CONFERENCES FOR WOMEN

June 2014

“Build Your Persuasive Powers”

Guest: Amy Richards

Interviewer: Samantha Ettus

Interviewer:Hello and welcome to The Conference for Women’s radio show.

Interviewer: Hi Sam.Thanks so much for joining us.

Interviewer: Thank you, and today we have an amazing guest. I’m so excited to be interviewing Amy Richards. Amy went to Barnard, and then unexpectedly embarked on a career as a feminist activist, writer, and organizer. And she ended up cofounding the Third Wave Foundation, which is a nationally renowned organization for young feminist activists between the ages of 15 and 30. She’s an author and a TV personality and a renowned speaker, and her leadership and visionary work have launched her as a primary spokesperson and leading voice for contemporary feminist issues. Welcome, Amy.

Amy: Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: So, one of the things that fascinates me so much about your work is that you are able to get, you know, large groups of people who come to the table with such different viewpoints. You’re able to get them to come to some sort of consensus, and often transform people’s opinions about feminism and other ideas when it comes to women’s issues. How do you do that?

Amy: I think the most important thing here is that we’re dealing with people who don’t necessarily – and it’s not even a matter of agreeing or disagreeing – people maybe just don’t understand where you’re coming from – is, first, be a great listener and, by that, I specifically mean is it’s to really understand how you can make the issues you care about, applicable to somebody else’s life.

I ended up at a dinner a couple of years ago: I sat next to this man, and he worked at Nike. And it was right at the height of when Nike was being incredibly picketed because of their supposed unfair labor practices with sweat shops around the world. And I sat down, and I made the mistake of saying, “Hi, I’m Amy. I’m an activist.” And I put him on the defensive for the rest of the dinner because I got out of the gate in the wrong way.

The next time I was at a dinner that was similar to that, I sat down, and it was a man, and he worked at Smith Barney, which was, you know, at that point, an independent company. Now they’re part of the much bigger investment banking world. And he said to me, “What do you do?” and I was about to say, “I’m a feminist activist,” and I said “Tell me a little bit more about what you do.” And what he did is he ran a, you know, a wealth management division. And I had gone to a meeting at Smith Barney trying to get them to do a human rights screen for funding. And we wound up having an incredibly productive conversation.

And so, I use those examples saying that I think that we often have more in common with people than we realize, and so, we need to find that kind of commonality of our starting place. And then we’re going to be guaranteed of having a much more productive time together…

Interviewer: And I love those examples because, you know, we’ve all done that, we’ve all made that mistake, where you think, “I talked too soon. I should have listened first and then sort of tailored my pitch a little more to who they are.” And so, I love that example. You know, one of the things that I think is so interesting is that many women are afraid to speak up, because they’re afraid that it’s going to impact their careers or impact their job in some sort of negative light. How do you make your point without risking that?

Amy: You know, it’s just a reality that women are penalized more when they speak up. You know, Sheryl Sandberg, who’s really helped us shine the spotlight on this said, “You know, when women are bossy, it’s bad. When men are called bossy, they’re leaders.” And so, I do think that women have to recognize that. Not that we can’t try to change that in the long haul, but in the short term, we really have to recognize that. And again, I think it’s finding developments of relate-ability. I also think it’s, you know, you have to be a good leader. You have to be willing to be un-liked at certain moments, you know, because being a leader means making tough choices. And it means standing for something. And so, I don’t think you can spend all of your moments just trying to win public approval. You have to spend some moments making tough choices.

Interviewer: And for those of us who just tuned in, we are talking to Amy Richards, and just a reminder, our Twitter handles are MassWomen, PennWomen, and TexasWomen. Now, what you just said, which is so important, especially for women here, is that you have to be un-liked sometimes, right? I mean, there’s always gonna be – I heard a statistic that the average person 90 percent of people will like them, and 10 percent will hate them. There is no one who will be liked by everyone. And so, if you’re always making your decisions based on that 10 percent, then you’re going to fail, right? So it almost has the likers in mind. And so, for women, that’s especially important. Let’s talk a little bit about feminism and your work with feminism. It feels like the word has made a wonderful comeback recently, and there’s a lot of talk about boys now calling themselves feminists. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Amy: Yeah. When I first defined myself as a feminist, I was very dependent upon the dictionary definition, which has been “movement to the full social, political, and economic equality of all people.” When you give people that definition, most people identify as a feminist. And even men in public opinion polls. And, as much as I think that definition means something, when it comes to translating feminism into their everyday lives, it doesn’t mean that much.

And so, for me, I have evolved to describe feminism as, there’s something in each of us that makes us feel vulnerable, maybe even insecure. We could have come from…we could be too poor, we could be too rich, we could be, come from alcoholic households, we could come from where we have one parent in prison. We might have a gay sibling, we might be gay. There’s something that makes us feel vulnerable in very mainstream settings.

And feminism’s about saying that there’s no “normal” and that we can all bring our whole selves into the room and that will transform the room. In fact, we should own those parts of ourselves that feel different precisely because the motivation to keep us feeling different is intentional. And it’s intentional to keep certain people holding more power over the rest of us. I think that feminism has become popularized, as it were, because you have a generation of people who were raised with more feminism, you know? In another generation, people often came to feminism later in their life, and so it was something, you know, that they were gonna eat steak every night for dinner, and then, all of a sudden, you’re vegetarian. You’re like, “Wait, you just changed the rules on me!”

I think this generation, that those were the rules from the beginning, that there would be more equality. And not only do we see it in this generation as benefitting women, we see feminism as something that benefits our culture and our society. So, it’s no longer a movement; it’s about the betterment of women, it’s seen as the movement that’s the betterment for everybody.

Interviewer: That’s great. So, it’s become a more inclusive movement?

Amy: Yeah, and I think that, I mean, one statistic I read recently is, you know, it came out of initially one of the Scandinavian countries and then they adapted in the United States, is that, you know, companies that have a higher percentage of women on their board, a higher percentage of women, you know, CEOS, women of leadership, women in other leadership positions, have a bigger return on the investment. And so, to me, that’s just one example of how having women in positions of authority, supporting women in their unique leadership, benefits everybody. And I think the more we can sort of document that, that it’s not just about supporting an individual woman at the expense of an individual man, that it’s about supporting our whole, unique human landscape, and having that benefit our whole human landscape.

Interviewer: Now, emotion is often seen as a feminist trait. What role does emotion play in being persuasive?

Amy: You know, I think, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article years ago called Crying in the Office. And, you know, crying in the office is something we’re taught not to do in the office. And we’re taught not to do it because it’s seen as a sign of weakness. But, in fact, it’s what women often have a hard time expressing anger, and so anger often comes out as tears, when, you know, whereas in men, it’s expressed differently. And so, I think we should be able to express our full range of emotion, and I think that we also should recognize that an emotion to us and why we’re expressing it, might be very different for somebody else. And that we shouldn’t judge somebody for how they’re expressing it. You know, I get, you know, angry because I get frustrated. And I really should just be able to better explain and articulate my frustration; instead I get passive-aggressive.

But I think if I were allowed more opportunities to express that full range, it would be better for everybody.

Interviewer: If you were mentoring a young woman coming up in the ranks, let’s say, of your company, and she was often, you know, getting emotional about her arguments, how would you counsel her? Would you say…that that’s okay, go for it? Or would you say let’s take the emotion a little bit out of the argument?

Amy: Again, it really depends. It’s situational. I definitely think it depends on your workplace setting and what’s appropriate in that setting. And sometimes it’s going to be a greater cost to her to express her emotion than it is going to be to her to repress her emotion. And that’s, I think, what you constantly have to figure out. And that said, you know, the CEO of Price Waterhouse Cooper recently talked at a conference that I was at, and talked about how he had gone through a divorce during his tenure leading this company and didn’t talk about it, really kept his emotions to himself. You know, a couple of years down the road, when he felt like he had sort of weathered it, talked to some of his senior colleagues and was more open about this. Several of his colleagues, most of them men, came up and said “thank you for being honest about your emotions.” I felt like I had turned all of my sadness and anger inside, and I wasn’t actually being as productive an employee. And now I feel like I can let my coworkers know some of what’s going on, and I feel like it’s going to make me a more productive employee.

And so, I do think that sometimes, not being able to express that full range of emotion, does prove to be a negative in terms of your work performance. And so, negotiating when is the right time.

Interviewer: Right.

Amy: And I do think what, you know, you’d be surprised…I think more often than not, people are going to be supportive of you. I think sometimes people are reacting to what their assumptions are, and the assumptions are don’t bring your personal life into your workplace. And so, that stops the conversation. But I think if you can have a more fully developed conversation about the ways that this might benefit the workplace with you being able to be honest, I think that that can expand it.

Interviewer: Well, and it sounds like, and for him, it was almost a relief for his employees to say “Okay, we can bring our lives to work. It’s not like we have to compartmentalize everything to be successful.”

Amy: Exactly. And, I think, for him, particularly, I mean, for both the senior man and the people under him, they were particularly reacting as men. I think men are particularly vulnerable to not being able to show their emotions in the workplace.

Interviewer: And that’s how we raise boys also, right? My husband always says you want to raise compassionate boys and strong girls because if boys are not taught that it’s okay to be emotional, it really leads to trouble later on in life.

Amy: I do think that feminism has done a good job of is allowing women to be more powerful in other ways, allowing women to have more access to what has traditionally been masculinity. And what we haven’t yet done is allow men to have more access to femininity and to have more access to female qualities. Because those female qualities are seen as weakness.

Interviewer: I love that, allowing men more access to female qualities. Now, let’s talk about the role that emotion plays in networking, because I often think it’s hard to be a really good networker when you’re always hiding your personal life, right? You know, we all have friends – and it is more stereotypically male, but even, you know, a lot of strong women – in the workforce, they don’t let people into their personal lives. And I believe it makes it harder to form deep connections with them when they are networking. So, you could feel really close to someone, but there’s always gonna be a barrier when they’re not sharing with you what’s really going on in their personal life. How does that play into networking?

Amy: Well, you know, I, you know, I think it’s so funny, because I started my professional life in New York City when people still wore suits and ties to work, like, every single day and if you didn’t do that, you were penalized for it. And I think that what we saw, and I think that the tech boom was sort of credited with this, was a little bit more of a melding between the personal and the professional. You know, you could now come casual every day, you could play Ping-Pong in the office, you could hang out with your colleagues, you know, it was trying to make it… So I think that some of what you wore to workis part of an entire generational shift that happened within the workplace. Yes, there’s still places where we need to wear suits and sort of keep buttoned up, but I think more so, you know, we’re bringing our diets into the office, we’re asking for more organic food and where there’s more opportunities for us to really create a community in our workplaces.

And I do think that benefits the workplace. You know, I think people have a sense of where there’s an opportunity to be more of yourself, it benefits your investment in the company. There’s a great company in Vermont – I can’t remember the name of it – and the people used to bring their dogs to the office. And they found this was a company dominated by men. And they actually said that having the dogs in the office was a great way for men to talk without having to talk because they could ask about their dogs. And they said “Oh, I’m taking Spike out; I’ll go ahead and take Josie out too.” And so, I do think that when we’re given the option of sharing, that’s like the Ping-Pong, the beer caps in the office, you know? I think that people recognize that they want it more than they admit…

Interviewer: So, it’s a way to connect with your personal life without actually having to get too personal.

Amy: Right.

Interviewer: So, for networking, it seems, you know, it still comes more easily to men, in the sense that, I remember being out to dinner with my husband and another couple.The woman, actually, had a very strong connection to my husband’s work. But at the end of the dinner, he and the man exchanged business cards and it really bothered me. And I said to him, “You should have asked for her card as well.” And it’s also the woman’s fault for not offering her card. But I think that’s that just something in general that women just tend to see more of a church and state separation between their personal lives and their professional lives than men do. And so they’re less apt to make a social situation into a networking situation. What are, sort of, the biggest tips you have for building your network, to really form deep connections?

Amy: I definitely think – I mean, first of all – don’t overlook any situation. The most personal settings can be, sometimes, the most professionally profound. You know, a lot of what we’re looking for when we say “networking, networking, networking,” is not like “Oh, we’re both in sales; let’s go have lunch.” It’s we’re looking to make a deeper human connection and to trust each other and just to understand people as human beings and then to forge better business relationships around that. And so I do think that you will find in your network – sometimes in the most unlikely situations – you know, sitting on an airplane when you’re stuck on the tarmac for an hour, maybe in an airplane or in an airport, or maybe you’re sitting at a soccer game, you know? My kids play on a soccer league and there’s a woman there. And finally, one day, I said “What do you do?” It turns out she’s a very senior woman at J.P. Morgan Chase, and she and I have all these colleagues and friends in common, and she and I have really been a support to each other, you know, over the last couple of years. And it started in a very personal place.