Women in the Arena
Women in the Arena is the celebration of everyday women living extraordinary lives in plain sight. We seek to inspire, encourage and challenge you to reach for the great heights you're made for.
Women in the Arena
You're Not Playing Wrong - You're Playing A Different Game with Wendy Cocke
What happens when the games we played as children shape our entire professional experience? In this eye-opening conversation with chemical engineer and author Wendy Cocke, we uncover how fundamental differences in how boys and girls organize play creates invisible barriers in the workplace that nobody talks about.
Wendy shares her journey as a successful engineer and mother who was once told her career would stall if she pursued flexibility—a prediction she thoroughly disproved. Through her experiences leading global technical teams while raising her "Rolling Circus" (her loving term for her family), she's developed unique insights into why women often feel like outsiders in corporate structures.
The most revealing moment comes when Wendy explains her "circle exercise"—a simple activity where people draw two circles representing work and life. The dramatic difference between how men and women typically approach this task illuminates why workplace miscommunications happen so frequently. Men generally draw separate circles, while women (especially mothers) draw work as existing within life—a fundamental difference in worldview that explains countless workplace tensions.
We explore how boys naturally form hierarchies from childhood while girls create communal structures without winners and losers. When these different frameworks collide in corporate environments designed around hierarchical "ladders," women often feel they're playing a game where they don't fully understand the rules. This insight alone transformed my understanding of workplace dynamics.
Wendy also challenges us to embrace risk-taking and creativity, sharing how her own unexpected career shift following a corporate layoff opened doors she never imagined. Her perspective on failure as merely a redirection rather than an endpoint offers a refreshing antidote to the fear that holds back so many high-achieving women.
Whether you're navigating a male-dominated industry, seeking more flexibility in your career, or simply trying to understand why workplace dynamics sometimes feel so challenging, this conversation offers practical wisdom for defining success on your own terms. Try the circle exercise yourself—you might be surprised what it reveals about your approach to work and life.
Welcome in everyone and thank you so much for joining me again this week. You know, in the four years that I've been doing this, I've met some really amazing, cool women, and today is no exception. You are really going to enjoy my guest this week. My guest this week is Wendy Koch, and she is the author of Making Flex Work Defining Success on your Own Terms, and she is a chemical engineer by training and spent over 20 years in Fortune 500 companies, leading technical teams across time zones, borders and languages. She's also a working mother and she has redefined success for herself according to her values, as well as keeping her kids and her family in the forefront.
Audra :She was also told just as in case any of you have heard this she was told that when she wanted to become a mother and have a flexible work environment, she was told by a well-meaning company that, while she desired a flexible work environment, her career would stall and that she would never move up in the organization. Well, she showed them she's doing just fine. Wendy, like I said, is a successful chemical engineer and she leads teams all over the globe. She also lovingly refers to her family as the Rolling Circus, which also includes her mother, grandmother and is also the founder of the Engineering Leadership Solutions, where she provides technical consulting, management and coaching and leadership development to women just like her. It is my pleasure and honor to introduce to you Wendy Wendy, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
Wendy :I am so excited to be here with you. I love what you do on your program and I am honored to be a part of it. Thank you so much.
Audra :Well, welcome to my rolling circus, that's right. That's right. Or, as I refer to the arena, the arena, that's right. So you and I met before you and I got to meet in another group of other podcasters and you and I connected instantly. We're like, oh, we didn't get to talk to each other, meet each other, so let's meet on an aside. And we did, and we instantly connected because we are women trying to define our way on our own terms. And you do it in the world of engineering, which is not one that is traditionally one for women. I mean, it certainly wasn't built by women, but you're making your own way.
Wendy :You know I am, and it's interesting because, as I look back in my career, there were definitely times when I was the only, but I never was lonely, and I think that's different. You can be the only and not be lonely, and you can also be lonely when you're not the only. So just because it wasn't a lot of women around me, I've always been able to find that group of women who support me, who pull me up, who help me figure out that I'm not crazy when I'm looking around thinking there's no way this can be happening, and I think that's what has made it so easy to be successful and easy is probably not the right word, but it just always felt like the way it should be as I was going through.
Audra :Yeah, Easy is not necessarily the right word. Maybe there is another word for it. Maybe it's you didn't feel less alone, Maybe the path didn't feel less like you were doing it solo, that you found other women to be compatriots with you, if you will, that you're like oh she's another one with her own struggle. Well, let's struggle together. And you were carving your own paths together. Maybe that's the right word.
Wendy :Yeah, I think you know I use the word easy because when you have a community you can do all sorts of things. Easy to me simply means achievable, and maybe that's my engineer brain, because I can do hard things. I have a girlfriend that that's one of her mantras I can do hard things. And when you have a sense of community, which women naturally have and I think that's a really important part of being able to succeed in an industry where you are one of few is being able to find that community. And women do that naturally. We find community naturally and that community can help you do hard things in a way that doesn't feel hard.
Audra :And that's what we've been doing together. That's how you and I found each other. It's how we found each other. We naturally were drawn to each other because we naturally do hard things and we thought you know what? Let's compare notes on the hard things that we do and let's do them together. And that's what brought us here together. And I love the way your brain works, because I thought, gosh, you're an engineer, you solve really complex problems, but you really like solving problems about people. How do those two things work? And you said, oh, but they do. And tell us a little bit about how your engineering brain works with solving these people problems.
Wendy :People problems are just problems that are more interesting than machine problems. So to me, the most complex problems are the problems that involve people, because you cannot control all the variables. As an engineer, I know how to design an experiment where I can change one thing at a time and I can figure out exactly what is happening. Well, that's interesting, but it's more interesting to have constantly changing variables, any team. You take one person out and put another person in their place doing the exact same job, and that team is not exactly the same. The dynamic changes, the workload changes, because even if you and I are hired to do the same thing, we don't have the exact same skills, we don't have the exact same interests, we don't have the exact same motivations and therefore we're going to do the work differently and we're going to do different work.
Audra :So to me, being able to solve a people puzzle is just the most interesting of all the engineering puzzles I could possibly tackle out is because your passion is helping women succeed at whatever it is that they define as success, not as what society defines as success, not what their family defines as success, what the individual woman defines as success and that is the puzzle that you want to help solve, and as you and I were talking about it, you started to break it down into these really interesting pieces that I thought that is really fascinating.
Audra :That's something that we need to talk about, because I'd often speculated about these things but had never been able to really articulate it in a way that was easy to understand. So let's talk about the puzzle pieces, if you will, about girls and boys and how they're taught at a young age of how to be successful and what it looks like, and why boys and girls, men and women look and perform differently as they get older. It's a really fascinating science and I'm really excited for you to share what you have discovered through your problem solving and what it looks like.
Wendy :So we're going to go kind of two ways here as we talk about this. One is just what naturally happens. So I don't know how many of your listeners have children, but I have a boy and a girl, and my husband and I have raised them in the exact same house, the exact same way, in the exact same community, with the exact same friends, and I can tell you that boys and girls are in fact different. When a group of little girls gets together without any parenting intervention, they play communal games. They play games where there is not necessarily a winner and a loser. They play games that involve everyone participating. Those games might be we're going to make up a dance. That game might be we're going to play Barbies. That game might be we're going to do art together. There's no winner and loser at Barbies or at art or at make up a dance.
Wendy :Now you take a little group of boys without any parental intervention and they naturally start to play in a hierarchy. Their games have winners and losers. They play sports that they have seen on TV or they make up new sports. Given the equipment that is around. They will naturally start to play fighting games where they can figure out who's the faster, the stronger, who has the better nerf gun. They will naturally start to put themselves into a hierarchy so that there is a boy leader and then followers, and there might be competition for that leader. Or it might just be natural and there might be people who are very happy to be followers and they never compete to be a leader, but they all know where they stand in that pecking order.
Wendy :Now that's without any parental intervention. Now this is very generalized, right? Of course there are little boys that love to do arts and crafts and there are little girls that play sports. I'm not trying to say that they're not. My girl plays softball, but she's also an acrobat. She's also an artist. My son plays baseball as a sport, but he's also part of the band. He also does, you know, individual type things. He's a very creative child. But when you get them together with their friends this is what I have observed happens, and I've tested it out with a bunch of moms and it just sort of happens. And it doesn't have to be a sporty parent, right, it could be any group.
Wendy :So you take those things that we just are naturally doing and then you put them into a corporate structure, and in a corporate structure. We even have a word for it the corporate ladder, the corporate hierarchy. We use those words because that's what they are. Whoa, those look just like the games the little boys learned how to play. They don't look like the games that the little girls were playing. Learned how to play, they don't look like the games that the little girls were playing.
Wendy :And so right away, the little girls who are now grown say, oh, this doesn't feel comfortable to me. It doesn't feel comfortable to me because it's not just a part of every interaction I've had throughout my adulthood or through my childhood moving into adulthood. So it's not that corporate is trying to be exclusive as opposed to inclusive. It's that it's literally set up by people who only represent half of the way that the world has placed. So no wonder we feel like we don't know what we're doing, no wonder we feel like we're being inauthentic, because it just isn't who we have been trained to be, because it's also set up.
Audra :Well, I mean, traditionally it was set up during the time that kids are in school, set up eight to five, that's when kids are in school. I mean that's how it was set up. It wasn't set up during the industrial age. You know, it wasn't designed with women in mind, it just wasn't.
Wendy :It wasn't. I don't know that it was even designed with men in mind, but what it was designed to do was figure out who could do the work, and the work had a particular structure and this is how it was. And so if you needed to leave your house to go do work, you left your house and you went and you did the work. One of my favorite movies that my children absolutely roll their eyes every time I talk about is there's a Charlie Chaplin movie in black and white where he is learning to go to a factory. It's one of those great silent movies and it's just him figuring out how to work as a machine and clock and how does it work. And he's like this doesn't work for me.
Wendy :So I use that as an example because it doesn't work for anyone. It just really doesn't work for working moms. Yes, but I don't know that it works for anyone. If you haven't seen the Charlie Chaplin movie, then you know. Imagine Lucy on her chocolate factory line, Right, Everybody has that visual. Everybody has that visual and it's a system that is artificial and it's so ingrained in us that we think it's real. So an exercise. I think you and I did this, and I don't know how many of your listeners have the opportunity to get a piece of paper, but if they do, I suggest they do it.
Audra :Everybody pause. We're going to tell everybody hold on, Everybody go, get a piece of paper. This is well worth this exercise. I promise it's not painful. And besides, Wendy is a riot. She's, I mean, get her going and she's going to keep you in stitches, I promise you so hold on Okay so here we go. Everybody's got a piece of paper.
Wendy :Yes, everybody's got one. Everybody's back. They have unpaused, they have a piece of paper. Everybody's ready, okay, excellent.
Wendy :So what I want you, on this piece of paper, to do is draw me two circles. One circle is life and one circle is work. You get to decide how big are the circles and where are they on the paper. I have done this with hundreds of people over the years and I'll be real honest, I did did not create it. I found it from somewhere and for years I actually credited it to an author that I read and a friend called me out and said it is not in her book. So I have no idea where I learned it, but not the author that for a decade I credited.
Wendy :Um, so what you'll do is you'll see that, generally speaking, men will draw two circles of about the same size next to each other, two separate circles next to each other. Sometimes they will draw it like a Venn diagram, so they sort of overlap. For those of you that are like whoa, that sounds like middle school math Venn diagram, what was that? That's where the two circles interlock, just sort of like Olympic rings. Okay, so sometimes they'll have them overlap or touch, but generally speaking, men draw two circles.
Wendy :Working mothers almost always draw life as one big circle and work as a smaller circle inside of it. At worst they will draw those interlocking circles. But there's always an overlap and what that says is that we, as two different genders, are actually approaching our work differently. Working moms see work as one part of their life, not as a separate entity of their life. Not as a separate entity and therefore when we get bad feedback at work, when we have an argument with someone at work, we take it personally. We don't take it personally because we are soft. We take it personally because work was a part of who we are. It's a part of that huge circle.
Wendy :Men, on the other hand, are like that was at work. That has nothing to do with my character. That's in the work work. That has nothing to do with my character. That's in the work circle. That has nothing to do with the life circle. So you know what he can call me. All the ugly names he can think I'm an idiot. Doesn't matter, we can still go play golf. That's why they can have an argument.
Audra :That's why, you see, as you were growing up, they could have an argument at school, have a fight after school and then be buds the next day and you're like, how does that happen? Two different circles, yeah, two different circles. And just as a note, in case anybody was wondering, when I did this exercise with Wendy, mine was a Venn diagram and I went, oh my gosh, because that means my life just completely intertwines with everything. I don't know how to separate anything from anything.
Wendy :So that's basically what that means for me. Yeah, I mean, when I did this with my husband, he drew two circles and he was like this is a stupid exercise, Wendy, why would I do this? Everybody would draw them like this. And I held up mine with my big circle with the little circle in it, and he looked at me and goes what is that Right? We, whichever way you draw, it is not right and it is not wrong. But just know there are people in this world that draw it entirely differently and you've probably never even considered that they are coming at it with an entirely different piece of paper.
Audra :Never even dawned on me. Until you and I did that exercise, I was like huh, I had no idea. Never even occurred to me that there would be something even different.
Wendy :Right, doesn't even cross your mind that anybody would ever draw it any way other than the way you draw it. So if you're having a struggle, so you know, in making Flex work, one of the things that I do is tell people to think of themselves as the machine and get the emotion out of it. Because if you think of it as intertwined, interlocking or overlapping in any way and your boss doesn't, then he doesn't actually care about the bus stop Because that's in a different circle. So what you have to do is pitch your flexible work arrangement or whatever it is that you want so that it makes sense in his work circle, because all he's thinking about is the work circle. So you have to make it work. You can't talk about life, because that's a different circle. He doesn't actually care because he's at work. It's not to mean he doesn't care about your life, it means he doesn't care about it while he's at work.
Audra :Which makes perfect sense when you put it in that perspective. If you had not told me that, I would say he doesn't care about me as a person. No, he's just a jerk. Yeah, exactly that's what I would have thought. He's just a jerk, he doesn't care about me, he only cares about what I can do at work, which is kind of right, kind of Kind of Sort of he cares about me, what I can do at work, at work, in the work circle, in the work circle, right In the work circle. But he probably cares about me as a human In the life circle.
Wendy :That's right. When he's in his life, part of of his life, and you pop into his brain, he probably doesn't wish ill of you. Yeah, no, and that's why sometimes people say he's such a great boss when we go out, but he's such a jerk at work and it's like two different circles, right, two different circles. It also the way people draw. This can impact the way they think about non-traditional work or flexible work. And a lot of people called me during the start of the pandemic because I worked with a lot of engineers and a lot of male engineers and, ooh, they draw those circles very separate, right? And they were saying how do I do work from home? Because my life is happening and now you need me to do work.
Wendy :So of course these are people who want us to go back to the office. Of course these are people who were excited for the return to work policies because they never wanted their work and life circles to mash together. They have just been longing for a day that they can re-separate them. They're like conjoined twins that they never wanted to have conjoined and they are trying to figure out desperately how to separate them and, by the way, they think their employees want to separate them too, because, just like we talked about on those circles, they have no idea anybody else would ever draw those circles different. So of course they're doing everyone a favor by giving you this opportunity to come back and separate your work and your life when all you want to do is say, hey, for years I've been trying to figure this out and now I can. Why would you take it away from me? Because we're different, because we drew our circles different, because we're different and we're different from the time. We're very tiny, so simple yet so difficult.
Wendy :So hard.
Audra :So hard. But isn't this eye-opening when you look at this, like I had no idea. I am 53 years old and I never knew this until Wendy and I had this conversation. And I drew the circles on the page and she's like what do your circles look like? And I went what? Oh my gosh. It was such an eye-opening experience. I've looked at everything different. I've looked at my coworkers different, I've looked at situations differently and it suddenly dawned on me I've been looking at this from a completely different point of view and it has given me an opportunity to educate. Educate differently, teach differently. I don't think that anybody is any less interested in what I have to do. I think that they're open to learning more about what I do or how I think differently. I just needed a better way to explain it.
Wendy :Well, and it's so simple once you think about it. And one of the things that I just a cornerstone of my philosophy in life is that people most people are innately good. People very rarely wake up in the morning and think how can I go to my job and be miserable and make everybody else around me miserable and do a poor job? Right, most people wake up thinking I'm going to do a great job today because it's who I am, it's my brand, it's my character, it's my character and they want to.
Wendy :So when we come into a conflict with someone at work or someone who's acting like a jerk, or somebody who is doing something that makes absolutely no sense, yes, in the moment I am no saint, in the moment I'm like big old jerk, don't have to deal with them.
Wendy :But in those moments where I'm like, ok, let's get some focus, let's figure this out. If I can go to the root, which is okay, they're trying to be good, they're trying to do a good job, they're trying to do what they think is best, now let me figure out why would they do that and think that it's best? Because if I can figure that out, that's the key of the puzzle. The people puzzle is figuring out. What information do you have, what motivation do you have that makes you think that something that I think is stupid is a good idea, because I think what you're doing is stupid. So let me figure out why you don't also think that's stupid, because now I can educate you, now we can figure out common ground, and often it is that they know something or they're coming at it from a different perspective, in a way that makes sense to them Whole different way of thinking, whole different way of thinking, and that's so.
Audra :That's one piece. That's one piece of this puzzle of how to make life work a little bit differently. And then you had said something a little bit differently to me that I had never thought of as well. Is that again how boys learn and how they play? Is they learn how to stand in line, take your turn, and all of that? Girls were not taught that, because I was. I was raised in the era of take your daughter to work day, which, by the way, was not the fun time that it was. Now, when it's take your children to work day, where it's a big party and you have games and you have cupcakes and all that stuff, no, we went to work. We went to work. We went and hung out with our dads while they worked and stared at our dad doing their jobs.
Wendy :And we did not have a cell phone or a computer to keep us entertained?
Audra :We did not. It was painful. We watched our dads do their jobs and it was not fun. It was very unfun, very unfun. That's what we did. I sat in on meetings. I sat in on and this was before video chat, this was before email. I watched my dad write letters. I watched my dad in conference meetings. So painful, so painful. It was very, very unfun.
Wendy :But my dad gave me a catalog, like last year's catalog for the products that he was working on and the draft of this year's catalog, and my job was to go through and circle anything that was not the same. Oh, that's what I did every year on Take your Daughter to Work Day, and then we went to lunch.
Audra :Yeah, I did get to go to lunch with my dad. I did get to do that. I did have to. I had to read or read the quote, unquote emails, because there were no emails at that time. That was before email. This was all being mailed out. I had to spellcheck. I was spellchecked, that's right. I was spellchecked for my dad and proofread the letters that he was mailing out. So that was my job. So you had to circle what was the same or wasn't the same and I had to spellcheck, that's right, yeah, we did not have cupcakes and hands-on science activities.
Audra :Nope, there was not that. But you and I were not taught to stand in line. You and I were taught how to work really, really hard. As a matter of fact, the speech that I was given was you either find a way to either assimilate with the men or outwork them. I don't know that much about sports. I'm a swimmer, you know. I don't know the whole lot about football. I know when to cheer, I know that part, but I don't know a whole lot about that. So my choice was I just outworked them. That was just that's what I chose, because I knew I could do that, that. But I think a lot of women chose that too. I mean not everybody, because I have a lot of friends that love sports and they were great at that. That just wasn't me. And so those were the choices I was given Very well-meaning, probably not the great advice.
Wendy :But I think it was great advice because look at what it has done for you. True, but it has created a dichotomy, and this is what this is where you and I had our conversation like a month ago was, as I was moving up that corporate ladder, I was often not just the only woman, but I was also the youngest and or the most junior person doing whatever it was that I was doing and my guess is, a lot of your audience is the same way and that's because we weren't told to wait in line. We were told if you want something, you leave the hut, you go out and you kill it, you drag it home, you cook it, you eat it, ta-da, yep. We weren't told that there was even a line that existed. So we have jumped into corporate America and we have cut the line and we have all of these men who were raised being told there is a line, there's a hierarchy, get in line. And they look around and they're like why are these women cutting in on the line? They should be behind me. I've been here longer, and so it creates this unnecessary tension because half of the workforce or, in engineering, most of the workforce is playing by an entirely different set of rules than this small minority don't even know existed.
Wendy :I'm going to give you a sports reference. Even though I know you're not a sports person, I am a sports girl. I did not have to work hard to assimilate to be one of the boys, because I kind of feel like I'm one of the boys most of the time. But this is as if we told everyone we're going to go play football and half of the players went into the locker room and thought they were playing American football and they got pads and helmets, and the other half thought they were playing soccer and they put on some shin guards and we all met on the field and everybody's looking at each other saying what are you doing? We're playing football. We literally have two genders. If we're looking at women in their 40s and older who have come to what they think the game is and the game is entirely different than what they thought they don't have the right equipment, they don't understand the rules, because we were trying so hard to get equality that we didn't slow down to explain what that might cause.
Wendy :And the story I love to tell is that I am a strong, independent woman. That's what we call them in my house Strong independent women and I surround myself with other strong independent women, and that's because of how girls play. We make a little bell curve, without even knowing it, where we are very much like our friends. So if you are the weakest link, the group will actually push you out. You will find another group of which you fit in the middle of the bell curve. And if you are too strong, guess what? Oh, we don't like those alpha females. We push them out too, and then they go find a group where they're all alphas and they're all together. That's my group of females, right? Strong independent women. We were all sort of kicked out for being too tough, and now we all are our own bell curve and we're all in our own happy community.
Wendy :So what I didn't realize when my now high schooler was very young is all the women he knew were leaders in corporate America. All of us led teams. We were all bosses. So I was on a call with my boss one night. This was very common when my kids were little. I spent a lot of time working on international teams and we would have calls at night because it's morning in Asia and so bedtime just happens to be right that magic moment when mommy needs to be on a call. Well, luckily this was the time before the pandemic, before Zoom, and I could just put that laptop right on the bed with me, facilitate a meeting while patting and rubbing a child to sleep. So my children have listened to lots of meetings and almost all of them mommy was the boss. All the other mommies, he knew all bosses.
Wendy :So this particular night my leader, my vice president, was going to be on the call and I told him. I said you have to be very quiet tonight. Mommy's boss is on the phone. He said okay, and we hung up the phone at the end of the meeting and he said mommy, I thought your boss was going to be on the phone and I said he was on the phone and he said boys can be bosses. He had no idea He'd never met a boy boss. So mommy was the only girl on the phone. He thought my boss had stood us up. She had not called into the meeting. How very different of an experience is my child having than all the other little children because of the group of mommy's right. He literally didn't even know that he could be a boss, mind blown when I told him that almost all bosses in the whole planet were boys which he probably went what, what?
Wendy :like we were not going to bed anytime soon because his little brain was all over the place thinking about these possibilities. What a cool experience. But also what happened when we now have the other half of society that doesn't realize that they could be bosses, right? What do we have when we've got all these exciting things for girls to do to build them up and we just tell the boys, like, figure it out, wait in line? Because, by the way, we're still doing that, we're still telling the little boys just wait in line, and we're still telling little girls to go out there and conquer the world. Why aren't we telling everyone to go out there and conquer the world? Why aren't we telling them to take ownership of it? You know, that's actually the reason I wrote my second book. Reimagine your Work is about thinking of yourself as a small business and the product that you sell is you, because everyone needs to know that they have way more power in their career than they think they have, regardless of gender. It's crazy.
Audra :It's because these systems in which we live in are very old and very tired and no longer fit anybody. That's right. I've said for a very long time and people look at me funny when I say it is that the system of the patriarchy hurts everybody because it's an old system and that's what you're referring to is a patriarchal system. It has nothing to do with gender, it has nothing to do with male or female. It's a patriarchal system and it hurts everyone. And you just demonstrated it of the system and it's exactly that is that. Why aren't we telling everybody boys and girls, go out and conquer the world. Go out and conquer the world. You want to be the best chef, regardless if you are male or female, Go be the best chef. You want to be the best nurse, regardless if you are male or female, Go be the best nurse, Doesn't matter. Whatever is lighting your soul on fire. That's what we need you to do as society.
Wendy :we need you, that's right. We need you to go do the be the best you you could possibly be. Forget about this little box you're trying to fit in and figure out what it is that fuels your soul and go set the world on fire. If we all could harness that passion that we have when we're little, before we figure out all the constructs that the world puts around us. You know, when I talk to my students oh, your audience doesn't know I also teach at Georgia Tech. So when I talk to my Georgia Tech engineering students right, I tell them that creativity they've studied it Creativity drops off the minute you hit kindergarten, because we start to explain how the world works to you, and so now there's a structure.
Wendy :I'm not saying that kindergarten's a problem. I'm not saying that our education system is the problem, but what I'm saying is, if we could harness that creative power of those little kids who were not afraid to be wrong and who didn't even know that there were things that you could be wrong at, how cool of a world would that be Right? So we see that drop at kindergarten. We see that drop again at adolescence, when the hormones kick in and we all just want to conform and often we see it drop even more. If you are considered a high performer because you are unwilling to take risks that will tarnish your ability to be seen as a high performer. So if we weren't scared to fail, how much more interesting things could we do?
Audra :Oh, say a little bit more about that, because my audience happens to be an audience full of high performers. I know, because you know, like begets, like I mean you just said the bell curve I mean, let's just face it, the women that listen are all these amazing, incredible, interesting, high performing women. They just, they just are. And, yes, no, not. None of us like to make mistakes, especially not publicly. Not one of us do. Not one of us like to do that. Because we've worked so hard to get where we're at. The last thing we want to do is make fools of ourselves, especially publicly.
Wendy :But we don't want it all to crumble, right. We're all afraid that that one thing in the whole house of cards is going to collapse. Yes, and so my encouragement, being one of those women and this is why you and I became kindred spirits immediately when we talked is we have to understand that it's not a fluke that we're here. Is we have to understand that it's not a fluke that we're here. And one thing is not going to make this all crumble away. Okay, maybe one thing. If it's a big thing, maybe, right, there are lots of like big things you could do that would disrupt your whole career, but you had to be fearless already to get where you are. Don't all of a sudden become afraid now that you are where you are, because, for me, I had my entire career ripped away out from underneath me after 20 years.
Wendy :See, part of my story is that I got laid off effective immediately as a director of a PMO of a Fortune 500 company Reorg. Happens. That's life, right, we were part of a corporate structure that did not need duplicate people. We do it all the time. People are machines and sometimes you don't need two machines. But it should have been the darkest day of my career. Right, it should have been the day that I didn't know what to do, that I was panicked, but it wasn't. It was a day that allowed me to reimagine all these possibilities Because, see, I'd been training for that day my whole life. I had always been responsible with the resources I was given, I was always being intentional, building relationships and I was always being strategic with the job assignments I took by the way, probably what most of your audience does. So that meant, when I didn't have this job anymore, it wasn't like, oh gosh, am I going to do something next? It was like what are all these possibilities? Because I was now a list of experiences not tied to a job, so I could reimagine all of it.
Wendy :Prior to 2022, I was not an author, I was an engineer, I was not a small business owner, I was an employee. I wasn't a speaker and a trainer, I was a leader in a company. But all those things were all skills and experiences that I had that I could package in a way that allows me to talk to so many more people. Employee in a Fortune 500 company. I wouldn't have been in that podcast meetup, I wouldn't have met you, I wouldn't have been able to talk to your audience Without deciding to write a book. I wouldn't have had something interesting to say, I wouldn't have had those ideas put in one place where I can easily talk to people. So if you fail at the thing you're doing today, that doesn't mean you're failing at the thing you're meant to do. It just means you're going to do it differently.
Audra :It may just be the launching pad to your greatest adventure. Yet you never know, you never know, you never know.
Wendy :The possibilities are endless. And for women, especially these strong women, these high-achieving women, our creativity is what got us to these jobs, and it doesn't have to be a creative job. I was an engineer. I wouldn't necessarily say I was in a creative industry, but in order to play with the boys, in order to jump ahead in a line, in order to achieve the great things that your audience achieves, they have had to do some really creative things, because the structure was not there for them just to follow. So just know that you're creative and that you're going to be able to use that creativity for even greater things. So let that knowledge of your creative self be the reason that you're not afraid to take the risks, to do the things that need to be done. And, by the way, because you're good at community, somebody will catch you when you fall. You've got a whole safety net. You're not out there on an island by yourself. That's one of those great things women do. We surround ourselves with people that pick us up when we fall. Know that it's there.
Audra :Be brave. You never know what kind of community you can build. You just have to ask. That's the amazing part of building community with women is that you just have to raise your hand and women will come running. Yeah, I mean, I'm here to tell you that I'm a testament to that, because four years ago I had no idea what I was doing and I just announced to my family I'm going to start a podcast without knowing what in the world I was doing. And here we are, four years later talking to women all over the world and having a global community and it's and, like I said, I raised my hand and said I think I need a community, and it's a community that has done so much good to give back to everybody else. That's been the greatest part about this is being able to give back to everybody else. That's been the greatest part about this is being able to give back to everybody else and connecting as many people together as possible, because everybody needs community. Everybody needs somebody.
Audra :I'm hoping that through this conversation, it connects more people together. That's the whole point of this is that I'm hoping that it gives people some aha moments, maybe makes their experience a little bit easier, like it did for me that when you were like people are just different, they just think differently and I went, oh well, this makes a whole lot of sense, this makes this a whole lot easier. This makes this experience a little bit different. Now I can communicate this from a little different point of view, hoping that does the same for you and it also helps you make, maybe feel a little bit braver in making some, maybe some more creative decisions and maybe doing things that you've considered doing and been like, oh, I don't know what it'll do, do it, do it, go ahead and do it. You're a brilliant person. Give it a shot. I mean, wendy just said that she wasn't all these things before 2022. That's only been two years, two years.
Wendy :A lot can change in two years.
Audra :A lot can change in two years. A lot can change in six months, by the way, a lot can change in a day. Like I said, not what society thinks, not what your family thinks, not what you think you should be, but you actually want is the first person to admit this, because suddenly I get the opportunity to define what that looks like for me, because, as an empty nester, that is a very weird space to be, because you have to come back to yourself and try and figure out what that looks like. Before you became everything to everybody else. Now you've got to figure out well, what does success look like, now that you get to be just for you?
Audra :No idea, I'll let you guys know when I figure that out, but I'm having a good time figuring that out because I don't know. I'm just taking it one day at a time, but it's worth doing and I want you all to do that too. And that's what Wendy's an expert at, and this is just a little taste of what she does. So I hope that this has given you some food for thought, wendy. You know, as we've been listening, if you've been listening to the show for a little bit, you know this is the part where I get to shut up and stop asking you questions and I get an opportunity to stand back from the mic, because I want you to have an intimate moment directly with the audience, so you can give them something to think about and take with them throughout the day. Just give them something to contemplate and really sit back with. So the mic is yours.
Wendy :So if I could leave you with one thought, the thing I want you to know is that success is not the same for anyone, and it's not the same for you today as it was for you 10 years ago or for you as a little girl who was dreaming about what your life would be. It is okay to redefine success however you want, on whatever frequency you want, so that you feel successful every day.
Audra :I think that's perfect. I think that's beautiful and a great reminder, because we're constantly evolving. And, wendy, thank you. Thank you for having this conversation with me and being brave enough to break it down for us, because no one has ever broken it down for me like this, quite like this, in easy digestible pieces, where I finally went ah, that makes sense. So thank you for doing that and thank you for having this conversation.
Wendy :It has been wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.
Audra :Well, thank you for the work you do, and if people want to hear more about your work and read your books, where would they contact you?
Wendy :So you can go. I'm a very, very complicated lady. You can go to making flexworkcom, and I'm right, there, right. So the book is Making Flex Work. The website is Making Flex Work. The second book is Reimagine your Work. I'm not particularly creative. I told you I'm an engineer. So if you go to reimagineyourworkcom, that takes you to the same place. My business is Engineering Leadership Solutions. If you go to engineeringleadershipsolutionscom, that takes you right to me too no-transcript.
Audra :That all ready for you. Once again, thank you for being here, thank you for this conversation and thank you for your friendship. I really enjoy having you as a guest and I will bring you back because I'm sure there's lots of amazing, wonderful things and all kinds of trouble we can get into. Oh, we can cause some trouble. Oh, I plan on it. So thank you again for being here and thank all of you for listening, and we'll see you again next time.
