Supportive leadership 101 (w/ Gina Gutierrez) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Fixable. I'm Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:00:07] Frances Frei:
And I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School, and I’m Anne’s wife.

[00:00:11] Anne Morriss:
Wife of 17 years this spring. We did it, baby. Actually, anniversaries are one of the holidays we do celebrate. Birthdays, I feel like I just—

[00:00:23] Frances Frei:
Participation trophy.

[00:00:24] Anne Morriss:
—gripped, gripped the side of the little car and hung in there for one more trip around the sun. But marriage is something you got to work for.

[00:00:33] Frances Frei:
And we work on ours a lot.

[00:00:35] Anne Morriss:
We skip some weekends.

[00:00:37] Frances Frei:
We skip some weekends. And honestly, you work on it more than I do. And I want to thank you for that.

[00:00:41] Anne Morriss:
Well, what's on the inside of your ring, Frances?

[00:00:44] Frances Frei:
It says I'm a lucky shit.

[00:00:45] Anne Morriss:
Yes, let's remember that in these moments. You are, uh, and let's transition away from working on our marriage for our listeners and onto today's show. Today we are talking to Gina Gutierrez about something we see a lot with leaders.

[00:01:04] Frances Frei:
Gina is the chief creative officer and co founder at Dipsea, an audio erotica app.

[00:01:09] Anne Morriss:
I can't wait for this one. She's a leader of a young company making very creative and intimate work. And Gina says that she feels like her team often looks to her as a parent as much as a boss. One example is that when there are big events happening in the world, she feels an obligation to really bring it into the workplace and engage with her team and, and take care of her team.

[00:01:33] Frances Frei:
That's a very tricky place to be as a young leader.

[00:01:37] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, Gina’s issue has made me reflect on parenting generally and, and the intersection with leadership because I found that for myself, it became a fuzzy line at times. And I'm curious, Frances, how becoming a parent change the way that you showed up as a leader.

[00:01:53] Frances Frei:
Oh, yeah. So I find there's great parallels between parenting and leadership. And honestly, I didn't realize how bad of a leader I was until I struggled as a parent. And, and then those struggles became super crystal clear to me as a leader. So let me give you an example. With our first son, I set the bar so low for him and—

[00:02:15] Anne Morriss:
Strong words.

[00:02:15] Frances Frei:
—and just things like if he could do it himself or I could do it for him, I did it for him. And that was my way of showing love. But that wasn't helping him get any better at doing things and getting the confidence from self sufficiency. So I denied him so many opportunities for that kind of, uh, of confidence, and one day when he was quite young, he said to me, and I'm almost positive it was this language, “Please set higher standards for me, Frances.”

[00:02:51] Anne Morriss:
In, in some five year old—

[00:02:54] Frances Frei:
Agh.

[00:02:54] Anne Morriss:
—version of that, I'm sure. Yeah, I used to use a Carol Dweck quote when we talked about this with teams.

[00:03:00] Frances Frei:
Oh. Yeah. Yeah. There's two ways to parent. You can either prepare the path for the child or you can prepare the child for the path. And I was a weed whacker. I was preparing every real and imagined path.

[00:03:17] Anne Morriss:
You were mowing down—

[00:03:18] Frances Frei:
I was mowing down the paths. Um, and that was of course not helping him be ready for any path in my absence.

[00:03:25] Anne Morriss:
But Frances, I'm so glad you brought this up because this is exactly what our caller, Gina, is struggling with, which is how does she play a role in her employees’ lives that is fundamentally empowering and preparing them for the path ahead and not coddling them too much the way Frances Frei's circa 2010 might have done.

[BREAK]

[00:04:07] Anne Morriss:
Welcome to Fixable, Gina.

[00:04:09] Gina Gutierrez:
Thanks for having me. So fun.

[00:04:10] Anne Morriss:
So let's start with Dipsea. Uh, tell us a little bit about this awesome company that you are building.

[00:04:17] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, I, uh, started Dipsea five years ago with one of my best friends, Faye. We are still best friends. It's amazing that we've managed that. And we just basically believe that sexual wellness is really, really important and really undervalued.

We saw a lot of amazing innovation happening in 2018 in the sexual wellness space, but it was mostly products. So there were better vibrators being built, better body safe materials designed by women. But we were surprised and perplexed that a mind first approach wasn't really being taken when so obviously sex is as mental as it is physical.

[00:04:49] Anne Morriss:
What was the problem that you set out to solve when you started Dipsea?

[00:04:56] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, arguably too big of a problem to fix with a single product. Um, but I think we were like, it's clear that the idea around sexuality, especially sexuality for women is like, it gets so complicated, it's not really solvable. And so we were hoping to help people feel like their own internal desire and arousal was fanned.

Like we were fanning the flames and um, we wanted to do that with audio content because we thought that audio is unique and powerful because it's so imaginative. And so we wanted to help make people feel more alive and confident and feel more empowered.

[00:05:27] Anne Morriss:
And it's, is it all centered around stories?

[00:05:29] Gina Gutierrez:
Yes, we do have some content that's sleep oriented, which people love. We take some of the characters that you love most and you get to kind of be with them while they putter around the house and clean up or play the guitar until you fall asleep.

[00:05:41] Anne Morriss:
Clean your kitchen.

[00:05:42] Gina Gutierrez:
Do your laundry, clean your kitchen for you, which is very erotic for people. Um, um, and you can wind down with kind of the comforting presence of a character that you already like, which is pretty groundbreaking and cool. People really love it. And we do have some wellness content as well. So guided masturbation content and, um, content to help you feel more in touch with your sensations and emotions in your body and all sorts of other things like that.

[00:06:03] Anne Morriss:
So we, we work with a lot of young organizations and entrepreneurs, um, starting with an idea. There's usually a point in that adventure where it becomes clear that this idea wants to be a business. Was there a point for you where you really knew you were onto something?

[00:06:19] Gina Gutierrez:
We had some friends who were, you know, dabbling in voice acting. Faye was the sound engineer. I was the director. We made six ostensibly not so good pieces of content, but, like, pieces of content nonetheless.

And we put them on a website, sent it to 200 people. And the next day, 1,200 people had been on the website and we were like, okay, even if these pieces of content aren't so good, they are inciting people to share, and they are making people curious. And there's something pretty exciting there. And so we started raising some money to make more of them.

And we heard from plenty of people, like, “This isn't a venture-backable business. It's just not, like, we don't believe the scale is there.” And, um, I don't know what kicked in there, like some mix of hubris and we can do this-ness. I'm not sure. Um, but it was enough for us to be like, there's something here. There's a there there. And that's when we started really thinking about this in earnest and, um, you know, quit our jobs. Off to the races.

[00:07:09] Anne Morriss:
What's been the highlight of this entrepreneurial ride for you so far?

[00:07:15] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that question a lot because I just had my five year anniversary. Um…

[00:07:19] Anne Morriss:
Oh, congratulations.

[00:07:19] Gina Gutierrez:
Thanks.

[00:07:20] Anne Morriss:
It’s a big one.

[00:07:20] Gina Gutierrez:
Um, it's a big one. I think that one is the team that we've built is a team that we got to handpick to work with and that is such a gift and a joy and ideally create a working world that they love. And that's been a delight for me.

[00:07:37] Anne Morriss:
What’s been the low light?

[00:07:38] Gina Gutierrez:
I think with every highlight comes a low light. I think that the last five years has really taught me that two sides of the coin thing are true. And one of the things I'm excited to talk to you today is as you think about creating a, an exquisite place to work. Like, how do you do that in a way that is sustainable and energizing as a leader? I've definitely burned myself out at different moments of Dipsea, trying really, really hard to hold it really tightly all together and really not being able to do it because I was holding on too tight.

[00:08:02] Anne Morriss:
So in your wildest imagination, if you had magic dust to sprinkle on this conversation before and after, where can we help you think differently, feel differently, act differently?

[00:08:17] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, I think, um, how do you manage your boundaries and your energy as a leader when you really dedicate yourself to creating a psychologically safe, transparent team?

But I think this is a really interesting question culturally. ’m watching videos on TikTok of sweet Gen Z employees saying, “Oh my God, I love my millennial manager so much. They're reparenting me.” And I watched that, that video and I think both, “That’s so lovely for you,” and also, “Is everyone okay in this experience?” Do you want reparenting from your manager? Does your manager want to reparent you? Is that actually the right dynamic?

[00:08:50] Anne Morriss:
Can you give us an example or two of where you personally felt this friction most acutely?

[00:08:57] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, I think that especially in the summer of 2020, which was rife with challenge for everyone on this planet Earth. The pandemic was raging. George Floyd was murdered. There was all sorts of questions and reckoning and anger and people were feeling adrift. And these are all the stories I have, like people were feeling like their leaders of their government weren't giving them answers. So who's, who's going to give them answers?

And it was a really, really tough time. And I really struggled with like what my job was as the leader of a team. For example, like, should I post every morning on Slack? “Hey, I saw this news come through. This must be especially hard for some of us. I'm thinking of you.” Is that the role that actually I need to play?

Is it, is it my job to be the filter for the world to keep my employees emotionally safe? My hunch is no, but I think to a degree, yes. Where do you draw those lines and how?

[00:09:54] Anne Morriss:
And then you said you found your way to some kind of boundaries. Can you tell us about that journey and where you are in this moment?

[00:10:04] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah. Yeah. So I've done a lot of work on this in the last two years, personally. Um, I’m part of a coaching group that's been super helpful to me. And I've done a lot of thinking on, like, personal agency and giving people more space to have more agency is actually a big part of leadership. It's not “I'm going to do this for you because you can’t”, it's “I believe in you to do this and you'll be okay”.

A great example of this is an employee who's doing great. She's a more junior employee. She's crushing. She's doing an excellent job. But she came to me recently and said, um, “Here are my goals over the next six months. And here's how I see myself achieving them.” And a lot of the goals were become more comfortable doing X, get comfortable doing Y.

And I was like, “Can I offer a reframe here?” And I said, “What if the goal isn't getting comfortable with? What if the goal is hitting the bar?” The quality is really high. I'm hitting my goals from a timeline perspective. And maybe a little bit of discomfort is okay, because this idea of like, we should feel good at all times isn't really serving us. Uh, does that example connect?

[00:11:05] Anne Morriss:
Perfect. Perfect.

[00:11:08] Frances Frei:
Totally does.

[00:11:08] Anne Morriss:
So that feels like a super graceful, integrated, let me, I’m going to parrot some of the language that may be popping up in your coaching group, but super grounded, integrated, clear, boundary-reinforcing response. And where are you personally still feeling some friction around this?

Is it, am I doing the right thing? Do I need to go further? How do I find the energy to keep doing this job? So, there was this example of current event in the external environment, how active do I have to be in filtering it for my team.

[00:11:46] Frances Frei:
Yep.

[00:11:46] Anne Morriss:
Is that a place where you're still feeling tension?

[00:11:50] Gina Gutierrez:
I think that the global climate, while still insane, is not as insane as it was in summer of 2020.

[00:11:56] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:11:57] Gina Gutierrez:
It’s present, but not nearly to the urgency that it was back then. Yeah.

[00:12:02] Anne Morriss:
If I search for a pattern on where this tension is showing up for you, is it around coaching Gen Z employees to rethink their relationship with work?

[00:12:16] Gina Gutierrez:
It's a good question. I don't know if generalizing to Gen Z's is totally fair because there's plenty of people of other generations that I think um, are kind of struggling with the relationship between feeling good at all times and being uncomfortable sometimes. I struggle with that as a leader. Being direct and being caring, that balance is very important to me. Very, very hard to get right.

[00:12:39] Anne Morriss:
We work with a lot of leaders wrestling with questions like this. If I were to crudely categorize them, Frances, I'm curious if you think this is right. There is a group that is, that is feeling tension around this. They want to get it right and they want to lock it down in policy form. And there's another group of leaders where they're giving themselves permission to go on the ride. Learn as they go, dwell in the gray, recognize that there's not an answer out there in the world necessarily, but their job is to keep pushing forward and create an environment where their team is willing to be guided by them. But the future isn't knowable and they're at peace with that. Does that seem reasonable?

[00:13:24] Frances Frei:
I, yeah, I’m going to, the other layer I would put on it, and I don't know if it's a column or a row, is that there's a group of people who, it's not that they want to know the right answer. They just want help in thinking through it. And so they’re—some are seek-seeking the answer. You're absolutely right.

But there are some who are seeking a framework so that as things change, they can still use the framework to sort it out. Uh, and so that's the other part I would do it. In fact, though, as you were speaking, Gina, it felt like it's a lot of startup time of “I have to get into it again and again and again”, whereas if I just, if I had a framework of sorts that I could use, I wouldn't have to be recreating the wheel every time.

[00:14:05] Anne Morriss:
And I have a follow up question for my wife, which is, if you were to imagine such a framework—

[00:14:10] Frances Frei:
I do have one in mind.

[00:14:10] Anne Morriss:
Frances, What, what might it be? And let's find out if it's useful to Gina.

[00:14:16] Frances Frei:
All right. So on the managing your boundary and energy for other people and the comfort, I'll tell you the framework that comes to mind for me is that people thrive in the presence of high standards.

So if you had a choice between high standards and low standards, somebody setting them, I know you will achieve more if you have high standards. Now I'm not saying you'll be more comfortable, but you'll achieve more. People thrive in the presence of experiencing people being deeply committed to their success.

So if I could give you two people, one who's like just really committed to your success, not to do the work for you, committed to your being able to do it. So those are the two dimensions. And the trick is we want people to experience our high standards and our deep devotion simultaneously. But as a human species, when we screw up the courage to have people experience our high standards, we sometimes shield them from our deep devotion to their success.

And when we have people experience our deep devotion to their success, we insidiously lower the standards. So what I keep hearing, and you can tell me if it's right, is that it's how do we get both of these things to happen in any single instance and with any single person?

[00:15:36] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, I think that's really well said. It reminds me of the radical candor concept.

[00:15:43] Frances Frei:
Oh, Kim Scott’s book is so good.

[00:15:45] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah.

[00:15:45] Frances Frei:
And it's, it's totally similar to that. There's not… you won't find an, a hint of any contradiction.

[00:15:52] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah, I think that to go back even further, I really appreciate the concept of a framework that you can put content inside of versus something that you need new content on a discrete basis for each time something happens, and that's exactly right. Um, it's something that my co founder does well that I really admire. Her, I think we both have framework brains in different sort of ways, but she's more likely to say, you know, unlimited time off is something that we can give to people and remind people that that's at their discretion to use how they want it. Even down to I need a mental health day, take it, like you have the time off to do that versus where my natural inclination might be, “Hey, if you're not doing so hot, I would love for you to consider X, Y, Z. Do you want to take take a mental…?” Like I'm making assumptions that actually aren't very helpful in that way versus just reminding people that they have that opportunity and to not dig myself into their business to that level, but rather just remind them that they have the agency themselves.

[00:16:48] Anne Morriss:
One of the patterns that we see is that people tend to default into the category. of either low standards-deep devotion, so in the bottom right if we're visualizing the two by two, or high standards-low devotion. I'm a deep devotion, low standard bottom feeder, but with intention, I can move to the upper right and then the people around me show up differently, contribute differently, hit those goals that you were coaching one of your employees through.

This journey works best when both the manager, coach, leader, and the coachee-employee, are actively invested in the conversation and the trip to the upper right. And so when I hear you talk, Gina, I, I think and that, that last example triggered it.

Sometimes where we see a lot of power is in making this really explicit, but sometimes the conversation can look like “I feel like what's happening in this dynamic is I'm making it very comfortable for you, but I'm getting in the way of you hitting your potential by not being really clear about my expectations. So what I want to do now is be really clear about my expectations. And what I think your potential is and so now I want to talk about how you and I together can create an environment where you show up and are not just happy when you're here, and of course, psychologically safe, because that's the foundation for the whole enterprise, but you're also crushing it. So what do you need from me to create an environment where you're crushing it?”

And so part of the dialogue that is up in your head where you're thinking: Do I parent? Do I not parent? Is this healthy? Is it not healthy? You are respecting the person on the other side enough to make this discussable and invite them into that conversation.

[00:18:49] Gina Gutierrez:
Right. I love the word respect. Let me ask you a question. Do you think that that kind of explicit, almost like agreement is best employed when you already have an existing relationship, like you're six months into a relationship with an employee or like you’re course correcting after two years? Or is that something that you could do at the very, very beginning, the outset of a relationship?

[00:19:09] Anne Morriss:
I think you can do it right at the beginning. And it's a lot easier to, to do it right off from the beginning. What do you need? Like, here are my expectations. Here are my hopes and dreams. Here's what I think you're capable of. That’s a really super powerful—

[00:19:23] Frances Frei:
That’s a super powerful way of saying it.

[00:19:24] Anne Morriss:
Here’s why I hired you. Because in five years, I want you to have my job because i'm going to redefine the role of the CEO. Uh, and I'm going to be out there starting a movement, and you're going to be running this organization So what, what’s the plan to make sure that you develop the skills to be able to do that? We have road tested that conversation with employees of every age.

[00:19:48] Frances Frei:
Every age.

[00:19:48] Anne Morriss:
Every generation. And no one does not respond to “Here's what I see in you. Here's what I think you're capable of. How do we make that happen?”

[00:20:00] Frances Frei:
And so, Anne, when you have that conversation, what are the questions or the prompts that you ask, uh, for people to, like, get in? So if we get to the nitty gritty of that conversation.

[00:20:10] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, I mean, it, it is variations on, like, “In your wildest dreams, what are you doing in the world, what are you doing in this organization if I push you to get in touch with your full ambition around who you want to be in the world?” And then, “How can I help?”

It's a decision to not be a parent who knows the answer without having the conversation and knows what's best. You have no idea. You have no idea what's going to come. But the, to make, to turn that into a question, to lead with inquiry is I, is—

[00:20:45] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:20:45] Anne Morriss:
—part of what unlocks the power of it.

[00:20:47] Frances Frei:
What I just felt that Anne was doing was co-creating the high standards.

[00:20:51] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:20:52] Frances Frei:
And when you do that, any standards you thought you were going to make on somebody, if you let somebody else participate in them, after you've done this, you're going to have my job one day, they'll help set really high standards, even, even higher standards.

[00:21:05] Anne Morriss:
But then you get to have the language of when there's inevitably friction around expectations versus performance and reference this conversation.

[00:21:16] Gina Gutierrez:
I think that I, like, really relate to and feel excited by the concept of co-creating what the story is based on a belief in the person. Not, not even like what you can do in this, in this work, or in this job, or in this company, but like you as a person, I see something in you. I believe in you and you get to take yourself there.

I think I do feel that in a startup environment where resources are limited, headcount is sparse, redundancy is zero, where I hear myself feeling some, like, resistance is “Tell me what you want out of your career and let's get you there,” because I can't necessarily promise that your goals for your career and what we need right now in the next three weeks, three months, year is exactly what you want out of that. There's definitely going to be alignment, but a lot of it also is saying, like, “I really need this to happen. That's what we need to do. Even if that's different from your goal to X. This also needs to happen.”

[00:22:08] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Ah, as someone who's had this conversation with many, many, many humans, and I'm already starting to think about what homework we're going to give you as you go out in the world, where I would push you is to have some faith because whatever comes out of that conversation is going to be useful to you.

And you want to have it now, not later. Because if what you need that person to do is radically misaligned with what their answer to that question, that's really helpful information.

[00:23:38] Frances Frei:
Early.

[00:23:39] Anne Morriss:
Early, and then you get to talk about it. You get to say, "I understand that your long term goal is to be a creative contributor, but what I need you to do right now is this. And so, this is the role that I've hired you for. Is this not going to work? Or can we carve out 20 percent?” And you're making the decision together, so that when they show up and do the 50 percent of the job that they don't want to do, they’ve now opted in instead of being surprised and it's now, you’re now out of the, the realm of this undiscussable tension to this, a discussable tension that they have responsibility for.

[00:23:17] Gina Gutierrez:
No, I think that that really makes sense. I think that the idea of bringing people into the let’s, like, talk, let’s put the reality of this in front of us and talk about what the discrepancy is or how you see it is really valuable. An interesting one that we talk a lot about is, um, doing well as a business versus doing “good”—I’m air quoting—as a business, especially because we are a sexual wellness business. We put our necks out there for, you know, putting some sort of stake in the ground for what is better content for people, which is very gray area. You know, some people think, um, our boundary for safe sex in a story, for example, isn't very sexy.

Why are there condoms everywhere? Well, we think it's really important. And so condoms are in our stories. It's one example. But I think that's a very interesting question with our team that we've negotiated the gray area of. I think it's really important that we make more stories that speak to this community. Versus, “Hey, I think it's really important that we make more content that is going to address our largest audience today, right?” That's like doing well versus doing good. And they're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they’re, in moments, divergent. And that's been really interesting to have a co creation conversation on.

[00:24:29] Anne Morriss:
I think those are the really powerful examples.

[00:24:33] Frances Frei:
Yeah. I have a, a suggestion for there might be times when okay, that's solving it, but I still have 20 percent left, um, which is you could almost make a promise to every new hire that they're going to get to experience every single aspect of this organization. And you can't guarantee when.

Um, but you're going to get to promise. Because that already is, “I got to do some of the stuff I want to do and some of the stuff I don't do” but I've made a promise. We have to be close enough to the experience of everything. So I'm going to promise everyone that they're going to have cross functional experience. Um, so I'm curious how, if that resonates or not.

[00:25:13] Gina Gutierrez:
Yeah. Like, we do have great examples of, you know, uh, a producer taking on sleep and figuring out how to make this new content. And that's not, that was not part of their job description, right? And you know, I often joke with employees like, you know, what's part of your job description on day one is not going to be your job description very soon.

And like that flexibility is actually cool. Like, you tell me where you think more needs to be done. Um, so I think what I like about what you just shared is like, I, I can't guarantee when it is. I can guarantee it will happen and like those stories are going to be the stories of your career and also really inspiring for other people.

[00:25:48] Anne Morriss:
And what I love about that example too, Frances, is I think it's consistent with this theme of making some of these implicit contract terms explicit. So one of the mechanisms that we, uh, use a lot for making these things discussable is like a simple team contract. It's so old school. It's so Gen X. Um, but a simple team contract, which, you know, what are the commitments we're going to make to each other as a team to make this business work?

[00:26:17] Frances Frei:
It’s one of the most powerful conversations I've ever observed when Anne is leading that every person gets to say, “This is what I need to be wildly successful.” And you break the ice that there's no wrong. There's nothing taboo.

[00:26:31] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:26:32] Frances Frei:
You just get to say what I need, because it's really hard for the rest of us to set you up for wild success if we don't know what you need.

[00:26:39] Anne Morriss:
And it signals exactly where we started the conversation, which is it is not your job, Gina, CEO, to figure that out on your own for everyone around you. That's a parent's role. That's what, that's what we have to do for our sons every day. It is the, it is the co-responsibility of the people in that room to articulate their needs and ask for them to be met to reach the shared goal of building this kick-ass business.

[00:27:07] Gina Gutierrez:
A lot of what you're bringing up for me now is how valuable it is to get comfortable with some of this, I don't have good words for it, more touchy-feely language in the workspace that every so often I feel that, um, I'm bumping up against people's comfort with my earnestness about some of this stuff, where they're like, “Why are you telling me how you feel right now?”

And I'm like, “I don't know. You try it.” Um, I remember I said in a check in with someone like, “It really made me feel sad when…” And I just watched her eyes go wide like something terrible had happened because I had felt sad and I was like, “It's not the world that I felt sad, but I did feel sad.” I think a lot of people a little bit of a challenge at that level of vulnerability and that's just so critical, I think, to your point. And like, you know, amazing when you see it happen.

[00:27:50] Frances Frei:
It’s… Yeah, I think it is. That's one of the reasons why it's so amazing is because you can feel that hesitation in the beginning. And at the end, it's just amazing. And then, you know, we each want to be heroes for one another. And so if I can do something that's going to help you, it just feels so good.

[00:28:08] Anne Morriss:
And Gina, it, it brings me all the way back to, and the next step is being a bit more intentional in inviting other people into the conversation, which also solves that problem of not patronizing them and thinking you know, like they have to step up and articulate what they need.

[00:28:28] Frances Frei:
You know, if people ask us to define leadership, we define it as leadership is about making other people better as a result of our presence in a way that lasts into our absence. And I think it's also the greatest gift you can give someone, is that they get to excel in our absence.

[00:28:42] Gina Gutierrez:
I hope that they get to move on from Dipsea one day and take this with them and, you know, we talk a lot about some of these more philosophical ideas around sexual empowerment and one of the biggest ones comes from Audre Lorde, who's this in—incredible feminist kind of philosopher, poet, and—

[00:29:01] Anne Morriss:
Um, we are lesbians of a certain age and so she's a hero.

[00:29:07] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:29:07] Gina Gutierrez:
Great. So you know, and Audre Lorde talks a lot about how, um, getting more comfortable with the sensual, emotional, experiential version for you of your own pleasure, which does not just have to be erotic, sets a bar for yourself of what you deserve everywhere.

This is the hallmark I, of the leader I want to be, where you then say, “Well I want any future manager, I want any future team to feel as good or better than this,” because I, I know it is possible and I know I can feel really seen and valued in an organization, this is what I want. Um, and that's the ultimate gift that I can give and worth striving for.

[00:29:44] Anne Morriss:
If it helps, we could not be more optimistic.

[00:29:47] Frances Frei:
We’re 10 out of of 10 optimistic.

[00:30:08] Anne Morriss:
Frances Frei, what did you think?

[00:30:11] Frances Frei:
Oh, that, um, that went in so many directions. You know, these mission driven organizations I have such a soft spot for.

[00:30:19] Anne Morriss:
Mm-hm.

[00:30:19] Frances Frei:
And, and solving that. If I was going to recap, like, a great gift you can give someone is to have them experience your high standards while also experiencing your deep devotion to their success, and that if we look at the patterns in our lives, we've probably emphasized one over the other, and it switches, maybe as a, y’know, as a reaction, um, and that the path to people experiencing both is the way we are going to set them up for success in our absence. Wonderful that she joined us.

[00:30:56] Anne Morriss:
Thanks for listening, everyone. And we want to hear from you too. If you want to figure out a workplace problem together, send us a message, email us at fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253.

[00:31:09] Frances Frei:
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Frei.

[00:31:17] Anne Morriss:
And me, Anne Morris. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Sarah Nics, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, Banban Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer.

[00:31:36] Frances Frei:
We’ll be bringing you new episode of Fixable every week. So please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:31:43] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review, we love hearing from our listeners, particularly when they have nice things to say about us.