The focus of our discussion here is to discuss our new purpose and values in a unique and dynamic way, and also to allow the company to get to know members of the MarketStar family, as well as the organizations that run under it, which is why we were really excited to have the opportunity to talk about Women In Business, to discuss its impact, to discuss plans that you, as a group in the organization and as a leadership team, have in play. So let's jump in and get to know Women In Business a little bit. What really is it about the organization as a whole that brings out passion for each of you? What is it that makes you willing to put in the extra time and effort that makes it impactful?
Antoinette:
Steve, one of the main reasons I've been engaged with our Women In Business initiatives from the very beginning when they first started to grow at MarketStar, is that I believe so much in the potential and the power that comes with diversity and with strong men and women in every part of our organization and being involved in the Women In Business and watching our women as they grow in their careers. As they take on tough assignments and as they raise the tough questions and challenge each other and our leadership teams, that honestly is one of the best parts of my day. I'm involved in Women In Business because I believe in the power and potential of every single one of our women in the organization to create change in their own worlds and within our company and within our community and just being a part of that and watching them grow, it brings me an intense amount of satisfaction and helps to balance out some of the hard things that we have to do for our day jobs. Being able to see that growth and that power and that potential just come to life with our people is what keeps me going and what keeps me connected to this resource.
Shae:
There's a lot of value in having the ability to watch people grow amid the chaos of the roles that we're in every day. I think leaders are leaders for the right reasons when they're focused on what we call service-based leadership, and empowering others. For me, there's another layer. That's a little bit of a unique perspective and maybe not something that you would expect from someone who's overseeing this committee over the next couple of years. It really ties back to the fact that I haven't had a negative impact on my career because I'm a woman. I've had fantastic leaders from before MarketStar and through MarketStar.
But as I was debating whether or not to step into this focus and really drive different opportunities for the women and the men within MarketStar, I was forced to reflect on some of the experiences that I've had that quite frankly, are unprofessional. Not because I've lost opportunities to become a leader, but because of how I've been approached or invited to events or feeling insecure about travel, because I'm a woman and being alone -- I've got lots of fun stories there. I think that women are expected to be in scenarios that are comfortable for men. I think that our women are expected to play in “the good boys club,” but that's just not the reality of the world anymore. And so for me, it's layering on the fact that we get to empower women to do really cool things, as well as men to support and build those relationships. And then also to help continue evangelizing how we support women and what's needed in the workplace to create good experiences for them. And that actually leads into question.
Nicole:
How do you think the conversation around Women In Business has changed over the last few years in your direct experience?
Ariadne:
It has changed a lot. Let me talk to you a little bit about my experience in Latin America. Running business in Latin America is sometimes different from how we run businesses in the U.S. and from my perspective, now, women are more powerful than ever before. We are able to accomplish a lot of tasks and a lot of positions within a company. We have a lot of talent and women are getting prepared to take over a lot of responsibilities. And men are there to support these women and to empower them as well. So we have a lot of people that are trying to change the world and give more opportunities for a lot of people that have been preparing their whole life to take a manager position or take a leadership position. In the last few years, I have seen a lot of change, at least in the Latin countries that I am working with.
Antoinette:
I love that perspective, Ariadne. It reminds me of the evolution that we've seen within our own Women In Business group. Over the last seven or eight years, we started out with a focus on creating connection and an opportunity for women to meet with each other and to better understand each other and develop their network so that they knew more about themselves and about MarketStar. It's evolved to having hard conversations around unconscious bias and gender bias and looking at how we need to increase our diversity, but then also how we need to be thinking about the hard skills that we're missing out on. Over the decades before now, there's always been this perspective that women need coaching on soft skills. And the research over the last decade has shown that women are actually very strong in soft skills, but especially when you look at leadership opportunities, where we often fall short, is that we don't have that formal training in financial management, or data analytics, or how to critically look at different problems. And so just that awareness, both within the global culture, as well as within MarketStar, has been a significant change that I've noticed that has enabled some really good, hard conversations.
Nicole:
Thinking about how each of us has our own wildly different experiences, how have your particular experiences shaped how you're approaching the Women In Business committee and how it's being run? What can we expect to see this year that might be different from other years?
Shae:
That's a really powerful question, Nicole. My perspective is that our experiences really start with our story long before we get here. When I introduced myself to the Women In Business committee group in January, I needed them to understand that what people see on paper, especially in business, is what appears on LinkedIn, or what we choose to post on social media, or even what's evangelize within our own internal communications. But what it doesn't always do is help each individual person within that company, especially the new individual to the organization, hot off the streets. This is their first career job. They're figuring life out.
They don't always understand that there's a past and a story that allowed these people to get where they are. And for me, that goes all the way back to childhood and having experiences of a mom who worked two or three jobs to make a great life for her kids. And a father who, for a period of time, kind of disappeared due to drug use and having really hard conversations and learning how to be direct with people at a really, really young age, all the way to, really cool experiences in college and living on your own and having to figure out how to pay your bills without any support. Each of these unique opportunities and people who touch your life all the way to who's in that circle today. My husband is a great example, he continues to push me to be more open and communicative about things like emotions because that's not a place that I naturally live. It’s helping to connect with people in different ways.
Those are the stories that I think bring us to what we're hoping to accomplish in Women In Business this year. There's a couple of big things that I'm very, very passionate about. And I know Antoinette and Ariadne are also very passionate about different things. One of them in the world that I live, is how do we create and connect on a truly deep, authentic level and allow people to understand those stories so that they can feel empowered to do these amazing, cool things that they want? That doesn't mean they want to be a leader necessarily, or take on different types of roles. They may want to do something completely different and it's our responsibility to get them there through the opportunity to learn really great tactical business applications. And when you can mirror and meet those two things, you create some very powerful opportunities for individuals who maybe didn't feel like they had them before. And to me, that's really where my passion lives and what I think we're trying to accomplish.
Antoinette, you are so instrumental and you and I had, I can't even count how many hours of conversations about this. What is your perspective?
Antoinette:
This is my passion topic, because to your point, we all come with our own stories -- I used to call it baggage. And then as I got older and started to appreciate the complexity of everyone's story, I stopped calling it baggage because baggage is what holds us back. When we acknowledge the fact that all of these things contribute to our story and give us an opportunity to create change, or to be better, or to change the narrative, then it no longer holds us back. I grew up in a household where I knew I was loved, but I was never good enough. I brought home a 4.0, and my dad asked me why didn't I get a 4.5? And I'm like, well, dad, they don't get four-point fives. I was good at this, but why wasn't I better? That shaped me and my career and how I approach so many things.
To Shay's point, when we are truly able to be authentic with each other, we're able to have those conversations, and then we're able to understand each other. And it's at that point of understanding that a whole new world opens up and we can be truly our authentic selves and connect on a level that actually creates growth. It creates growth for us. It creates growth for our families. It changes the narrative. But if I've never been able to connect with someone on that authentic level and tell them my story, then I can't unlock that. And I can't change the narrative that I grew up with. Because the reason my dad did that to me is because that was his experience as a kid. And he was never able to unlock that. There are things that we don't want to perpetuate down through the next generations or even into our leadership roles or with our friendships and with our community. So when Shea articulated in focus on that authenticity, I was so excited because it is that opportunity to connect and unlock the future by owning our stories and just saying, you know what, it's not baggage. It's my story. And it's what makes me who I am and who I authentically am matters, and I can create growth and change.
Steve:
I really, really love this perspective on authentic connection and being your authentic self. In terms of finding that authentic connection, how do you differ authentic with inauthentic connection? If there's an individual that wants to personally develop that for themselves and be a part of that improvement and by helping themselves to support and lift the community. What, from your perspective are things they could look out for, or a good place to get started to evolve and improve in that day-to-day mindset?
Ariadne:
Sometimes the way that I handle my leadership. About five years ago, when I took over the whole operation, I remember one colleague mentioned, Hey, are you going to do this like this or that former director? And I said, no, I am going to do this like Ariadne. This is the Ariadne way. This is what I would tell my colleagues and my team to empower them, to make decisions, to go ahead and go for it. I'm going to be there to support them of course but make their own paths. I think that when I am so transparent with them, and I try to be really honest with who I am, obviously, we are talking about metrics or whatever, but I like to connect in a personal way with them. And they come really, really honest. They come in and they say, Hey, I have made near to, I want to accomplish this or that. And they know that they can trust me. They know that they have someone at least just to listen and be there for them anytime they need. So I think when we empower our colleagues, our teams, and our communities in that way, encouraging them to pursue their dreams, helping them get what they want, what they need - that is the most important way to help others.
Steve:
That's fantastic. I think something you'd noted is to be completely honest and to be transparent with how people are feeling. I had a supervisor once who told me that the worst thing I could tell him is what he wanted to hear. In our interactions, our one-on-one time, there's no point in playing that lip service, if there's something off-kilter, or even if there's just something completely out of the direction which we were planning on talking about, let's dive in on that because that's where growth and improvement and support really does happen. At the time that had an impact on me and I could see a very similar impact for those with whom you've had these discussions.
Our real goal with this podcast is to better understand the purpose and values at MarketStart. How would you say the rollout of the purpose and values has affected the evolution of Women In Business as an organization?
Antoinette:
Steve, from the very first time that I heard about our new values coming out, which was November of 2019, Oh, I was so excited because they truly reflect who we are as a company. They're measurable, they're specific. We can quickly identify when someone is living them. But what did that mean to Women In Business? I think what that meant to Women In Business is that we were able to say, it's okay to talk about the hard things because We Care. And if we don't care authentically, then we're just saying, yeah, no, you're fine. For example, saying “Hey, Steve, you got a little something in your mustache!” That's caring rather than saying in our heads, Oh, Steve has part of his lunch in his mustache.
That's just a very superficial example, but it goes down to that level. And as we looked at how we focused our energy on Women In Business, coming into 2021, and looking at those opportunities to create that authentic connection, why did we do that? Because We Care. Because we know that our people matter and that we have to be Leaders That Amplify across the business at all times. And we know that our people are All In, Every Day, as much as they possibly can be. So it enabled us to have broader conversations around what we truly wanted to do, which is to elevate and lift each other. And not just elevate and lift the women, but elevate and lift our male allies and our sponsors, because we're able to truly connect and talk about our experiences authentically in terms of these values.
Shae:
So I'll give you the more “red” personality answer to the question because one thing that I love about the committee that we have in place today is there's a lot of polarizing perspectives. Antoinette is more of the “blue” connection personality. If you look at the objectives that we'll talk about in our kickoff in just a couple of weeks, there are two primary ones and they do tie back into the values, but they also tie back to the greater MarketStar purpose, which is to create growth. The first objective is to facilitate skill development, to create individual growth. And the second is to empower growth through connection.
When we looked at how to leverage the values, we absolutely had to consider the realities. Our mission for this year and next year is around belonging and authentic connection and leveraging internal and external communities -- that is all very much there, but there's also this very realistic aspect to what we're trying to accomplish this year. Not only are we expanding those networks, but in order for people to create growth in their careers and become Masters of Their Craft and to really feel like they can be All In, Every Day, we have to arm them with really true experiences that give them the opportunity to go sit down for that interview and present themselves well, or to take the role they're currently in understanding how it applies to a bigger picture and then be empowered to go look at a completely different business unit or operational function that they never knew existed and, and explore that.
That's a really powerful thing for people to do when you start layering in what we're trying to accomplish with Women In Business this year so that it doesn't just result in feel-good moments. It results in actual progress. Antoinette mentioned the measurable metrics of the values. We want measurable metrics for Women In Business. We want to know the women are being promoted because right now our female perspective is the lightest at the top. And that's executive all the way down to the sales manager level, but also in a lot of our support organizations. I think there's a lot of history that ties into how young women go through school and education, but that financial acumen, the data analytics pieces that Antoinette mentioned earlier. So we're really focusing on how to drive all of that together. Yes, we are trying to boil the ocean, but we're doing it tactically. So we'll get a lot done this year and then hopefully have some really cool things to roll out for 2022.
Nicole:
With the climate around our female perspectives, there's a couple of unique ways that the last year has affected that. We had a conversation earlier this month about how COVID had a particularly disproportionate effect on Women In Business, and I would like to address that with the group. We all know that COVID had some pretty detrimental effects, resulting in a lot of women voluntarily leaving the workforce compared to men and job loss in general. What can a program like Women In Business do for current employees that have not had that happen to them, but also make it a welcoming place to perhaps encourage women to come back into the fold and jumpstart their careers again?
Shae:
Let me throw a couple of those statistics out, Nicole because I think it's a really good foundation for this part of the conversation. McKinsey and Oxford economics is probably one of the better places to start. They posted a few things just, as you mentioned, a couple of months ago, there's two that are really important. Number one, unemployment numbers back in February of 2020 were equal roughly for men and women. So if you go back a little over a year, unemployment was pretty equal. Today, the female workforce has already dropped to 57%, which is in fact, the lowest level since 1988. So if you think about that, that's potentially 30 years of progression that we have lost because of the impacts of COVID.
I think that there's one other thing that was really interesting that I saw as I was researching this. It's this thought that men will be back to new normal levels within the next six months or something. And they thought women would be lagging six to eight months behind. But I think that's really ambitious based on what we're seeing, even in the talent pools, as we're trying to recruit and hire. If you look at what causes that there are aspects tied to just historical male and female roles and family dynamics...who's going to get the kids to school or who's going to do the homeschooling. Where does that line play, that persona categorization that starts in early childhood all the way through college that we have to battle about where women play in these roles and what those expectations should be?
There is also the reality that they get lower-wage jobs early on. So they're not as experienced coming into the workforce, which minimizes their career growth. I wanted to lay that out there because I think it's really important to understand the context. Now let’s look at how Women In Business is working to empower that. Number one, I don't think it's just Women In Business...it's MarketStar as a whole in the way that we have as a company created benefits and opportunities that allow women to now have balance. Things like childcare, specifically the cost of childcare, the work from home environment creates a lot of that flexibility that maybe wasn't there before. So I think we've been able to, more recently, retain more women. We certainly had a big impact early on, but when I look at the bigger picture giving, not just women but men opportunity.
I think we have to make sure we're balancing the conversation, and create understanding within our company. If Women In Businesses is the avenue in which we do that then fantastic. And it definitely will be a huge anchoring point for it, but we have to help our men understand the different challenges that women are facing so that they know how to support them through those. But at the same time, we have to teach our leaders as a whole to support men and women, because there are different challenges that come up on both sides of that token.
Ariadne:
In Latin America also, unemployment went really, really, really high. It's different in every country, but it's really, really high. Most of the people that lost their jobs were women because they had to take care of children, and they have to take care of the home, and other reasons. So I love to be part of Women In Business and the diversity that we are creating here, because we need to spread awareness to the men in other regions, to understand how they can be proactive and helpful. To support Women In Business having a career with children and everything. So one of the most important things that we are trying to do is to create this kind of education within our communities, not only with MarketStar employees, but we try to expand this information to the rest of the communities in countries and organizations we may have some network with.
Nicole:
You're actually making me think of this amazing book that kind of outlines what each of you just said, it's called “Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has The Time” by Brigid Schulte. It totally changed my perspective. Not only did it kind of read back to me what I was already thinking about the state of the world and Women In Business and things like that. It talks about how women traditionally have the lion's share of the household, running the house and all that implies with children, appointments, etc. The husband usually takes care of being the breadwinner or things like that.
Well, now that's completely changed. When women started becoming breadwinners and have careers, this book sort of outlines “now what?” What does the future have in store for policies in the workplace that are equitable for men and women to support careers, but also family life and that splitting of the mental load with childcare, household maintenance, things like that, and all that comes, lifestyle-wise, with that is really outlined well in this book because it describes ways that equitable sharing of that mental load that I mentioned is really well done.
But I think with the way that the business world is operating right now, due to COVID and work from home, that whole paradigm shift is so interesting to me now, because it's almost like we can sort of accelerate those discussions about how we can make a return to work easier for everyone. And that goes for women as well. So hopefully in these coming months, even in this year, as businesses get more comfortable with working from home where they traditionally were in offices or more comfortable with work-life balance, that's more suitable for family life and things like that. Steve, you have a good perspective here because your family is growing right now as well. So in addition to all those policies and conversations that are changing, the equitable distribution of work and responsibility is shared with men. Men need to have a definite part of it, a seat at the table for that, it describes all these things that should be just as valuable to men as it is to women, things like family planning, maternity, paternity leave, things like that. Working from home and making sure that the kids are taken care of can now be a shared responsibility.
Steve:
Absolutely. This is actually a conversation my spouse and I had recently. Growing up, I don't remember hearing even the term paternity leave. Usually, it was maternity leave, and in a lot of ways, it was set aside for almost medical healing time. Obviously, I don't have the perspective of someone who has physically given birth to a child, so I'm not going to try and say what their perspective is on it. But I think one thing that is supportive is it allows men to stop compartmentalizing their lives between work and family. It's really about having a flexible perspective of what is needed right now and allowing that time for all employees, to be able to not just be with their family, but connect with them.
I think this comes back to what we talked about at the beginning: connection. I was an infant in the eighties, so I can't quite speak as well for that. But I think from those eras, a lot of times the disparity and the expectations with men when it came to who's the breadwinner, who's the “nurturer”, things like that. So much of it came down to communicating more with your spouse and setting those expectations to understand those things.
If my spouse is taking on full-time work, I don't like the idea that some people seem to have that I'm “allowing” that to happen. No, this is her life and her passion, and I support her. I've also been frustrated sometimes if I'm spending time one-on-one with my son or my child, that's suddenly called babysitting to some people. It's not, that’s me being a father, it's me being a parent. It comes down to having that flexible perspective. Like I talked about that authentic connection where you're continuing to discuss and evaluate those things.
Shae:
You call out something important and you did as well Nicole, but we haven't talked a lot about it yet. It's kind of a foundation in any program, like Women In Business: the value of good mentorship. And I think that's important for men and women, but let me give you my direct experience with this. Antoinette was, we'll say lucky enough whether she believes it or not, to be dubbed my mentor as part of an internal growth program that we have here around six years ago. For context, I've been with my husband for eight years now. We have a fantastic 13-year-old whom I call my bonus boy. He's by default stepson, but in reality mine through and through, in my opinion. One of the things that were most valuable to me as I tried to navigate learning how to balance career and family was mentorship -- someone I could go to, in this case specifically Antoinette, when I wasn't sure how to do those things because she had done them.
She was also doing them as a mother herself. I think that we have to be conscious of the fact that people will always try to navigate this and it will probably never fully go away. And that's okay. But part of what we need to do as an organization with Women In Business and other avenues in our company is empowering people to know that they have options and then enveloping them with a community that can teach them how to do that through other experiences that they can leverage in their own personal lives. And then a hundred percent, you have to have the support of a fantastic spouse. And mine is absolutely fantastic. I'm so grateful for his patience as I've tried to navigate my own career, and as he does the same. That's part of what I think can make relationships powerful, but it's certainly not easy.
Antoinette:
Shae, I think you call out something that I've always felt a little bit overprivileged on. You and I both have some fantastic support partners. Now, I'm not saying they were born that way, or they came into our relationships that way, but they are now. We have a lot of our Women In Business and within MarketStar who are single moms or who are transgender, who are struggling more with creating space and feeling like they belong and have a voice in a world that is still very much centered on, the concept that a perfect life is a spouse and two kids and a dog and a house and a mortgage and all that fun stuff. I recently texted our daughter that “adulting” is overrated by a long stretch. And part of our focus and goal for Women In Business this year is because we hear it repeatedly.
She brings messages back from every time she does a new hire orientation on diversity and Women In Business with our new hires that there's a craving for connection, but it's not always the married woman who's lived in Utah, all her life. It's different gender preferences, it's different ethnicities. It's people who are recently divorced and struggling to figure out how to manage three kids and a job and an ex-partner, etc. Our goal this year is to create an environment where we learn and grow our ability to have those hard conversations so that when I need my boss's attention I can have the hard conversation that says, please tell me what kind of listening mode you're in today because I need your full attention.
Or it's that conversation with our boyfriend or girlfriend that says, I don't feel like you're doing your part and I need help because I'm drowning. It’s the ability to be authentic and acknowledge that we have all these different stories. Going back to the conversation about stories and acknowledging that we're different. And that difference is what makes us absolutely amazing because we learn and our perspective broadens and we're able to say, Oh crap, I'm not as good as I thought I was because I just learned that I could be better. I think that's a lot of the opportunity that's been opened with the pandemic. Nicole, back to your point that we dealt with some really, really rough things. We dealt with losing friends to suicide. We dealt with relationships breaking up because of the stress in the home. We dealt with trying not to throttle our children as they were in our space while we were trying to do our job. And they were trying to do zoom school for all those months. I think it's important that we celebrate that diversity and that we make space for that difference and that we learn from each other. We need to have the courage to say, I love that perspective. That's not mine. Can I share my perspective with you? Can I share my story?
Nicole:
That vulnerability is so, so important and Women In Business is definitely a crucial place for that to happen. There are different types of vulnerability and in the spirit of the “You Belong” value, I think that aligns perfectly. Being able to be vulnerable opens you up to being included because you're heard and you're validated. Everyone has their own unique experiences, but you can still feel united with other people, even with your unique experiences. What do you think is a surprising value that you have found while driving conversations with Women In Business? We touched on “You Belong” just now, but are there any like values that are popping up in conversations that may surprise you?
Ariadne:
In my case, Nicole, they're surprised by the value because in the Latin culture, it's not really normal that the company that you're working for actually cares about you, about your career, about your community, about your growth. They are always surprised how MarketStar really cares about all the employees.
Nicole:
That's really great to hear, we're a global company and we can still connect in the same way and still feel cared about. I think that's a huge achievement. We're a growing company and we have so many locations around the world, but these values are just so easy to connect with and the We Care value is also very, very powerful.
Steve:
We did want to talk a little bit about the upcoming Women In Business event for those listening to this, which will be, I believe on May 6th. Can you share some insight on what people within MarketStar can expect and how everything came together?
Shae:
We're really excited about the kickoff event. It's going to be simple in the sense that we're keeping it to an hour. We are focused heavily on making sure that there's a global presence with Women In Business. We didn't talk about that quite as much, but we'll be including some of our executive leadership to talk through, not only the value of Women In Business to them but what they're committing to as an organization and the support on that front. Then each of our subcommittee groups will have some opportunity to share what they're working on and delivering to MarketStar this year as part of Women In Business, in addition to rolling out our greater plan for this year and next year. So people can understand everything from what we want to accomplish and how we want to support them, as well as how they can get involved and be true consumers of all the great content trainings, workshops, and especially the connections that we're trying to put in place.
Steve:
For anyone attending the events, is there anything that would be beneficial for them to do leading up to them?
Antoinette:
For everyone who's going to join that kickoff event, come with your thoughts about where you want to connect and participate because you're going to hear this full scope of what we're undertaking for the year and all the different committees and councils that go into making this possible. Come with a perspective on what you're interested in and prepare to ask. Is there an opportunity for me to participate and connect and to learn more by being a part of Women In Business and participating in the committees? We've talked so much about our need to add more men and women to our committee so that we have a broader perspective. I had one of my co-chairs share the other day that when she was a brand-new hire, she started to get excited about Women In Business and went onto the group page on Workplace. And she's like, I was so intimidated by what was being shared because it was so professional and so buttoned up. And my thought was, Oh my goodness! I created a negative experience for one of the most important people now on my committee. So come with your perspectives and come with an eye and a mind to say, am I interested in participating here?
Steve:
Absolutely. This is “You Belong”. I feel like that's a huge message. People are looking to connect with Women In Business on their own time. There is the Workplace group on Facebook Workplace. Is there any other encouragement you would give to anyone in the company if they were looking to connect with someone or something and get to know the organization a little more?
Shae:
I would encourage them to ask. That's one of the coolest things about working here. Nobody really ever says no to helping someone find a connection or an opportunity. And so it's really in your hands as an employee or as someone in our community externally, even to raise your hand and ask for really whatever it is. That could be growth. That could be mentorship. That could be just advice on a random situation. Be willing to be vulnerable, vulnerable enough to raise your hand. You're going to find the support here. Be the voice, just invite cohort pairs, invite anyone on your teams to be part of the Women In Business. We are here for you.
Steve:
Thank you so much, Shae, for being a part of this discussion and joining us for this episode, I have just absolutely loved the experience of not only getting to know you better and getting to know Women In Business better but really getting to know about MarketStar as a whole on a better level. It's been a fantastic learning experience for me. I'm absolutely sure that the MarketStar community will definitely feel the same.
Nicole:
I just wanted to say I enjoyed everyone's perspectives here. We all have unique experiences that tie into why we think Women In Business is so special. Thank you for sharing your stories!