--- title: "Empowering Women To Rise" episode: 220 date: 2026-08-27 guest: "Lois Frankel" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/220-empowering-women-to-rise audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-220/audio.mp3 --- # Empowering Women To Rise In this episode of The Inclusion Bites Podcast, Joanne Lockwood welcomes Dr. Lois Frankel for a compelling discussion on empowering women to rise, navigating the complexities of gender expectations, and challenging the status quo within organisational cultures. Their conversation ranges from the impact of early socialisation and the nuances of emotional intelligence to the systemic barriers women continue to face in leadership roles. Joanne and Lois explore how societal messages shape professional behaviours, why balancing masculine and feminine energies is critical for collective progress, and the importance of self-awareness in building stronger, healthier workplace relationships. Lois is a bestselling author, executive coach, and renowned advocate for women’s empowerment. With roots in counselling psychology and a substantial background in corporate HR, she focuses on helping women break free from limiting behaviours without compromising authenticity. Her influential book, "Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office," revolutionised the conversation about women’s success and leadership, highlighting the subtle yet pervasive messages that impact women’s career trajectories. Lois’s philosophy of teaching women to claim what they want and deserve has resonated globally, establishing her as a key voice in DEI and workplace culture transformation. Together Joanne and Lois dissect the challenges of cultivating inclusive environments, the enduring impact of gender norms, and the vital role of emotional intelligence in leadership. From historical examples like Margaret Thatcher to reflections on diverse teams and the erosion of DEI initiatives, the episode unpacks why amplifying women’s voices is not only an issue of fairness but of organisational effectiveness. There is a strong focus on actionable strategies—asking difficult questions, embracing difference, and building mutually rewarding relationships—to disrupt imbalance and open doors for all. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Introduction to Inclusion Bites podcast - 07:52 — Transitioning from Therapist to Coach - 10:54 — Coaching assertive women in business - 17:13 — Book title changes and coaching philosophy - 24:50 — Discussing global conflicts and gender dynamics - 28:53 — Changing military leadership styles - 32:05 — Diversity issues in leadership spaces - 39:14 — Discussing privilege and inequality - 45:51 — Using 360 feedback for self-awareness - 52:27 — Girls' self-image struggles - 55:58 — Women in leadership and competition - 01:03:22 — Importance of a supportive team - 01:06:08 — Learning the importance of teamwork - 01:09:51 — Wrapping up the episode ## Key takeaways - The enduring impact of childhood socialisation on career-limiting behaviours and how to recognise and recalibrate these patterns for professional growth. - How emotional intelligence underpins effective modern leadership and why it remains essential amidst shifting business landscapes. - The risks of imbalance in leadership styles and why organisations need both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ energies at the top. - The structural and cultural barriers still impeding women’s progress and the nuanced reality of ‘competing’ in mixed-gender professional spaces. - The mechanism of exclusion and privilege maintenance, from echo chambers and bias in leadership to societal reluctance to redistribute advantage. - The insidious effects of societal messages and media on girls’ self-worth, and why workplace equality must also be matched by cultural change. - The importance of team composition that embraces different thinking styles to achieve collective intelligence and lasting organisational resilience. ## FAQs ### What is emotional intelligence and why is it crucial for success? Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity for self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, and empathy; it is widely recognised as the sine qua non for professional effectiveness and leadership, frequently outweighing pure cognitive ability. ### Do women naturally possess higher emotional intelligence than men? While emotional intelligence traits such as empathy and social awareness are often more pronounced in women due to socialisation, this is not exclusive to women, and emotional intelligence can be cultivated by individuals of all genders. ### Is it possible to succeed by simply emulating traditional “male” behaviours in the workplace? Adopting behaviours traditionally associated with men or “tough” leadership is not the solution; success is more about balance—adding new behaviours to one’s repertoire without abandoning core strengths or personal authenticity. ### Why do women sometimes struggle to ask for what they want or deserve at work? Societal messages received in childhood, reinforced by media and organisational culture, can socialise women to prioritise likability and compliance over self-advocacy, thus making assertiveness and self-promotion more challenging. ### Does increasing women’s representation in leadership automatically ensure greater inclusivity? Not necessarily; genuine progress relies on cultivating diversity of thought and emotional intelligence across all leadership, rather than simply achieving gender parity, as toxic dynamics can persist in any gender-dominated environment. ### How can individuals overcome self-sabotaging behaviours and thrive? The first step is self-awareness—understanding how early socialisation and implicit rules shape one’s professional conduct. Change comes when individuals identify personal leverage points, often with support, and are motivated by their own values and ambitions. ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Foreign. Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And today is episode 220 with the title Empowering Women to Rise. And I have the absolute honour and Privilege to welcome Dr. Lois Frankel. Lois is a best selling author, executive coach and women's empowerment advocate. She helps women overcome limiting behaviours and succeed in business without compromising who they are. When I asked Lois to describe her superpower, she said that it is her belief that to those whom much is given, much is expected and her commitment to teaching other women how to get what they want and deserve. Hello, Lois. Welcome to the show. Lois Frankel: Joanne, thank you so much for inviting me to join you. Joanne Lockwood: It's a pleasure. And we've already had a good little chat before we pressed the record button and you said you're in the U.S. is that right? Lois Frankel: I am. I'm in California. I just recently moved from the Los Angeles area down towards the beach area. I'm in a little town called Dana Point Point, which is a couple of towns north of Oceanside. And just most people know Laguna beach, it's the next town south of Laguna beach, so in California, though originally from New York. Joanne Lockwood: So you've moved around a bit, east to west. Lois Frankel: Yes, absolutely. Joanne Lockwood: You hopped over the middle, did you? You didn't get stuck in the mountains? Lois Frankel: I didn't get stuck in the middle. I shouldn't say stuck, because it's. The middle is beautiful. Joanne Lockwood: Beautiful, yeah. Lois Frankel: But having grown up in New York, on Long island, when I was offered jobs in the middle of the country, I always declined them because I felt landlocked. So I've only lived on coasts. I lived in New York, on Long Island, I lived in Miami and then I came out here to Los Angeles. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I'm the same. I live not far from the coast. And if I go too far inland, I mean, the UK is not a huge place by US standards, but yeah, if I get too far away from the water, I kind of feel that uneasiness of not knowing where the water is. Lois Frankel: Yeah, exactly. And it's not to say the middle. There's anything wrong with the middle, because there isn't. It just for me, feels a little claustrophobic, personally, never having lived in the middle. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And also you've got the contrast between the Hustle and bustle and 24 hour New York and that more spread out, la, California type environment as well. And I noticed that real contrast when I was in New York. You walk everywhere or you subway it or bus it everywhere. Everything's really kind of in a compact area. But LA and San Francisco and even the whole of California is just more sprawled, isn't it? You need a car and. Lois Frankel: Yeah, it really is. They're like two different cultures. But you know, this country is so big, Joanne, that we have so many subcultures within our United States. So. Yes. You know, New York has one totally different vibe. Los Angeles does. San Francisco does. You know, people who live in San Francisco don't want to live in Los Angeles. People who live in San Diego would never live in San Francisco. So, you know, we each have our preferences, I think, partly based on how we grew up and what our values are. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Now, having been to San Francisco, LA and San Diego and New York and Miami, I get it. I get, I get the difference of vibe. But you're right, US is such a big place. It's map it onto Europe. It's. It's several countries, isn't it? Easily. Lois Frankel: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Lois Frankel: You can't paint all Americans with the same brush, really, because we're very different from place to place. Joanne Lockwood: Especially this, in this current climate, we can't, we certainly can't paint people with the same brush. Lots of different perspectives. So you were infamous or famous for penning a book some 20 years ago. Was it Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office? And I guess that sparked a whole career for you coming out of that book or enhanced the career you already had? Lois Frankel: Both. Joanne Lockwood: What got you into it? Lois Frankel: Yeah, I'd say both, because when it first came out, all the. All of a sudden I became an advocate for women. And I was always kind of under the radar as an advocate for women. But the fact is I was an executive coach, so I coached predominantly men because I only worked in major corporations with people who were referred to me by the corporation. So who did they invest in? Men. So that was primarily who I was coaching at the time. So when the book came out, all of a sudden everything shifted. And at first I resisted it because I thought, wow, I've spent, you know, a lot of my career trying to build this coaching business for both men and women and a woman who does marketing and branding. She said, lois, go with it, go with it. Just be glad that you have this wave to take you along into this new area that is consistent with your values and your beliefs. It's just not how you were making your living previously. So did I answer that part of the question? Joanne Lockwood: Absolutely, absolutely. Lois Frankel: But when you asked me how to. So that's kind of how I got into this part of it. But. But there's something just before that, too. There's a backstory, and that is, you know, I mentioned during our pre conversation that I worked for arco, the oil company, for quite a few years in Human Resources. And while I was working there, I went to school at night to get my PhD in counselling psychology, because what I really wanted to do my whole life I dreamed of being a psychologist. So with ARCO paying for it, I got my PhD, and then I went to the Powers that Be and I said, you know, you paid all this money for my PhD, and now I. I'd like to be able to use it in the employee Assistance programme. And they said to me, you're doing fine where you are, just stay there. And I think that happens to a lot of women. What happens? As we get more education or degrees or certificates or just experience, people see us for who we are and what we were doing. And I was actually working in Equal Employment Opportunity at the time. I spent quite a few years in eeo, which now it's called dei, but back then we called it eeo, spent quite a few years there and, and realised, you know, I didn't. I didn't spend all this time, energy, going to school at night to be a psychologist, to just stay where I am. So I quit and I started a private practise of psychotherapy in downtown Los Angeles because I realised that I wanted to work with that particular population. I wanted to work with working people. Joanne I did it for about, I'd say about a year and a half, and the moment I wanted to jump across the couch and put my hands around my client's neck and say, how many times are we going to talk about the same thing? I realised I'm probably not cut out to be a therapist. And yet Again, that was all I wanted to do my whole life. So it was like, at this point, left a good job, got a PhD, you know, what am I going to do now? Well, as sometimes life happens to you in the way it should, a woman I had done some training for came to me and said, lois, would you be willing to coach someone? Now, this was 1989. There were not a lot of executive coaches around at the time. There were hardly any, as a matter of fact. And I looked at her and I said, I don't know exactly what you want. And she said, oh, Lois, you've been a therapist, or you are a therapist, you've done training, you worked in human resources, you put them all together, you have a coach. This woman was always on the cutting edge of everything. And I said, sure, I'd love to coach someone for you. I figured it had to be better than what I was doing. And she sent this woman to me because, remember back then, you got sent for coaching because you were somebody who was too valuable to lose and too painful to keep. And she sent this woman to me. And all I knew was that no one wanted to work with her, that she was bristly and nobody wanted to work with her. She comes in, she sits down. Now, remember, there's no coaching models out there yet. So I used my very first coaching client to come up with my own model. And I looked at her and I said, you know, maybe you could tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in your household. Because I was a therapist. What was I going to ask? And she, luckily for me, she went with the programme. And what she said was, I grew up in a German household. My parents taught me to always obey authority. Don't waste time, keep your nose clean, don't gossip, don't get involved in other people's business. You know, that Teutonic, that whole Teutonic attitude. And it was very clear to me why people didn't want to work with her, because she was doing all those things she learned in childhood. And Joanne, that became my coaching model, that became my coaching question. Tell me, what were the rules you learned in childhood that you had to obey in order to get love, attention and affection? In every household, there are rules and sometimes they're explicit, sometimes they're implicit. In this German household, they were quite explicit. So what she was doing was over relying on the behaviours that she learned in childhood were appropriate, not realising they now were getting in her way. And that actually formed the basis of my very first book, which was called Stop Sabotaging Your Career. And it was for both women and men. And in that book, I really talked about the seven primary reasons why I saw people falter in their careers. And it was from these old messages. Now, I want you to fast forward about 10 years. Now, I've been in coaching for about 10 years, coaching both men and women, primarily men. But I was working with this one woman who was sent to me for coaching because she was a little bit on the aggressive side of assertive. We know what we call those, right? They're called bitches. So she was sent to me for coaching because people found her kind of bitchy. I worked with her for about two or three months and one day I went in for a coaching session and she said, before we get started, I just want to tell you I was invited to sit on the executive committee of my company and I went to give her a high five and she stopped me and I said, what? And she said, you know, I've been to those meetings, Lois, they're a waste of time. And what popped out of my mouth was, honey, you got to quit being a girl. Because what I realised was that she was acting like she was taught in childhood that you have to be twice as good. You have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. Right? You know, you're never as good as men. You have to just work, work, work, work, work, and maybe you'll get recognised. When that popped out of my mouth, you know, honey, you gotta quit being a girl. All the mistakes I saw women make because of how they were socialised. I mean, up till now I was talking about family messages for both girls, but now I started thinking, wait a minute, but girls get unique messages in addition to the family messages. They get messages about be nice, be kind, be helpful, be, you know, all these things, and that's what gets in their way. And after I left my coaching session with her, I outlined all of what I was calling quit being a girl that the publisher renamed to Nice Girls don't get the Corner Office. And so that's really how this transition happened. Joanne Lockwood: Fascinating, fascinating. So you mentioned the seven things that tend to get in the way. Out of the seven, is there a top one or are they all pretty insightful? Lois Frankel: Well, of course, I think, as the author, I think they're all pretty insightful, but I think the primary one is building strong, mutually rewarding relationships. And you're from Great Britain. So in that book, I used examples of real life people who derailed in their careers because they either didn't listen, they didn't have strong relationships. And the example from Great Britain that I used was Margaret Thatcher. If you read Margaret Thatcher's biography, you learn that she grew up in a household. She was taught, Margaret, always think for yourself, don't do things just because other people are doing them. Be independent. She learned those lessons well and look at how they brought her to Prime Minister of Great Britain. But those messages also derailed her. That my understanding and you know, you'll have to tell me if I'm wrong because as an American looking in, or from what I've read, Margaret Thatcher derailed because of the poll tax controversy, that Margaret Thatcher wanted to put a tax on everyone who voted. And everyone else, her advisor said, you know, Margaret, this is not a good idea. We don't think that you should do this. And that's when, if you recall the famous line, you turn if you want to, the lady's not for turning. That told us everything we needed to know about her. It also tells us everything we need to know about why she derailed. Because she wasn't really able to take in information from other people. She didn't have those kinds of relationships that would support her in the long run. She was a lone ranger. And so Joanne, let me ask you, would you agree with that? Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I mean, I was, this was what, late 70s, and I was probably 16 years old or something at the time when it all came off the rails, but I remember it quite distinctly. And we had the miners strike, we had a lot of political unrest, all as a result. And the Iron lady character that she had defeated the striking miners, it defeated a lot of things. But you're right, the poll tax became this kind of the hill she died on, I guess you would call it. Fundamentally, it wasn't a bad idea. Before the poll tax, you were kind of taxed as a household based on the size of your house. And what she was trying to say, well, it's only fair if we base it on the number of people who are eligible to vote. So it's almost like usage based. So water metering, electricity, gas, so metering based on usage. And so fundamentally it's a very conservative model and it meant trying to create fairness. But unfortunately what happened was it meant the people who are very, very rich with very, very big houses paying lot tax, only one person living in it ended up being much, much better off because they were only paying for one person. And people with five people living in a small council supplied house were ended up paying five times the amount than they were before. So fundamentally it advantaged the rich. And I think that divide was lost on her. And I think you're right, she probably didn't listen to the people around her counselling on it. And she was so set on not turning and not you turning. Lois Frankel: Yes. And that's a great example of someone who could have a fundamentally great idea. But I think it was the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, who said, it's a curse. Right. May you have a wonderful idea and not be able to convince anyone of it. And so she really suffered from that and from what you just described, which I hadn't understood before, it had a chilling effect. What seemed to be neutral on the face had a chilling effect on people who had less. And don't we see that happen even now in all kinds of ways? Chilling effects. And I know we'll probably get to that a little bit later, but, yes, that had a chilling effect. So as a result, she derailed. So she was the opposite of a nice girl, Right. She wasn't somebody who would go along to get along. She wasn't someone who suffered from the disease to please. So really, that first book, Sabotaging Your Career, was for both men and women, and I saw both men and women having difficulty with that particular behaviour. However, in Nice Girls don't get the Corner Office, it's. It's kind of the opposite. It's not quite the opposite, because when they change the title from Nice Girls from what I my working title, Quit Being A Girl, to Nice Girls don't get the Corner Office, I said, you realise I'm going to spend the rest of my life saying, you can be nice and can be successful. And they were probably right because it sold a lot of books. And, you know, it's intriguing, it piques curiosity, but also a lot of people have told me I didn't buy the book because I thought you were gonna say you had to be mean and nasty when nothing was further from the truth. Because if I had the opportunity to coach Margaret Thatcher, I wouldn't tell her to stop doing anything. And this is also kind of the basis of all my coaching. Don't stop what you're good at, add new behaviours that are going to create balance. And in Margaret Thatcher's case, given the opportunity, which I never would have had anyway, I would have told her to stop. Do more listening, ask more questions and more consciously decide the hill that you're going to die on. When it comes to Nice Girls don't get the Corner Office, All I'm saying is you can't be that nice little girl you were taught to be in childhood and expect to achieve your adult goals. Just like this client who was finally invited to sit on her executive committee. She was obviously implementing some of the things we talked about. You know, I talked to her about, you need to listen more. You know people, we live in a society where we expect certain things from men and certain things from women. And when you're not delivering those things, people are going to react negatively to you and you don't have to deliver them. I'm not saying you have to change one iota. I tell my clients this all the time, don't have to change one iota. But look at the playing field you're on and what does the playing field want from you? And if you want to win on that field, you may need to learn a couple of new skills. Joanne Lockwood: What you're saying to me sounds like what we would describe these days as emotional intelligence. Having that self awareness of. And you also. The other thing you said was build stronger relationships. And that's the kind of the bookends of emotional intelligence, isn't it? By being self aware, self regulating, the end result is you build stronger relationships through being adaptive and understanding the game you're playing. Really? Lois Frankel: You're absolutely right. We know that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non for success, right? You can have a huge IQ but a low EQ emotional quotient and you won't be as successful as someone who has a lower IQ but a higher eq. And we see that happen all the time, people who are not rocket scientists rising to the top of their organisations. And that's again because as you said, emotional intelligence is about self awareness, self regulation, social skills, the ability to show empathy. It's about all those things. Now ironically, Joanne, all those things are things that come naturally to women. And so women tend to be more emotionally intelligent than men. They tend to be. When I was coaching more men, I used to do what I called the feminization of leadership, that men had to learn to be more like women if they were going to be successful. They had to learn to care what other people think, to listen more, to show more empathy, right? They had to become more self aware, see themselves as others see them. If they wanted to be successful leaders, that's exactly what they had to do. Now what we know today, the pendulum is swinging back because you have people like Mark Zuckerberg saying men have gotten too soft, we need to really toughen up, you know, leadership. We need Men to be tougher leaders. You see, our own Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, I can never pronounce his name and I don't really care. Saying that women don't belong in. Don't really belong in the military. Joanne Lockwood: Right. Lois Frankel: So we've seen the pendulums shift, but I believe that emotional intelligence will always be the sine qua non for success. It always has been, it always will be. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I don't see many wars being fought by women in the world or started by women or propagated by women. Women are often the victims or the targets or the. Or the people who are most affected by conflict. These scenarios. And Margaret Thatcher wasn't for turning. There's a lot of politicians who have the same sort of impact as well. They think the biggest and loudest is best. Lois Frankel: Exactly. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Lois Frankel: And you know, it's interesting because I did a little talk the other day and somebody said that they thought the military style of leadership, loudest is best, top down. Joanne Lockwood: Right. Lois Frankel: That tough kind of leadership is the best. And I said, not anymore. I mean, when I was growing up in the corporation, when the boss said jump, we said, how high? If you say jump today, people don't say how high. They say, why? Why do you want me to do this? What's in it for me? Joanne Lockwood: Right. Lois Frankel: It's a discussion. And so, as I explained to this gentleman who said he thought military leadership was the best, I said, it's only good in an emergency situation. It's only good when you need someone to say, take that hill. It's not good in MO and probably 90% of leadership scenarios. It doesn't work. And it particularly doesn't work in this day and age. And it's precisely. I'm glad you went there, Joanne, because it's precisely why I say if ever we've lived in a time that cries out for women's leadership, that time is now. Because you look around the world and you see war, poverty, famine, corporate greed. We're not at the helm. You know, I said to a friend the other day, what do you think would have happened if Netanyahu and Donald Trump were replaced with two women? Would we be at war? And she said, oh, no, definitely not. We would be at the negotiating table. And I believe that with all my heart that we need, just as you're saying, we need more women in significant leadership roles if we want to change the world. You may have read the book. There's a book I wish I wrote. It's called Gather the Women, Save the World by Jean Shinoda Bolen. And she talks about how if we have any hope of saving this world, it will be because we bring women together in leadership roles. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think I completely agree with that and I'm sure, hopefully you'll agree with what I'm going to say is that we need a balance, don't we? We need, we need that, both that masculine and feminine energy to balance out those perspectives. So it's not one or the other. I think, I think what we need to do is we need to bring the skills, bring the emotional intelligence. And we can't also say that there are men who don't have emotional intelligence. It's not a, a purely female trait. In terms that we can. We always used to argue that women had no leadership capability. It was a man's job to be, to be a leader. You know, the army, the, back in the 1800s and the 90s where women's role was to, to walk around looking pretty all the time. There was no, there's no expectation that women could do anything. But yeah, I think it's just trying to find that, that natural synergy between the, between the, the thinking styles and the emotional styles, isn't it? Lois Frankel: Absolutely. And I'm with you. It's about balance. You know, the Native Americans had a word for it, it's called Koyaanisqatsi. And it's about world imbalance. And I think that's exactly what has to happen. And we are totally out of balance right now. And I think that's why so many people are suffering. There's too much suffering in the world because we are out of balance. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, there's too many conflicts at the moment that are bouncing and bumping off each other with an agenda that nobody really understands. Is it about money? Is it about power? Is it about oil? Is it about what's it all about? And it comes down to a certain group of people who may well be described as men without enough female influence. And I think if you look at some of the administrations around the world, they are male dominated. Those cultures and societies do not respect women's opinions. And it's. And we see some of the areas of the world, Afghanistan, places like that, rolling back women's rights even further. That's a really sad state of affairs. And we can't solve that problem today. But yeah, it's. You're right, it's. We need that energy, we need those, that thinking. And wars would be less. Well, wars would be different. Wars would be different. We've probably still. They'll be bitchy to each other, but they might result in not talking to each other for a while or something else happening. But we certainly wouldn't be launching missiles as a first reaction. Lois Frankel: Exactly, exactly. Did you read the book the Chalice and the Blade by Riane? Joanne Lockwood: No, I haven't. Not. Lois Frankel: I think it was Riane Eisler. I think Eisler was the author. And in this book she talked about the fact that we know that there were matriarchies throughout history. And we know that because when you look at their graves and the burial sites, the, the ores, the iron and the ores were used to create chalices that you drink out of to create ornamental things because that's what was surrounding the women in these graves. Right. And then when the, the. I think they were Nordic, but I don't want to. I don't want to. I'm not sure I can swear to that. But somehow as people came from the north and invaded, they came and they took those irons and oars and they made weapons out of them. And we saw it move towards patriarchal societies. So this whole notion of the Chalice and the Blade, it's exactly what you're saying brought that to mind. That would there be wars? Yeah, sure. But would they look different? Probably. They'd probably look a lot different. And missiles would not be the first thing we'd think to use our resources for. Joanne Lockwood: I think we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be bombing or killing women and children even by mistake in that situation. And there'd be a lot more value to human life. I think that's the sad thing is it's the innocence, innocent people that get caught up in all this. The people who are inadvertently becoming human shields or human victims of over exuberant casualties. Acceptable losses, I think they probably call it and. Lois Frankel: Right. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Lois Frankel: You know, I think it was Golda Meir who said a leader who doesn't. Isn't cautious about sending their people into war doesn't deserve to be a leader. Joanne Lockwood: No. If people are expendable, they become. Yeah. And I think that takes us back to the concept of the emotional intelligence, the need to balance that out. And I've got a good friend who actually, she's been on this podcast. She was a Tornado fighter pilot and she did tours of Iraq and she used to fly these tornadoes and she, she, she fought in combat as well as a, as a female fighter pilot. Lois Frankel: Tornado or torpedoes? Tornado. Joanne Lockwood: Tornado. Tornado. Tornado, yes. It was a European fighter. Lois Frankel: Oh, okay. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And they still Fly them today. So yes, it's a. I think there's different configurations. One is a combat fighter and the other configuration is a bomber that had a sort of dual depending on the model and depending on the configuration. And I listened to her, I've listened to her podcast, I've listened to her an audible book as well. And her experience in the military really, really did sort of shine to like the title of her book is An Officer Not a Gentleman. So she talks about what it was like to be one of the first female fighter pilots and the bias and the prejudice she faced trying to break into that man's world. And I listened to it and I was in the military, I joined from school and I did three or four years in the military when I was younger. And I remember my experience of being that very much you were shouted at, it was commander control, this is the way it had to be, jump how high, that types of things. But I listened to her story and she was probably in the military 20 years or maybe 20 years after me. The way she described it was very much more enlightened and there was a lot more emotional intelligence, a lot more proper, what I would call modern day leadership thinking in there rather than just shouting at each other. And I saw that as a real difference in the way she described it. Okay, she was an officer and I wasn't an officer. So yeah, they do talk differently. But I did notice a shift in the way that leaders, certainly in the UK military are being nurtured and developed now. Lois Frankel: I love the title of her book, An Officer Not a Gentleman. And I absolutely agree with you in terms of this whole notion of how are you going to bring the best out in your troops? That there is a philosophy that says you must be a leader for your time. So, for example, you couldn't take MacArthur and put him in charge of the troops today because he would not be effective. And it's exactly what your friend is saying, is that in times of danger, right, when danger is imminent, you have to be more command and control. But you have a whole generation of people in the service today that just aren't going willing to do that. They're just not going to follow because you said that they should. So I agree with her wholeheartedly. Joanne Lockwood: I mean, go back to the First World War, if you weren't prepared to go over the top and run and fight, then you were shot as a deserter or something else. But I hope we would no longer do that in a version of society. Maybe some societies might do, but so Human life is valued differently than it was 100, 150 years ago. Lois Frankel: You know, Julian, I'd like to think that, and I think we have moved in that direction, particularly as we've seen more women enter business, more women enter the political arena, not enough, but more. And so I'd like to think that. But then when I look at what's going on in the world today, it doesn't seem that that's true. Does it seem true to you that. That we are valuing human lives more? Joanne Lockwood: No. I mean, now you call it al. I would like to think that we probably have that aspiration more than we ever did. We probably think about it, but the reality probably is that acceptable losses, acceptable things happen. I think we probably, the people who rationalise it, they still rationalise it in a need based sort of decision. Sorry, we had to take that target out. Sorry, there were children. Lois Frankel: Collateral damage. Joanne Lockwood: Collateral damage. The, the means lead to the end. We were trying to achieve. And. But then I don't think it's fair to say that women wouldn't make that decision. But most people from the outside looking in wouldn't make that decision. So somehow the inner circle making these decisions, their echo chamber is almost. It becomes their operating procedure is acceptable and they are, they're not getting challenged enough. Is that the issue? Lois Frankel: Well, the inner chamber is primarily Caucasian men, isn't it? And so if we look at it that way, they haven't changed that much. Because, look, we talked a little earlier about the erosion of DEI, right? And it quickly eroded, more quickly than I thought it could have, given how far we'd come, which tells me it wasn't on a strong base to start with and that Caucasian men only went along with it because they had to. So when you talk about this, you know, the way that you describe this, I think it's that. And I don't mean to sound. I know this sounds horrible to say that it's Caucasian men, but that's who's in the echo chamber. I mean, when I picture who's in there, I picture Caucasian men. And so I'm thinking, so what's wrong with this picture? If there were more people of colour, if there were more people, people, more women, right? If there were just more people who were different of every kind, lgbtq, if there were more people like that in that echo chamber, I think it would create that balance that we talked about earlier. Does that make sense? You look like you might be disagreeing with me or maybe you just. Joanne Lockwood: No, I agree completely. And I think. Sorry I was nodding in my head, probably not nodding outward. So, yeah, you're right. There's still this perception that hiring for DEI or hiring for difference is hiring for second best. And we saw that rhetoric coming out of the new administration in states where there was a plane crash or something, and it came down to the fact if that had been a white man flying that plane, it wouldn't have crashed. So we should not allow women to fly planes because we can't trust them. Yet you can put autonomous cars on the road in San Francisco and say that, okay, it still caused 800 serious accidents, but it's better than a driver doing it. Lois Frankel: You know, it's, again, collateral damage. It's collateral damage to the technology. Right. It's the technology, what's most important. And we don't hold the technology back because of collateral damage. We don't stop wars because of collateral damage. There's something faulty in that thinking. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, but what you were saying there about, or we were saying together about, you know, hiring for diversity, hiring for second best, there was this perception. And what you said, immediately someone said, took the clothes off and said, it's okay. You don't have to be nice anymore. It's so difficult being nice to everybody now. I can just go back to being me and being abrasive and dismissive and thinking in that way. It's almost like a relief to the people who had. Who had the power. Lois Frankel: Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Because how did it get eroded and in some cases obliterated so quickly? We're talking about within months, within days. Yeah, yeah. Joanne Lockwood: Right. Lois Frankel: Yeah. It's like. And it's because people never really bought into it to begin with. Human beings. I don't know that human beings really want equality to begin with. And I'm thinking about. This is a little bit of a. Kind of tangential, but I think it fits in here. And you can certainly let me know if it doesn't. They did this study once where they brought together all these people who won the lottery. Okay. So all these lottery winners came together at a cocktail party. By the end of the cocktail party, the lottery winners were divided by how much they won. So the people who won the most gravitated towards each other and formed one group. The people who earned the least gravitated towards each other, formed another group. And it kind of speaks to how human beings tend to segregate and find ways to separate from each other rather than find the similarities. You know, and again, there's the saying, you know, in the End, we're all more alike than we are different, because all the research does show that we're all more alike than we are. There's more difference within any one group than there is between groups. So again, it kind of speaks to our desire to segregate and to find ways to say who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out. Right, yeah. Joanne Lockwood: It's a very human thing, though, isn't it? If you go back forty, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand years ago, anybody who came from over the hill generally wanted to do you harm. They didn't come and say, hi, how you doing? Can we have a coffee? They wanted to take what you had, your women, your food, your children, whatever it was, and destroy you to empower them. I think we still have that protectionism. If you're different, you're from over the hill, therefore you must mean me harm. Affinity bias and in group and out group, I think that's still part of our psyche and that's what we've got to try and fight against. You're different. I don't trust you, you're not me. And we also have this bias that we think we are better than other people, and people who are more like us must also be better than other people. And that's an inbuilt bias. People don't see that within us. We still believe that I'm right, I have to be right, I want to be right. Lois Frankel: Yeah, that's well put, Joanne. That's actually really well put about over the hill. It's like we're tribal. We're still tribal, aren't we? Joanne Lockwood: We are, we are. And, you know, we've become us and you become them. And it's. We see it all the time. As soon as you are able to them somebody or other, somebody, you can then use dehumanising language. If you dehumanise, the empathy goes and you just look at the rhetoric that comes out of certain politician's mouth, how everybody this person doesn't like has a bad name and that bad name sticks. You become Sloppy Joe or you become Crooked Hillary or whatever it is. So you lose the human factor. You just become this label. And it's easier to demonise a label than it is to demonise a human, a person. And I think that's what's going on. You see. You see the language that's being used and it's designed to divide and dehumanise. Lois Frankel: Absolutely. What's that saying? Defamation precedes annihilation? Joanne Lockwood: Yes. And you look at the history, certainly in Nazism and how that worked. You create by that. Was it the seven stage of genocide or whatever it may be, or whatever it is, you just gradually erode somebody, dehumanise them and then you could do what you like. Once you don't see that person as a human, it's no different to slaughtering a cow for food, is it? You don't have any feelings for it, it just becomes food or becomes vermin. And once you get people into that category, there's no breaks. But going back to what you're saying earlier about the privilege and the differences, I was thinking about, if you've ever seen the video, the privilege race, where the people line up on the start line, they take a step forward or they take another step forward of this and they take another step forward and at the end of it, so I think there's a school somewhere and they. They line everybody up at the start line and they ask a series of questions. One of the questions is, do you have your own mobile phone contract? Do you have a book at home? Are you at college because you're intelligent or because you got a scholarship for playing sport or something like this? And then what they did is they look, they asked the people at the front to turn around and look at the people at the back. And generally it was people who are of colour. No socioeconomic state was rooted at the start line. And then the people of the college goers, the privileged people, were generally leaps and bounds ahead and when they turn around, they look and you can see the shame almost in people's eyes that they had so much advantage and some people didn't. But what always strikes me when I look at that video is that nobody ever says, I need to go walk back, I need to. I need to cede my privilege. I need to cede all the benefits I've got and come and join you. That's the trouble with our society, is we all want betterment for ourselves or for our children, our children's children. And we're not going to say, oh, no, no, you have that job, you have that extra money. I'll give you all my money. We want to be worried about the rainy day, aren't we? We don't live in a sufficiency world, we live in a gluttony world. We always want a bit more, just in case. A bit more just in case. Lois Frankel: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I'd love to see that video. Joanne Lockwood: As a matter of fact, if anyone's listening, to this, just go into YouTube and type privilege Walk, I think it is, or Privilege Race. Lois Frankel: Okay. Joanne Lockwood: There's a lot of variants. It's often used as a. Well, it was in the DEI sort of coaching space. Whether you can still find this online, I don't know. But some very good videos. Lois Frankel: You're right about feeling as if you never have enough, right? Because money is not about money. It's not about having enough. It's about keeping score, particularly for men. All right, it's about keeping score. So look at somebody like Elon Musk who has. And I could name all these other people too, who have more money than they're ever going to need in their entire lives. They could take. If you have $20 billion, you could take a billion and you could solve world hunger. But does it happen? No. And that's the other interesting thing, is there was. I recently read an article about how women are much more philanthropic than men. Look at what named MacKenzie. I can't think of her first name. Bezos's ex wife giving away all of that money, right? It's like we see this happen over and over. Gates wife giving away money, giving it away to good causes. But we don't see that happening for the richest of the rich because it's not about the money. It's about keeping score. Joanne Lockwood: A sitcom, I think it's. I think you call it a sitcom on. I think it's Apple TV called Loot. Lois Frankel: Yeah, I've heard of that. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. It's about this. This woman who gets divorced and gets half of her husband's billions in a divorce settlement. She then decides it's going to spend the rest of her life giving it away. And it sort of plots that the comical, satirical way that she gets thwarted and how power gets behind each other to try and prevent her giving it away. Being. Being a genuinely sort of philanthropic billionaire. It's almost like society goes around and saying, you can't give your money away because you're going to give us a bad reputation. And it's quite, quite comical to see that, that if you've got that much money, and you're right, you can never give it away. Bill Gates is giving away money like hand over fist and he's still a billionaire. You cannot give it away quick enough to make a difference. Lois Frankel: You can't. You can't. And, you know, I just read something yesterday that said, you know, consider this. What if after somebody has a billion dollars, they. Their taxes go significantly up, right? Once you reach a billion, your taxes are like significantly more the taxes on that billion could really help everyone else. Like you're saying, you know, what about the people who are less privileged? It would really help them. But we're not willing to go in that in this country. We're not even willing to like increase taxes on businesses or the wealthy. We're not willing to do that. Those initiatives somehow don't get very far. Joanne Lockwood: No, I read a story. Maybe you can help on this one. One of the things that Nixon was going to do was introduce universal basic income. UBI was it? And he was, I think, one vote off or something, getting it through. And then obviously Watergate and everything else crumbled around. But he at that stage recognised, even Nixon recognised, that people need sufficient to live on. And there's this myth that poor people don't know how to manage money. Poor people are better at managing money than rich people who squander it on stuff and nothing. And rich people waste more money than poor people ever have. So there's this myth that if you give people universal basic income, they will squander it. We want to keep the poor, poor and needy to make sure that they're grateful and work so that rich people who have money don't need to work. And because they're, and I think that's the divide in society, we want to create this divide. If, if, if poor people didn't need, didn't need to work, what would they do all day? Yeah, it's. They don't know what to do with leisure. And it's. I, I think it's, there's this disconnect in society where we gotta try and plug those holes. I mean, we can't solve that today, obviously, but that's some of the fundamental problem, even going back to what you're saying about the gender divide. And it's making sure that women have something to do. Lois Frankel: Absolutely, I'm with you. Absolutely. Joanne Lockwood: How do you move the mindset? You obviously coached a lot of men, a lot of women, and you said that quite often they have this, a common blocker, which you find you almost wanna, as you say, get off from your chair, go over the couch and give em a shake and say, come on, how do they overcome those blockers? Is it a kind of epiphany or is there a way of coaching people through this? Lois Frankel: Well, you know, it's like the old joke. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? It only takes one, but the light bulb has to really want to change. Right. And so it's the same thing when you're Coaching people, what's in it for them? People don't change because it's a nice thing to do. Most people, I should say most people, they don't change because it's a nice thing to do. They do it because there's something in it for them. So it's always about finding where is the leverage. And the leverage is different for everyone. I remember coaching one man when he got his feedback because, you know, we've always used 360 feedback to hold up the mirror to let people say, here's how people see you. Okay, this one man started crying. And I mean, he was tough and he started crying and he said, I, I consider myself a Christian. And the fact that people see me like this, I'm not acting very Christian now, that was the leverage for him, okay? That was the epiphany for him. I think once people have the mirror held up and they can see how other people see them, how they experience them, then they can make some choices about what's in it for me to change. So that was that it in that case. In another case, it was quite the opposite. I was coaching a man who was sent to me for coaching because his company said he wasn't an adding enough value, that he would never disagree with anybody. He was, you know, he was acting more like a nice girl, right? Never disagree with anybody, always very nice, very pleasant. Everybody liked him. But when things tough, things had to be said, he wouldn't say it. And so when I asked him the coaching question, tell me about what it was like growing up in your house and what were some of the rules for membership. He said, I, I grew up in a very religious household and I was taught to always turn the other cheek. And I said, that's a good thing to learn, isn't it? At the same time, if you always turn the other cheek, then some things that shouldn't happen are going to happen. And you need to be able to find your voice. You know, I go back to, it's not stopping what you're good at. It's about adding behaviours. And in this man's case, I needed to help him develop some new skills for being able to disagree without being disagreeable. Because that's what was important to him, was to be likable. I want everybody to be likable. Hey, you know, likable is necessary for success. Being likable is necessary, it's not sufficient. And so, and that goes back to that emotional intelligence. So it is about finding the leverage. For some people, it's about getting a promotion you know, I could be coaching a woman and she says, you know, I want to get this promotion. And I said, well, in order to get that promotion, you're going to have to speak up more in meetings, you're going to have to speak louder, you're going to have to speak earlier. Are you willing to do those things? If you want the promotion, you're going to do it. If you don't, why change? There's no need to change. So you know, to answer your question, it is always about for each individual, it's different and it is finding that place that this is changing is valuable to me. I am going to get something out of it, of it. And I think most people don't just change for the sake of changing. It's too hard, it's too hard. Why should they? Did I answer that question? Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. As you were talking there, it's going through my head about that word likable. And I came to the realisation about 10 years ago that a lot of these things are in my own control to be likable. I control whether I'm likable. That's for me. If I want to be likable, I could do something about that. If I want to be worthy of respect, I can do something about that. If I want to be loved, I need to be lovable. So all of those basic things are in my control. And if I, if I'm self aware enough to know that that's what I want to achieve, I could be likable, I could be lovable, I could be worthy of respect because I'm now empowered. That's on me. And I think the other thing that you picked up on there is I don't like it, I don't like everybody, therefore I don't have expect everyone to like me. And that's fair, it's a fair swap. I don't have. Lois Frankel: But that's really hard for women. I think that's really hard for most women. I think most women do have this disease to please and they want everyone to like them. You know, I always say I'm a recovering nice girl. It's like I make a lot of the mistakes still and I catch myself and it's hard for me to say difficult things, to have a difficult conversation with someone. It doesn't mean it stops me from doing it, it just means it's hard to do. But I know what the payoff will be, that there'll be a positive payoff. And so, you know, this whole thing about this need to please. I used to have a Little saying in my office, it was from Quincy Jones and it said, not one bit of my self respect depends on your opinion of me. And that's the place I think we all need to get. And it sounds like, Joanne, that's where you are, that not one bit of your self respect depends on someone else's opinion of you, that you are in control of your self respect. You get self respect because you respect yourself. That's what I'm hearing you say, correct? Joanne Lockwood: Absolutely. And I had to do the work myself. I had to realise that this was in me and how I show up is in my control. And I think I've seen others who I think pick up on the words you said earlier about I believe I'm a Christian, therefore I'm a good person. You are a good person who is a Christian rather than a Christian who is a good person. I think sometimes your faith can justify your actions and believe you're doing for righteousness. And you can look at wars we've been through, we've talked a lot about wars and they're done because you believe you're righteous and you believe you are fighting for good. And I think if we stop and think I'm a good person who happens to be a Christian and not use Christianity or whatever faith you may have to justify your actions is a good thing. And that's, that's probably the fundamental here, is you don't have to be likable because you're a Christian, you can be likable because you're likable. Lois Frankel: Well said, well said. You know, and I think for women, again, going back to women and this whole likability thing, this nice thing, the problem is, is that we get such reinforcement in society and negative reinforcement when we're not nice, which that does not happen to men. Men can be not nice. And sometimes it'll just be, you know, guys will be guys, or that's just him or, you know, blow it off or, you know, he'll get over it, whatever it is. When a woman has an off day and she is not nice, that dogs her, that follows her. And so the rules are really different for women. And that's what makes it so hard that, you know, it's interesting because for years I've been saying that little boys and little girls get different messages in childhood. I realised that now little girls get similar messages to little boys. You know, daughters get messages about, you can be anything you want, you can do anything you want, the sky's the limit, don't let anything hold you back. Little girls are getting that message. Now the problem is as soon as they get out into society, all bets are off because you have the media, you have educators who are not educating that well. You know, you have all of this coming at little girls that say, but how are you supposed to be. A woman came up to me after I did a keynote and said that she had a five year old daughter and she sends this daughter off to school every day with a fist bump. Be smart, be kind, be healthy, okay? Be smart, be kind, be healthy. She comes home one day and she hadn't eaten her lunch and she said, what's the matter? You didn't like what I made you for lunch? And the five year old says, no, mommy, it's not that, it's that I'm getting fat. Where does a little girl who gets all the right messages come home with that message? And so that's just one small example. What about what you see in magazines? What about what you see on the Internet? The Internet is so unhealthy for children. It is just plain unhealthy, especially for little girls. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, you're right, you're right. Certainly that body consciousness, self image stuff, social media, Instagram, all that kind of new Snapchat, Y type social media now it amplifies this negative talk. And in the old days you could, you go home from school, you shut the front door and you're safe. Now you go home, shut the front door and you're less safe in your bedroom than you ever were. And I think that's, that's what we've got to try and remember here. But it's the problem where we going back to this nice girls don't get the caller office. Women trying to compete in the male environment and losing because if women compete in a female environment, they win. You know, I look at my daughter, who's what, 34, she works as a, a manager of a, an early years nursery care establishment. This is a global organisation, they're based out of the States and they've got nurseries all over the uk. And she's a manager of one of these offices. Her profession or her sector is female dominated because it's children, it's care, even though there are men. I'm not saying there aren't men in it, but she's able to thrive as a manager of this because her area manager, her people around her are all women. So she's thriving is the challenge we need to solve, really. Getting more female investors, getting more female money to promote, amplify and create female led Businesses and female led organisations so that women can succeed in those environments? Or should we be fighting in those male environments trying to get in there and change the rules? Or is it both? Lois Frankel: Oh, that's a lot to unpack, Joanne. So sorry, but let me start with. I don't think it's about creating all female environments for women so they can thrive because that means that would suggest that every female, female led environment or primarily female environment would be a healthy one. And that's not necessarily the case. I look at someone like Martha Stewart, I would not want to work in her environment. Look at, you know, the Devil Wears Prada, right? I would not want to work in that environment. So it's not about women create better environments. They don't always create better environments. It has to be. I think part of it for your daughter is that that field attracts a certain kind of person, woman or man. And so you're getting certain values in those roles. And I think it's more the field necessarily than it is just an environment of all women. Although with that said, we do know that girls who go to all girls schools and graduate from all girls high schools and I don't, I'm not sure about, I think in the past when they graduated from all girls colleges as well, they were more likely to become leaders later in life because they weren't competing against men. And so when I said there's a lot to unpack, that was one thing of what you said. And then the other piece was, or you said, are women competing against men in the workplace? Well, women are just competing to get their fair share. It happens to be that men are the ones who hold the purse strings, are the decision makers, whether they're going to get it or not. And I don't like to see it as women are competing against men. That's not how I see it. I see it as women are competing for their fair share. And in order to do that they can't be more like men. But they have to embrace that they have rights and that they deserve certain things. And once they get that, then they're gonna be more willing to ask for what they deserve, ask for what they've earned. And I think that's the place they have to get to within co ed environment. Right. The fact is, is that there are men and women in the world. I don't want to create these separate entities. I want to create equality wherever we go. And that can be in an environment where there's both men and women working, only women working, only men working. I think there needs to be, because even within those environments, there are differences. I mean, I can't imagine being like, you know, for example, I can remember when I worked at ARCO and some of the guys who I knew there who were gay, it was a predominantly male environment, but it didn't mean they were thriving. Because you have to remember this is back in the 80s because they were not treated equally. It is every step of the way for me, it's about ensuring the playing field is equal, is even. And at the same time, as you said, it's about recognising I have control over whether I'm going to be treated equally or not. Am I asking for what I want? Am I acting like I belong at the table? Am I saying the tough stuff? Am I making tough decisions? Am I doing all those things? And if I'm not doing all those things, then I am sabotaging myself. And you don't do those because you compete against men. You do those things because that's what it takes to be successful in most businesses. Does this make sense? Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And as you talk about, I was going to spare my mind is I don't perceive that men actively consider competing against women. I perceive men are so caught up with competing with other men, they're not actually competing with women, whereas women are competing with men. So it's almost like I just think of a football analogy. So England always think Germany is their biggest competitor, and there's this feud going on. Germany don't care about England. They care about the Netherlands. They want to beat the Netherlands. So it's almost like we care about beating Germany, but Germany don't really. Don't care about beating us. Men are so preoccupied with competing with each other. Women are just a casualty in that fight, whereas women are actively competing in that space, I think is how I would perceive it. Lois Frankel: I think that's a good point. I think. And in most situations, that's absolutely 100% accurate. And yet my mind went to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Joanne Lockwood: Yes. Yes. Lois Frankel: When they were competing with each other or with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Joanne Lockwood: Right. Lois Frankel: When they were competing with each other. When men do compete with women, it becomes personal. Joanne Lockwood: Yes. Lois Frankel: You know, it becomes a personal competition as opposed to a professional one. You know, when men compete with other men, they don't make it personal. They make it about, you know, can I get more sales? Can I get a bigger piece of the business? Can I have, you know, more people reporting to me than you. They don't make it that, you know, you're a bitch. Joanne Lockwood: All right, just let me push back on that then, using that specific example. So you mentioned Kamala Harris and you mentioned Hillary Clinton. How did Donald Trump treat Joe Biden then? I don't think he treated Joe Biden any differently to Hillary. Kamala. Really? Lois Frankel: That's a good point. That's an excellent point. Yeah. And that's how Donald Trump treats everyone, that it is a zero sum game and there's winners and losers and there's only room for one winner and that's me. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, exactly. Lois Frankel: So, yeah, that's an excellent point. I don't know this and that's why I'm actually going to ask this question. I'm going to ask a do you think question which I normally tell women, don't ask, don't do you think questions unless you really want the information. I really do want this information. Do you think that Donald Trump does this because of his malignant narcissism and do other men do the same thing to other men? I don't know if it's a Donald Trump thing. Joanne Lockwood: I don't recognise his behaviour in anybody I've ever come across to that. To that extent. I don't think it's a. I don't. I don't see it being represented anywhere else. I think it's a particular type of personality trait, radical narcissism or borderline personality disorder, however you want to describe it. I don't see it as being a common trait amongst even famous. Was it. What's it called? Founder of Apple or Apple, Jobs? Yes. I mean he was famously quite narcissistic and aggressive and things. Lois Frankel: Yes. Joanne Lockwood: But I don't think. Yeah. The current president is as more so is a more extreme version of that, isn't he? Yeah. Lois Frankel: You know, that's the difference between narcissism and malignant narcissism. Right. We all need to be a little narcissistic. We ought to be successful. We need to think something of ourselves. And I think that kind of narcissism we see in leaders at all levels and a bit of it is healthy. I think, you know, healthy narcissism is a good thing. The problem, you know, is when it goes over healthy into malignant, when it is really harmful to them and to other people. Right. And. And I don't. I guess I could go on and on about that and I don't want to. Joanne Lockwood: The self. Self belief of being untouchable being. You know, I know people joked about him seeing himself as the king or the emperor or the Dictator is that sort of self belief that everybody else will agree with you even when they don't. And I think that's, that's the unhealthy bit is where you, you don't allow discussion or dissent or collective thinking. You know, we started this conversation off by the ability to sort of engage with others ideas. That's the whole power of diversity, the whole power of thinking more than just yourself. This person is obviously has a plan and I'm sure he's surrounded by people going please don't do that, please don't do that. And he does. And I heard a story that the reason that things like Starlink and Tesla have been a success whereas X hasn't been, is that in those other organisations Musk was surrounded by people who said no or not actually no, but they just filtered out the silly ideas. But with X he had nobody around him filtering those ideas out and you saw a different perspective. I think you go back to that factor thing. You need to surround yourself with people you can trust to tap you on the shoulder from time to time and go, probably not a good idea. And then you actually listen and have that emotional intelligence to realise that. I think that takes us full circle back to the Thatcher analogy at the beginning. What's your thought of them? Lois Frankel: I absolutely agree that the best leaders trust the wisdom of the team and they know that collectively when synchronicity kicks in, it is far greater than any one individual's contribution. And so it's that, you know, it's the synchronicity as you get that going. Good leaders know that's what you want to have happen because you're only as good as yourself. Your team is exponentially better when you capitalise on all those differences. And it's what makes it so important that the team have differences. Joanne Lockwood: Right? Lois Frankel: Like think about the Myers Briggs. The Myers Briggs is something I used to do in my team building exercises and I used to break them into groups based on their Myers Briggs types. And I would say, okay, tell me how you would handle this situation as a group, as a Myers Briggs type. And it became very clear that if you only hired people exactly like you, your type, you would be limited in how broadly you could break down a problem and solve it with different kinds of resources. Like I always say, I don't want people all like me on my team. I want, I know that I'm not a shark. I know that I'm not a shark. I wanted sharks on my team because I knew that they would bring more balance, that hey, I'm the counterpart to that. I know that it's not. I trust that that's not going to get out of hand or I hired more people who were smarter than me in certain areas. That's the trick is understanding that there's always gonna be greater and lesser people than yourself. And so, okay, let's bring them together and let's really get teamwork going in synchronicity. Because the wisdom of the team always exceeds the wisdom of any one individual. There's exercises that show that. If you've ever done any of those, like lost at sea exercises, you know, those kinds of exercises, it proves it over and over. Joanne Lockwood: I think. I suppose in my own leadership experience, I realised early on that if I was the smartest person in the room, there was a problem. Yeah, I need to get more people in the room. If I was the best at anything, I needed to get more people. I mean, the skill, the best leaders, the best skill they can have is bringing the people on board and creating motivation and direction and empowerment and other things. And that's more of a facilitation role to allow the team to succeed and thrive. And all you're doing is playing blocker or enabler and opening doors and stopping things going wrong or asking for money or this sort of thing. So I think as soon as you think you're the best at something, you're not being a leader at that point, being the best. Lois Frankel: No, no, you're not. What was that book by Jim Collins that talked about the different levels of leadership and he talked about level five leadership that really you want, you know, as leaders we want to achieve level five leadership where it's not about us, it's really about everybody else and it's about us putting everybody else together in a way that works. That's where our wisdom comes from as leaders is seeing how do I put together a team that's going to have all of the resources needed to exceed to excel? Joanne Lockwood: Yes, Lois Frankel, on that, on that note, yeah, it's been fascinating. How do people get hold of you? Lois Frankel: Oh, people can get hold of me. My suggestion would be to connect with me on LinkedIn. Dr. Lois Frankel Frankel. And the reason to connect with me there is because I post interesting articles, resources, things like that that are career related. And so, you know, just connect with me and you'll get some of these little tips as you go along through the week. Or you can connect with me through my website, drloisfrankel.com My books are available on my website lists all the books drloisfrankel.com or you can just Google my name on Amazon and all the books come up. There's a Nice Girls series we've been talking about. Nice Girls don't get the corner office. There's Nice Girls Don't Get Rich. Nice Girls Just don't get it. Nice Girls don't speak up and stand out. So there's a series of books. Joanne Lockwood: Is there going to be a final book? Nice Girls actually do get everything they want. If they want it. There must be. Lois Frankel: No, but if you act like the nice little girl you were taught to be in childhood, you will never achieve everything you want. The final book would have to be Adult Women Get Everything They Want because that's the goal is to add adult behaviours to your little girl repertoire. Joanne Lockwood: Is that divorced, independent, older women get everything they want. Lois Frankel: I write about that in Nice Girls Don't Get Rich. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, let's not ruin it. Then People can get a book to find out the answer to that question. Lois, thank you. It's been fascinating. I've really loved our conversation. Lois Frankel: I have really enjoyed it too. Joanne, thank you for the invitation. Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing community driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share there? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.