Claim Your Power and Create a More Inclusive Workplace (and World) with Deepa Purushothaman
Show Snapshot:
Burned out from years of overwork and exhausted from trying to “fit in” to a corporate work world, Deepa Purushothaman knew she was not alone in needing work to work better for women of color. Now, she is leading the call to reimagine how business gets done – both inside and outside the office, as a DEI advocate and the author of The First, The Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America. We uncover the steps for taking obstacles and turning them into fuel, how to have difficult conversations about race, and giving yourself permission to try – in every area of your life.
In This Episode We Cover:
Redefining yourself after corporate life.
Think corporate life is a meritocracy? Think again.
Why the structure of corporate America is not built for women (and women of color in particular).
How to redefine success, power, and what is important to you in career (and life).
Negotiating, “actively” owning your career, what a seat at the table truly looks like.
Stress and “death by a million papercuts” – how to know when it’s time to go.
Lessons gleaned from 500+ interviews with women of color.
Do women help each other succeed?
Why we all need to rethink a “scarcity” mindset.
How to have hard conversations about race.
Launching a business and the move to entrepreneurship.
Quotable:
The message has always been: work harder, if you keep your head down, if you do the work, you’ll get recognized and rewarded. But it’s not a meritocracy, the system does show up differently for different groups of people, and it is okay to talk about that because if we don’t talk about it, we can’t fix it.
Give yourself permission to try. Have a conversation you wouldn’t normally have; don’t be afraid to ask a question. Give yourself permission to mess up. We’re not going to be perfect, but I think we’re so afraid of doing the wrong thing, that sometimes we're not trying.
More Resources:
Follow Deepa
Deepa’s Book:
The First, The Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America
Deepa’s TED Talk:
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (0:03):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. You’ve no doubt seen the news headlines about jobs and the women in the workforce. What’s being called the Great Resignation is here. The numbers are astonishing. People and women in particular are leaving the workforce in droves. Pushed out by the pandemic and an inflexible and entrenched work structure that is failing their needs. Work is not working for too many people.
My guest today is a woman who is committed to making work work for all. Author, speaker, and diversity inclusion advocate, Deepa Purushothaman, spent more than 20 years at consulting firm giant, Deloitte, and was in her own words, a first. An Indian American woman and one of the youngest people to make partner in Deloitte’s history. She’s a woman and public policy program leader and practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and is the author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Colour Can Redefine Power in Corporate America. She joins me today to share ideas from her book and ideas for building a more inclusive workplace and beyond. Welcome, Deepa.
Deepa Purushothaman (1:09):
I’m so excited to be here, thank you for having me.
Katie (1:11):
Deepa, thank you for being a yes. I’m really excited, I got to watch one of your TED Talks last night in preparation and I want to start by asking you about something I heard you say. You called yourself a corporate refugee.
Deepa (1:26):
Yes.
Katie (1:26):
That really caught my ear. I want to hear more about that and ask you if that’s what drove you to write your book.
Deepa (1:35):
Yeah, absolutely. So, I have to give credit to my business partner who was my coach, so Rha Goddess who did the TED Talk, the official TED Talk where we were on the TEDWomen stage. And by the way, I have to tell you, we had 12 days to prepare for that so that’s maybe a different question, it was a fascinating experience.
Katie (1:48):
Amazing.
Deepa (1:48):
But Rha, early on in my work with her, she calls herself a corporate refugee. So, she left 20 years prior to me leaving, her engineering role. And she’d only been in corporate for a year or two and she kinda left for a variety of reasons and calls her work really helping others. So, that term when she first said it to me really stuck with me because I do think there’s a sense of shell shock sometimes. I do think there’s a sense of really redefining yourself, especially if you’ve been in a structure or a company for a very long time. I spent over 21 years at Deloitte so it just felt like a really big change to me, it was my identity, it was my whole life. So, when she used that term I told her I was gonna adopt it and use it as well because I do think it’s relevant and I do think it speaks to how you’re leaving something behind in some ways. I completely appreciate what the word means and so I’m not trying to co-opt or downplay the significance of what it means to be a refugee but at the same time, it is a very different mentality when you leave a company or a corporation after that long. So, it did feel right, it did feel like a good way to describe what was happening.
I talk a little bit in the book about the fact that I wrote and rewrote what I called my work obituary for almost three years before I left. And I also should say, I only left a year and a half ago, so I’m a very recent transplant or refugee in a lot of ways. So, I call it the work obituary that I wrote and rewrote because it really did feel like part of me was dying, it was a very hard thing to leave behind. I’d given up so much to get to this seat, and yet I felt so called to do work outside of this space, I was burnt out, I was sick, there’s a lot of things we can get into that caused me to leave. But I do think that I was so tied to that identity at that point in my life and it’s so different now, it’s fascinating.
Katie (3:40):
It must have been such a hard transition, I want to explore a little bit about what the year and a half since you’ve left has been for you. Your book really talks about the challenges that you experienced and that other women of color experience when they are in corporate life. You write the structure of corporate America was not built for us or by us. What does that mean for women of color trying to navigate their careers? Or for women in general in corporate America?
Deepa (4:07):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the structure candidly wasn’t made by us, for us. We weren’t there when it was originally designed, is my point. I also think, you know, and this is commonly written about, the fact that the structure was made for a two-person household, where one person usually stayed at home and that was usually the wife. And that model is what a lot of corporate America and companies are based on. So, we haven’t really evolved that thinking—the hours, the way we work, how we work—and we’re seeing that with COVID over the last few years, so many moms are leaving. The structure itself wasn’t designed, and I like to say, for women of color, it wasn’t made by us, it wasn’t made for us, and frankly, sometimes it doesn’t even want us to succeed, I think that’s the third part to it. And part of what I’m trying to bring light to is that there is work that we can do as women of color, there is work that we can do as women, but there’s also structural impediments, there’s also something about the structure itself that we’ve never had permission to talk about before. I feel like it’s always been this message of, "Just work harder, if you keep your head down, if you do go to work, within reason you’ll get recognized and rewarded." And what I’m trying to really make sure we talk about is that it’s not a meritocracy, the system does show up differently for different groups of people and it is okay to talk about that because if we don’t talk about it, we can’t fix it.
Katie (5:22):
Yeah, absolutely, it has to be called out. Something you just said triggered a thought in my mind which is that you read a lot about the gender pay gap, women are earning less on average than men, women of color are earning less on average than women who are white for doing the exact same job. You hear a lot about how women should be better negotiators, women should be better about dealing with their imposter syndrome. But when I read those things, I think that they’re all true but it also really irritates me because the system knows they’re paying you less, why is it our job to be better negotiators? Why can’t it be their job to look at what they’re paying white men, what they’re paying white women, what they’re paying women of color for doing the same job because they know that they are shortchanging you? So, the onus should not always be on us to, you know, we have to call them out, but I think the system needs to be better.
So, what would you like to see change in corporate America? I know your book touches on this and it’s a really broad topic and we could probably talk until next Tuesday and not get to everything that needs to change. But what are some of the big ideas that you’ve surfaced in your book?
Deepa (6:33):
Yeah, so maybe I’ll use the pay example because it’s a great one. I was talking about it yesterday with somebody, or negotiations when you’re up for a new job. I think it’s a great example because yes, we’ve put a lot of onus on the women who should ask for more but we don’t talk about the structure. I actually think the work is in both parts, right. So, my book is really about what can women of color do to redefine success, redefine power, redefine what is important to them. What I found is so many women of color were striving to rise in these structures, they would get to the seat thinking, once I get to the power seat, then I can do it my own way, and that actually rarely happens. Once you get to the seat, it’s even harder. So, there’s a little bit of a message of really paying attention to what’s important to you and making sure you flex on that as you rise.
But if we come back to the pay example, you know, it’s hard to speak up for what you want. At the same time, I also think that the system itself needs to adjust and reflect. We were having this larger conversation about the fact that I don’t understand why we don’t share pay information, and why is there such shame in how much you make? And one of the women I was coaching yesterday said to me, “Well, I’m afraid to ask for how much I want, but I’m also afraid to tell one of my peers because what if I’m making less than her?” And I said, “Well do you feel like that reflects on you?” And the more we talked about it, we realized it had no reflection on her, it probably had more reflection on the HR person who she negotiated with and brought her into the situation. But there’s such indoctrination and feelings and underlying beliefs around things that are related to the corporate structure that it comes with, that we’ve never really unpacked. So, my book is about asking bigger questions about the things we believe, about how we work and how companies were set up, and why we believe those things. So, that’s a lot of what it’s about.
Katie (8:17):
So, a question for you: if women were to read your book and ask themselves some of these questions, do you think they would be more inclined to stay or to leave?
Deepa (8:25):
That’s a great question. [both laugh] When I started writing, I had this amazing agent, Richard Pike who I wanna say is one of the best, I mean, really, really well known, he’s done every single amazing, large business book you could name and he said that to me early on, he said, “Are you trying to tell everybody to leave?” And no, that is not the message. But I’m also asking women of color, and women, candidly. Although I write about women of color, a lot of what I’m talking about is applicable to others as well. I’m just asking us to be more conscious of the situations that we’re finding ourselves in.
What I have found—and I’ve interviewed over 500 women of color and it’s their stories in the book—is that a lot of women of color get messages early on about staying, about security, about how much our parents have sacrificed to come to this country. Or, you know, how we represent— I felt so responsible when I was in my role to not leave because I was the first Indian woman to get to this seat. I felt so responsible if I quit or walked away, what was that saying to others? Why did I take that on? It was a real process. There was a real sense, I think, a lot of us come with this belief we have to stay even if it’s not working for us. And what I’m asking us to really be conscious of is messaging, and actively choosing to stay if we want to. I’m not encouraging everyone to leave, but I’m also encouraging us to use our voice and to find power in the situations we’re in because what it feels like is happening is death by a million paper cuts in some cases and larger indiscretions in some cases and it’s taking its weight on women of color. Women of color, we have a statement in the TED Talk and in the research we did where we say, white women are burnt out, but women of color are traumatized and that feels real in the women that I interviewed.
Katie (10:08):
You share that in your book there. Some stories that I got to surface. You interviewed more than 500 women, it sounds like burnout what a theme. Were there other themes that emerged from the book? Was there anything that surprised you?
Deepa (10:24):
Yeah, the two most surprising things, and it’s kind of led to some of the TED Talk and the other work we’ve done, one was, how most of the women of color I met were sick. So many of the women of color had these indescribable illnesses, so stomach pain, skin rashes, headaches, fertility issues that seemed to grow over time, and they would go consult doctors and get a lot of feedback that was very vague, no actionable feedback. The more they spent time trying to understand it because the symptoms would grow—they did for me by the way, as well—they would realize it was stress-related. I’ve done enough work and spoken to enough experts in this space to also think it comes back to not being fully seen and heard in structures where you’re giving up your whole life in a lot of ways to rise. So, that was really surprising, how ill and how burnt, not just burnt out, but literally how physically ill the women were.
The second I would say is that most of the women thought, I will do small weight things to conform; I’ll change how I do this, or I’ll edit myself here, and once I get to the seat, it will change. I was surprised by how many senior women I spoke to, who once they got to seat they were unable to change because there was even more pressure to behave or perform, or conform, or contort in a certain way.
And then the third thing, and this was really what lead to the research and the TED Talk research that we mention, is the fact that you know, at the end of my interviews I would ask the women, is there anything else I didn’t ask you? Anything else you want to say? And they would drop their voices and literally, you could see their shoulders drop because there was shame in what they were about to say. And they said, “Can we talk about how women don’t help each other? A lot of the time, white women don’t help us, but we also need to talk about how we don’t help each other.” And I would end up hearing four to five stories about how women had really been their biggest obstacles in the workplace.
Katie (12:12):
That is fascinating and upsetting. That is fascinating and upsetting. We have to take a very quick commercial break, but when we come back, I want to talk more about this.
[Ad break]
Katie (13:22):
Okay Deepa, we’re back. Right before the break, we talked about a third surprise that you gleaned from your more than 500 interviews. And one of the surprises was that women shared with you that sometimes they felt a lack of support from other women and maybe a lack of support from white women for their needs or lack of support in general. Was that surprising to you? Have you experienced that yourself? Or were you hearing this third-hand?
Deepa (13:51):
It was surprising to me. At the same time, when I look at who really has supported me in my career it’s usually white male leaders that had supported me. I had assumed it was because there weren’t enough women ahead of me, period so it was more of a scarcity issue, or just kind of, who I was working with. But if I really think who has lent a hand and made a big difference in my career, it is white men. I had done some of the research, you know, with Harvard and we’ve done the research with Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative which is what you know, the TED Talk was referring to. I think it comes down to what we’re taught. And this is so much of what the book is talking about, really question what you’re taught, question what you’re indoctrinated with, question what you were taught in school growing up, the messages you get from the media. And I think a lot of this comes down to because we think there’s one seat because we think only one of us can succeed from the beginning when you walk in a room and you see another woman or another woman of color there’s a little bit of an innate competition and that’s wrong. Who taught us that there was one seat? Who taught us that there could only be one of us in the room? And that’s part of what we have to change if we’re gonna really see each other differently.
Katie (14:59):
You know, I think you touched on it when you used the word scarcity. You ask, who taught us this? But I think we were taught by reality. I mean, there weren’t seats. So, at one point there was this notion of only one person could succeed, or this sort of tokenism. But that’s only gonna change if we commit to changing it and I would love for you to talk a little bit more about, for listeners who are saying, that’s not right, I want to do better, I want to make sure I’m bringing people along and I’m being supportive. For people who are maybe younger who are listening who still have the opportunity to sort of shift their leadership style and make it be more inclusive, what are some specific recommendations that we can take on?
Deepa (15:45):
Yeah, I think the first is to be really conscious of the fact that that is happening, for whatever reason. I do believe it’s coming from a, we’ve been taught that and we believe that even if it’s not a conscious thought. So, we really have to be thoughtful. So, in every sort of interaction, going out of our way to do things differently. So, one example is I met with an executive woman and she had just gotten to the VP rank and now she was one of eight women at that level and they believe that only one of them would be promoted to the C-level. As soon as she got that VP title, it felt like she was in competition with the others. And one of the things we talked about was, could she take those women to dinner and have a different conversation of, you know, we can see each other as fighting for that one seat, or we can try and do this differently. And yes, maybe only one of us will get the seat first but then we can find other ways to help each other rise. And so, it was just almost changing the dynamic in the going in the situation.
I think the other thing that the data that we did, the research showed us is that 91% of the white women said they wanted to mentor a woman of color, but only 9% did. I love this stat because I think there’s a difference between the intention that we think we’re doing and what actually happens because we get busy and we’re doing other things. That’s what I found in the research for the book, that it’s not that women of color didn’t want to help other women of color, yes there was some of the sense of scarcity. But we’re also just so buried in all the things we’re doing, trying to be perfect, trying to rise, trying to mentor everybody who comes after us. So, many of the women of color I met had so many other jobs outside of the job they were hired to do that we don’t talk about because they are a first, a few, or an only. So, I think it’s just being really conscious of, you know, what you want to do versus what you do.
Katie (17:33):
Yeah. I spend a lot of my time on LinkedIn because my day job is helping senior executives and leaders and teams of organizations be better on the platform, both sharing their professional story and using it as a brand advocacy tool. So, I’m on it every single day and over the last two years you saw, I saw and read a lot of exhaustion from women and from men of color who were tired of having to also take on the dual role of educating people in their organizations about what they were experiencing. It felt like, you know, they have three jobs, they’re surviving a pandemic, doing a day job, and helping people be better. So, I just felt like that notion of exhaustion I can totally relate to. But the idea of mentoring is so important and of committing to bring people along. I feel that way in my personal life where I have been somebody who has been in and out of the paid workforce and different times, I found it very hard to get back in after stepping out to care for children and I really feel that it’s important to support other returners because you have to hold the door open for the people that are coming behind you.
Deepa (18:40):
Absolutely.
Katie (18:40):
And how would you like to see corporate America do a better job of that? What would you like to see? Does this come top-down, is it bottom-up? What do you think needs to change? And not everyone listening to the show works in corporate America. A lot of women who are listening to this show are small business owners. I know that you are an entrepreneur too after leaving and becoming an author and a speaker, you also run your own business right now. How can we take the lessons that you saw in corporate America and apply them in different work environments?
Deepa (19:08):
Absolutely. First of all, I think we need all of the above. I do think change happens, or not happens, but can’t happen without senior executive buy-in, right? So, if the C-suite’s not bought in, it’s very hard for a company to change culture, so for me you absolutely have to have that. But at the same time, just top-down is not gonna change how we interact with everybody on a daily basis or how we feel on a Zoom call and that’s really where belonging, inclusion truly happens. So, it does also has to happen at a manager level. We have to be having conversations we haven’t had before. Part of why I wrote this book was really, in words, explain what is different to be a woman of color in workspaces. And I think although we say that, it’s very hard to find the details and unpack in the data and to really show what’s different and how the weight of that difference shows up for us. So, that was really the intention.
I would also say, you know, this is about conversations around race which are hard, they’re emotional, they’re heart conversations as much as they’re head conversations. Part of this is, you know, we’re learning how to talk about this outside of work but we also need to talk about it within work and so, you know, my answer is it has to be top-down and has to be from the middle up and also has to be person to person in a very different way because it’s asking for a level of vulnerability. People are so afraid of saying the wrong thing, this is really about giving ourselves permission to try and have conversations and make change that we’ve never done before, truly. And so, we have to have grace with ourselves.
What I would say to the entrepreneurs is yeah, I mean a lot of the women I interviewed had left corporate America to be honest with you, to start their own businesses and they did that because the culture didn’t work for them. And so, there are stories of entrepreneurs as well. I think what’s really exciting to me is a lot of the women of color I interviewed who did go start their own companies started with the intention of doing it differently. So, how do I create a culture that’s more inclusive? How do I address some of the gaps we have for women of color? So, one of the women I interviewed, Lisa Sun, was a former consulting partner, she got some feedback that she didn’t have gravitas and she was really unclear about what that was, and fast forward five years later she now has a company called GRAVITAS that does clothing for women of all sizes and it’s a really different way of approaching inclusion. So, I just feel like the women I interviewed, and this is why when you asked me, am I writing a book about everyone leaving? No, I feel like I’m writing a book about inspiration, about how you rewrite the narrative because she took something that she found challenging and didn’t really know what to do with and turned it into a positive, not just in her workspace but as an impact for society so everyone felt like they could find clothes that made them feel fabulous.
Katie (21:45):
Right. I love that she took that word, that was sort of denied to her and just, you know, took it over and made it her thing.
Deepa (21:53):
Yeah, co-opted it.
Katie (21:55):
Co-opted it, honestly, that’s a lot of the stories I hear from the women that come on this show. I’ve talked to ad executives that have aged out of their industries so they built their own companies, their own creative shops that are helping brands communicate to women in midlife that, by the way, have all the purchasing power. Women that have been denied the ability to rise or continue their career because of ageism and have just said this is total nonsense and left to build their own thing. What is your take on that? You left because it sounds like you were burnt out and sick and it sounds like you got coaching there was a different way of harnessing your powers and feeling great, but did ageism play any role in that decision?
Deepa (22:42):
For me, no. But I can see, I know a lot of women and what I’ve done since I’ve left Deloitte is to start a company with my partner called nFormation and our focus is providing brave, new space to women of color. So, we’re really having conversations about a lot of these things. And we have a lot of women that I call legacy women, right. Women who are maybe not in traditional roles and trying to figure out how do they give back and what’s their next chapter? So, I think that that’s a real conversation, a real issue. For me, I had almost the opposite, I was really young in all the roles that I was in so it was the opposite challenge. Some of the micro-aggressions I talk about for myself in the book were I would walk in the room and people would question my age on a daily basis, even into my forties. And so, it was the opposite problem for me, but I also think that age, in general, is a challenge for women regardless if you’re young or if you’re old.
Katie (23:38):
You’re never the right age.
Deepa (23:40):
You’re never the right age, exactly.
Katie (23:42):
You’re too young, you’re too old, you’re too whatever. It’s never the right thing. So, we’re changing that, we’re taking that back. I want to shift gears for a minute, ask you about, I think it’s a chapter in your book. You use the language, “That there are delusions that hold us back.” And I think I saw you share this on your Instagram as well and I was curious about that. I would love to hear a little bit more about this concept of delusions, holding yourself back. And ask you, how do we propel ourselves forward with this knowledge?
Deepa (24:13):
Yeah so, I have a chapter that talks about the delusions of corporate America. And then I quickly moved to this idea that we have to shed messages that don’t serve us or our own delusions. So, with the women of color, I met, and again I think this applies to women in general, there are messages they got you know, from their families, they got early on, so messages for example around how to speak up or what was expected of them, what it meant to be a good girl. The messages, a lot of women of color I met in more traditional households really struggle with the expectations that they have at home—that they’re gonna do all the cooking and all the cleaning themselves, that family comes first in every single instance. So, trying to figure out where does work comes in or how do I prioritize amongst those things if they’re both competing in a moment, in a very different way than I heard in some of my conversations with some of the white women I was meeting with.
So, I think some of this is really sitting down with the things that you heard early on that really, you know, come up for you when you are up against something. So, I ask women to really think about when you’re in a difficult situation, what are the five or six messages that play over and over for you again. For a lot of women I met, it was that they were not enough. And so as a result of getting messages early on that they were not enough, they tried to outwork and tried to outperform and that’s part of what leads to this exhaustion. These women believe there’s no room for error as a woman of color, that all eyes are on them. And so it’s really looking at those messages and figuring out, I’m an over performer and over effort-er does that serve me? And at the point that I physically started to get sick, I had to ask new questions for myself and realize, is my superpower that I can outwork everyone? Or is my superpower going to be different because that’s actually not serving me?
Katie (25:54):
So, what’s your new superpower? Because you did say at the beginning that you felt you were working yourself into sickness and that you had a change and sort of re-evaluate. What’s your new superpower?
Deepa (26:06):
I think my new superpower is kind of taking obstacles that are thrown my way and turning them into fuel. Seeing things are realizing they’re not going to destroy me, in fact, they’re actually being provided for me to pivot. So, my very long story in a few words is that I ended up getting really sick. So, I moved across the country, I had just got married, the biggest project of my career, you know, huge visibility, but I was working 20 hours a day because it was a divestiture that was really just intense. And I found myself with this growing list of, you know, illnesses. Three years later, fifteen doctors later, it was diagnosed as Lyme disease but I had to take 8 months off, I had to really kind of evaluate what I wanted to do and what I could do, and what I was willing to sacrifice to kind of get ahead and what I wasn’t willing to and was my life, was I living to work? Or was I working to live and how did I want to go forward? Those were really big questions for me. And in that process, I really learned that you can, that Lyme disease in a lot of ways was a gift because it did make me pivot, it helped me see what was important to me, but I had to really step into that as opposed to seeing it as a, you know, as a negative or a disaster, or you know, something that happened to me.
Katie (27:22):
You had to take a pause and use it. So for women who are listening to this, who are thinking you know, I’ve been in a job for a while that doesn’t value me, I want something different. Or somebody, maybe they’ve been forced out or maybe they’ve been out of the work world for a while for a variety of reasons; caring for kids, managing a health challenge as you did, maybe caring for aging parents. You know, you have reinvented, you wrote a book, you’ve become a speaker, you are an advocate, you’ve launched a new company. What would you say to somebody who wants to take a new challenge on? What are the things, a couple of tactical steps that really helped you move from ideation to execution?
Deepa (28:04):
Yeah, so one is, my biggest advice is to just leap if you keep thinking about something.
Katie (28:09):
I love that. By the way, that’s so simple, that’s so simple and so genius. Just do it, just leap.
Deepa (28:14):
Just do it.
Katie (28:14):
Just do it.
Deepa (28:14):
Yeah, I mean because I spent three years churning and in the end, I didn’t have any better answers than I did in the beginning, [Katie laughs] you know, I made myself crazy trying to find them. The other thing I did that I think really was pivotal is as I was really struggling with stay or go for myself in the big role that I had you know, fought 20 years to get, I started meeting with women of color. They initially started as one-on-one dinners, eventually turned into two, three-person, and then eventually into almost 20 person dinners that Rha and I did across the country with 10 groups of women. So, I ended up meeting 300 women of color, just in an attempt to figure out stay or go. That’s all I was looking for. At a senior level, what are you all doing? Where do I want to go next? What does someone do to pivot? That turned into the fodder for the book and also the fodder for the company that we started. So, my path wasn’t so intentional, right, I just sort of fell into these conversations and as I met these 300 women, I saw such patterns in what we were facing. I saw such shared stories that it lead me to want to learn more and to read more, all these women were sick as I was as well.
So, part of my other feedback is to talk to people, or if it’s not talking, it’s writing. Whatever works for you. But I’m a big, I need to bounce ideas off of people and I think meeting those 300 women and really being thoughtful and learning from them and listening is probably what propelled me and what made things happen so quickly. So, just to be super clear, 6 weeks after I resigned from my job I had a book deal, we had a company up and running. It all happened really quickly because I think I was so ready and had really been open to what was showing up for me.
Katie (29:49):
I love what you just shared, be open to what’s showing up for you. You don’t necessarily need to know where you’re going. I think a lot of women prioritize perfection. You talked earlier about, we are raised to be good girls, there’s a certain path and we feel like we need to get the degrees or get the promotions or get the titles in order to get to where we want to go, but sometimes just having the conversations like you did, being open to suggestion, being open to possibility, allows you to create something that you didn’t envision if you were busy sticking to your plan. So, I love that you shared that story.
I want to ask you a question, I’ve been asking this to some of my recent guests and it’s really about the power of asking. You talked a little bit earlier about negotiation, but I have been spending a little time thinking about my podcast, it’s been around for a year and a half now, and asking myself, how did I get here? Where am I taking it? Where do I want to go? And I’ve been working with this theory that as you hit midlife, I’ve just gotten better at asking. I’ve gotten better at asking people for what I need, or maybe what I deserve, or what I want. And I also am better at asking myself to do more and expect more for myself. I would love to hear you talk about this. Do you think that your ability to ask more of yourself and ask more of other people in your world has improved as you’ve aged?
Deepa (31:15):
I think what’s really changed for me is slightly different. It’s related but slightly different. It’s more.. and it comes back to the pay conversation we had earlier, the reason I have found in my own research—and I’ve done some research on negotiation with a few professors at Harvard—is that women are afraid to ask because they’re almost afraid to get the answer no because then somehow it reflects on their worth. And I think what shifted for me, yes, it’s asking and all of those things, but it’s more, if someone says no, and this is so critical to the book itself, it’s this idea that you get to define power. I think what’s happening is so many of us are putting power outside of ourselves if someone says yes or no, that’s defining for us, our worth and what I’m asking us to do is realize, make all the asks you want, within reason because you don’t want to set yourself up for failure or seem like you’re being unreasonable, but there’s also no harm in asking if you’re asking in the right sorts of ways. And if you get a no, or if you ask for two extra salary and you get one and a half, that’s still a win. So, it’s a little bit of reframing, you know, and reacting to the response you get and I think we’ve just been conditioned as women, as women of color especially, if we get the no or if we get pushback it’s somehow that we shouldn’t have asked in the first place. But that’s not what white men do, and I think we need to kind of get to that point of you put the ask out there and then it’s not on you, it’s about them and kind of get to that mantra that I love for myself, it’s in the book, but that’s one of my favorites. You can only control what you can control and that’s how you establish your power or you stand up for your power is really being clear. Everything else is out of your control and so if you give that power to other people, you’re gonna feel very powerless in many situations.
Katie (32:53):
Yeah, absolutely. And having the clarity to understand what it is that you want and that, you know, even though you are sometimes getting a no, maybe one of my friends says it’s a no, not yet. No doesn’t have to be the end of the line even though in midlife, I’ve taken on no as a complete sentence, I’ve gotten better at saying no [laughs] to people about things that I want but, so interesting. So, self-advocacy is something that we all need to practice more of and you know, recognize that a no is not the end of the line.
Deepa (33:25):
Absolutely.
Katie (33:25):
Deepa, our time is beginning to end but I do want to make sure we move into our speed round because there’s so much great information that you have in your book and I want to give everyone a little bit more of a taste. So, we close with a speed round, I ask quick questions and I’d love it if the guest can give me a one or a two-word answer. Are you up for this?
Deepa (33:45):
Sure, let’s try it. [Katie laughs] I will try to keep it to one or two words.
Katie (33:50):
You can, you can use a sentence if you want, I’m not a stickler. Okay, writing The First, The Few, The Only was _____.
Deepa (33:58):
Therapy.
Katie (34:00):
A woman of color who is a corporate leader we should all have on our radar but who we may not really know about yet _____.
Deepa (34:08):
Ooo, that’s a great question… Thasunda Duckett, I know, I mean she’s out there because she’s a CEO but I’ve just been doing more reading about her and what she’s talking about and I just like how she’s telling her story more and bringing her personal voice to the forefront. I actually would say that for a lot of the women in seats right now, sorry that’s more words than you want.
Katie (34:28):
No, that’s okay keep going.
Deepa (34:29):
They’re talking more about their personal life and their histories and I think those are the parts of the interesting story I want us to gravitate to. Yes, they’re a trailblazer but also what else are they bringing to the party that we’ve never really heard before?
Katie (34:41):
I follow her on LinkedIn, I’m gonna put that in the show notes so other people can follow her as well. A book or TED Talk that influenced my career thinking _____.
Deepa (34:52):
That’s a great question. Maybe I’ll say what I am reading right now and so it’s Out of Office. If you haven't heard about it it’s about working from home and how people thought that was gonna solve all of our ails but it’s maybe created different ones.
Katie (35:08):
[laughs] Totally agree. Okay, burnout is real, I combat burnout by doing this one thing _____.
Deepa (35:17):
So, I’m not a big meditator but I have a steam shower and for whatever reason, I can sit in there and get very calm so I try to do that for 10 minutes a day.
Katie (35:25):
Ooo that sounds lovely. Life as an entrepreneur is _____.
Deepa (35:31):
Very high, highs, and some very low lows.
Katie (35:34):
[laughs] A rollercoaster. Finally, for listeners wanting to be part of creating a more harmonious, just, inclusive workplace wherever we work, what is one action you recommend we do to get started?
Deepa (35:52):
I think my suggestion would be, give yourself permission to try. Try to have a conversation you wouldn’t normally have, don’t be afraid to ask a question, just give yourself permission to mess up. We’re not gonna get this perfect, but I think we’re so afraid of doing the wrong thing we’re not trying.
Katie (36:09):
I love that. I would say you should buy The First, The Few, The Only and read it before you have that conversation because it’ll give you the confidence to have that conversation in a way that is gonna move forward and move the ground forward.
Deepa, thank you so much for your time today. Before we say goodbye I want to make sure listeners know how to find you, find The First, The Few, The Only. If they work at a workplace and they want to bring you in to talk to their teams or buy the book to help their organizations and their teams, where can they find you and your work?
Deepa (36:42):
Absolutely, everything that I am doing, the book, all the rest of it, is all up on my website so deepapuru.com. And I would love to hear from you. This is really why I did the work, is to really bring it to women of color but also to have the conversations within companies so thank you
Katie (37:00):
Amazing Deepa, thank you. This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday when dentist Dr. Julie Cho shares oral care trends, products, and cosmetic dentistry ideas to keep your smile radiant for the long run.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.