Motivational Leadership Speaker, Bestselling Oprah Author

She was 40, successful and had just been canned because her boss told her she had “an edge.”

“Why do I scare the hell out of people?” she asked me. “People either love me or hate me. I am told I need to tone it down, not to push so hard. I’ve been called a ‘bitch.’ What do I need to do?”

 I wondered:  “Why the hell are you asking me that?  That’s my problem.”

 That conversation happened eight years ago in front of seven senior executives who’d coaxed me into hopping into rental cars and heading for a Mexican border town after I’d done the keynote for their women’s leadership conference. They assumed that I had all the answers. Not that time.

 That woman had bared a raw truth that, after a few more drinks, every one of the other executives shared. They, too, felt like misfits. Outsiders. They had achieved so much success, power and authority, but they’d always gotten nailed when they exerted a little force. People sniped behind their backs, “Do you know what she’s done this time?” As managers, they were hired to shake things up, make things better, or improve the bottom line, but when they made changes, they were met with a resounding chorus of, “That bitch!”

That conversation led me to interview everyone from Hillary Clinton to Arianna Huffington to Susan Sarandon for my book, Mustang Sallies which I am not mentioning here as a transparent attempt to boost sales. I bring it up because it was published five years ago and women are still feeling the same pain.

 Things have gotten better because more women are in power and fewer men are surprised to see them there. In fact, there are legions of good men who are championing this generation of women executives so they will be more effective and successful. I don’t hear the word “bitch” as often as I used to. I see women going faster and farther. But, have we resolved the issues that kept that woman feeling watched and judged? No.

There are still things women leaders can and cannot do because we are still operating in a restricted zone of operation. We are not to say things with the same tone as men. If we’re too nice, we are seen as too weak. If we’re too strong, we’re controlling. If we’re too direct, we’ve got an edge. If we defend ourselves, we’re hysterical.

It goes on and on.  Two nights ago, I dined with senior executive women working for three of America’s largest corporations. We basically had the same exact conversation I’d had with those women who’d gone to Mexico with me. These successful women still feel they are maneuvering through that tiny zone of operation. One woman told me about receiving an e-mail that had accidentally been copied to her by a vender who called her “crazy” and complained that she was being overbearing trying to get them to deliver what they were contracted to deliver.

 That made me sad. I’d seen an e-mail like that written about me about a dozen years ago. And then there was the office Christmas party where a drunken employee in the buffet line blurted, “I hear you are a real bitch.”  I was crushed. I thought to myself, “I am not a bitch. I am a big marshmallow with real feelings that hurt. I’m just trying to do a good job. Don’t you get that?”

I didn’t understand that strong, bold women give off an energy that threatens insecure people. We have to watch every word so we aren’t misinterpreted.  So, if you’re wondering what to do to be more effective, try these steps:  

1. If you are angry about something, try to wait a day to say or write anything. Cool down as much as you can.
2. Always re-read every bit of your correspondence out loud, and do it in the shrillest, bitchiest tone of voice possible – because that may well be the way it is interpreted.
3. Do not immediately defend yourself if you are told you have messed up. You have every right to make your point, but do it with a plan and don’t do it when you are emotional.
4. Avoid crying. We are hormonal beings and it will happen. But, try to avoid it. When you feel it coming, go to the bathroom, go get a drink of water or do something else to stop or hide the tears.
5. Understand that your job is not to win every battle, but rather, to survive to fight another day.
6. Ask others what they think you are communicating and make sure it’s a match.
7. If others are gossiping about you, do not be afraid to confront it and say, “I would much rather we talk directly and keep our communication open.”
8. Build a strong, powerful support group around you to validate you when others are tearing you down.

Work. Life. Balance. Work. Life. Balance. We’ve all heard those words so much it’s as if they have merged together into a simple little mantra which, if repeated enough we will manifest. “Work. Life. Balance.” “Work. Life. Balance.” “Work. Life. Balance.”

Poof!

Look at her! See that career woman climb that company ladder! Look how happy her marriage is! My, aren’t her children beatuiful, successful and happy! She still has time to cook gourmet recipes, clean house and have great sex! Not only that, she still plays tennis, too!

It doesn’t work like that.

Years ago, when I was still married and working as a newspaper reporter, I was drowning in an investigative project that stretched for ten brutal months. It was the most challenging and important work I’d ever done, but as that series became more consuming, I kept moving the mail and my junk to the guest bedroom where it amassed itself into a giant pile of unresolved clutter. One evening, friends gathered at our home before we all went out to dinner. Imagine my horror when my then-husband opened the door to the guest bedroom and said, “Look at this!”  before exposing my secret mess.

In the midst of some of my greatest accomplishments as a journalist, I was exposed for the one failing that trumped everything. I’d failed in my traditional role of wife. I don’t think it was his intent to land that kind of blow on me, but I felt that, if I wasn’t a good housekeeper, I was not worthy. I was humiliated and I was crushed.

 Of course, if you come by my house today, you will see that my office doesn’t look much better than the guest room did on that particular occasion. I’ve grown into my identity and balanced myself out by making decisions that let me define success and failure, rather than tradition or guilt. That is how you achieve life balance. You do it consciously and on your own terms.

Know your priorities and know where they rank. Years after that experience, I’ve got my priorities down. God, family, friends, community, recreation, work, and, if there is time, housekeeping and other details. Whatever. You’ve got to drop the ball somewhere, and I choose where mine drops. That is the first step in balancing your soul.

 I get so amused by the importance people give to the notion of work life balance. Like, once we get it right, we all let out a nice, long Zen Ohm and all will be well. Balance implies some sort of time/effort equity that few ever achieve in life. I certainly don’t, and I don’t even have a husband or children to worry about.

A woman once told me she needed help juggling all the balls she’s got in the air and I said, “let some of the balls drop.” 

I remember former cable television senior executive Gayle Greer showing me how she learned how to balance her soul. As  a working, single parent,  she traveled about 80 percent of the time when her son was growing up. He seldom came along. One day, he asked if he could schedule time for her to meet with a couple of coaches who wanted to talk to her about college scholarship possibilities for him. “It blew me away,” she said. “College? I hadn’t even thought about it. I wasn’t living in the present. I was so intensely holding on to whatever it was, keeping all the balls up in the air. Then it dawned on me, this kid is leaving.” That changed her forever. She never missed one of her son’s football games after that.

Our lives move so quickly that it seems like we are powerless over our schedules. But, we’re not. Truly, if you schedule a day off in your calendar, it doesn’t exist. And you may think you are too important or too busy or too stretched, but you have got to make time so you don’t lose your “self. “ If you think you can’t, or you can’t do it right now, you are wrong. Because, if someone you loved were suddenly in a life or death situation, your current schedule would screech to a halt and you would know what really matters.

 Balance is about identity. It’s knowing who you are and what matters most so that you honor your priorities in the way you want and need to honor them. We sacrifice so much of ourselves to things that don’t matter.

The mantra isn’t “Work life balance.” It’s, “I know what matters and I honor that truth.”

If I had ten dollars for every time someone has come up to me after an event and said, “I’ve always wanted to write a book,” I could be retired. I’m serious.

It is a sad refrain because, almost every time someone says it, I can tell that the book will never be written.

If you really want to write your book, you write your book. If you truly want to go back to school, you go back to school. If you want to take off a year and travel, you take off a year and travel. Whatever. You shut up and find a way. I’m one of those people who believes that, if you really want to do something, you make up your mind and do it. One of my mentors was a single parent who, when left with two small children, drove a taxi to get herself through law school and went on to become a much-admired judge.

We are capable of accomplishing so much if we just dare to commit and get started. When I hear the “I really want to write a book” line, I tell people of Rick Light, the service manager at my local Goodyear store. Rick once saw a box of books in the back of my car and mentioned he was writing a novel. Every time I see him, he tells me how it’s going. He spends every single lunch hour in the public library. He takes index cards and writes several paragraphs or phrases and perhaps sketches out a scene. Then, he goes home and types it all into his computer. He’s been doing this for a few years now, and I’ve always known he’d finish his book, which he did. Unfortunately, a break-in by vandals left him with no original and no backup. Did he give up? No. He started all over and will not stop until he has a new, better draft. He bolsters his vision with the kind of determination needed to create success.

This is an era where millions of people are rethinking what they will do with their careers. If you’ve been pushed to the edge by a layoff, you probably feel like you are staring into the abyss. But, how you rise out of this adversity depends entirely on whether you can do what Rick did.  Figure out what you want to do, make up your mind to do it, and persevere — through anything by doing it one small step at a time.

I know it is easier said than done — and that’s the point. If it is worth doing, and if your success is worth having, you’ve got to suffer the pain to earn your reward. Don’t judge your success by what comes easy — judge it by what comes hard. My motto is “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” It comes from a Chinese proverb that so simply sets the course that one must take in life because the obstacles are inevitable. They just are. When I started writing my first book, I hoped I could have written, sold and published it in six short months before it exploded onto the best-seller list and made me rich and famous. Things didn’t play out that way at all. I suffered humiliating rejections and obstacles that repeatedly tested whether I had the mettle to earn my success. Getting up every time I fell down required me to find strength when I had none.

Fortunately, I had a support group that kept cheering for me when I couldn’t cheer for myself. Count on your friends to keep you moving forward. There were so many key moments when I felt like giving up, but others inspired me to stay in the game. If you don’t seek out that kind of positive energy, you’ll get stuck in the defeatism that destroys dreams. If you’ve been stopped along the way, don’t give in to bitterness. Reach out to your friends and tell them what you need in order to continue toward a positive outcome.

I recognize that many of us feel like we are stuck in the 2009 vortex of negativity that makes it impossible to break through to do what we really want to do. The old notion that we should do what we love seems to be a luxury in a time when people are worried how they are even going to pay their electric bills. But, I still believe that we can do what we are meant to do — if we really want to do it. The challenges of this hard economic year may mean our steps are smaller and our progress slowed. Still, we can do what we truly want to do.

I always tell the aspiring authors the same thing. “If you write a page a day, you’ll be done in a year. You’ve just got to start it and finish it.”

The question is the same for them as it is for you. Do you really want to do it? And if so, what’s stopping you from getting started?

I was 17 years old and a guppy reporter for The Bradenton Herald when my editor sent me on my first assignment in the field.

“You’re going to interview Gloria Steinem,” she told me.

It was 1978 and the normally gruff woman boss I worked for was as strong and courageous as any that would follow. The Steinem assignment? Looking back on it, I think Grace Allen gave it to me in order to introduce a young woman into the world of women’s leadership. She could have sent a real reporter, but she sent the kid.

I spent most of my reporting years exposing things that crooked politicians wanted hidden, writing about difficult social issues and covering politics. I once spent a year digging into the death of a baby that the coroner’s office had written off as the result of an ear infection – rather than the result of a beating from the child’s mother’s boyfriend. In the end, that man was sent to prison for life without parole, and the spinoff investigative stories led to the demise of five senior people in local government.

I never felt the slightest bit discriminated against as a woman. If a story was a great story, it made the front page – whether it was written by a woman or a man.

At least, not until the day I was assigned to do a series on domestic violence. Accompanying the story was a front page photo of a woman with two black eyes. Our top editor went ballistic when he came back from vacation and saw that on his front page. He demanded that the series be killed, but I fought back by finding so many newsworthy stories that he couldn’t bail on the project. When the Colorado Secretary of State and a member of city council both admitted to having been battered, it was news. But, I was suddenly persona non grata at work for having written it.
It was the first time I had ever experienced anything that told me the rules were different for women than they were for men. But, they were. It was a hard lesson I had to learn before I could understand the triumph of the women’s leadership movement in the corporate world.

I look at my audiences now and see young women who can’t even conceive of a time when women couldn’t get charge cards in their own names, or could be fired if they got pregnant or wouldn’t get hired because they might get pregnant. The notion that there would be two sets of classified ads – one for men and one for women – seems preposterous. That some bosses would demand sexual favors in exchange for promotions? Implausible.

And yet, ask a woman in her 50s, 60s or 70s and she’ll respond with a knowing nod. “Yep, hard to believe – but true. That’s the way it was.”

They had to fight so hard just to get in the game. Now, so many of us are making the rules. It’s amazing.

I do get discouraged by the lack of women working as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (just 15) or the scarcity of women on boards of those companies (less than 15 percent). But every time I do a speech at a women’s leadership event, I come out invigorated. The notion of a woman vice president, senior vice president or executive vice president is not one that raises too many hackles at most companies these days. They are there. Many – if not most – are working hard to mentor others so there will be more success to spread around.

Kind of like Grace did for me, way back when Steinem came to town.

My mother has had Alzheimer’s Disease for eight years. At least. She is 83 and living in a nursing home, fed through a stomach tube.

A few weeks ago, she was sleeping when I arrived for a visit. I nudged her awake, then climbed into bed to cuddle with her as I have done on every visit since she moved there. It is the closest human contact she has, since my father’s bad back won’t let him get in bed with her. I have cherished those moments because of the way it makes her smile and how her eyes twinkle, and because I feel her love radiate life from my sweet, lost mother.

On this occasion,  I didn’t see the usual joy. I saw fear.

My mother didn’t know who I was. She was afraid — there was a stranger in her bed and she was powerless to protect herself. She tried to say something, but her words came out as jibberish. I showed her pictures of us when I was a child, but she didn’t make the connection like she’d done on the other occasions when she couldn’t quite get who I was. So, I climbed out of the bed.

Then, I dropped my shorts and mooned her. I have always been the joker in the family, and this made Mom laugh harder than I have heard her laugh in years. That bare bottom could only belong to her daughter. “You are beautiful,” she said. A full sentence. She finally knew it was me.

I think she recognized me the other day. I am dogsitting for a tiny little Chihuahua mix, and since Coco is so darned portable compared to  my two big dogs, I brought her to visit my mom. Mom’s left side has been paralyzed since a major stroke 17 years ago. The Alzheimer’s has frozen most of the rest of her body, so she does not move much. So, I put the little dog on the bed. She didn’t say anything and she didn’t smile. Coco wagged her tail and kissed my mother, but there was still no real reaction.

A Florida afternoon thunderstorm started brewing, and with the first rumblings from the sky, tiny Coco started quivering in fear — trembling, all over. I tried to calm her, but she kept shaking. Mom watched this, transfixed. “It’s okay,” I told Coco.

After a long moment, Mom moved her right hand. Slow and unsteady, she moved it closer and closer to Coco and finally rested it on the little dog’s side. She kept it there, holding her, trying to comfort her.

Coco didn’t stop shaking until the thunder stopped. But, she didn’t move away from my mother to be closer to me. I will never forget the innocence of that tiny dog, or the slow awakening of my fading mother.

When there are no words, there is touch, which says more anyhow.

Coco meets my parents. Sorry about the quality. Blame my cell phone.

The past year has really done a number on people. Truly good human beings are writing me and telling me that they feel like failures. They are worried about their finances and their futures. They are starting to define themselves by what has happened to them.

Several years ago, I quit my job to chase my dream of writing a book, but that book was rejected repeatedly. I was demoralized. If I wasn’t going to be “Fawn Germer, Author,” who would I be? Everybody was asking, “How’s the book coming?” “When’s the book coming out?” I felt like such a failure. I was so embarrassed.

My friends got together one day and I blurted out, “I don’t know my purpose in life.”  The outburst was met with silence and stares. Finally, Pam said, “I don’t know, either.” She was in a job she hated. Teresa said, “Me either.” One by one, we went around the room and every single one of us confessed that we didn’t know our purpose in life. I was sure that, by the time we got to Bette, we would get an answer. Bette was in the throes of chemo for ovarian cancer and, surely she had figured things out since she was facing a likely terminal outcome. But, she shook her head “no.”

Not one of us knew our purpose in life.

Time passed. I sold my book. Pam switched jobs, Teresa went back to school and Bette kept on living as best she could.

For two years, Bette lived the best life possible. Once, we went kayaking to Caladesi Island. The Gulf of Mexico was cold, yet she dove right in because she said she “thought the water was pretty.” She got a grant from the city to build a butterfly garden in her neighborhood. She spent time with family and went hiking and laughed and lived.

My book was finally published and Bette and the gang made it to my first big signing. It was a big deal for her, and she’d forced herself to rally so she could be there to support me. A day or two later, she was in the hospital again. I left on tour for several weeks, and when I got back, she began her walk into death. One day, she told me she’d seen Jesus and she wasn’t afraid.

The day came when her brother called to let me know Bette had passed away. He asked if I would write her obituary. As a journalist, I have always thought that obituaries are the most important things we will ever write because they are the last word on an individual’s life. I spent a lot of time writing Bette’s. I thought about how she’d lived her life as she faced her death. She filled every moment with as much joy as she could find. She was from a huge family and every one of her brothers and sisters took turns of coming down for a week and caring for her. I know that, when she died, there was peace. She’d defined her purpose in life by simply living her life. That obituary was not a list of accomplishments. It was the story of a woman who lived. Regardless of what life threw at her, she lived.

That was when I realized what I’d learned through her passing. Our purpose in life is to live our lives. In the end, the only thing that matters is that we breathed in our moment here and filled it with life.

I was flying off to St. Louis for an event the next morning and everything was so rushed because I’d taken time to write the obituary. I had to get my hair cut before my trip and was going to a new hair salon. I passed right by it as I sped through the darkness, then turned around on the busy six-lane road and kept searching for the salon. I moved into the two-way turn lane so I could see the numbers better on the left side of the street, but that was a terrible, terrible miscalculation. Another car was coming straight toward me, blaring his horn. We had no time to stop and nowhere to go because there was so much traffic whizzing in the other lanes.

Miraculously, a space opened up on his side and he moved into it, flipping me off as he sped past me.

Seconds later, I turned into the salon parking lot. My heart was pounding harder than it ever had. I’d come within a split second of being killed. How tragic it was, because my friend had just died after spending two years fighting so hard to live, and I had almost died because I hadn’t been paying attention.

What a profound lesson. We lose so much time by not paying attention and don’t realize what we are wasting until we face losing it. It doesn’t matter what you do for your job or where you are living or where you think you rank in society. What matters is what you do today to live and enjoy your life.

It’s so simple. Your purpose in life is to live your life.

One of a kind. Meet David Bailey.

David Bailey hated it when people would tell him the day would come when he’d see his adversity as the best thing that ever happened to him.

“What an asinine, terrible thing to say,” he says.

Months later, he tells this story without realizing that he keeps recounting all of the things he’s learned and done since the day he was laid off at age 61.

Not long after he left his job as executive editor of Sky magazine for Delta Airlines, he sent me an e-mail that ended with this bombshell: “Did I tell you that I’m going to start work as a dishwasher in a fancy French restaurant here on April Fool’s Day?” I was dumbstruck. He was one of the most talented journalists I’d ever worked with and a larger-than-life character. I could not believe this gifted man was going to wash dishes for $9.50 an hour.

His story has a happy ending. He was promoted to cook. And then, to something much better. But, it’s the lessons learned in the middle that are worth sharing.

When we talked last night, he’d just come back from a fine dinner at the French restaurant where he’d been the dishwasher. He’d just dined on beef bourguignon on the terrace by candlelight, but before leaving, he stopped back by the dish room to visit two men from Niger, with whom he’d washed dishes.

“I hugged them both. They said, ‘When are you coming back?’ I had a stab in my heart. That’s the thing about a kitchen. You have this relationship with these people and it’s just like being in the newsroom. You are working extremely hard. You are producing something excellent. It feels good.”

That was more important to him than taking time off, collecting unemployment and coming up with a new career strategy. “I just had to get back to work,” he said.

“The real irony of unemployment is it robs you of your ability to do the thing that makes you feel good about yourself,” he said. “Taking a job that may not be, in many peoples’ view, worthy of my skills, gave me a place to go and a thing to do to validate myself and feel good about myself. That was a good thing. It gave me a community of people I could be around. Those people are still good friends. They are still very important to me.”

When he started this odyssey, he feared he would lose his house. Now, he says, “If I’d lost the house, I would have gotten over that.”

He didn’t find the comedown from the white-collar world to the kitchen sink demeaning in the slightest.

“What’s demeaning about washing people’s dishes and cooking people’s food? What’s demeaning about cleaning a toilet? I don’t find it demeaning. We were put on the planet to serve others.” He’s not defensive when he says this. It comes from his heart.

The French restaurant where David worked is owned by Dennis Quaintance, a man who was fascinated by his willingness to start out at the bottom. Most of the people who wanted to work for Quaintance in a transition capacity wanted to walk in and be maître d’ or sous chef.  David just wanted to work and learn the business – even if it meant pushing a broom. In time, Quaintance promoted him to be marketing director for his company, which also includes two Greensboro, N.C. hotels. One of the hotels houses the restaurant where David started.

“I’ve had people tell me that, ‘We knew you’d come out on top.’ Well, damn. I didn’t. I was worried. I’m still not comfortable. But, maybe that’s good. Maybe we’re not meant to be comfortable.”

He’s not making half of what he once made, but you can hear excitement when he talks about the company’s efforts to make the Proximity Hotel profitable and sustainable.

“Sustainability is a metaphor for my entire life,” he says. I wanted to live a sustainable life. I never wanted to be rich, but I wanted to be sustainable. When this whole thing came down, I was unsustainable. I was a person who could not sustain my family.”

But, he did. And he sustained himself. Not such an asinine lesson, after all.