Jane Finette learned about the value of leadership coaching late in her career, but when she finally did, it changed everything.
She left her position as Chief of Staff to the CEO of Mozilla, the global internet company behind the Firefox browser, to launch The Coaching Fellowship. This non-profit organization helps advance young women as social change leaders by giving them the coaching they need to become their best selves. It’s a community of professionally-trained, volunteer coaches who span more than 25 countries. Since its inception in 2014, more than 1,000 women from 70 countries have graduated from the Coaching Fellowship.
“I’ve had a lot of training over my 25-year career, but never anything quite like coaching. And it cracked my world open,” says Jane Finette. “I immediately realized I was in the wrong career and understood that most of my successes so far were not much more than happy accidents. It wasn’t until I experienced coaching, that I could make solid decisions with positive intention.”
Author Jane Finette
Jane has recently published her first book, Unlocked – How Empowered Women Empower Women as both a referendum on women’s inequality and a toolkit for leveling the playfield for women and girls. It’s a collection of real-world short stories about female leaders who are working to propel women and girls forward.
“Sexual violence statistics are through the roof, sub-Saharan girls are not in school, US women are losing many rights and in Afghanistan, 20 years of headway was wiped out in a few days. Reading these headlines in the throes of the pandemic, I realized that women lost a generation of progress in 2020,” says Jane. “But I believe we can turn this around when every woman stands up for other women. That’s why my book Unlocked is part inspiration, part practical guide.”
In this episode, you’ll learn about Jane’s own experience of leadership coaching and how it changed the trajectory of her career and her life. You’ll learn how she’s taken what she learned from coaching and turned it into a global movement to empower women and girls. You’ll be inspired by Jane’s uplifting and instructive view of the power of women in leadership.
Listen here:
Listener Competition
Win a signed copy of Unlocked – How Empowered Women Empower Women, by Jane Finette, founder of The Coaching Fellowship.
To enter the draw, share a link to this podcast on social media and tag Trilogy Effect (our social media profiles are linked below). Enter by November 30th, 2021, to be included in the December 1st draw. Good luck to everyone!
More information about leadership, coaching and The Coaching Fellowship:
We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!
Apple Podcasts |Google Podcasts | I Heart Radio | Spotify | Amazon
MACHINE GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. It may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.
Being Human Is Good For Business Podcast with Jane Finette
Sherrilynne: Hello, I'm Sherrilynne Starkie and welcome to Being Human is Good for Business, the podcast for business leaders who want to build high performance teams today. I'm joined by Wendy Appel, she's the author of ‘Inside Out Enneagram’ the game-changing guide for leaders and she's also a founding partner of Trilogy Effect. Hi Wendy.
Wendy Appel: Hey!
Sherrilynne: Together, she and I are welcoming Jane Finnete, a passionate advocate for women and girls and the author of ‘Unlocked, How Empowered Women Empower Women’ which has just been released. Jane is also the founder of ‘The Coaching Fellowship’, a non-profit organization, which helps advance young women, as social change leaders. Since its inception back in 2014, more than a thousand women from 70 countries have graduated from the Coaching Fellowship. Wendy got on board very early as a volunteer coach and she’s personally coached dozens of young women leaders, a couple of whom that we've met on past episodes of this podcast. So I've been tremendously impressed with what I've learned about Jane's organization so far, and so I am very excited to welcome her to the show. Thank you for coming on the show.
Jane Finette: Sherrilynne, thank you so very much for having me. It's a joy to be with you today.
Sherrilynne: So can we start at the very beginning? Why don't you tell us a little bit about how and why you started the Coaching Fellowship?
Jane Finette: Thank you. I would love to. I actually got access to leadership development and coaching when I had “quote unquote” sort of already made it as an executive. I used to have a really big job at Mozilla, that's the folks behind the Firefox web browser. I made it into the executive team and then suddenly was anointed with all of this opportunity for resources for executive coaching and leadership development. Quite honestly, I'd had a lot of training in my 25-plus year career, but never anything quite like coaching and it cracked my world open. I thought, ‘Goodness, I think I'm in the wrong job,’ first of all, and I was really surprised that I had sort of gotten this far without really knowing myself intimately.
There were lots of things that I'd done in my life and my career, on purpose, which kind of ended up being sort of a happy accident, I suppose, but it wasn't until I was much older and had this opportunity of coaching, that I could really make decisions with Intention and kind of really understood what was underneath it all. So I decided that, first of all, I was going to get trained as a coach, which I did. Then I wanted to give back, I wanted to really help young women get access to something that I had had because I had made it. I was turning around asking myself, ‘Gosh, what if I had had this opportunity 25 years ago? What decisions would I have made, what would I have done differently?” I felt that it was critical to help someone have this information much earlier in their careers. Then on top of that, thinking about young women and impact, who absolutely were not going to get access to this gift of coaching and leadership development.
So that's where I focus my efforts, with the belief that if we could help them very early in their careers, that they would not burn out and may be able to do, and create, even more impact in the world and bring others with them as well. That was my humble beginnings, but it was a lot of being late in my career and realizing, ‘Gosh, this is something I wished I could have had a long time ago.”
Sherrilynne: Jane, tell me a little bit about the fellowship today. What's your organization look like and what are you working on?
Jane Finette: Yes, thank you. So to date, we run two pretty big fellowship programs a year, and we look for young women who are social change makers, so they are high-potential young women leaders and they're generally working in non-profits, or they are founders of non-profits and they’re social impact entrepreneurs. They’re also working in social enterprises or they're activists and, as you mentioned in the introduction, they come from more than 70 countries.
So we work globally. We welcome fellows from everything from Myanmar to Argentina, to Cambodia, South Africa and an awful lot in the US, as well, and across Europe and Africa. So we run this program, it's six months long, and it's an application-based program. We give our fellows access to six months of executive coaching of which Wendy has been able to coach so very many of these women, which has been really fantastic.
Then, in addition, they become part of our network. I think the largest network of young social change women leaders across the world. They connect and we have additional training and opportunities for them to build bridges and have a shared experience and help support each other.
Wendy Appel: I know that Patricia, who we had on one of our podcasts, she said that was a huge benefit for her, of working with the coaching fellowship, was the support network, which has been just an extraordinary thing for her in her career.
Jane Finette: Yes, I mean, we know that women who have a strong network around them are two and a half times more likely to succeed. I think in the impact space, you can have a lot of, sort of, co-colleagues, those maybe who are first time leaders or even entrepreneurs and CEO’s in their own right and in the impact space there was very little opportunity for them to connect and have a shared experience.
When you think of sort of the for-profit world, one would see organizations such as the entrepreneurs organization, or young presidents, or even chief.com these days, an elevate network, but very little happening in the impact space. So that has been wonderful to help foster these relationships.
I talk a lot about ‘The Hero's Journey’ Joseph Campbell's work and so I call it ‘the heroine’s journey’ and the part in ‘The Hero’s Journey’ where you get into the pit and you're stuck and it’s hard and there were two things that Campbell says that will get you out of that pit. That is faith and allies and I see from the Coaching Fellowship’s perspective, what we're doing is, on the one hand, is the faith, faith in working with your coach, faith in yourself and what you're here to do and your abilities and your experiences and that you will triumph then, absolutely.
Then the allies and the people around you that are going to hold you and help you, whether that's your coach or your co-colleagues and the fellowship as well. Yeah, we need we definitely need a village.
Sherrilynne: It sounds incredibly powerful. I kind of wish I had something like that early in my career, too.
Jane Finette: I do hear you, absolutely. I'm really curious, I'm super curious, gosh, because we're all getting older and I've only been doing this for seven years, but won't it be interesting to be 25 years down the line and see what are these women doing now? Who are they? What's the impact that they're making, because let me tell you they're extraordinary today. So much about what we're doing is, nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing, it's about helping them do and be more in the world because man, do we need it? We need them. They're extraordinary women, I’m super proud of them.
Sherrilynne: Wendy, tell me a little bit about how you got involved in this fellowship?
Wendy Appel: Sure. I came at it from a different place, in that, I had been wanting to put my time and energy into passion projects and things that matter. My career's gone well, it goes well and it’s kind of ticking along, but I wanted to invest in areas that I really felt where I could make a difference. So I had been looking and looking and I have two fundamentals, there's sort of like if you care about everything, you care about nothing.
So I had to really say, ‘Okay, just pick one or two,’ and the two that rose to the top of the surface are young women and giving them a hand up. Like Jane was saying, and you were saying, what if we had had this when we were young women in the business world? I never did. I didn't even have a really good mentor. I really wanted to give back to young women and then also, environmental issues and, to a degree, the Coaching Fellowship hits both of those targets because of some of the social impact entrepreneurs are focused in that arena.
So one day I was sort of contemplating, ‘How am I going to find this organization, where I'm going to put my time, energy and attention? In my Facebook feed a post popped up by somebody I know and respect who said, ‘Hey, anybody's interested? There's this organization that’s just started its called the Coaching Fellowship and they’re looking for coaches, et cetera, et cetera.’ They described Jane’s organization and I just clicked on it and that was it. I just said ‘here it is’ and so it landed in my path.
Jane Finette: We were the lucky ones, and it was so early, Sherrilynne. I mean it was, gosh, we weren’t even a year old. So Wendy has been a part of the growth of the organization and been a supporter in so very many ways, as well as the coaching. So, yeah, you’ve watched it grow and been part of the growth, deeply, Wendy.
Wendy Appel: Yes, it been so exciting to see how it's evolved and what it has evolved to. I mean, you've done an amazing job taking this from a vision and a dream to actually manifesting something so incredible. I mean, I’m just, I'm in awe.
Jane Finette: Thank you.
Sherrilynne: That has a real impact on real people's lives, right? Can you share with me the kinds of issues that you're helping your fellows deal with and overcome so that they're able to step into their power?
Jane Finette: Yes, absolutely. We actually spent two years with the University of Southern California on a longitudinal study and we know, conversationally, what other things that the fellows like to welcome. We completed, at the end of last year, this study, which was really fascinating and I'll share a little bit more, of course.
In the early days when I first started the Coaching Fellowship, I remember that distinctly, the very first program that we ran, we had nearly 800 applications and it was shocking. It was a bit too many; I'd gone from 50 to 800 six months later. I would read. the applications and it was me, kind of pretty much doing everything, at the time. Then I did recruit a selection committee and things went on from there, but I used to read every single application and let me tell you, 95% of the women all wanted to work on confidence and it just about killed me.
I would be crying, reading these applications of the most accomplished young women, doing the most extraordinary things to make this world better. Yet they all were struggling with self-doubt and self-assurance that they were in the right place and in the right boots, doing the right thing, and were they enough and could they do this?
It really used to get me down, but then I had this realization that it was okay because we were helping them with coaching. I couldn't help them raise more money for their organizations, I didn't know Bill Gates or Melinda Gates very well. I couldn't help them with a massive network of funders and things like that, but man, we could actually help them with confidence.
We could do that, we could help show them that they have everything they need already and that they're magnificent because they are. So, I just wanted to share that small story at the start because that was kind of like where I really dug in and thought, ‘Man, you know, we can do this. What would be different if confidence was a thing?
So, with the study that we did with USC, other things were exposed such as much more sort of professional tactical things, you could say, being quite uncertain about decision-making, being a first time manager, worrying about fundraising, being in a position of being an entrepreneur and being responsible for employees and staff and the product and so on. I would like to say that the coaching that we're doing is not advice, it is not mentoring, it is not, ‘we're going to help you with your capital or your marketing plan.’ What we're going to do is help you help yourself from the place that, ‘you already have all of the answers or you know how to get the answers, but we're going to help you figure that out for yourself, so you're in your full power and potential.’
Sherrilynne: And does this reflect your experience Wendy?
Wendy Appel: Yes, absolutely, I mean, now that you're asking. I'm kind of harkening back, sort of flipping pages through all the people I’ve coached, mentally, and this a common theme, most definitely it’s confidence, asking for what they want and deserve in terms of a raise, in terms of applying for a new position, in terms of stating there terms, such as ‘I will start on this date, I have a vacation planned, just even things like that. It’s how to have those difficult conversations and also difficult conversations with people that report to them or board members or whatever. A lot of it is helping them feel confident and comfortable that they can take some of this on and stand for themselves and behind themselves and alongside themselves, and I’m a placeholder for that until they can do it.
Sherrilynne: Jane, why did you write ‘Unlocked: How Empowered Women Empower Women’?
Jane Finette: Through difficult circumstances. I sat, more than a year ago, and in the middle of the pandemic, reading headline after headline, and news articles of women going backwards, not forwards. Women lost a generation of progress in 2020 according to the World Economic Forum. Sexual violence numbers were going through the roof, and more and more children of sub-Saharan Africa not being able to go to school and it just wholly depressed me and I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness, I created this organization where we're empowering women and what is going on? This is devastating.’ I was thinking to myself, ‘My goodness, I get to work with the most extraordinary young women leaders every day and I'm depressed, like I'm struggling. What is everybody else feeling like?’
I pick myself up…. ‘this is not true,’ Of course these headlines are true, don't get me wrong, the numbers are real , the problems are incredibly real and I know enough, I've seen enough, that there is great progress happening for women and girls. So I want people to know that, because we don't we don't actually have a lot of those good progress newsworthy articles out there.
A chunk of the book is actually telling those stories, including some of the fellows of the Coaching Fellowship and the work that they have done to advance the progress for women and girls around the world. Then the second part is, ‘We've had the vote for more than a hundred years and we're still fighting and I mean, my God, like chaining ourselves to railings and going on the women's marches and things like that.’ It’s done something, but we're still here, we're still losing our rights in various states, in the United States. You look at Afghanistan all the progress that we've made and then in one fell swoop it’s gone.”
There's just so many of these kinds of stories and, call me naive, call me absolutely naive, but I really think women helping women is how we will solve this. This is how we will reach gender equity, it is actually when every woman stands up for every other woman, in her life and in her, in the world. These are not difficult things to do and yet, I know, and I'm wondering the men and the women listening to this podcast is, ‘Okay you you better not mess with an empowered woman, right? I mean, she will move heaven and earth.” So it's palpable for me. ‘Goodness me, what happens when we get that kind of energy out there? Like what kind of change can we make? Like if we get more money in the hands of more women will capitalism change? If more women have more exposure in media and get more stories and get more and more coverage and more voice will social attitudes change? Will diversity be more appreciated that we actually want different perspectives and different people?’ We need laws changed and gender racial bias needs to be a thing of the past, but ultimately all that starts with you and me and a single action.
Like I said, maybe I'm naive, but I really want women to know that they can take very small actions, which will have very big repercussions, but where it does require that we all do it and we do it often and we tell others to do it. It sounds cliché, but we are the change we have to be.
Sherrilynne: We really are at such a moment of change in the working world right now. I’ve been reflecting lately on these large technology companies that are coming out and saying, ‘Well, okay we hear you, you say you want to keep working from home because it works better for you and we’re willing to do that, but you’re not getting the big pay cheque if you’re not coming into the office and you’re going to be on a reduced package.
I just cringed when I started seeing these headlines come out, because you know who it is, who's going to be taking the package. You know who it is that’s going to self-select and stay home because it makes life so much more manageable when they have a family and that kind of stuff and I really feel there’s, I guess the word is there’s a risk of us taking a giant step back with this new trend. I certainly hope the women and girls listening to this podcast harken on this and don’t take the step back and fight for your right to work from home.
Jane Finette: Yes, and help a sister also stay in the workforce and demand what she’s worth. I heard Sallie Krawcheck from Ellevest say on the radio the other day. She was actually quoting another lady whose name I am forgetting right now, but she said, ‘Other countries have social systems for security and, in America, we have women.’ I kind of hate to say it, but it’s like, yeah, who is going to take the step back? Who was going to stop working, who is going to stop, because we do have our children, we do have our elders, we do have the groceries and everything else, and I don’t mean to moan but that really is enough. We had some fragile gains and the pandemic has exposed these very fragile gains and we absolutely cannot go back.
Sherrilynne: So what are your readers going to learn from this book?
Jane Finette: Goodness, I don't even know where to start, Sherrilynne. When I was writing it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I think this could be like ten volumes, but nobody needs to read ten volumes of this.
I think from the stories, I know people will be inspired. The stories cover everything from Colonel Candice Frost, who was the US Army's glass ceiling breaker. Extraordinary, she literally smashed every role she could have had in the US Army, as a woman, and has led the charge for more women to follow in her footsteps. She's an extraordinary human being, and I think to myself, ‘Gosh, if a woman can make it in the most masculine kind of industry on the planet then there's hope for us all too.’ This is kind of near to my heart, just at the moment, with everything that's going on in Afghanistan. There’s an incredible young woman called Fereshteh Forough, she is founder of an organization, Rebuilding Afghanistan 2.0, and opened the first coding school for girls in Herat in Afghanistan. She was born a refugee and fled from the Taliban in the early 2000’, and she was able to finally go back and was teaching girls web design and how to code. The most extraordinary thing about them, was these girls would then go on to earn double or triple of any other relative in their family with this work.
She is one incredibly strong young woman, just in her mid thirties, she’s seen the world and seen and experienced so much. So, I hope that these stories are inspirational and also a reminder, I guess, for most of us living quite comfortably in our homes with our nice beds and computers, and all these things that we do take a lot for granted. So we can use our voice, we can use our resources for good.
The other part is those keys, the ten keys to helping unlock another woman's potential. They're not meant to be complicated, they are really easy and I definitely had a whole bunch of saboteur time where I was like, ‘My God, will anybody think these are worth anything, really? Be the example they’ve heard that 50,000 times you know.’ But, I hope that it's with a different flare to empower someone else, when you take action, to be the example, and do this consciously and with intention. One of the keys I talk about is to actually talk about money. I'm sure you've talked about this on this podcast before, but we have a very difficult relationship, I don’t want to generalize us all, but that vast majority of us have a very challenging relationship with money. It’s either a lot of guilt and shame, or a lot of confusion and a lot of just that we don’t know what we’re supposed to do with because we’ve never been taught. That’s part of our patriarchal systems as well, which we’re taught to save and be careful with it, while men are told to invest it, and grow it and do something with it, it’s useful, it’s a vehicle for change. That is something that we can do as women, as well, even if we admit, ‘Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing, but can we figure this out together?’
It pains me that women in America will retire with less money than their husbands and that is not only because they’re earning less. We’re earning 73 cents on the dollar compared to our male counterparts, but we’re also not investing it, so we’re not going to make as much and that compounds over time, so that one in three women in America will actually retire in poverty. That cannot be a ‘thing’, when you have worked your entire life.
Sherrilynne: Well, I can't wait to read this book. It sounds so inspiring and I'm looking forward to getting my copy. If the book is half as inspiring as Jane is talking it’s going to be fantastic.
Wendy Appel: If the book is half as inspiring as Jane is talking, it's going to be fantastic.
Jane Finette: Thank you. Bless you. Thank you.
Sherrilynne: So Jane, where can people get your book?
Jane Finette: Thank you, they can search for ‘Unlocked: Powerful Women Empowering Powerful Woman’ on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and it's also available internationally as well. So Amazon, wherever you are in the world, just search for it, it’s available in e-book and paperback and I’d be delighted if your listeners would love to check it out.
Wendy Appel: I’m just so grateful that you exist, you’re making such a difference in the world for so many people. I’ve been on this journey with you and saw your ups and downs with the Coaching Fellowship and funding for it, to keep it going and how that all evolved. It was obviously meant to be, but it didn't just happen, your vision, your persistence, your hard work, your grace, and watching that, witnessing that, you’re such an inspiration to me. I think about you and you're like a pebble in a pond and you and your energy and everything that you've done is just a rippling out, literally across the globe. So, if we think one person can’t make a difference….
Sherrilynne: Thank you to Jane and Wendy for joining me on today’s show and thanks to all you listeners. I hope you never miss an episode by subscribing to our podcast and liking us and sharing us with your friends. Please leave a rating or review that really does help people find our podcast. Thank you once again for joining us until next time. I’m your host, Sherrilynne Starkie and this is the Being Human is Good For Business podcast.