Embracing the Other Woman (Part III)

(I thought I'd end my rant about women's tendency to repel each other with a story about a woman who taught me a new, collaborative model of leadership.)

Back when I worked for a Start-up, a new woman entered my life; a new boss. I hadn’t met her yet, but she said that she wanted to meet with me and hear more about my job.

I’d had introductory meetings with new bosses before and knew the drill: tell them about procedure, stick to the facts, let her make up her own mind about what wasn’t working and let her redecorate the department. She would be the fourth person I reported to that year. Her title could have been Senior Vice President, Revolving Door.

“She’s a Harvard MBA,” a co-worker informed me, before even telling me my boss’s name. That told us all we needed to know: she would think she was better than us; she would be stunned at the ‘whatever works’ project management style we had developed over nearly two years at a Dot com start-up; she would quit in six months for a job with a "real" company with non-speculative pay.

The company had downsized by 75 percent. We had given up one of our two floors and consolidated the remaining employees onto half of the remaining floor. None of us felt like we were still at a company. We were like zombies wandering through our routine of sales calls. By now the entire company had been moved into sales, and I had resorted to wearing jeans nearly every day of the week.

My new boss was taking a job with a company that was contemplating its freefall; not a very strategic move for a high-falutin' MBA.

“What’s her name?” I asked my co-worker.

“Cathi.”

“Is that with an ‘I’ or a ‘Y’?”

“An ‘I’, I think.”

Jeeze. Not an ‘I’. I didn’t trust women who spelled their names with ‘I’s. I’ll bet in the seventh grade she dotted her them with hearts. What kind of MBA spells her name with an ‘I’?

Cathi, with an ‘I’, wasn’t quite what I expected. She came to work in what might have been a business suit had it not been furry. She wore clunky black shoes. Her long brown hair had artificial streaks of red and blonde. Unlike everyone else in the office she moved slowly, literally sauntering to her meetings without that physical energy I'd seen in previous bosses.

When we met she came to my desk and sat down next to me. She asked me to tell her about what I had been doing. I rattled off my projects, bullet point by bullet point, thinking to myself, "I’m up to a lot, Lady. And I’ve been through this routine before. Please don’t waste my time by having me explain it for the umpteenth time."

She listened intensely. I found that she didn’t speak much, and when she did her voice was barely audible; I had to lean in to hear her. At times she broke into a chuckle over something I said. Her laugh was girlish and uncontrolled, a total break in her soft demeanor.

I finished my list. “So that’s what I’ve been up to.”

She nodded and thanked me.

A week into her job Cathi organized a team offsite. She started by asking us how we thought the company should move forward. It was in our hands how we would try to get unstuck; she simply facilitated the planning process.

Interesting, as we discussed how to implement our plan, no one insisted on doing all the glamour work; we broke our plan down into pieces and determined how we would help each other meet our goals.

Cathi took the first letters of our names and spelled them out. "You guys are the JETS," she said. That's what our group became.

Consolidating floors meant that we had fewer offices for the senior team. Some execs scrambled to the few remaining private suites; Cathi opted to sit out on the floor with the JETS, next to me. You could tell which desk was hers—the one with the candy and the Powerpuff Girls  handbag tucked underneath. She preferred their butt-kicking animated branding to Louis Vuitton's.

I could feel my back straighten one morning when she came into the office and sat down at her desk.

“Do you want to go over the meeting we had with the client?” she said.

I knew it; she had been waiting to grill me on the meeting we'd had yesterday with a potential advertiser. I had expected her to say more during the meeting, but she had been silent while I pitched. I had stopped intermittently, expecting her to jump in, but she never did, not even when I finished.

“How do you think it went?” she said.

“OK,” I said. “Though I’m not sure what they’re thinking.”

“Yeah. I think you did a great job explaining what we do. The proposal was very well-written, too. But notice what they are telling you—in their words, their actions. Ask questions; let them show you what they want."

It occurred to me that I had been so used to ceding my power in meetings, in projects, that I didn't even know how to get farther than imparting information. Usually others took over when it came to negotiating, persuading, or closing the deal.

Cathi had been with the company nearly a year when I noticed, one morning, no Powerpuff purse underneath the desk next to mine, nor was it there the next day. I learned why Cathi never moved very quickly; she had been diagnosed with chronic arthritis at birth. It came and went, sometimes offering a reprieve. Back at Harvard she often had to travel in a wheelchair. Her treatments over the past few months hadn’t been working, I was told. All this time she had been in excruciating pain.

The company was in a death spiral, and Cathi was leaving, but she insisted that she and I still meet for my six-month employee review. I wasn’t sure what she would say; the past six months had been torturous for the business. I had learned nothing more than how to cold call people until they told me to stop. I wasn’t sure where I was going.

She asked me what I wanted to accomplish. I told her I wasn’t sure, confiding that if the company didn’t make it I might try graduate school, who knows?

“Let me know if you are interested in Harvard,” she said. I would be happy to help with that."

The thought of me getting an MBA at Harvard was outrageous. I was good at taking orders and getting things done tactically. Strategy wasn’t my forte.

She continued, “You are fast; you learn quickly. For two years you were given things to do, with no manager, with no supervision, and you figured it out. I've seen your correspondence, your proposals. I hear you talking to people. You are a communicator."

It was another first for me, not just being told my weaknesses, or hearing about how great I was because I did everything that was asked of me. Cathi had given me the gift of helping me better understand my strengths, my contribution.

Cathi moved out of her place and moved to L.A. Eventually she got a job with a "real" company, with non-speculative pay. Still, I worried about her, wondered how she was doing healthwise. I caught up with a co-worker who had seen her out one day, before she moved.

“Was she in pain?” I asked.

“Don’t think so,” my co-worker said.

“Was she walking?”

“Nope."

"How was she getting around?"

"Quite well. She was riding a Ducati.”

Comments

[Robert]

Wow, inspiring on many levels (how we judge each other, what we sometimes "hide" at work, and the possibility of finding a thoughtful mentor when/where you least expect to, etc.). I am vacillating between wanting to work for Cathi, or marrying her. Maybe both. :-)

[Don The Idea Guy]

Great story about a great boss.
Most times we bitch and moan about the crappy bosses we've had, but the stories of the good ones are few and far between -- like the good bosses themselves it seems.

"Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be."

What if we took the Emerson quote above and replaced the word "man" with "boss"...?

[kirsten]

The Ducati girl. That is hysterical. Wish there were more women like you and Cathi in this world!

Kindly,
Kirsten

[Cathi with an i]

Wow! I've never been a blog topic before! I actually learned a lot about myself from reading this. Thank you Jory! You're still an incredible communicator.

I'm writing from Japan. Yesterday I was in Korea and the week before Shanghai and Beijing where the Powerpuff Girls are growing in popularity in the local marketplace! I moved on from a Powerpuff handbag to working for the company that produces Powerpuff Girls (where else can someone with red streaked hair work!).

I really miss being in a start-up where there is an incredible sense of team. We learn so much from each other when we work together in small teams. A good manager is really a coach who relies on her team's skills and capabilities; removes hurdles; and helps everyone do their best. Helping people grow, evolve and follow their dreams is the real measure of success for any manager.

I hope Jory and I will work together again someday!