We’re strong women.
We know what we want.
And when it comes to negotiations, uh, maybe not quite as much sometimes.
If this sounds familiar, buckle up! Today’s guest has more than three decades of global C-suite experience.
And she’s going to school us on how to up our game in negotiations.
Julie Holton:
Welcome to the show. I’m Julie Holton here with Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris, and Audrea Fink, we are your Think Tank of Three.
And today we are welcoming an incredible guest to the podcast to share not just her story, but also the art of negotiations. This topic comes up almost exhaustively for us on this podcast.
Audrea Fink:
It really does. We talk a lot about it because women tend to be less comfortable with negotiation. It’s not a skill that society places an emphasis on women learning. So you learn it, if you’re lucky, in business.
I’ve done a lot of negotiation in previous roles: contract negotiations, vendor negotiations, discussing promotions, but even I’m still uncomfortable with it. And as I’m working on my own skills with job offers and new opportunities, it’s still something I’m uncomfortable with
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Studies show that women tend to not put themselves out there for the opportunities like new jobs or promotions unless they are 100% sure that they are qualified or even overqualified.
Julie Holton:
Our guest has some thoughts on that in ways for women to really change their mindset on negotiations. Julie Fasone Holder retired from the Dow Chemical Company where she was a senior VP running multi-billion dollar business portfolios. A true trailblazing executive who now funnels all of that C Suite experience into helping women, like us, shape our careers. Julie, welcome to the show.
Julie Fasone Holder:
Thank you very much, Julie. I’m delighted to be here.
Julie Holton:
We are so glad to have you. So I wanna start first with your own personal path to the C Suite. What did that look like? Tell us, how did you move up the ladder?
Julie Fasone Holder:
Well, I graduated from the great Michigan state university and started my career in sales unlike many people today, I had a career with one company which was Dow and I was there for 35 years. I had a fairly typical sales career sales, marketing, sales management, marketing management.
And then I was given the opportunity to run a 30 million business and then three 30 million businesses and portfolios of businesses. Until 2000, I was asked to run a billion-dollar portfolio of industrial chemical businesses. And then I moved over to our plastics business and ran a similar portfolio of businesses, doubling the size. And then the last three years of my career, I was fortunate enough to work for our CEO and I ran marketing and sales and I ran public affairs and government affairs. And I also ran human resources for a time for the company.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Wow. Moving up the ladder and just kept it going. So now you transitioned out of corporate America. You chose to launch your own business after having such great success moving up that ladder at Dow to JFH Insights. Why are you so passionate when it comes to helping women in their careers?
Julie Fasone Holder:
Well, as you would imagine, when I started my career, there weren’t a lot of women in the workforce..
Audrea Fink:
And probably even less in sales.
Julie Fasone Holder:
Yes. And less in a chemical company and manufacturing industry as well. And I was not a chemist, I was a business major. So I came at it from a different skill set than many of my peers as well, but because I was the first or only woman in almost every role I had.
And as I progressed through my career, the company started hiring more women, but we weren’t very good at keeping the women that we hired. And I saw a lot of talent walk out the door. I always felt that that was a real loss for the company because, you know, we needed to build a diverse and inclusive environment. I thought my skillset being different from my male peers was a strength for me, not a weakness.
And the company benefited from that and they gave me new opportunities. So I always wanted to help the company be more successful with women. And I always wanted to help women be more successful as well.
And so when I retired, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do, but I knew I was passionate about helping women. I met another woman who was similar to me in her views, and when we started working together we approached Michigan State University and launched an executive education program for mid-career professional women that we ran for 11 years.
And now I’m working with a couple of other universities, teaching segments for them in their executive women course. And I also do some one-on-one coaching of executive women. And then I’ve also done nonprofit interest around women, too, helping women who are victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse. I’ve invested in women through some angel funds. And I just think that women have not had the opportunity that they deserve. And that companies, our country, our politics would be so much better if we had more women leaders. We’re wasting a lot of talent by not being more successful at moving women into positions of leadership.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Preach!
Audrea Fink:
It’s very true. When you think about the fact that women make up half of the world, but not half of the boardroom, it makes you wonder what is missing from that boardroom. When you say women don’t necessarily get the same opportunities, they also don’t get the same training. They don’t have the same expectations placed upon them for work.
I know that myself in sales, when I joined the sales industry if you will, or sales market, there were women. And it was amazing. I had really wonderful women mentors, but it wasn’t as common as having men in the workplace.
One of the skills that I think women need help with – because they’re not really encouraged to go down this route – is negotiation. We talk a lot about it on our show. We talk about negotiating for pay, negotiating a promotion, just negotiating in general. Women tend to be less comfortable with it.
What are some of the skill sets needed to be a strong negotiator?
Julie Fasone Holder:
One of the reasons women don’t negotiate on behalf of themselves is not because they’re not good negotiators. Because women negotiate for their children, women negotiate healthcare for their families. I mean, think about it, if your child is sick and you wanna get into a doctor, women are great negotiators. Women in companies in purchasing positions are great. We’re great negotiators on behalf of our company, on behalf of our family, but we’re not great negotiators on behalf of ourselves.
And I think one of the reasons for that is because we don’t understand how men negotiate differently than us. And one of the things that I discovered as I developed this curriculum for executive leadership for women is the differences in how men and women approach things in the workplace. It really opens the eyes for women. And once they realize how the guy down the hall is playing it, they get more courage to play it.
Similarly, women have to be good at negotiating, not just negotiate. And that’s another reason women don’t negotiate for themselves is sometimes they get punished for negotiating for themselves.
You know, they’re viewed as too brazen or too assertive. And so not only do we have to have these skills, we have to do them well. Whereas our male counterparts don’t usually get penalized for not doing them well as we do.
So I think that doing your homework, you always need to approach negotiations in a company, speaking in the language of benefit for the company I have to offer. I’ve delivered this, this, and this. Consequently, I’d like the opportunity to grow and think that this would be an appropriate reward for what I’ve delivered for you. So it’s important that we do our homework and think about how to negotiate. But we also, I think get courage when we understand kind of what the language of the workplace is.
And actually, research shows that a lot of women leave companies because they get passed over for a promotion or they don’t get a salary increase. And the way they just separate is when one of their male peers gets that promotion and as they’re walking out the door, they go into their boss’s office. He will, he, or she will say to the woman, I didn’t know you wanted it or I didn’t know that was important to you. We also need to speak up on behalf of ourselves and make sure that what we want is known. If we don’t negotiate for ourselves, no one’s gonna negotiate for us.
Julie Holton:
I was just having a conversation the other day with a man. And we were talking about different approaches in business with employees. He’s in a position where he has a role in hiring and firing and negotiating the salaries for the company’s employees. And of course, as an agency owner, I’m in charge of that for my agency.
And we were talking about two women on my team who both do an incredible job and I always want to make sure that that I’m valuing the people on my team and I’m not showing them value if they’re doing the same job at different rates.
And so I was actually having this conversation with him about me getting into this process of offering one of the women an increased pay rate without her asking me for it because that’s just what I feel is the right thing to do. And it was so interesting even to hear his take on that and how that’s bad for business and why would I give someone a promotion if they haven’t asked for it or a pay increase if they haven’t asked for it. And I thought, wow, our brains think totally differently on this topic. What do you think? Is that something that even fundamentally is different sometimes between women and men?
Julie Fasone Holder:
Absolutely. I think that’s a great story and a great illustration of how differently we think. Because if you think about it, companies, aren’t inclined to give you any more than you ask for. And frankly, they kinda wanna pay you as little as they can. These in large companies typically have structures, an annual performance evaluation, and an annual salary increase based on performance. But a lot of people aren’t in those situations, they’re in small companies and you know, they don’t have processes and systems to kind of help them. A business owner may say, I’ve gotta keep my wages low. Whereas the employees, of course, want to make what they’re worth.
This brings up another point is we really need to test the market to know what we’re worth. And I think a lot of that is what’s happening today with people leaving the workforce or people looking for other roles is this pandemic has offered us the opportunity to kind of look at work in a different way, but you do need to test kind of what you’re worth outside if you don’t think you’re getting paid well where you are.
And the other thing I often tell women, particularly women in companies that have these processes and structures is your HR representative is your best friend. If you have a relationship with them because you do need people inside because that’s another taboo typically is we don’t talk about our salaries and companies don’t want you to talk about your salaries. So it’s in their best interest, not in ours.
And if you can find people to share information with, you get a feel for if you’re being treated fairly or not, or you can use is the outside market to get a view of what you should be paid. And you definitely need to keep track of your own performance and your deliverables and be able to articulate those as a way to say, you’re not giving me a gift. This isn’t pay for lack of performance. I am delivering for you. And consequently, I am worth this amount, this opportunity, this pay, whatever it might be.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I think we just really need to rewire our minds. We really need to rethink our worth. Julie was telling her story and I was thinking former MBA college coach, Larry Brown, who would get a job, and then it was almost like he was negotiating for his next job after being there a year. He was always looking for the next gig.
But as women, we get into our spot and we’re like, okay, you know what? We’re in a good place. I don’t wanna rock the boat even though I know full well I should be getting what John Jackson in cubicle two is getting. I’m doing the exact same thing. And it tends to come back to that question of you never asked.
Listen, I like my TV shows and my movies and quotes, and there was an episode on Grey’s Anatomy where Meredith Gray got the general surgery gig, but she was offered one thing and everybody kept asking, wow, that’s it?
And she’s she realized something was up and someone asked, why aren’t you offering more? And Miranda Bailey said because it’s not my job to offer her. She needs to understand what she’s worth. She needs to ask. That was her taking the male point of view. Whereas what Julie was saying was why should she have to ask? I know what she’s worth. I’m going to give it, but we need to get into that habit of don’t just assume that they recognize. If you’re not gonna ask then why do I have to offer you more?
Julie Holton:
Small disclaimer here, I also know that keeping my employees is really important because I want them to stay working for my company. Yes, Julie’s a good person. She wants to make sure someone’s getting what they’re worth, but also it makes my company better to have people that are getting paid and that I’m showing them the value of the work that they’re providing.
Julie Fasone Holder:
One of the things I often tell women is when you get a salary increase from your boss it’s fine to say, thank you. But my response as a manager was always to that individual, this isn’t a gift. You earned this, and this is a recognition of your performance. And that’s why you’re getting this bonus or retention or salary increase or promotion. So I think we, as women may tend to think of you gave me a raise, you gave me a promotion. Well, no, we earned that promotion. And the guy down the hall knows he earns that promotion. And so you have to approach it like you earned that promotion too because you did.
Audrea Fink:
We had a guest Dayna on our podcast before talking about negotiating for your salary and what of the things she said, that you’ve echoed so far here, is you have to go and approach with the language of business. A lot of times we treat everything around us in a sort of relationship manner, because we do build relationships because we are empathetic and communicative and we build our tribes everywhere we go. We think of this business as part of our tribe, it’s part of our identity.
And so when we get to the part where we’re talking about promotions, I think a lot of times…I will speak for me.
In my previous job, I had a wonderful relationship with my manager. She was phenomenal. She was an advocate for me. She was a sponsor for me. So when I go to her for my promotion, I went like this person is part of my tribe. They’re on my team. She’s still operating, though within a business and a business doesn’t care. It’s not a living thing. It’s not something you can have a relationship with. The business wants to spend as little money as possible and make as much money as possible. If not personal. She will give me what I demand or I will walk. And she will know this. It’s not really a relationship. It’s a job.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
We had a guest, Allison Tivnon talking about that. And she was negotiating for years down the road. Not even necessarily for within that year. Think about a partnership in two to three years, then they were fearful that they were gonna lose her with and they go to have this lunch. And then when they realize, no, no, no, she’s happy. Then they really showed their hand when she was like, now that we know that you’re really, really happy and you were fearful that I was gonna go, this is what I need you to think about. If you want me to stay going into that room, speaking the language that those people in that room are gonna understand, because generally speaking, those people in that room are men and they really do just speak a completely different language than we do, which isn’t bad. But it’s better if you, at least, if you know that language and understand that language and you can shift into that and make it work for yourself. I think it’s good that we have a different mindset of things, but we just have to be able to go into their world and show them where they’re thinking wrong.
Julie Fasone Holder:
And we have to survive in their world. You know, if we’re gonna, and we wanna flourish in their world. And frankly, the business world is still a man’s world.
Julie Holton:
In this man’s world, you had a lot of tough negotiations or situations where you had to persuasively make your case for things throughout your career. Is there a time when you were met with a particular challenge, that would be helpful for us to learn from what kinds of situations did you encounter that you thought, okay, this is gonna be a tough one?
Julie Fasone Holder:
One of the most, I think interesting things that happened to me in my career was when I had my first child and I had been with the company for 13 years and I had done well, but I was really at a crossroads, as many women are. Can I continue to be successful and move up? Do I need to step aside and move into a staff role? Because I had been in line roles my entire career. I was really struggling with that. And my boss at the time said, go out and talk to different managers and the company and get their perspectives. So one-half of the company’s managers, and this was, I would say the more hierarchical part of the company said, Nope, you can’t compete with the guys. My issue was travel because in sales and marketing, you traveled a fair amount and I was willing to travel, but not 50-70% of the time I wanted to limit my travel to about 30%.
And one group of the company’s managers said, Nope, can’t be successful competing against the men. They’ll do whatever it takes. And you’re putting limitations on yourself, it will not make you successful. That was the last group of managers that I had listened to. And so I was gonna take a lateral move. I was due for a promotion. I was kind of ready to move up. I was excited about that new role, but I had those tapes in my head. And so I was gonna take a lateral move into a staff function.
And as I was walking down the hall to accept this role, a top leader in another part of the company pulled me into his office and said, I know you’ve been making the rounds. Would you decide? So I told him what I’d heard and he raised his eyebrows. And I said to him, I take it, you don’t agree with the advice I’ve been given?
And he said, no, I don’t. He said, frankly, I think the men travel because they like to travel. Yes. Um, not because they need to travel because it’s easy to leave home on a Sunday night when you have three young children and two of ’em have colds and you can get on an airplane and go to a fancy dinner.
And he said we need women in this role. There had maybe been one or maybe two in the company at that point. And I think you can manage your travel and I’m gonna have a job open in a couple of weeks. You’re my candidate. It’s gonna be a promotion for you. And I’d really like you to think about taking it. And I walked out of his office. I still get goosebumps. When I think about this because I felt like this millstone had been lifted off my neck. It was what I wanted to do and what I thought I could do, but no one had told me I could do it.
But the other thing that was a bit frightening or serendipitous about it is had I not run into him at that moment, walking down the hallway to accept this job, my career would’ve been completely different. So I think there are a number of lessons to learn from that.
One is you need men to help you and to guide you and to give you a good career, you need men to be sponsors for you to help pull you along. But you also need to realize that sometimes it’s a two-minute conversation that you either have, or you don’t have that can change your career. And you need to make sure you kind of seek out different perspectives before you make big decisions because having a different boss could make all the difference in the world in terms of how successful you’re gonna be. And I would also say, listen to your gut. I always tell women, to listen to their gut because I do think your gut often gives you a good feel of, are you on the right track or are you on the wrong track? Do you need to make a change or is this okay?
Audrea Fink:
I love the idea of listening to your gut because I think as you mentioned, we have these tapes that play in our heads. This is what I’m capable of. This is where my limit is for whatever reasons, those are the restrictions we put on ourselves. You know what you’re capable of.
I have looked at roles where I thought, oh, I’m way underqualified for that. And then talked to somebody else who said, you’re not underqualified for that. Why do you think that? Oh, well, because I don’t have this one particular piece of experience. And it’s so silly how we trap ourselves in these stories. And it very frequently takes a mentor or a sponsor or an ally to turn those tapes off.
One of the things you mentioned that I want to circle back to, cause I think it is so important is this idea of mentorship and sponsorship. Women tend to get mentorship frequently. It’s very common for a woman to go after a mentor to spend that time talking and working through their career. And I think their mentorship is wonderful. The thing women don’t tend to do as often is get sponsors. And sponsorship is very common for men in business. Not as common for women, we don’t know how to go after it. We don’t know necessarily how to ask for it or what it looks like. Talk to us about how we can negotiate to get sponsors instead of mentors.
Julie Fasone Holder:
One of the things I’ve discovered recently is a lot of men don’t know what the difference between mentorship and sponsorship is, which is kind of crazy. Because sponsorship has been going on in corporate America forever.
We hire people who are like us. We promote people who are like us. We bring people up the ranks like us and that’s often the way things worked. And when women enter the workforce, we’re different. We’re not like them.
Women do get over mentored and under sponsored. And so how do we get sponsored? Because the challenge is you don’t choose a sponsor, a sponsor chooses you. So you have to cultivate that relationship with someone who’s gonna pull you up, which means a sponsor has to be a higher level than you, has to be someone who can pull you up through your career, and someone who will speak for you when you’re not in the room.
So there’s an opportunity here. You know, I think Audrea would be great for it. Let’s put her on the candidate list. Let’s interview her for the role.
And men need to realize that they need to sponsor women as well as men. So companies have a role in getting people to understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. Many large companies now are putting together programs that educate people on sponsorship so that the leaders know what it is. And you know what they’re doing when they’re doing it because they’ve been doing it. They may just not know, but for women, it’s harder to pick a sponsor. But I think certainly if there’s a leader you’ve impressed. So I would say, pick a leader, a couple of levels above you and get to know them. You know, it’s probably your boss’s boss, or maybe it’s someone who reaches a handout to you to find out about your career and then cultivate that relationship, making sure that they know what you’re delivering for the company so that they speak highly of you. You want them to represent you or they wanna hire you.
I often talk about how your brand is like a company brand. You wanna move from getting hired to being selected, to be loyal, and to be indispensable. I wanna hire Julie because she’s the best person for my team and she will really bring something to it. So how do you cultivate that relationship so that leader wants to bring you along with them? And so networking becomes a really important part of your career as well. And helping them get to know how good you are.
Audrea Fink:
So if you have someone who is either new to the workforce, new to the area, they’re brand new at a company and they don’t necessarily have easy access to that two or three level sponsor, how do you recommend they either go about building their brand or networking so that they can rub elbows with the right people?
Julie Fasone Holder:
I think first off you do the job that you are hired to do very well. So let’s say that’s table stakes obviously. And then you either find an opportunity through, you know, we’re having dinner and you avail yourself of that. Or you go to a presentation perhaps that the senior leader gave and then maybe you run into ’em in the hallway and you have an opportunity to say something like what really struck me was this, this and this. We talk a lot about an elevator speech, which I think is really important for women as well. Often our interactions with senior leaders are in line in the cafeteria, in a meeting, walking in, or walking out.
And one of the things I tell women is they have to get out of their language. Oh, everything’s going fine. And I’m working very hard because you know, when you run into somebody, a senior leader and they say, Hey, Julie, how are you? And you’re like, oh, things are really great. And I’m working very hard.
Here’s a missed opportunity when you could say, and maybe twice that long, but not much longer is: I’m really excited. My team just delivered on the most important goal for the year. We saved the company 50 million on a purchase. And I think we could really leverage this across the organization.
Now, how long did that take? Not long at all, but it gave them an opportunity to go, oh wow, that’s pretty darn impressive. I’d like to hear more. And it gives you an opportunity to say, I’d love to share with you how we did it. Could I get on your calendar or for a cup of coffee? So that’s how you do it. You have to think, you have to be intentional about showcasing your accomplishments and taking advantage of the opportunities that you get to interact with people who can help you.
Watch some of your male peers. Some of them are really, really good at this. And so, you know, take your lessons from the guy who knows everybody in the company and kind of knows everything that’s going on behind the scenes, but it’s because he’s playing golf on Saturday or he’s having a cup of coffee with the right person or he’s got the right people that invite him into meetings that other people don’t get pulled into. That is what you want to happen to you in your career. If you wanna continue to move up along those same lines.
Julie Holton:
You know, one of the things that I felt, at the time, was one of the most annoying things that I had to do because I just felt like I had to do it when I was working in corporate America was just making the rounds through the office. Annoying because I had more work than I had time to get it done. But I also knew how important it was to have in-person time. And in this particular office, we were spread out over three different floors of a really large downtown building. And so if I didn’t go up to the other two floors, I could go months without seeing any of those folks. I found that you even just walking through the hallway and saying hello and stopping in to ask how other people were doing or what projects they were working on, allowing them the opportunity to tell me something that they were in the middle of or that in-person time would bring you kind of back into the mix. And I’m the type that I just wanted to focus on what I wanted to focus on. And I didn’t wanna go make chit-chat. But sometimes we just have to strategically think through those same things, just like the elevator speech
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Jules. You’re not wanting to walk through those halls, but that’s your minute on the golf court, right? That’s your minute on the golf course or that’s your, Hey, I’ve got the extra ticket to the game.
Audrea Fink:
One thing that I do think we can utilize though, is our ability to build relationships. If you are getting to know these people, you’re taking that few minutes when going out for coffee, you’re going out to lunch. You can talk about shared interests. I got invited to a lot of dinners because we had some serious dog photo sharing. I had a coworker who hated golf but talked about it all the time. She got invited to go golfing, hated it. So part of that invite comes from making sure that you’re building a relationship. You’re understanding what they’re into, you know, who you’re talking about. And then you can say, oh, you have got a cute new puppy. Show me photos speaking the language, right?
Julie Fasone Holder:
Absolutely. You know, the other point that I’d like to make is even the word network is a really interesting word because men think about networking as their safety net and women often think of out networking as extra work as Julie said. And so if you have that perspective that this is my safety net, this is not additional work. This is the most critical work you do because those are the people in the relationships that are gonna pull you up or get you what you need. It’s even how I got my board positions after I left corporate America. I was qualified, but so are so many people. The way I got chosen to be on corporate boards was someone in my network recommended me. And that’s the way the business world typically works,
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
Depending on who you to talk to. Some people will say, women have come a long way in this business world, in the gender gap. What do you say to that?
Julie Fasone Holder:
I don’t think we’ve come nearly far enough. And it’s interesting if you look at the statistics, women have stalled at about 20% of leadership positions and we achieved 20% in 2004 and we have gone between 20 and maybe 30, 20 and 25. Whether it be CEOs, women on boards, women in the C-suite.
So we have not gotten even close to parody and we still have a lot of work to do. And I would say companies still have a lot of work to do to bring people in that are not like them. And that use better processes, better selection tools. There are so many studies that show that if you take the unconscious bias out of decision-making like orchestra performers performing behind a sheet and then, oh my goodness, well, we have 50/50 orchestras between women and men. When before it was like 90/10 or 80/20. But if you can take the unconscious bias out of selection processes, then we’ll be much better at achieving an inclusive environment and a diverse workforce. But we still have made some progress. It’s on top of people’s minds. They wanna do well, but we haven’t achieved it. My opinion.
Audrea Fink:
How do you think we go about achieving it? Do you think it’s following in California’s steps where they put together a law that says at least one woman has to be on boards for companies? Do you think it is in internal diversity programs? Is it in women who need to be putting their hand back and bringing another woman with them? How do we focus on bringing more women into leadership and bringing more women into the workforce?
Julie Fasone Holder:
I think it’s all of the above. There is no magic bullet. If it was easier, if there was a magic bullet, we would’ve done it. Companies, like the company that I grew up in, they’ve been working on it for 40 years. Yet some companies that started working on it five years ago have about the same amount of representation. So it’s interesting to me having been in it for 40 years, kind of looking around and seeing how challenging it actually is.
So I think you need to do all of the above. Boards and companies need to be intentional about interviewing people who don’t fit kind of their traditional criteria and bringing more women, more women of color, more men of color into organizations. Women need to raise their hands. We need to kind of get educated. We need good social safety nets around us so that it’s easier for us to manage home and business.
I mean, women that have gone through this pandemic, my heart goes out to managing a family, managing kids at home, managing a career it’s tough. So I think we need to do all of the above to really achieve gender parity.
And I’m part of a movement and organization called paradigm for parity where we’ve identified some things that we think are really important that companies need to do. And a lot of ’em we’ve talked about today. You need to have sponsors as well as mentors. You need to put women in line roles versus staff roles you need to measure, and you need to be transparent about that measurement. You need to offer flexibility so that women can manage both family and home and you need to manage unconscious bias. We try to share best practices among companies that are working on these things so that we can all get better together. And we have over 120 companies that have signed the pledge to achieve gender parity by 2030, and they are working very hard on it.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
It is interesting because it also seems like, for men, we need to tell men, to stop looking for what looks like you, but for women, we kind of need to tell women, to start looking for people who look like you.
Julie Fasone Holder:
You know, as women, we do need to help each other. We need to reach back and we need to mentor each other, sponsor each other. That’s why I say, that’s why I’m so passionate about helping women to be successful if I can. And sometimes women feel they’re in competition for roles and men in companies make us feel that way. I mean, we just don’t kind of make that up.
You know, I remember once in my career they said two women got a promotion the same day and they’re like, oh, it’s women promotion day. You know that makes you feel great, right? It’s like, no, I earned this promotion. And it’s unfortunate that there are only two of us in the whole company, but you know, finally, we both got promoted. We have to reach back and help and mentor each other. And when we get to positions of leadership, we need to represent women. We need to be the courageous voice sometimes as leaders because it’s not always easy to be the courageous voice, but we have to think about how to do it. So it’s accepted, but we do need to do it. Julie,
Julie Holton:
This might seem like a really odd question, but I’ve actually been asked it. And so I wanna ask you. Why is it important to invest in women?
Julie Fasone Holder:
Well, I think it’s important to invest in women because they’re 50% plus of the labor force of your talent, of your brains, of your energy. I often say, can you think of us lobbying off half of the world’s population and saying nope, we don’t care about Asia. There’s 50% of the population that we’re not gonna learn from, we’re not gonna be interested in their culture. We’re not, you know, we’re not gonna use them, but why would you take 50% of your workforce and not use them fully and bring, you know, yin and yang I think is a great saying. I mean, we are different. And with that difference, we bring strengths and women have different strengths that we bring to the workforce that the workforce needs. So we have a lot to offer and we shouldn’t be walking by all that talent because it’s expensive to hire people. It’s expensive to keep people. So let’s keep the good people that we have.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
I always find it so interesting how people don’t understand the importance of the perspective of the other person. How did you get to that? Well, I was going down this trail of thought, and this is where it took me. I didn’t even think about that. That’s the point. Exactly. That’s exactly the point. We are different. We’re equal in our value of who we are and what we bring to the table, but we are different in how in general and how we see things, how we process things, how we come up with ideas. And that is a good thing. And you need that yin and yang to bring together the whole. I don’t understand why that’s so hard to understand.
Julie Holton:
Everything that makes us different, makes us stronger. These are strengths, these different characteristics. We shouldn’t be seeing them or labeling them as weak. It’s a strength to be able to pair them together.
Audrea Fink:
Thank you so much for joining the Think Take of Three. Before we go, we are collecting advice from successful women in communities and sharing it with our forum. So three rapid-fire questions for you.
Number one is there a lesson that you’ve recently learned that you wish you had learned earlier in your career?
Julie Fasone Holder:
Well, I think the lesson goes along a lot with what we’ve talked about today, which is figure out your worth and then ask for it. Figure out what you want and then ask for it. Be able to speak the language of benefit to the company or benefit to the organization. Then you can represent yourself well.
Julie Holton:
What’s one piece of advice that you would offer to any woman in business or out of business?
Julie Fasone Holder:
You are capable, you’re talented, you’re smart. You deliver for your company and make sure you end up with a company that delivers for you. If you can find the intersection of what you’re really good at and what you’re passionate about, you’ll be very successful in your career.
Reischea Canidate-Kapasouris:
That’s awesome.
What is the most important skill for women to have?
Julie Fasone Holder:
I think it’s the ability to build a network. We talked about having that safety to help you or those people that will pull you through your career or through life or through whatever opportunity that you want. So taking the time to build relationships in and outside of work will really serve you well in whatever you wanna do in life.
Julie Holton:
You can connect with Julie Fasone Holder at JFHinsight.com and we’ll share her contact information for you on our website, along with this podcast, Julie, thank you again so much for being here today.
Julie Fasone Holder:
I loved it. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure meeting the three of you, and I really enjoyed the conversation.
Julie Holton:
Thanks, Julie. And that is all for this episode of Think Tank of Three.