I'm so excited for this. I'm over the moon. We're doing it. But could you. Can you tell me what it is first? Like, I feel like I know, but what is unabashed?
Oh my gosh, so Be Unabashed. It is. It is a movement.
So I feel like time has come for women to, just be more bold about who they are and what they want out of life. You know, we all play so many roles for so long. Especially when we get, midlife, mid-career.
You know, we've been the daughter. We're becoming the caretaker of the parents. Right? We're moms, whether it's to fur babies or human beings or, you know, we've been soccer mom, we've been chauffeur, we've been employee, dutiful employee. Who the hell is Margaret? You know, who are we?
I recently went through, papers my parents, God love them, have kept report cards from my grade school years, and I recently went through some of that. And read about who Margaret was when she was ten years old. And I'm like, where is that Margaret? Why should I be a different Margaret than I was at ten years old before the world, filtered everything out, you know. And I was unabashed.
So why the hell shouldn't I be unabashed now? Why am I filtering what I'm saying? And why am I censoring myself? Why are we all doing that? It's because we've become what we needed to be for everybody else. So I think it's time for us to be who we need to be for ourselves, and therefore we need to be more unabashed.
I think that's a really interesting thing to say, to stop with the race. All of the busyness of life and say, wait, why am I doing this and why do I want this? And can you remind me what I want. What do you think Lisa?
Well I mean I'm sitting here listening to you and it resonates so much when you talk about your ten year old self. Because as you guys know, I have a daughter who's 15, almost 16. And when she was really little, I mean, she was just a force to be reckoned with. And now she's one of those kids, super smart, super accomplished.
But she feels this need to apologize for everything.
And, you know, she's gotten so much more meek. Whereas, you know, a really young girl, she was just such a force. And so I see it happening to her how we women sort of get pushed into a corner and told who we're supposed to be. And not only am I doing this for myself and for other women out there, but I'm doing it for my daughter and her peers because they need it.
It's still happening, if not worse than how we had it.
So I when I think about my younger self because I recently discovered a journal from when, the summer before I went to college to undergrad. And I think about that person who just knew no boundaries. I mean just thought she could reach the heights of the height. And it really kind of put things in perspective for me to think about.
Am I happy? Am I doing what I want to be doing if I'm not doing what I want to be doing? What does that look like? And when did I not if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me how could you say that, you would be seeing me on like a beach in Costa Rica. I, I've never really had a hard time saying in a nice, professional way, I think, to stand up for myself, because even if I can't do it for myself, I have found that other people are watching. Other women, even other men, are watching.
And if I don't do it in what I appear to be right, I feel like how do people experience me? I think people experience me as Brooke, a grounded person. She knows what she's talking about. She feels confident in herself. And I feel like sometimes when I'm like, ooh, should I say that? And then I think, that's the truth.
Absolutely. We can say things in a kind and respectful way. But still be authentic to ourselves. And given my background, when I would do investigations into all kinds of behavior in organizations. I always found bystanders, one of the things that they took with them when they had saw poor behavior is this guilt and shame as to why didn't I say anything?
And all the studies that come out that say, if you hold things in, it's bad for your body, it's bad for your immune system, it's bad for your psyche. And so being able to talk to women about how do we say these things. Can we first of all can we say these things Because we've been conditioned to think we can't.
Yeah. And we've experienced that. We can't. It's not just conditioning or a thought. I know there are times where I'm sure it impacted my career. Not a great way, but it was a question of can I live with myself if I don't?
And so again, it goes to that modeling behavior, which is why I think unabashed, it's a movement. And what Margaret said, because it's not just for the women in unabashed, it's for women and daughters and nieces surrounding them to say she did it. I see her speaking into her authentic voice. It's amazing that, number one, she knows who her authentic self is because that's really hard.
But like she's speaking into it. And that's one of the things that makes me so excited where it's not just a class, it's not just this or that or a one off. It is literally teaching people around you to because you are going to start to develop certain behaviors.
It's funny, I'm seeing Margaret do the same thing I do, and I'm kind of thinking, I think women do this and I don't see men doing it. As you're listening and I'm doing the same thing with Brooke, you're nodding yes. You're, you're encouraging her. In her voice. And I see women doing that. I don't see a whole lot of men doing that. Maybe I'm being biased, But you're mirroring something that I know I do.
Well I think it's active listening and it's ... how many times, I mean, how many times we've been taught active listening.
Active listening. We were all I was taught in school. And I've even I've done that with men. I do on my own all the time on my team. It's like you're whoever, you're you, them. You're agreeing. That's a great idea. I like doing that for other people.
You know what? You know what I feel is missing so much in the workplace. And this is why. Another reason why I think it's so important for women to speak up. And I'm going to stereotype here, but because we are typically the nurturers. I've read no studies on this, but I'm going to make a hypothesis right now that women have higher emotional intelligence than men.
Oh, I'm certain of that. Oh, I mean, I think that's how we're raised.
And there are lots of studies on that. I read studies. Yes, there are a lot of studies.
That is why I again, why I think it's so important for us to use our voice. Because in the end, what everybody wants is what to feel? Valued, to feel like they belong, you know, to feel like they connect
And to do that, you have to converse, you have to use your voice. You have to feel like you're in a safe space to do that.
You can tell when somebody... it's a lot for them to be speaking up and to just lean in and to nod means so much to them.
How many of us have been on a zoom call and my teams call and we're just getting dead faced, right?
People are working.
Or, best case scenario, they're not working, but they're just looking at you and giving you the new deadest of faces.
And it's horrible because you what happens is when you start to feel uncomfortable or you start to feel like you're losing the room. I was speaking with a very high powered woman the other day, and she asked me, well, what do you do when you start to lose the room?
And I said, well, actually, I slow down because you're your body will say, just get off this stage. And whether that stage is to a room of 300 people or to a room of four managers or four employees or four executives or your board. It's just get off the stage. It's fight or flight, right? And you start to speed up, and then the audience goes, oh, wow, she's really uncomfortable.
She's really nervous. She must like she knows what she's saying. It doesn't have value for me because she's just trying to wrap it up and get off. And so you're feeding in to their disinterest. Yeah. And so I will specifically slow down, slow down and believe in what you're saying. And if you don't believe in what you're saying then go back to the drawing board.
You've got a bigger problem if you don't believe in what you're saying, for sure. Awesome.
All right. I'm just going to read this.
So what if I told you that the most successful women I know feel like they're living someone else's life? That behind the title, the experience and all the success. There's a woman who's forgotten who she really is.
Relevant.
So do you relate to that? No, I total. No. But that shows there's different paths for different people. Oh, 1000%.
It goes in waves, right? So it goes in waves, like I'm in a very unique time in my life. That I would say it's probably the first time in my adult life that I've been allowed to know what I want and have the educational credentials to go get it. And I will tell you that I said my 40s are mine.
So it's a very different situation than a mother with a 15 year old or a child heading into college. That's very different. And I think it's important to acknowledge that.
Well yeah. Everyone has a different journey and what shapes it. Things that have affected me may be you know the same things wouldn't of course wouldn't affect you guys in the same way.
We're so unique. But it's interesting that there are many of us that fit that description of what you what you asked about. But we got there in different ways. Absolutely. Absolutely.
But I definitely think unabashed plays a big role in that because it is, How do I either do I want to keep climbing or how do I maintain that authenticity or get to that next level that I know that I'm capable of? Right? Yeah. And so it's not a matter of working harder. My mother would say, keep your head down and work hard.
Will that work hard? Working hard is a thing, but that's not a thing, right? Right. And so unabashed is important to me because I want to teach women. Okay. You are you are doing what you want to do. How do we get you to the level you want to be at? Your ideas and thoughts deserve to be at the head of whatever table. Are you there. Yeah. And if you're not how do we get you there? Yeah. Let's talk about that.
Absolutely.
