In this episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast we talk to a leader whose career at GSK and Unilever spanned six countries. Helen Appleby led a $1 billion consumer healthcare business before changing track to focus on women’s leadership. Her book, the Unwritten Rules of Women’s Leadership is a practical career guide to help women develop the self awareness, confidence and tools they need to take on leadership roles.
In this interview, Helen shares the top ‘unwritten rules’ and her own leadership journey.
Author Helen Appleby
“As a little girl, my dad told me that girls could do anything that boys can do, and I believed him. But what he didn’t tell me was things can be a lot harder for girls,” explains Helen. “He didn’t tell me the world of work is different for women, and I had to discover for myself and learn how to navigate the many ‘unwritten rules’ for women at work.”
In her book, Helen has included everything she knows now, that she wishes she had known earlier in her career. Things like how to:
make your invisible work visible
build self confidence
find mentors and sponsor that will accelerate your career
have difficult conversations and resolve conflict
manage up…so that you can advance your career and contribution.
Trilogy Effect’s Managing Director Heather Marasse agrees that, for women, often a lot of their important work remains invisible. She says, “Sometimes the work women do remains invisible because they do it so well. It doesn’t get noticed because leadership is more focused on exceptions and variances in performance. Women are reluctant to promote their own successes and instead can develop a creeping resentment that their efforts go unrecognized.”
In this podcast, Helen and Heather provide real life examples and practical tips for women leaders as they share their own experiences and leadership development expertise.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE
Links to helpful resources and information about some of the tools and concepts mentioned on the show:
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 AUTHOR HELEN APPLEBY
Once I did get to where I always wanted to be in my career that, if I knew what I knew now, it would have been much, much easier, but I hadn't learned it. Nobody had told me that I'd have to figure it out. So that was really the kind of essence of the birth of beyond written rules. It was really the stuff that I wasn't told and I wish that I had learned earlier in my career. It was that
specifically, a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it, was how you navigate as a woman, that I wasn't told, because, there are different things that work for men than work for women.
Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. In each episode, the leadership development experts at Trilogy Effect explore how the process of self-discovery unleashes potential in us all.
Now here's your host Sherrilynne Starkie.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Hello, I'm Sherrilynne Starkie and welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. Today, I am joined by two leadership experts: welcome Heather Marasse, Managing Partner at Trilogy Effect, and also welcome to Helen Appleby author of the wonderful book, The Unwritten Rules of Women's Leadership. Helen is an Executive Coach who has run a $1 billion dollar
Business. She's a mother, a podcaster, and a role model for women leaders who has lived and worked in six countries and I am so happy to have you both on the show.
Helen Appleby: Thank you both.
Heather Marasse: Lovely to have you here. Thank you for coming.
Sherriynne Starkie: So why don't we start at the very beginning Helen and you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your career background
Helen Appleby: Of course. Yes, I mean you did a pretty good job there. I've recently published a book and I'm a coach and an author and a podcaster and a women's leadership trainer. Previous to that, which is where I know Heather from, I had my own commercial career which, as you said, spanned many countries, but brought me here to the US in 2007.
It as a commercial marketing career working for a big pharmaceutical plant, which was great. I guess along the way, though, I realized that I liked growing people more than I liked growing brands or businesses and I said that out loud to a coach, I had a coach. Once I'd said that out loud, he said, oh, what are you going to do with that and the genie was out of the bottle
Sherrilynne Starkie: Exactly.
Helen Appleby: The genie wouldn't go back in the bottle so, hence began a five-year plan to transition out of corporate life and into this new world, so I am kind of an accidental entrepreneur. Along that journey I really found that I loved, loved, loved coaching very senior leaders and women on their leadership journey, which has led to the podcast and the book and the course, and really my life's work. It’s what I'm here on the planet for, which is to make the workplace healthier and to help women succeed and get the recognition that they deserve.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Changing track here a little bit, Helen I've recently read your book, The Unwritten Rules of Women's Leadership and I’ve got to say I loved it because I felt like you totally nailed it. What brought you to the idea that this book needed to be written?
Helen Appleby: Thank you, Sherrilynne first of all. I guess what brought me to it was the recognition that, I succeeded, but it was probably harder than it should have been. So, you know, when my dad told me when I was little that girls can do anything, boys can do, I believed him, but he didn't tell me, some of the stuff that would be really hard.
Like that I would sometimes cry, and try and cry, silently in the bathroom and that I would take conflict so personally. That I really didn't get good at stakeholder management and that whole process of managing up until much later in my career than I should have done. Yet, I went on all the courses, you know, I was on all the, the high potential programs and I was on the Unilever
Company's Management Development Program. Then there was a real sense. I think, once I did get to where I always wanted to be in my career. That if I knew what I knew now, it would have been much, much easier, but I haven't learned it, nobody had told me that I'd have to figure it out.
So that was really the kind of essence of the birth of beyond written rules. It was really the stuff that I wasn't told and I wish that I had learned earlier in my career. It that was specifically, a lot
of it, not all of it, but a lot of it, was how you navigate as a woman, that I wasn't told, because, there are different things that work for men that work for women, and the different tendencies
that we have. So, the topics in the book are, they’re on leadership topics, as you saw, but I've picked them because they're typically the areas that everyone can struggle with, but the women disproportionately often struggle with. So it was a real sense of wanting to make it better for the women that came behind me and also wanting to make it better for all of our daughters.
Sherrilynne Starkie: I was really excited to read your book and see it as kind of a handbook for women leaders coming up behind us or not even women leaders, just women who work, coming up behind us and learning from the hard slog that some of our generation went through in learning these unwritten rules
Helen Appleby: And it's very deliberately designed to be really practical, so I’m glad that you found it that way. I describe it as kind of strategies and tools and approaches to really do things
differently. You know, I do a lot of like ‘say this and don't say this, say that,’ and helping with the vocabulary so that it's really actionable in the workplace immediately. It was really designed to
be practical and thank you, I'm glad it landed that way for you.
Heather Marasse: It did for me too, for sure.
Sherrilynne Starkie: What do you think is the number one unwritten rule that women need to learn?
Helen Appleby: Oh, there's a lot and I guess the one I coach on a lot and the one that I end up being asked a lot about is this concept of visibility. I wish I had learned this ten years earlier in
my career and it’s that there is invisible work, and visible work, and that we only get judged on our visible work. I think many women, including me, kind of work on the premise that if we do good work, then our work will be noticed and we will get recognized and paid and promoted because of it.
I guess, you know, what you find out as you go through your thirties and forties is that it doesn't work like that. That approach on its own is really not how everyone's playing the game. So, being quiet or, the other thing that I see women do a lot, is relying just on their boss to promote their work and to recognize it and to make it visible, but bosses are really busy.
Even if they actually do it, our job then becomes how do we help them do it really well and what I say to women is ‘it's really your job to me, make your work visible’. I guess, back in the day, I kind of knew that and it wasn't really an unwritten rule, but where that then took me, back then, was like, ‘oh, I have to self-promote’. That feels so yucky and inauthentic and I just felt so
“salesy” and just like, ‘oh, I don't really want to do that.’ Like it’s on the to-do list, you know, ‘I must do that soon,’ but it never made it up to the top. So the change for me, the flip point, I think for me on that journey, was realizing not to think of it as self-promotion, but to think of it as education. To really think about what is my visible work?
Right. So to really think, ‘what is my visible work and what is my invisible work?’ To focus on ‘what is my invisible work and what are the results that I deliver?’ ‘What is the work that I do, or the value that I add that people don't know about?’ Then to really sit and say, ‘okay, so who's people right, because we don't need to be on a billboard on Times Square, do we? So, the people that need to know are the people that will be in the room or consulted when your next role is discussed, so your next move or your next promotion. Typically people will say, ‘oh that's my boss that’s HR, ‘ and then I say, ‘are you sure, I don’t think it is?’
Then I say, ‘go back,’ I think that list is between six and ten people. It's other senior leaders, it's previous bosses, it's the peers that you work with, it's the divisional president it's maybe your HR day-to-day leader and maybe their boss too. So what's that list and then what is the invisible work that they don't know about and that flip being, can your educate them?
So you set up a meeting and tell them, give them an update, ask for their advice, and bring them in on all the things that you do and the value that you add. That will get you the recognition, the promotion, and or the pay that you really deserve, and women, we're just not great at it. We just would prefer to do good work and hope that it works out and it decelerates our careers.
Sherrilynne Starkie: So true, can you give us some examples of what typically remains invisible, what kind of invisible work are women doing?
Helen Appleby: I think it varies. Like when I say that in a room, when I talk, or give a talk to women's employee resource groups, which I often did, in person before COVID. When I say, ‘what’s the invisible work that you do?’ that the normal reaction I get is, ‘ugh’ and their eyes roll and they say there's so much that I do and they have no idea of the crap I put up with, with the barriers that I have to go through and the results that I deliver. You know, if I moved on, they'd have to replace me with two people.
You know, I think that if we just think back and think about our jobs, it's actually, if you take the time, it's not that hard to identify what is invisible in, in a particular role.
Heather Marasse: Yeah, and I think there's the obvious stuff, like, ‘who's going to take the minutes of this meeting?’ I hate to say it, but that gets asked all the time.
Helen Appleby: The “community work” women get asked proportionately to do community work.
Heather Marasse: Yes and who’s going to make sure that everybody has it on their schedules
and that kind of stuff, because there isn’t the level of administrative support that there used to be in an organization. So a lot of that administrative work is still the invisible stuff that
somebody has to do, but to your point, I think that, depending on the role, there will be work that's invisible hat's kind of unique to your role that you don't even realize maybe is invisible. You just have a creeping resentment climbing up your spine about the fact that people don't seem to get it and that's probably a good clue.
Helen Appleby: It is, that “Spidey Sense” I think, that is what I see when I see the audience’s eyes roll. I think it's often not just the admin stuff, but in many just be the value that you add or the results that you deliver. If a piece of business that you're working on is doing well are you telling people, are you telling them these are the results and this is what the research showed,
or this is where our focus is, or this is a new account that we brought in or this was the result of the audit, that kind of thing, often. I think it's business as usual, but women don't tell when it goes well, because they just kind of take it for granted and carry on, whereas that isn't often
how men do it. They will shout it from the rooftops and write the email and tell the senior stakeholders, and people know, they claim the credit. Whereas women are often just a bit reluctant, we use “we” a lot, much more than men do, when we talk about our work, which is not wrong, but in terms of claiming credit, even if you claim it for the team, we're much more reluctant to do that than men are.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Claim credit, that really resonated with me because one of the things that I was thinking about with this invisible work and advocating for yourself beyond your direct report. Often times a direct report might be very happy to let everyone, in the wider organization, think that this individual is responsible for all this progress and that might not actually be the facts. It might be that the women on his team, or her team, are working away in the background on invisible work.
Heather Marasse: I think that the business is usual stuff and things that are going well, it's a good point because most businesses, especially at the senior level, there's so much going on that you focus on the exceptions and the variances. So, if things are going well there’s not a lot of air time or communication around the value being provided just by the solid performance of stuff that's working, and that’s a really good point.
Helen Appleby: Yes and these days tend to work in a matrix don't we? So, if you're somebody in the centre that's providing materials for a market, then often the market will get the credit rather than the people than the centre, or the dangerous people in center. There are a lot of blurred lines in how we work in these cross-functional teams and, like I said, it's the people that need to know are the people who will be in the room or consulted when your next role is discussed. The whole town doesn't need to know, but those people do need to know.
Heather Marasse: Yeah, remember, it makes me think of something that I learned early in my career that I didn't realize I was learning. It was learning about account management and it was, of course, for sales work, but I started to realize that it was important for internal work, as well, to navigate the influence structure. Where is the power structure, where do decisions get made,
not according to the org chart, but according to what I see going on. So, you start to be able to map out where the influencing is happening. It's to your point that these are the people who it would be wise to share the value of being produced by ‘me and my organization’, and why it matters to them, ‘we're helping you in these ways and is there more we can do?’
Helen Appleby: I agree there's a whole other chapter in there on influencing skills and the stakeholder management process. Earlier in my career, I thought that if I just showed up to the meeting and I had done good work, then I could kind of the silver platter, in the restaurant, you know, ‘surprise it was brilliant work and everybody would agree. Then as you get older and
wiser you realize that the meeting actually happens before the meeting and that actually, as you get more senior, your job is actually to not to do the work, but to prepare for the meeting and exactly, as you say, Heather, go along and have those discussions of ‘this is what we're working
on, what do you think and give me your input, and how would it work in your market and what does that mean for your customers?’ Get their input and build it with them, because of what I say to women is ‘people support what they helped build,’ subconsciously, That's why you can get children to eat vegetables if they helped you cook them because it's subconscious
Sherrilynne Starkie: So true.
Helen Appleby: So if you arrive at the meeting and the stakeholders, will have been managed before, then you know. You know who the advocates are, they feel like they've been brought on the journey, and then you can show the solution and the meeting happens as you expect it to happen. But again, I don't know that I was really taught back as early as I really needed to know it. I kind of resented it like, this is just more work, we've done the good work so why can't the work speak for itself? It doesn’t work like that.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Right, how has your book been received so far?
Helen Appleby: It's been a great, to be honest, what I've had is, ‘wow, thank you, it's really practical.’ The other thing that has been was really heart-warming was last Christmas, I accomplished it last November, October or November, it was just how many of my girlfriends and women that I'd known on the journey had bought it for their friends for Christmas, which was so nice. I really didn’t expect that at all.
So, yes, it’s been great and it’s really helped, because you have a book and it’s really much easier with content for social media and then it's now obviously become a course. The book is a course that has activity worksheets, and coaching with me to go alongside it, but there is a book of the course, which is great, and helps course participants too.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Lets change track here and go on to talk about practical things that people can use in leadership. One thing that Heather and I talk about on the podcast a lot is the Enneagram framework and it is such a practical tool that Heather uses, and her team use, with all the work that they do with leadership development. So I wondered if you were familiar with it, is it something that you use?
Helen Appleby: Oh my goodness it’s so close to my heart, thanks to Heather actually, and working with Trilogy. So, when I was running that business, we were fortunate to be working with Trilogy and Heather and the Trilogy Team brought Enneagram to us in a big way and I have
never looked back. I am, to this day, a devoted student of it, and I use it with my one-on-one clients all the time. I like it because, as a coach working one-on-one with a client, it seems pretty unique to me in personality testing types, in that, it looks at what drives us from the inside.
That's why I like to use it, to really understand, not so much determine if someone an extrovert or an introvert, which is more about how they look on the outside. Enneagram is more about, what drives us from the inside. So back then understanding what Enneagram type I was and understanding that other people are different types. I guess, whenever you’re using a personality tool, whatever it is, one of the most important things that finding out your personality type gives you is that you realize there are types and that not everyone's the same and actually having people around you that are different is actually an advantage and they're not just annoying because they’re not like you.
So it gives us, as a team, a shared language, and an appreciation of different types. For me, one of the great things about Enneagram is that it tells you what you are like at a level when you're feeling healthy at a higher level of health, and then where do you go when you're in the grip or not doing so well and having taught us these wake up signs for when we're descending through the levels of health and how to catch ourselves. So it was enormously useful.
Sherrilynne Starkie: I wanted to move on to talk about it gender in the workplace because I feel like that's an important topic in this context, and because we're talking about, your book which is all for women leaders. Yet, I feel that young men also struggle, in the current context to, to become leaders. Do you think that men still don’t have the same struggles as women do when it comes to thriving and surviving in the corporate world?
Helen Appleby: I think the leadership lessons that are in the book could be for anyone, I'm specifically trying to make a difference for women, but there's a chapter in the back. It’s an afterword at the back for men that want to help. It’s for senior leaders, and I asked them questions like, ‘do you lead a team or do you lead an organization that you'd want your daughter to work for, and if not, what are you going to do about it?’
Heather Marasse: It just struck me that I wish I had been given this book to earlier in my career.
I did have mentors, but pretty much, exclusively, they were all men and there were some things that men did teach me that are in your book. So even that, the unwritten rules for women leaders, is great for men who are mentoring women, it's not just for women who are mentoring women because I was mentored, I was very fortunate and so were you, when you read the book to be mentored by some really great men and who cared about me advancing and could see that there were some areas where I would be at an automatic disadvantage unless I understood these things. Such things as the influencing piece that you talked about earlier—the meeting happens before the meeting. I was taught that, but I didn’t want to hear it just like you, and I was taught that like men.
Helen Appleby: So I guess the unwritten bit, on the mentors for me though is, as a mentor, we tend to be drawn to mentoring people that remind us of ourselves when we were younger. So I guess, you know, in the afterword, what I say to men is who do you mentor? Sit down and make a list, who do you mentor, who do you book a coffee with, whose career do you take interest in? They may not be a mentor with a capital ‘M’, but whose career you take interest and who do you sponsor? Which means, who do you advocate for when they're not in the room and to bring awareness to that list?
My experience, Heather, was, that we did get mentored, but the men around me got it a lot more. So what I say to women now is if you want really great mentors, you may have to ask and you might have to make it really clear that, ‘I really admire what you've done here, Heather, I'd love to ask for your advice, can we talk?’ Then build a relationship and introduce the idea of being the “mentee” later, but I didn’t realize that it didn’t happen, because it didn’t know how to ask.
Heather Marasse: It was hard for me to ask someone to mentor me. That’s an awkward conversation but you have some very practical tips as to how to approach that conversation and it doesn’t have to be awkward. It can be just about the business about what you appreciate about this person's position and what you've observed they were able to accomplish. ‘Can you help me?’ and it just is a very natural entry into an influencing relationship.
Helen Appleby: Absolutely, and getting clear what the journeys ahead of you are in your career and therefore who can mentor you. Again I try to make it very practical, and the other thing about mentors is that, they can be a potential sponsor in the future, because mentors are a career accelerator, but sponsorship is another level of career acceleration. So building strong mentoring relationships within the organization they could be, later on, once you’ve built the relationship, they could be really powerful sponsorship. You know, ‘I think Heather would be great for that role. I was talking to her about that the other day and I think we should consider Heather.’ Now suddenly you're in the room when you weren't in the room before, it can be really helpful.
Heather Marasse: There were two areas that really struck me in your book that I really wish I had known this when I was starting out. The first one was the whole chapter and everything you put in around negotiating. I wish I'd known that because I committed every mistake that you talked about in it.
Helen Appleby: Just don't take the first offer and be grateful.
Heather Marasse: To be forever grateful anytime somebody advocated for me to get a raise. The second one was the whole chapter on sexual harassment. What I appreciated about what you put in it is that it has some gravitas. It is not something you go into unprepared. When you realize it's happening, there is preparation that you must do. You must equip yourself and I think you did a really good and honest job of what you're up against when this is something you're dealing with.
Helen Appleby: It’s a really, really tricky the area, I guess what the research does show us really clearly is that if you don't do anything about it; it's not going to stop on its own. So really the quicker and the earlier in the journey of it, that you can nip it in the bud, potentially the better the outcome.
Sherrilynne Starkie: We have some stories in the headlines here in Canada right now, around this, and the women that are coming forward are talking about things that happened 25 years ago. Yet, only now, do they feel empowered to speak out about something that’s impacted their careers for most of their working lives.
Helen Appleby: And maybe their happiness and then mental health too first. The first thing I write is that it’s not your fault, so speak up, write it down, tell a friend, and all the kinds of steps that escalate up from there.
Sherrilynne Starkie: What are you most hopeful about now as you face the future, Helen?
Helen Appleby: Great question. I am the most hopeful about two things. The first, which is I am seeing real attention within companies, particularly in big companies, to addressing diversity and inclusion, and company cultures getting healthier and more focused on getting women and people of color and diverse candidates, in general, more involved and more recognized and paid and promoted. So that seems to be really changing.
The other thing I'm excited about is this concept, which I talk a lot in the book about and there's a lot of it in my work—the concept of sisterhood—women supporting women. I run the book of the course, the unwritten rules are very specifically about sisterhood, it’s about getting
sisterhood, getting support from other women and helping other women rise as we rise. I think back in the days of Margaret Thatcher and our mother's generation, there was a ‘queen bee’, \ one woman who made it through and then she kind of pulled up the drawbridge behind her.
That isn't the world that we live in now. There are really generous supportive women out there that want to help other women and want, like we do, to make it better for all of us and for our daughters too. I think those two; I think real change coming, and a willingness and an openness to change it in companies, and really the rise of sisterhood which, we also know, research shows makes a big difference to women's success.
Having a supportive group of women around you definitely helps you rise and also helps you keep going. A lot of this journey, to be honest, is resilience. You just have to keep going and that helps that too.
Heather Marasse: And I think it actually all boats rise with this because it helps men too.
Helen Appleby: It helps men too and it helps companies, and it helps company performance. It’s a win-win-win.
Sherrilynne Starkie: Thank you to author Helen Appleby for joining us on today's show and thank you to all of our leaders who are out listeners. See the show for the links and how to get your copy of the Unwritten Rules for Women's Leadership by Helen Appleby. You'll also find links to information and resources about some of the tools and concepts that we discussed today. Please, never miss an episode of our podcast by subscribing, wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or review, recommend us to your friends, your family, or to anyone, you know, who wants to learn to become a better, stronger and more effective leader.
I'm your host, Sherry Lynn Starkey. And this has been The Being Human is Good for Business podcast.