:
And I had a boss sit down with me that... We were very young, obviously, when I was in the Reagan administration. I started when I was 19. I mean, 21 years old to 24. And I remember a boss at the White House took me aside and took another girlfriend of mine aside and said, "Ladies, this is why they call it work. It's not supposed to be fun. It is work." And so there is that dynamic, which we have... Perhaps the pendulum has swung a little bit, where we're not recognizing that we do have an obligation to manage our own lives and earn our own paychecks.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, that's fair enough. Linking onto the sort of tough times and where we are now, talking about tough times when you went into FARE, there were problems there, and you had a tough time. Give our listeners a little bit of insight about that, because obviously in that situation, there has to be an element of both inspiration and tough love, I suppose, to get the thing to turn around.
Lisa Gable:
Absolutely. So FARE is the world's largest NGO that is investing in research of life-threatening food allergies, people that go into anaphylaxis and require epinephrine into the emergency room. And where FARE came about is through the merger of two organizations, a grassroots organization and a research organization in 2012. And the reality is the economics of the business never worked. That were merger never worked. And so they went through a number of different CEOs trying to tweak here, redesign here, try this here. Saw a considerable drop in revenue after the merger, which isn't actually supposed to happen. Normally, you merge things so the revenue increases.
Chris Roebuck:
That's rather the point.
Lisa Gable:
And that was the point. I had been the beneficiary of a large financial donation, which was put into a reserve, and they were drawing down the reserve to pay the bills. They weren't raising money. So when I walked in the door, basically the organization from an operational perspective was operating in the red. It wasn't getting operational funds, even though it had the reserve, but the reserve was going to go away if they kept spending the way they were. So in the first 80 days, we actually restructured two things. We restructured the organization by 49%, ultimately restructured it by 83% in the first 18 months. But secondarily, we restructured the board in the first 80 days.
Lisa Gable:
And I have to give a lot of credit to board members who personally said, "You're right, not my area of expertise. I don't have the financial means to write the big checks that are going to be required, or I don't have the business expertise." And so we set up secondary boards, board of governors, board of national ambassadors, didn't have fiduciary and governance responsibility. Took our board down from 19 people to 9 people, recruited some new people in that had business experience, and we raised $75 million in the first 18 months. So we completely changed the trajectory of the organization and got it back on track.
Chris Roebuck:
And within that context, how... It's not easy, but you can change the boards because you are in contact with them. But how did you sell what was happening to those who were on the front line in the organization? Because the arrival of somebody like yourself who said, "Hey, we're going to transform this organization," one individual would find that completely inspirational, and another person would find that like the knell of doomsday coming towards them.
Lisa Gable:
It was. It's so funny, because I actually just cleaned out my desk and just got a spur of energy to do so, and I found the speech I gave that morning. And I reread it, and I was like, "Wow, we've come a long ways." I walked into the room and literally gave a speech that said, "This organization is financially not in a position to continue forward, so it's going to have to go through a massive restructure. I'm going to be very honest with you. These are the steps I'm going to take over the next 30 days. These are the conversations I'm going to have with you." And the reality is some people would still be in the room and some people would no longer be in the room. And by giving people... I do believe you have to rip off the bandaid.
Lisa Gable:
You have to be very honest, and they know something's coming. And so I walked through the steps I would take to both get their details and understand where they were coming from, understand what they were doing in their activities. We would rank and rate things and set priorities against what we knew was both fundable as well as would achieve the long-term goal and mission of the organization, and let everyone know that we would be writing a five-year plan that would restructure how we focused on getting to the end state we needed to to deliver therapies and diagnostics to the patient. It was very tough. But one thing I spent a great deal of time is I did one-on-ones for this first 80 days with each individual in the organization not just once, but twice. The first time to hear what they were doing, the second time to find out what they wanted to do with their life.
Lisa Gable:
And I committed to them that I would personally write a letter of recommendation that would be extremely personalized to their key attributes that would let the interview committees know that it wasn't their fault that they were looking for a job. It was the economics of this business. They were good people. These are the good things they can do. And I opened up my own Rolodex, and I actually helped people find interviews. So I just felt that that was important not only for the care and feeding of the individuals who could be leaving the organization... But also, if you want to keep people loyal to you after they've just gone through an upheaval and watched 50% of their colleagues walk out the door, they want to know that you cared about those people.
Chris Roebuck:
So from the leadership perspective, what you've said, I hope our listeners have got a pad and a piece of paper, because there's probably at least five points they should have written down there from my perspective. First of all, it's about if there is trouble, you need to give people an honest reality check to let them know where they are, what the situation is. But the other point you made, which very rarely comes up in these sorts of discussions, is if people have to leave, how do they have to leave the organization? And I totally agree with you. My view has always been that you see the true quality of an organization and its leadership not by how they get people in the organization, but how they treat people when they have to put people out of the organization.
Chris Roebuck:
And what you said about taking a personal interest in ensuring that the people who had to leave had the maximum opportunity with your support to move to where they wanted to do is, from my perspective, something that everybody who is a leader listening to this should take to heart. Because to be blunt, if people on your team have to leave through no fault of their own, I don't care if the organization doesn't do anything, but I think as a leader, you have a personal responsibility. And your other point is so critical, that how you behave in that situation as a leader sends a massive political message across the organization, and that action that you committed with the person leaving drives the trust and respect you had with the people who are staying.
Lisa Gable:
Absolutely. I mean, we had good people, and they worked hard. And that's always hard for people when they're going through a situation like this. They're like, "Well, I worked really, really hard," and they're correct. They did. They showed up at work. They did the job they were told to do. The problem is that the job was not offset by revenue. That was the problem. That's just fundamentally it. It costs money to do things. It's a hard thing, especially in the not-for-profit space, but even in the for-profit space. You may have worked really, really hard, but the reality is that business unit that you worked hard on, and you had no control over it in some cases, was outdated or was no longer a viable path for the company. CPG companies, consumer product goods companies, do live in a state of constant sort of redistribution of assets.
Lisa Gable:
And that is different than a lot of manufacturing companies, because they're constantly going, "Okay, well maybe we shouldn't be making orange juice anymore, but so and so, if they were selling orange juice, is going to be highly profitable because they've got the distributors, they've got the relationships, they have the brand." So again, people have to understand it's just business. And that is from a self-awareness standpoint, from a personal self-satisfaction standpoint. You have to pay. My mother had to tell me this my whole life. If I didn't get the best grade or something, she's like, "You're not always going to get an A. You're just not. Life is not going to make it so easy for you. You can work super hard, but sometimes the cards just don't line up."
Chris Roebuck:
That's the story of life: Stuff happens, and the best-laid plans. And as an ex-military guy, one of the things we say is even the first three plans probably won't stand the test of what happens initially, because you are in a completely dynamic environment. Linked through to that, your experience has been over such a broad range of organizations. Many of them were, to some degree, I suppose like sort of Defense Department and some of the other silicon... Intel, fairly male-dominated environments. What were the challenges you found as perhaps being one of the few women in that environment to get to where you wanted to be? And Sylvia Acevedo said on her interview to get credibility with the men, because they don't look at you like they look at another male colleague.
Lisa Gable:
Well, they absolutely don't. And I also had a deficit, which is hard to see here on Zoom, but I'm five feet tall. And when I was working at the Pentagon, I weighed less than 95 pounds, and I looked like I was 12. And so there's this very funny viral photo that goes around sometimes of me at the age of 28 looking like I'm 13 in this group of military men. And the reality is I didn't have the physique, I didn't have the physical presence, so I had to speak with facts. And that was something that I learned from my mentors, is to go into a situation, do my homework in advance, understand the details. Don't try to compete with the men by throwing things out all the time or being the loudest person in the room, because you'll look ridiculous. Wait for that lull in the conversation, and get the point in that you walked in the room to make.
Lisa Gable:
And what I have found by doing that is it stuns people, right? They're a little surprised, because you haven't been talking the entire time. But you just make that one comment that you've worked out in advance, because you've seen what the elephant is in the room, and you identify the elephant and say, "Well, what if we did it this way?" And through that process, I can't begin to tell you how many times people have been in a room, and all of a sudden the men are going, "Like Lisa said..." And once I hear those beautiful words, "Like Lisa said," I know that I've achieved credibility in the room. It doesn't matter if my feet touched the floor or not.
Chris Roebuck:
To be honest, that's actually a great way of doing things for not just women, but for guys as well, who are trying to develop their careers and operating within an environment where there are more senior, more experienced people about. But that said, if I look over my corporate career, certainly I think it's fair to say that if we take the ages of sort of 25 to 35, I've noticed that within those age groups, young guys are much more prepared to come forward and promote their credentials and capability, even if they don't have it, whereas young women don't promote that often their credentials, even if they have them. And I think that's a challenge.
Lisa Gable:
It is, and it's one of the reasons why it's incumbent upon us to mentor women throughout the process. I was lucky to have both male mentors as well as female mentors. One of my other mentors and great friends through my life has been Elaine Chao, who within the US, she is married to a very powerful senator. She has been in the cabinet twice. She's been in multiple White Houses. But Elaine was another person who gave me advice and instructions on how I could own the room, but also how I could position myself. No one likes a braggart, but what you can do is you can underscore why you happen to have the information at hand, why you actually are the most knowledgeable person, you are the subject matter expert, and feeling confident in playing your role. And also, not allowing people to dismiss you from the conversation, and making sure that instead you can maneuver the conversation.
Lisa Gable:
And one way I do it, and I actually teach my team this [inaudible 00:27:15], is I do it through process. Whenever there is an opportunity and someone goes, "Can somebody do the agenda," I'm like, "Yes, why not?" "Can somebody write the meeting minutes?" "Well, yeah, I'm going to write the meeting minutes. You know why? Not Because I feel like I'm taking on the secretary role because I'm the woman in the room, because I want to control what they say." So I lay out the minutes and the way that I want to guide the conversation, and I lay out the agenda and the matter that's going to allow me to have more of an input and a say into how the next conversation goes. And so learning how to orchestrate conversations, volunteering for what most people are too lazy to do actually gives you control at making sure that the conversation moves forward the way that you want it to.
Chris Roebuck:
In that sense, the advice for the listeners is if you can, get a great mentor. Have the credibility to go in with that critical key point about the elephant in the room, and then control the conversation in terms of how it's set down. What is interesting from your career, Lisa, is that you have spent time both in the White House and in the public sector, and you've also spent it within the commercial sector. So you have that sort of dichotomy of the world where we are doing this for public good, the common good, and the world where we are doing this to make as much cash as we possibly can, not only for our investors, but potentially for ourselves. And when you look at those two worlds, do you find that there is a sort of different ethos, a different way of leading? Or is the public good something that is actually, to some degree, more inspiring than just making money, and what leaders actually do in both of those areas to be successful is actually common?
Lisa Gable:
Well, two things. One is that everything costs money, and I think one thing that people don't understand in the public sector or in the not-for-profit sector is we all have to talk about revenue. So we all have to talk about revenue, no matter if it's in the business sector or it's in the government sector, the not-for-profit sector. Somebody has to pay for something. And recognizing that that dynamic exists forces you to rank and rate what you are doing to ensure that there's revenue to offset what you have to do. Now, if you are doing something for the greater good, sometimes people will persuade themselves that the greater good is so vastly important that it can't be held to the same economic standards as business. But the truth is businesses are trying to meet the needs of customers.
Lisa Gable:
If they don't have happy customers, they don't have a business. And you are seeing more and more where business is able to enter in with the not-for-profit sector, and that's my sweet spot. That's what I've done across every single dynamic, is I bring business to the table. And we help convince businesses that in order to achieve their customer objectives and greater sales, that if they do it this way, we can actually amplify the voice of the patient, the voice of the consumer, the voice of the advocate in a manner that will actually generate more business. And so the two actually are cohesive, and people need to understand where they can align. And pie in the sky is great, but it's just not going to pan out results, and so you need to think of ways of packaging what you're doing.
Lisa Gable:
I always tell people it's like following an ambulance. So if you're on a highway, an ambulance is going down the highway, you're going to tuck in behind it and you're going to go a lot farther. So the question is: What are you tucking in under, and what ambulance are you following? Because you need to have partnerships across sectors in order to achieve big results, whether it's climate change or whether it's in health and wellness.
Chris Roebuck:
That's really interesting, the concept that no matter how inspiring the purpose of a not-for-profit is, the fact is the words not-for-profit do not imply that it's actually running for free. The fact that it is actually... It needs money to pay people. It needs money to invest. And a few weeks ago we had Peter Maurer, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and they have exactly that same issue. To be able do what they do in the refugee camps to employ people, to negotiate in conflict environments, somebody has to make the money from somewhere. But what I think is fascinating is you talk about that process by which you need to work with other people to champion through to be as successful as possible.
Chris Roebuck:
I believe that you can apply that logic to yourself as an individual and through your own development and career. And linked to that, you spent time with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America on the board of the Girl Scouts. Do you think that that idea of getting people to mentor, to champion younger people through to help them is critical to where we are now in a complex society?
Lisa Gable:
It's so important. And I always tell people that mentorship is not a moment, it is a movement. And what I mean by that is my mentors have been involved in my life through multiple transition points. Especially with Boys & Girls Clubs, and we talk about this a lot, one of the goals of Boys & Girls Clubs, which serves underserved community for a million kids in the United States from the poorest of homes, we focus on getting them graduated. And so that's really good. We get them graduated. That's our number one goal, is they graduate from high school. But then we have to help them figure out the next stage. And where you see a drop off is... And I mentor a lot of students from a wide variety of diverse backgrounds. Is I help them through undergrad, I help them through graduate school, and I help them with the first job, because that gives them the economic power and the credentials to move forward.
Lisa Gable:
We kind of leave them. So we bring them into universities and we give them big scholarships, and then we kind leave them alone. And you can't do that, because guess what? People didn't do that for us. I was fortunate that my parents had friends who would help me at each of those stages, and that through my own internships in Washington, I met people that helped me through the stages. You have to help people through the stages. And you're not responsible for them for life. It's not like some tale of Marvel comic books or something where you're taking on responsibility, but you got to help them get to an end point that they're good on their own. And that's what good parents do, right? That's what we do as moms and dads.
Lisa Gable:
And so we're helping kids who do not have that stability within their own homes to get there. Or with girls, Sylvia Acevedo, who you mentioned, who was head of Girl Scouts of the USA and was a rocket scientist, she knew it was important to give the girls the skill sets so they'd be competitive. So you need to think about what your end goal is with those children.
Chris Roebuck:
And linking back to what Sylvia said, the fact that certainly for girls, the way to some degree that the education system and the job system and even parental thinking tends to put girls into specific roles. And you, and indeed Sylvia, have bucked that trend by going into male-dominated world. What would you say to sort of the young woman, the girl in school, or heading towards university who is thinking about a career as something within a male-dominated industry? What would you say they should do in terms of a realistic check on reality, and what their challenges might be, and how they can face them down?
Lisa Gable:
Well, that is where mentorship comes in. I mean, your mentor's going to be the one that helps you make those transitions, that and sheer willpower. Keep in mind the never give up. And also, don't take things personally. I think sometimes what young women do is they see something occur and they go, "Well, that's happening to me because I'm a woman." Well, it actually happens to everybody. You're just interpreting it that way. So stop personalizing what's going on. Get the experience you need to be able to move up the ladder. Recognize it's not always going to be easy. In fact, there's a young man who I just got the most beautiful text from, a friend of my daughter's, who basically went through multiple stops and starts. He had worked someplace when he was a junior in college. They offered him a job, $80,000 a year in New York. COVID hits, the job got rescinded.
Lisa Gable:
I then put him up for a bunch of interviews. He's interviewing constantly during COVID. He takes different odd jobs. He basically had doors shut repeatedly, and I was able to help him go into a wonderful program that Deloitte has. And he just sent me a note to tell me that... My dad sent me a letter when I was in my twenties and I was a middle manager at Intel, and I was going through very rough time, again, because of this issue that we're talking about. And he said, "Lisa, remember, every stumbling block in my life has actually been my greatest opportunity." He said, "Challenge your crisis, and don't give up." Women sometimes think, "Well, the men had it easy." There are a lot of men like this young man that I helped that ended up with stops and starts along the way too, so don't take it so personally. Just keep moving forward. Don't stop.
Chris Roebuck:
And you could also apply the concept that you could say, "Okay, if you're in a situation and you succeed, great. If you don't succeed, it's a learning experience. Get over it. Move forward onto the next one." And one of the things that, that Peter Maurer from the Red Cross said that that was interesting was that the people in refugee camps, the most important thing that you have, even if in the worst situation, is as long as you have hope, then you'll keep going. And actually, I'm thinking: Well, for those people in those refugee camps, if they can keep hope, all of us out in this part of the world who have a comfortable life certainly should be able to keep that hope going even through the toughest times.
Lisa Gable:
Absolutely. In fact, I'm working on a blog right now about fear. We seem to all of a sudden be dominated by fear, and that's an extreme difference. We're so worried that if we don't put Purell on our hands, something bad's going to happen. If our mask slips, something bad is going to happen. If we do this, something it's going to happen. Sometimes, even during the... My husband's like, "Would you stop doing this during the pandemic?" I read a whole bunch of books about the Holocaust. He's like, "Why are you doing this? It's so depressing." Because guess what? People made it through. Not everybody, there were 6 million people who died, but when you followed the lives of the individuals who were so inspiring, that managed to go through truly the most horrific of all situations that no one could have ever imagined, and they managed to make it through, it makes you realize that sometimes we give up too soon.
Lisa Gable:
And there will be bad things. God's not going to stop bad things from happening. In fact, what is the phrase within the Jewish religion? That man plans and God laughs. When you look at history, bad things happen, and the key is you have to never give up. You have to have hope. You keep working your way through. And again, I think sometimes we personalize things too much. We let fear dominate, we let our anxiety dominate, and we don't recognize that we have the capacity, especially in the United States. And I know this is an international podcast, but my word, within the US, we have so many opportunities, and we live in a democracy. I've been in communist countries. You've been in communist countries. I've worked with communist countries. There's a big difference in being able to actually make a change, move someplace, do something different. Other people don't have that opportunity.
Chris Roebuck:
Which we are fortunate to. But actually, we are talking about leadership. You mentioned what leaders do. And one of the most amazing moments in my leadership life was for years, I had asked leaders around the world, "What did the best boss you ever have do on a day-to-day basis that made them the best boss?" Developed my career, understood I made genuine mistakes, told me what was going on, trusted me, blah, blah, blah. And the list was always consistent. And then one day, through a business school in London, I actually ended up in Beijing talking to 50 rocket scientists in the Chinese space program. And I thought, "Dare I ask the question?" And I did ask the question.
Chris Roebuck:
And the list that came back through the translator was exactly the same list as I had been given by everybody else across the world, which just shows beautifully, to your point about leadership and all the things you suggested, leadership is about understanding we are human and exhibiting behavior that shows you that your boss trusts you or vice versa, and building that trust, which I think is so powerful. And even when times are tough, if that boss is there for you, or if you have a mentor for you... Because if there is somebody there... And listeners who may be at the moment going through tough times, find somebody that you can talk to, confide in, who can guide you, which will make things better. So that, I think, is a key point.
Lisa Gable:
Yeah. The other thing is teamwork. Okay, let's say you all have a really crummy boss. And we've all had them, we've all worked for jerks, but what about your teammates? You can get strength from each other. You can do things for each other. You can open doors for each other. Leadership, it has the big L and the small L. You talked about these refugee camps. My sister has worked for years with refugees, and worked with getting women empowered in war zones. I've had friends that have helped women set up in-house business because they weren't allowed to go outside of the house due to religious constraints. But you watch those women, what they do for each other despite the horrific situation in which they find themselves, and again, it reinforces that leadership is a mindset. It is the moment at which you know you can do something to make someone else's path easier, and that you can open a door, and to not limit yourself by thinking, "Well, I can't do anything." Yes, you can. You can do something.
Chris Roebuck:
Which beautifully brings us to a conclusion. And I was going to ask you what you would suggest, given everything you've learned through your experience, what would you say to any leader... What's one thing they should do? And what's one thing anybody else who's not a leader should do? And to some degree, you've preempted my question by effectively saying: Look, if you are a leader, you need to do these things. But even if you are not a leader with a big L, you're not in a leadership position, you still have the ability to influence positively those people around you. And if you can do something that helps somebody else, that creates an energy, a momentum between you, that person, and all of your colleagues. So you would advise people to just look out for your colleagues as much as yourself. We, not me.
Lisa Gable:
Right. And also, reach out beyond the circle that you find yourself in. Reach out to people in other companies, other organizations. Find your moments. You become powerful as a unit. Again, you may have someone that you work for that is limiting and prohibiting your ability to move forward. But if you all find those relationships elsewhere and make sure that you're taking care of each other, this may not be your moment, but what you have done and the actions you have taken actually may be what gets you to that next level once that barrier that you have in your way is gone. And so don't limit yourself. I think that would be my other recommendation, is just don't limit yourself. There are no limits. You have the flexibility to reach out and beyond where you are to gather the strength, the inputs, or the learning experiences and support systems that you need.
Chris Roebuck:
Beautiful point to end on, Lisa. Don't restrict yourself, reach out. And just from the perspective of... It's effectively broaden your network, build those connections, because you never know who is out there and how they can help you at some point in the future, and how you can help them. And that's the way we work in a beautiful world where it's about we, not me, and we get great stuff to happen.
Lisa Gable:
Absolutely, 100%.
Chris Roebuck:
Lisa, thank you so much. That has been great fun. Listeners, there are so many lessons that you could have picked up, and I'll be picking up on some of those on my reflections on the top. But Lisa, in the meantime, thank you so much. Where can people learn more about you and the things you are doing now?
Lisa Gable:
Well, I'd suggest that... I'd love people to buy my book. It's called Turnaround. You can find it in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, indie bookstores, How to Change Course When Things Are Going South. And secondarily, I'm on Facebook and Twitter, as well as Instagram and LinkedIn, under Lisa Gable, Author. So I do love to write. I write about the things we've been talking about today on a regular basis. And so follow me on those platforms and reach out to me, because I do answer the messages that I receive.
Chris Roebuck:
Lisa, thank you so much. Thank you so much for all the work you've done, both in the public sector, private sector, particularly with the Girl Scouts and Boys Clubs for people who have come from difficult circumstances to help them get as much out of life as they can. So thank you very much. It has been an absolute pleasure.
Lisa Gable:
Great to talk with you. Thanks for having me.
Chris Roebuck:
Now, I think you'll agree, there were some great insights there from Lisa, from the value of using figures and statistics to analyze situations and present ideas in meetings to the importance of personal interaction to build trust and a positive working relationship. I also think she brought out the criticality of visible leadership, especially as a C-suite or senior leader, just getting out there and showing you care about people on the front line at all levels. Lisa showed from her own career, and indeed what she does now for others, the importance of having a mentor, and that's especially important when you have tough times as we all do. But if you don't have a mentor and you are going through tough times, as we spoke about, there's always hope, and always someone out there who can help you. So get back up, reach out, and also don't limit yourself in terms of your horizons and perspectives.
Chris Roebuck:
Now, have a think about how you can use some of Lisa's ideas to help you get to where you want to be. And don't forget that in a week, I will give you a more in-depth view of the key takeaways from Lisa, my insights, and three ideas for action in my reflections on the top. If you've used any of the insights that you've got from Perspectives from the Top, and they've helped you, please send me your success stories. I would love to hear them. And also, don't forget to sign up on the website so you don't miss any of the future guests that we have over the next year. Thanks for tuning in.
Chris Roebuck:
Check out the show notes from today's episodes at perspectivesfromthetop.com, where you can not only enjoy additional resources from today's show, but all previous ones. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your favorite podcast so you don't miss any. And if you really enjoyed the show, please give us a five-star rating and review. Have a question or comment? Let's discuss it. Message me on LinkedIn. Perspectives from the Top is produced in collaboration with Detroit Podcast Studios. So have a successful week, use today's new learnings and actions, and remember: It's onwards and upwards. See you next time on Perspectives from the Top.