Career Growth Advice from Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Career Development Leader | Career Tips for Women in Career Development

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 104
Featuring Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Episode Title: #104 Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author, economist, and entrepreneur discusses leadership, inclusion and female empowerment

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Sylvia Ann Hewlett



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you, encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hello, welcome back. Mary Killelea here, your host. Today, I am so honored to have Sylvia Ann Hewlett on the show with us here today. Sylvia is a distinguished author, economist, and entrepreneur. Sylvia is the CEO of Hewlett Consulting Partners. And 16 years ago, she founded the Center for Talent Innovation, which today is called Pokeball, where she is still actively engaged as the chief emeritus. It's a groundbreaking think tank that has pioneered leadership in the age of inclusion with a task force of 90 global companies. Sylvia's work through her high-profile books and presentations quantifies the value of difference, offering a compelling look at the challenges and triumphs of highly qualified women, people of color, and LGBTQ employees in their quest for career advancement. Her blend of hard data, in-depth storytelling, and actionable solutions has made her a sought-after voice for organizations striving to foster inclusive leadership cultures.

With 17 articles in the Harvard Business Review and 16 critically acclaimed books, including award winners And When the Bow Breaks, Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor, Executive Presence, and Me Too in the Corporate World. Sylvia's insights have profoundly impacted the conversations around diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Dr. Hewlett is a celebrated speaker. She has presented at Davos and at the Mobile World Congress. He noted the FT Conference on Women at the Top and spoken at the White House. She is also a Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year, has been interviewed on 60 Minutes, Panorama, Oprah, Morning Joe, and PBS NewsHour, and has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. I guess that's when you know you really made it.

Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Vogue. She is an influencer on LinkedIn. Dr. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia, and Princeton universities, a graduate of Cambridge University. She won a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard University and earned her PhD in economics at London University. Dr. Hewlett, who grew up in a family of six sisters in a coal mining community in South Wales, has made her home in New York City. She lives on the Upper West Side with her husband and children.

Today, we have the pleasure of hearing firsthand about Sylvia's remarkable journey, exploring her strategies, challenges, and the wisdom she's gained along the way. So, let's get to it. Welcome, Sylvia. My gosh. So, so honored to have you here.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett (Guest): Well, Mary, it's a mutual feeling. I'm a great admirer of your podcast. I love the storytelling and the depths with which you deal with your subject matter. So, a big thank you.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much. Okay, so your journey from growing up in a coal mining community in South Wales to becoming a leading voice in the conversation of diversity inclusion, along with all your other numerous accomplishments is so inspiring. Can you share with us what motivated you to pursue a career in economics and eventually focus on the dynamics of workplace inclusion?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Mary, it wasn't a straight line. It never is. But I was a blue collar kid. And I grew up in South Wales in a coal mining village. And you know, it's a very neglected corner of Britain. When I was a teenager, unemployment was at the 27% level. Margaret Thatcher was busy closing down the coal mines. And there was a great deal of distress in the industrial towns and villages around me, a little like Appalachia. And I remember thinking that the government seemed to be pretty happy with welfare payouts, but they weren't doing any investing in the people. You know, the educational system was very underfunded. Only 12% of kids got to go to academic secondary school. They were all shunted off into kind of a vocational programs, which weren't any good and were geared to industries that were closing down.

And even as a 15 year old, I remember thinking to myself, well, why the heck don't they invest in these people? Because there was a kind of culture of despair, a great deal of alcoholism, you know, family violence, you know, the kind of things that happen where most grownups don't have anything worthwhile to do. And I guess I was pretty determined to show how investing in human potential was a great bet for any leader, whether it be in government or in the private sector, because there's huge payoff, both for the human flourishing, right, for themselves, but also in terms of GDP.

I remember much later, I discovered a fellow economist of what I knew, I done this study of Japan, where they showed that if they had utilized their women much more effectively in giving them real jobs, instead of making them office ladies, right, Japanese GDP would be 5% higher. You know, this is, I guess, what lured me into this discipline.

Mary Killelea: It's amazing that you had that awareness at such a young age.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, I think, you know, the moms and dads of all my friends were felt that they've been tasked on a scrap. And it was good for no one. It wasn't good for their kids, right? Or for their neighborhoods. But it especially wasn't good for the prosperity of this region.

Mary Killelea: It is quite amazing when you look at the data, the data speaks for itself. There's like no arguing with it. And I think you point that out, when you founded the Center for Talent Innovation, and kind of brought those learnings to the multiple, you know, enterprises, talk to me about how you started that.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, you know, in the 1990s, I did quite a lot with the Clinton initiatives. I wrote a book with Cornel West on how to invest in both Black and white families. And stuff was happening. But then, of course, when George Bush came to power, but also the Tea Party, there was an alert to the right. And there was nothing much happened in the public policy realm.

So, I turned to the private sector and founded this think tank because I thought that there was a good chance I could appeal to enlightened self-experience, right? And indeed, you know, that was the premise with which I encouraged 19 global companies to be research partners with me. And I think one of the things I was most proud of, it wasn't just the usual suspects, companies like, you know, Citibank or Amex, or perhaps IBM, the good citizens, right, who have always been progressive. But, you know, we persuaded entities like Blizzard Entertainment, which does video games, that hey, this is a good idea. Having an open door to all of your best talent and making sure there's some equality of opportunity in terms of rising up from associate positions in the white collar workforce to management and executive status produced great results. Because you were doing a much better job mirroring your money. And you were not limiting yourself to about 35% of the educated, which is what white men are these days. They're a minority.

Just think of this, Mary. Almost 75% of all degrees in the biological sciences now go to women. I mean, we're talking undergraduate, graduate PhDs, a whole lot. So if you don't tap into that talent pool, you're missing out on some of the best people.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful news and very encouraging. Okay, one, I'm a huge fan of all the books that you've written. So, I want to get to these topics during the show. In your book, Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor, you discuss the crucial role sponsors playing career advancements. Can you share a personal story about how sponsors have made a difference in your career?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, first of all, let me tell a story about how women often get it wrong when they don't have a sponsorship or sponsor. So here I was. My first job, I was an assistant professor of economics at Barnard College. I thought it was a dream job being part of Columbia University, but very much being a role model for young women, it was wonderful. And as I thought was appropriate, I found myself an incredible mentor. She was a senior woman. She was a historian. She had the office next door and she was immensely kind. She allowed me to lean on her shoulders when I had a terrible time with one pregnancy. I lost twins in the seventh month. It was a total disaster in terms of my life. And she could not have been more supportive.

But when the tenure decision rolled around, this wonderful woman was totally useless. Now, not because she didn't try, but she did not sit in the right seat, right? She was a medieval historian. I was an economist. She wasn't on any of the committees that were considering my case. And she followed the dean, so no one really in the corridors of power even had much to do with her, right?

Obviously, everyone needs a kindly mentor in life. I'm not dismissing the fact, but you also need to deliberately seek out someone who sits in a role in a seat, who can open the right doors or advocate for at a crucial time. When you are at an infection point, you need this senior level advocate who's going to talk up about you in rooms where you're not present. Tell the world how amazing you are. And that is called sponsorship. That person is not necessarily a close friend, right? You need to respect that person. You don't have to particularly like them. You know, it's an alliance. And I think one of the differences between sponsorship and mentorship, and men seem to intuitively grasp this, it's about creating a two-way street, an alliance with a powerful senior person. And you impress the heck out of them. You really, you know, deliver performance, loyalty, you know, the whole bit. And in return, you get really vigorous advocates.

If you look at the data out there, women tend to have a ton of mentors. You know, we have maybe more than one at any given point in time, and we certainly have a lot over our lifespan. But we're much less likely to have sponsors or able to seek them out. Whereas men do this kind of transactional thing much more intuitively. And the figures speak for themselves. Only 13% of accomplished, ambitious women have sponsors. And over 20% of men do, because this isn't for everyone. It's for those who want to be on the fast track to eventually some kind of leadership. And of course, many women are talking about it.

Mary Killelea: That story, that personal sharing of how it affected your life is so great to have you share, because I think it does solidify the difference between having a mentor and having a sponsor and the importance of it.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: How you need to do both things. And then to give you another example of I filled into being a little more strategic about this at few points in my life. I remember when I went to Cambridge from South Wales, it was a huge shock. I was from the wrong background, from the wrong, you know, part of the UK. I had this accent, which everyone thought was my tutor told me I sounded uncouth when I met with her for the first time. She hated the fact I dropped my H's, you know, I used Welsh slang, she felt that I was not really fit for the real world. And she said I had to fix my horrid accent if I wanted to take it seriously. So, obviously, accents have always been a tripwire in the UK. Less so now than they were then.

But I realized that I had to be more strategic in terms of getting the advocacy I needed to improve my presentation of self but also open doors to opportunities because I certainly didn't communicate with any networks that were powerful or any friends that were powerful. So, I got quite close to a very senior woman who was a geographer. And I can't remember I was serving on some committee, I was a representative and I got to know her, she was not my direct tutor. And she realized that I was a kid that had never left Britain. I hadn't been to the theater, you know, I was clueless about most things because I'd grown up in a house with no television, no newspapers, and also, no refrigerator or hot running water or anything like that. So, I was clueless on so many fronts. It wasn't just my accent, I had no conversation.

I spent the summer before I went to Cambridge, working in the local municipal laundry, rolling sheets for the hospital because I needed to make spending money. I was a scholarship kid but I saw they needed to buy books. And then I arrived on campus at Cambridge and realized that my new fellow students had been taking gap years, they were interning at the Royal Court or doing bill power at Swaziland or whatever. But they also skied, and they did all of these things that I, you know, was clueless about. So, what my new sponsor person, the geographer, decided is that I needed to get out there in the world and fix up some of these gaps that I had in my education and I guess knowledge in general.

She encouraged me to apply for a Ford Foundation grant and I ended up in Africa that summer. I mean, she opened doors at a very imaginative level because she realized it wasn't just a question of my ability to pass exams. I needed to get the kind of broad gauge, you know, worldly take on things that came naturally with an elite education but not with the kind of background. And it was transformative. I mean, it's the reason I went to Harvard after it. She had the ability to see that and try and recognize it.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. And I know some of that I hear from when I read your book, Executive Presence, which I love that book. It was recommended to me by someone, you know, higher than me in at Intel. So I hope you know the impact that you're having among the women that are passing it down to other people. So, tell us how you define executive presence.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, here it is, Mary. It's the intangibles of leadership. Right? Think of it. There's a lot of research saying that the impacts or influence you have when presenting to your team or some kind of other audience, only 20% of the impact is the content of what you say. Everything else is executive presence. It's being compelling, being concise, right? Losing all the props, you know, lecterns, flip charts, endless PowerPoints, connecting with your eyes. Eye contact is enormously important. But it's also body language, you know, what you do with your spine and how you hold your shoulders.

And then the other thing that's incredibly important is the storytelling, the revealing of who you are. These days, the authenticity piece, the genuine connection are incredibly valued. So, in these books, and I've now written two books on executive presence, I break it down into gravitas, education, and appearance. How you behave, how you speak, how you look. And what are the top 10 tactics that work best? It allows you to have the impact and the influence you want. That is all additive to content, because, you know, quite frankly, as the progression pyramid narrows at the top, the competition for the executive slots is very intense. All of those people can perform. And what marks you as leadership potential, as standing out from the rest, is how you nail the gravitas piece, the communication piece, and the looks piece. The looks piece is the least important. The most important is gravitas, which is a huge relief. I mean, this is not a dress for success thing.

So, I did the first book 10 years ago, and gravitas comprised competence, decisiveness, phrases like, you know, kicking tires, showing teeth, biting bullets, all of that kind of stuff, command and control will. Ten years later, in 2023, a confidence, you know, does not go out of style, it's still top of the heap, but inclusivity and respect for others, right, are now incredibly important in really cracking the gravitas code. And that is very encouraging, that this is what gets you promoted.

All right. When we come to communication, clarity, being concise, being compelling, the eye contact thing, still very important. But now you have to do it online, as well as in person. And that's a whole linked but separate skill set. And when I look at role models, people are in the public eye that people feel are really doing this well, they treat virtual leadership as its own special skill set. It's not just doing the same thing as you do in a room. For instance, talk to Eddie Glaude, or even talk back in the day of Steve Jobs, lighting, what you use as your backdrop, right, the brand you project in your look. And that look should not just reflect your values, but some vision of the world. I mean, Steve Jobs famously liked to have this very minimal, paired back thing going on in his personal, you know, choices of what to wear and this darkness his backdrop, because that's what his machines were all about.

So, this virtual thing very important today is because think of this very, right. 77% of all meetings that this is in a hybrid post pandemic world are virtual. Before the pandemic, it was 44%. And of course, it went way off doing but we're now in a new world where it's an incredible tool for teams that are not co-located, right?

Mary Killelea: I think a lot of women miss out on this point that you're making. And they don't even put their camera on.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yes. I mean, you know, I know this is a podcast, but you know, and I know that the energy, right, right, on activity is about seeing one another.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. Let's talk about the me too movement. It sparked obviously important conversations and changes in the corporate world in your book, Me Too in the Corporate World, you offer insights and solutions for organizations. What do you see are the most critical steps companies can make to address and prevent harassment and discrimination?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yes, well, let's just start a little bit with why I wrote that book. I had discovered in my data that it's not just attractive young women who are the victims, right? Big Weinstein or any of the famous cases, you know, that would seem to be center stage. incredibly regrettable. But you know, that's the image we tended to have. I found that the two most hit upon and victimized groups on the sexual harassment and assault front were black men and gay women.

Mary Killelea: Oh, wow.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: And they hardly ever report because it's so entirely human. They're also afraid that they won't be believed. So, where I came to with all of the interviews I did with these groups that had not really surfaced was that it was really about power. It wasn't about sexual desire. It was keeping people off your turf that you did not see as part of your group. And obviously, to some extent, those tactics work, because think of the following figure. When the Me Too movement got some traction in 2018, 2019, two things happened to sponsorship.

One, at least some men are retreated from the whole challenge of sponsoring a young woman because they were afraid of the appearance in propriety. Perhaps, you know, they realized that they might also cross the line. But the other thing that happened is that talented women, but also talented black men, talented gay people did not want to be sponsored by a powerful male who might be predatory in ways that were supremely threatening and delayed. So that was a very negative reality in terms of the progression of those groups. So, there were all kinds of consequences to that.

So what did I come up with? Because obviously, half of the book is, you know, what the heck to do about this, which is always where I want to go. I look for examples of work environments which had cleaned up their act. IBM done a terrific job under the leadership of Virginia Rometti. I always help you. I have a woman at the top who is tuned in, you know, having gone through this herself earlier on. One program she did, which was extraordinary, she turned bystanders into upstanders. That's the IBM language. In that she gave potential allies tools in terms of how to intervene to turn a situation that was going in the wrong direction wrong direction back to safety and honored those people. They could be more junior, more senior, they could be some totally different identity, but IBM developed a whole internal way of hoping, being a much more active ally and kind of nipping it in the butt. They were also people that threatened employees could go to without having to go to HR. Get some advice. So that worked rather beautifully at IBM.

The other thing we found in the data was that when you have a more diverse leadership group, the possibility of predatory behavior is much less.

Mary Killelea: Interesting.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: And when you get a kind of frat-boy culture, you know, Silicon Valley to this day has some of the highest rates of toxic behavior on this front. And it's still the main reason why women are affected by some of these problems. So, we did find some the beginnings of effective action. And obviously some of the legislation has helped enormously, particularly the state government. So, it's not as weak a field as it was. But I will say that the notion that it's a kind of keep off my turf thing and don't threaten my power. If women quit Silicon Valley because of the toxic culture that senior guys probably don't care at all, maybe it's partly designed to do that. So, it is this paradigm dynamic is fascinating and needs to be dealt with head on. Otherwise, one doesn't understand the dynamic which involves these other groups, all of the other new kids on the block. Who are threatening to the hegemonic group.

Mary Killelea: It's very interesting that the whole bully concept or the evil stemming from insecurities, but it makes sense. And the fact that you have the data that supports that is eye opening. So I'm going to jump to your next book, Off Ramps and On Ramps. It's the book of yours about keeping talented women on the road to success. Why do you think so many companies get this wrong and lose top female talents? And what can women do in our own role, you know, in our own roles and ownership of our careers if we don't feel like career progression is available where we are?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, here's the thing. About a third of white collar women will voluntarily take a break, oftentimes triggered by the second child or an elder care crisis when you're a sandwich, you know, the toddler and you’re dealing with dementia. And it's the woman who still picks up much of those responsibilities. Clever, far sighted companies have always realized that the trick there is to keep the woman attached. I remember one thing I got very involved in, a boozing company, it's now being absorbed by another company. But when it was a big company in the teens, they allowed women who needed this break and in consulting when you're traveling three days a week, it's a very hard job to keep going. You know, breastfeed, something like that.

And what they said, look, we'll give you a one day a month job for two years. Not that you're going to earn a whole bunch of money, but you'll be part of us. You'll come to retreats, you'll be in the network, you'll be your mentor, we'll re certify your credentials, right? All of that kind of stuff. And it was an incredibly smart move because they didn't lose these women, right? And the women were very extra specially loyal to this firm because they gave them this opportunity. And it wasn't very expensive, it just needed imagination. 95% of professional women don't even ask. They're so sure they're going to get turned down, right?

And then another example, which was a beautiful policy, American Express, had something called Project Embrace. And what they did is that they said, you know, any of you 30 something years who have so much going on in your lives, and we don't quite know what it is, maybe you just went through a divorce, who knows, right? But we know you're under stress on a lot of projects. You can take two to three years on this different track and we'll guarantee you a 40 hour job. And you will essentially be roving consultants with this. We don't even want to know the reason, but you need to be a high performer. If you're a four or five, which is, you know, top of the tree, you can opt for this. And we'll put you back on the fast track. And that was the key. Because it allowed men to operate too. And it did more for fatherly involvement in childcare than anything else, because they then felt they had permission to plateau out for a couple of years. And then what they didn't want to do was miss out on getting back on track.

And once both men and women are doing it, right, it becomes very legitimate. You don't want to be part of the B team because, you know, a cross section of all of your high performance. So it's not that the world is devoid of good examples, but it's certainly something that there's a lot of short term bad decision making, both on the side of the company, but also the individual because obviously, if you're sleep deprived, you know, you have a five pound baby who actually has a set for three months, you're not going to make great decisions, right. And I think a lot of women don't realize that completely. For three years, you lose 30% of your nighttime money. A tremendous amount. Having that kind of total gap in your resume.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that is that is really powerful statement there. 30%. I didn't realize that.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Right. And I think the post pandemic, the off ramp is fully remote. We now know what's happening, you know, two years post pandemic and many more mothers with children than fathers with children are asking for and getting fully remote. And there's early evidence that they are stuck. If you're fully remote, you lose out on developing a sponsor. You're not pulled into a meeting at the last moment, you don't get to meet the clients that come into the office. There's lots of ways in which human connection and networking is happening for these devoted mothers. And again, I don't feel that it's well known. Hybrid does not do this to your career, but fully remote does.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think it is well known the devastating impact on progression, that full remote. I think people look at the short term like I've got so much on my plate, I've got to do this. I still need to bring in income because we can't live on a single, you know, paycheck.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yes. And of course, it's hardly a result of the way in which people moved out of cities. Because many young families can't afford cities, right? The pandemic, they, you know, moved to Vermont and they were working for, I don't know, TikTok in California or whatever. That's an actual example. And now, there's so much wrapped up in this fully remote setting. And oftentimes the dad is flying back to the city two days a week, because he earns more, can rationalize it that way. But the result in terms of upward mobility within a career for women is very sad right now. It seems very odd.

Mary Killelea: So, writing a book, and I have that on my bucket list, and here you've done so many. I know it's not easy. Where do you get your inspiration? And can you talk a little bit about the process in which you do this? The inspiration is the easiest thing. I feel that many of us trip over urgent agendas in our work. One of my new passions is that LGBTQ rights are being shut down globally in ways that we're not fully aware of. The Brits, you know, the Brit countries just expanded their membership and took in six nations, either which have criminalized, not to be too right, you know, they're Africa or they're Argentina, you know. But that is having an impact on corporations because if you're global, you now have to deal with many more fabrics, whether it's dangerous to reveal your identity and they now are needing to figure out how to keep their people safe rather than giving them all kinds of prominence.

You know, I don't want to necessarily go down that rabbit hole, but you know, something like that, you know, fires me up and I want to write about it. And some things warrant a whole book because looking at executive presence post pandemic, that clearly was, you know, a huge topic. It wasn't a article. It was how to create the discipline and the time. Well, I never had much time, either to write in the back of taxis, with Clipper the big red dog, you know, I've never had the luxury. I mean, I have a lot of children, so I have five children. So I work in very imperfect circumstances. But what I do know, I have to write in my prime hours. It can't be left over time at the end of the day when I'm tired, because it is the hardest work I do. I've got to give it kind of middle of the mall kind of attention. If I don't do it, then I don't do it.

And then the other thing, which I think is a whole trick, I say to myself, I'm putting in two hours for five days of the week. I don't say I'm going to get chapter one minutes. I don't. I judge myself by input. How much time concentrated time? And it can be 20 minutes here or there. Right. But it's going to be two hours and it's going to be in the prime of the day.

Because if I start saying, well, you know, in March, I'm going to do chapter one, I get incredibly discouraged because, you know, I spent the time ripping up my drafts and at the end of the month, I have nothing. But that's part of the process. So, figure out what your prime time is. I'm vicious about perfect circumstances because we need multi strand lives. You know, I don't see the back of taxis is pretty good.

Mary Killelea: Well, I think you're incredibly gifted at knowing the appropriate topics that really are on the minds and hearts of women.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Thank you.

Mary Killelea: And I think many young women look up to you as a role model. What advice do you give them about building confidence or overcoming self doubt or feeling with imposter syndrome?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, I was a prime candidate for imposter syndrome, given where I came from. I think that one thing I learned was to embrace failure. Once you confront it and actually almost celebrate failure, you're not an imposter. You can't be an imposter anymore because you've gotten rid of the fear. I mean, the reason you feel like the imposter, you're scared that you're going to fail or be humiliated, right? You actually don't know 100 percent of your domain of knowledge. Once you say, well, you know, we all fail and the best thing to do is to realize it's a gift because you learn so much from failure. And people love it if you share your failure, a humanizing thing.

I mean, I did not get tenure. You know, I've been talking about that ever since it happened. And there were a bunch of reasons, some of which were unfair, but you become human, you become accessible. You also, if you fail enough, and we, women in particular, were stretched thin over families and work, you know, there is a lot of things. And sometimes you feel like a trap, you're edging sideways. You're actually not going ahead. If you share your struggle and you also experience the pain of failure and the pain of reinvention, you're a much bigger person. Failure is good. I mean, a string of, you know, comfortable, successful years, you know, make people self-satisfied.

I also think it allows you to get in the shoes of others and to be more comfortable with your own experience. Because your empathy, your imagination for exclusion, inability to make something happen, you know, you have all of those dimensions. So to embrace it, to be much more real and to not be so scared.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I love that. Knowing that your work spans research, writing, and speaking engagements, including presentations, which I know you talk about, and you touched on a little earlier. I mean, you've done huge events like Davos. How do you prepare for these engagements? And what advice do you have for women on presenting so that they can get noticed by execs? Because like what you said, content is only a portion. It's the presentation.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yes. It's just blood, sweat, and tears. There's enormous preparation. I think the great fallacy is just wait. You don't ever wait. Even if I've given a presentation many times and we find it last week, I do an enormous amount of prep work. So, it's baked into my bones. Even if my knees are trembling or whatever, right? Actually, they don't anymore, but they used to. I can get away with it because it's banged into my head. So bang it into your head, using mirrors, and trying it out, understanding who you're talking to and allow a time for storytelling. People don't remember facts, as you know.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Maybe that's it. But you know, it's a weird analog. But when I was a graduate student at Harvard, I was also, you know, I was this no one from Wales and you know, it's an old, old organization. I was a graduate student. But I did attend John Kenneth Galbraith's seminars and I admired him like crazy because he was the only economist, in my view, that wrote exciting books. You know, he was an incredibly good writer and his books, The Affluent Society, it was a best seller all around the world.

So, I asked him, you know, I didn't do that. Was he just a natural born, you know, genius writer? And he laughed and he said, you know, in the 13th draft, he introduced the note of spontaneity. He said, I start with this incredibly dry thing with all facts and figures and evidence, and I get the arc of my argument and the trust of my research, right, in the first bit. And then he spends another 12 drafts, lightening it up, putting jokes in, you know, and he said, finally, it looks as though I just dashed it off.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: And I think that's really what matters. And you know, I think one of the lazinesses that has happened with Zoom, not only do people switch off the video, but they just turn up and then they doodle and they don't feel the need to even be courteous.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's surprising.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yes. And, you know, again, you know, in my new book on executive presence, if you proactively stage a Zoom meeting, you distribute an agenda. You give someone on the team responsibility to sum it up at the end. You know, what decisions were made, what are the next steps. And you don't tell people until the end of the meeting, so they have to focus, right? And there are all of these tricks of the trade, which means that 90% of them are actually focused, right? It makes a huge difference. And then if there's a new person, a new voice in the mix, introduce that person with a very brief two sentences on the value that person's bringing to this conversation so that people understand why the heck the person is there and opens the door for them to follow up. So, I have this short list of, it's so common sense, but you know, only 60% of meetings have agendas.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, it's surprising, isn't it?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yeah. There are no previews. And mostly, the clue was just decided on, you know, it's an incredible waste of, you know, talent to tie up chunks of the day in these meetings. Of course, oftentimes, well, they are very badly run, obviously.

Mary Killelea: Those are great tips. Really wonderful, especially in the in the corporate environment. Success can be measured in numerous ways. How do you define success in your career and your personal life?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Passion and purpose, right? If you have that in your professional life over many decades, it's a huge piece of your gratification with where you're at. And obviously, you know, one thing I'm increasingly talking about is that careers can be long. Very few of us want to sit on the beach for so many years, you know. And here we are doing stuff, you know, at ages that we would not have anticipated. So, passion and purpose is huge.

I also think that the ability to empower others, influence others, have agency, you know, outside of your immediate family circle is another huge gift. And interestingly, I think money is pretty important, although on my own list it's third, because it is wonderful to be able to set your kids up to have choices. It's wonderful not to be worried about the way my mother did, you know, when they pay bills. And it gives you choice in what you do with your time. And so, one needs to fight for that. And there are years where investing in yourself in strategic ways is very important.

Mary Killelea: I absolutely love that, because I think it's very rare to hear women say money's importance. And it is. I mean, why we don't talk about it, why it's not okay for us to say, I want to save for my family, I want to have that as part of my legacy surprises me.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Yes. I did a study a few years back for women want five things. And I looked at data in the US, the UK, and Germany, you know, a bunch of advances. So women want five things. It's true. They, these are female professionals of different ages. The senior women were totally in touch with the importance of money and how it had given all kinds of important things. Junior women not so clear on that. They were a little afraid if they moved up the ladder, they would lose touch with some of the hands on stuff that they import. They were also afraid of overwork. They looked up and they thought, well, if I did that job, how could I have children? They start, you know, making those choices before they have children, even if they never have children, they still see it as, you know, excluding family.

So, we measured it. The gratification was one's life. Mothers at 30, mothers at 50, non-mothers at 30, you know, non-mothers at 50. And it turned out that of the five things they wanted, and they wanted to be fairly and well-paid, they wanted intellectual stimulation, they wanted to flourish in their bodies and in their friendships. It wasn't just flourishing was much more important than the whole work family as traditionally. They also wanted to empower others and they wanted to give back to the world.

Men, interestingly, only wanted two things. I mean, some are on the list, way down the bottom, they also wanted those. But the two things they really wanted was money and power. Yeah, I know they did. The male script was super clear, the female script was much muddier, but the misconception was that power and ambition somehow don't pay off. We found that the senior women who had lent in, had made it, were much more satisfied in all five categories. They had much more choice, they had much more flexibility, they empowered others. But think of it, you know, one person I interviewed said, look, I can form meetings at my convenience because I'm the boss. I like meeting in this city in my office. I don't need to travel. I'll be on weird Zoom at three o'clock in the morning. I have flexibility. I have opinions to deal with my taxes and whatever, right? Whatever she did. And she said that at 25, I wouldn't have thought that, that power, you know, gives you a better life.

Anyway, she sounded as though she was of women in my generation who were fearful of ambition. It's a bad word. And I think to some extent it still is. But to measure the actual satisfactions, not just on earning power, but on the other data. She also said, look, you know, I go to, she loves Pilates. I go to the park in the morning. You know, I can control my schedule. It was fascinating.

Mary Killelea: I love to talk about the importance of a personal brand and us controlling our own narrative on how people perceive us. What advice for others do you have on building their own personal brand?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, there's a lot of exciting, rather wonderful data on this in my new book, because I found that we're now free to reveal ourselves. Authenticity is prized. I mean, you know, the helmet or the blackened hair and the grey suit are not the way to go. And people like Fasunda Brown-Jackett, you know, who's so colorful and has the wildest braids, you know, but totally has the eye contact and the authority because of her posture and the way she handles her body language in particular. I mean, I've interviewed all these people, so there's a lot of examples.

I'll just share one thing. If you take black women, almost 50% of them now feel that they can be who they are in the workplace. Ten years ago, that figure was her. So, you know, we're not perfect, but we are getting there.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: And so that gives you the roadmap. I mean, I'm vivacious, I'm colorful. I don't have to, you know, paint that in anymore. I'm very short. I mean, I'm 5'1", so lecterns were never a good idea because I just, which was one reason I abandoned lecterns a long time ago. But it's OK for me to be vivid. But I also talk about my own journey and let it spread through. In other words, one can have fun being distinctive in ways that are true to you. And I think it's one of the two pieces of good news out there that this is now a freedom we have.

Mary Killelea: I do agree with that. I definitely agree that embracing authenticity is more relevant today. And I know it's a term a little bit overused, but I think it allows us to show up as we are and not think I have to live in this box in order to be successful.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Right. The thing that I want to, there's a caveat, its authenticity and polish. Because you've got to look as if you're making some kind of effort. You respect the people, you respect your colleagues, you respect the themes. So the polish piece, I think, is a good word because it's the best version of who you are. And, you know, the tyranny of the size of your waist or the color of your hair or the texture of your hair have gone away. It's not even on the list anymore. Whereas, you know, certain kind of, you know, I guess Barbie doll kind of thing was really on the list big time 10 years ago.

But for instance, one thing that does not work is the aggressive casual thing. When, I mean, and of course, in the pandemic, maybe wearing your pajamas was okay for two months there, but it's not a good idea. You've got to look that you have authority, right? That you command respect. And that requires a certain amount of polish. And it could be your own version of polish, right? But, and there's, you know, one interviewee he said, you've got to look as if you can. Right. You've got to make some effort, you know. Even if it's your way of making effort. Well, it should be your way. You know, it's not the old-fashioned way.

Mary Killelea: What would you tell your 20-year-old self?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: I think I should have learned to embrace failure earlier than I did. I know that's a strange way in, but it's the beginning of true celebration of yourself and allowing you to take the risks. No one does anything incredible in this world. And you can't do that unless you see the richnesses of faith.

Mary Killelea: What is to be bolder when to you?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Well, you know, physically I'm not very bold. Obviously, the whole discipline of staying as fit as possible, like taking that on board, it is a long distance warrior thing. You've still got to be able to run around airports, no matter what your age. And that, you know, becomes more self-conscious. And finding which pieces of your authenticity work best as your leading edge of your brand. And then stick to it because consistency, consistency is very important. And one thing I have chosen is color. I wear a lot of color. It allows me not to be lost on the stage.

Mary Killelea: This conversation has been amazing. Before I let you go, I have this last little bit that I do some fast rapid, get to know you questions. So here we go. Coffee or tea?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Tea.

Mary Killelea: Summer or winter?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Winter.

Mary Killelea: I love how much thought you're putting into this. Beach or mountains?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Mountains.

Mary Killelea: Dogs or cats?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Dogs.

Mary Killelea: Okay, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to share your story, to join me, to accept my invitation to be a guest. It has truly been an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett: And it must be too, so thank you, Mary. Fabulous questions.

Mary Killelea: Thank you. Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two, little b, bolder.com.