Title:
Kristen Anderson’s International Leadership Journey
Subtitle:
Chemical Engineering, R&D, Inclusive Leadership, D&I Advocacy and Women in Boardrooms
Transcript:
Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.
Let’s go.
Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. This is a podcast where we explore bold ideas, powerful voices, and boy do we have a powerful voice today. I am so thrilled to welcome incredible global leader and fierce advocate for inclusive leadership, Kristen Anderson.
If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see where she lives in Italy right now, and it looks like a home from under the Tuscan sun or something, which I’m obsessed with. Her career is beyond, and we have a lot of women and men that follow this podcast, that are constantly asking me how to be a boss.
How to be an advocate, how to be a leader. And when I sat on a conversation with you, Kristen, I was like, wow, you are such a powerful woman. She is currently a global advisor for How Women Lead women’s leadership for the world program. She serves on an advisory board for W-O-B-A-L, which is Women on Board’s African Leadership.
She has spent four years as Vice Chair and CEO of European Women on Boards where she championed gender balance at its highest level in leadership. Her story is honestly about so much more than titles.
It’s about international experience, women having a voice in leadership, growing into executive roles. It’s about leading meaningful change through culture and scaling that on a global level. This is such an important conversation that we are having in the workplace, in our society from a global perspective.
And it’s really enlightening being where we are in the state of the union of 2025 and meeting women like this that are really leading and teaching us how to have voices. I know for me, the work that I do is because I never saw women, specifically disabled women on boards helping make decisions and influencing that.
So Kristen, thank you so much for your light and your power that you’re bringing to the show. Welcome. I’m so excited to share your story.
Kristen Anderson: Thank you so much, Alycia. I’m a bit embarrassed by that long introduction. It’s all me, but it sounds a little too much. But it’s a pleasure to be here. We met each other, had a great talk and it’s really nice that you invited me back to carry on our conversation, so my pleasure.
Alycia Anderson: I am so happy. I’m all about lifting up women and getting them in a power position to really leverage who they are and their identity to reach their dreams, gain their goals, and honestly, just have a true relationship with every layer of their identity and who they are. And I think you embody that in a lot of ways.
I just listed off some of your accolades. It’s not all of them, so I’m sure you can sew in more as we go through this conversation. But you’ve led at a really high level globally, and your career has evolved over time. Can we look back a little bit, and you talk about maybe some of the pivotal moments in your growth, like how do you get to being a leader globally and doing what you’re doing, will you share just a little bit of your history?
Kristen Anderson: Yeah, I can definitely tell you my history and, it’s a journey. You learn, you make mistakes. And I think the main thing is, it sounds very cliche. We learn from our mistakes, but I understand that, but it’s really being self-aware and saying, wow, I really screwed that up.
And, or I did that and I wonder why, or asking someone, what did I do wrong there? I got this sense because I was watching people that whatever I said did not resonate in the culture in which I am now present, and I’m trying to learn. How to be a better leader in whatever culture it is. Just to, for those who are listening and might be interested I’m a chemical engineer, so I’m a STEM woman by training. I grew up in, in a town that some people might know and it makes it easier now to tell people where I’m from because of the movie. Because in Italy, no one knows this town. But I usually ask, who’s seen the movie Oppenheimer? And you had seen it. And I said, well, that’s my hometown.
So I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It’s a town that’s hidden up in the Rocky Mountains on purpose because if you know the history of the town, my dad worked as a scientist, he’s a brilliant guy. My mother was a language teacher, so that kind of gave me a, I think a science background.
But I also had this great curiosity for cultures and languages. Yeah, so I decided to be a chemical engineer, did my trade in my university in the U.S. and then when it got to the point of thinking about jobs, I really liked the idea of working in an industry where, you’re making something that you can eat. I worked in the food industry, so there’s a lot of psychology that goes into what you choose to eat and, it was also a science marrying with people’s own emotions and needs. And but after some time, and it’s now 26 years ago. I asked, and my husband and I both asked to be moved overseas. And so luckily the companies we worked for always moved us for work. So first I spent three years in Australia, in Melbourne running a leadership, a team therealways in R&D. And after three years was transferred to Germany in Munich and also running part of R&D and doing also a business development role. And then left that company and was offered an opportunity to work in China for Coca-Cola. It was building in Shanghai, a new they had approved the budget for a new R&D center.
And what an opportunity, I didn’t really know much about China. I traveled there, but never lived there. And so it’s a new company, new culture. New organizations. So moved there and helped to build also with the people and the structure for an R&D, a global innovation and technology center in Shanghai. But we really wanted to go back to Europe and we’re looking during 2009 was a recession and thinking it might take many years to go back, find a role. And then where I am now is in Parma which is a small town people might know in Italy, home of prosciutto and Parma cheese because Barilla. The Italian food company found me in China somehow, and offered me a role running part of R&D Barilla, which is where their headquarters are. Family owned company. That’s the most of my career. What’s off to a little bit on the side that happened without me really planning it is that I was asked to be on the D&I committee, the DEI committee. I know there’s a lot of things going on in the US about DEI. Here it’s very strong still, and Barilla is, has started that 2013 and I was part of the committee probably because I lived by that time many places overseas, and I was the only first native English speaker in the whole Barilla headquarters. And,
that was a double hat and I did that, along with my R&D role. But then the role is still a rotating role. And after my time to pass the baton to someone the CEO asked me to take on as Chief Diversity Officer.
Long story short, my last corporate role. Was as Chief Diversity Officer for Barilla, which I really enjoyed, had its challenges culture change, especially in a family owned company in Italy, has its different challenges as well. But I really liked the role and had a great mentor as the CEO Claudio Colzani.
And he, I learned a lot from him I left the corporate world and I started working in nonprofits always around gender equality. And that’s what you mentioned, Alycia, about European women on boards or How Women Lead. So I hope that wasn’t too long of a background, but that gives people a little bit of the perspective of my career.
Alycia Anderson: It’s an incredible career. I mean that whole introduction of who you are is just an inspiring piece of a look into your history. And also it allows us as women to look forward at the possibilities of growth. That is a very impressive career that’s taken you around the world, where you’re marrying science and culture and just, I love it.
It’s amazing. It’s powerful. So how has your work, internationally shaped the way you lead from a women in leadership role from an inclusion global role, from your advocacy? Can you talk a little bit about that piece?
Kristen Anderson: Yep. I think that’s. It’s key how you approach leadership. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a different culture different company. I find there’s some key elements and I made my mistakes. It’s not like I went to Australia as a, wow. I got it all figured out. I made mistakes and almost the first mistake was thinking because the language is the same, that every other elements were the same.
And I made my mistakes by, doing things that I thought were totally appropriate. And it wasn’t. And people, you realize people are upset and you have to figure out why. So I think the first thing is a high level of listening a high level of observing.
Even if people don’t tell you they’re upset or you’ve done something wrong, you can see their body language. If you’re really curious and you really want to soak it all in. You can really learn a lot just by observing. And one thing I did I went to Australia, that was actually a mistake.
My boss told me after a few months he said, Kristen, you’ve waited too long to make changes. Because when you come to a new role, people will expect you to make changes. But people don’t want someone who comes in right away and says, okay, this is the way we’re doing. It’s my way. Tomorrow we’re changing everything.
They want people who can listen, who understand and take other points of view, but then at a certain point makes decision and makes changes. If you wait too long, and that time depends on the culture. So you have to have some understanding of the cultural differences.
Sometimes people expect quick changes, sometimes not, but I think the point is they expect changes, but those should be based on a level of understanding, not just, they hired me and brought me in to be the, the general manager of this R&D organization. So everything I’m gonna do has gotta be right.
It’s my way and that’s it. No, you’re brought in for certain characteristics, certainthings that you’ve delivered. But that doesn’t mean those are all gonna be successful. There’s different levers you have to be able to pull. To be successful in different cultures. So one is, I think really is a lot of first, like I call it, be a sponge.
Just soak it all in. and then also write down the things you find different for you. Why are they doing this? I wonder why it’s like this versus what I would do in my cultural background. And some of those will be explained. You can get explanation. Someone will tell you because it’s. Let’s just say it’s a regulatory requirement in Australia. Okay. Didn’t know that. Some won’t have an explanation. It might be things that you wanna change, and then you decide how to do that, whether it’s, more consensus based on the culture. So I think a lot of that listening, being a sponge, soaking it all in, and really saying, I’m gonna learn something from this, but I’m also gonna bring, of course, my strengths.
But those need to be also adjusted and be flexible enough for the culture in which you’re leading.
Alycia Anderson: I think that’s such an important lesson. The listening. Be a sponge. Take it all in. I think we’re all very naturally all kind of wanna lead with talking, sharing and a little bit too much we were just talking about before we started. How fast we talk and like how much information we wanna get out.
I think that listening piece specifically now in 2025 when D&I is under the microscope that it is, I’m really seeing how much people were listening and taking in versus. Not over the last many years where so much content’s been going out and diversity initiatives have been all over the place.
And I’m having these conversations now that I’m like, nobody was ever listening. Nobody’s been listening, nobody’s been listening. Have we learned anything? I think that’s a really important lesson, not just in diversity initiatives, but in life to listen. So you can really gauge where you need to land.
Exactly, because it’s out there.
Kristen Anderson: You can learn a lot. It’s not, again, I didn’t take some cultural training. I made the mistakes as I went along. But I luckily had people who also gave me advice. I’ll give you another story. When I was in China after a few months the HR manager, Jennifer Cao, and I always appreciate what she did.
She took me aside. She said, Kristen, you’re gonna get much more out of your first line. If you speak less often and you speak last, because again, I didn’t really consciously realize that, I thought everyone’s just gonna contribute their ideas. But in China, certain level of hierarchy, which is not only China, so I’m not pointing this out just for China, there’s a certain level of hierarchy and people are not gonna disagree with the boss in public.
Okay? So I stopped, and it wasn’t like I was monopolizing the conversation, but maybe, in that culture I was so I basically, would open up a topic, but I would make everyone go around first. I let them have a conversation, maybe add at the end, because if I had a stupid idea, people wouldn’t disagree.
And I was wondering why these things weren’t happening, like I thought we all agreed to this, don’t take a head nodding as a yes. In many cultures that means I listen to you doesn’t mean I agree with you. And if people don’t feel comfortable disagreeing, you’re gonna think everyone’s agreed. So they’re going on, to do this. honestly then when it’s not happening, I was like, oh, something’s definitely wrong. I’m not getting it. So I think that they’re not always subtle, but if you watch and you’re more interested in watching and listening than speaking, you can just get a lot of, and it will help your leadership style when I was working in Italy, Italy is also hierarchical society. generally junior people won’t disagree with their boss in public. So I learned a lot about, if I wanted to get some strong, I would have sometimes with people that were more introverted, have a separate meeting with before, get their ideas before, don’t put them on the spot in a meeting.
So there’s a lot of things you can do. It’s develop your toolkit and you will be a stronger leader just by having this toolkit. And it, say, but then I have to change the way I lead and my values, no, it’s nothing about your values and your leadership skills, it’s just that you will be able to flex those different muscles of leadership depending on your situation to be able to get the best out of your team, generally to make them feel comfortable to, express their point of view.
Alycia Anderson: I love that. It’s not about changing completely, but it’s about the tool belt, and being able to shift depending on what room you’re in and who you’re in front of. And that’s really important in business for sure. I just love what you just said about speak less often and speak last.
I love that. That prepares you even if you’re not in a room that’s tough or there’s hierarchy or whatever. I find in my own business that I’m asking more questions. I’m preparing in my mind. So I know when I speak towards the end or later when I’ve gathered information, I can have a strong conversation that benefits them, that it’s not about me, it’s about them.
Like how do we, make the business negotiation or whatever is going on work. So I think that’s really powerful. You’re doing a lot of advocacy.
Kristen Anderson: Totally agree with you. And I think it works in any context. When I was in Germany, I moved to Germany. I was the only female boss. No one had ever had a female boss. My staff was a hundred percent German men, all German men.
Alycia Anderson: Wow.
Kristen Anderson: They came into to me. It wasn’t that they had a big question mark. It wasn’t that they were negative on me, it’s just that I haven’t worked for a female boss. She’s tends to be less experienced than me a number of years in the company. and she’s American. So what is this gonna actually help us with in developing food products in Germany for Europe?
Okay. And so I really had to approach it about what could I help them with. So I’m, definitely far away from a micromanager. I’m more like to look at the strategic aspects and also very heavily the people development. And I thought, help them be inclusive leaders who can develop people. It wasn’t that they weren’t non-inclusive, but they had never been asked to develop people, have a plan, individual plan for each person. How are we gonna be of harder feedback? Many cultures giving the development feedback is difficult, it’s not come naturally. So helping them be comfortable with that. So I focus more on how they as people, leaders, could manage their teams better and setting us some strategic ideas, but letting them manage, of course, ’cause they knew it in and out, but they hadn’t been asked to focus as much on people development.
Alycia Anderson: Oh, I love it. So speaking of people developmentyou do a lot of work for opening doors for women specifically at the boardroom level. And today, 2025, I feel like this is more important than ever because boards are making a lot of decisions right now, as they always do, but it’s very clear.
What are some of the biggest challenges, opportunities for women seeking those roles? Talk about the power, the benefits. Will you just speak to that a little bit and how that’s a big part of your advocacy?
Kristen Anderson: Yeah, as you said, that’s where I focus a lot of my time now was in European Women on boards and now How Women Lead, because most of the boards, are, not gender equal. There’s more men than women, and I don’t. Think anyone in the audience will have to have the business case restated, but we know that more diverse teams make more ethical decisions.
You can, if you wanna, go past some of the crisis, recent and past, and you’ll see a board that looks very homogeneous. Even if there’s some women, they tend to have the same background. They tend to have the same education. So again there’s, it’s not just. My personal view or the fact that I’m passionate about the topic, there’s a lot of data showing diversity adds to business value, business success. So why are there not more women on the boards? Is that what you’re asking, Alycia? Why? What’s the challenges? First of all, unfortunately many board seats are still, gotten through a network and a network can be, I ask my friend, I ask the person that I know well in my inner circle to join the board. Our inner circles are very much made up of people that remind us of ourselves, and that’s the inner circle exercise. When you think who are the people that I spend my time with?
Who are the people at work who I ask opinions of? They tend to be people who remind you, they might not look like you, but there’s some aspect of them reminds you of yourself. That’s why it’s called affinity bias. And we some, it’s gonna be very unconscious many times. And so I might, there might be something about you, Alycia, that reminds me of when I, was a certain part of my career.
So in my unconscious mind it’s Alycia’s my in inner circle. So whenever I have a difficult decision and I need to get some input, I’ll ask these people that are my inner circle. I won’t ask the people. Are my outer circle or disagree with me. And those are also the people we should ask because we shouldn’t ask just, but anyway I’ve digressed on the bias.
So that’s why sometimes boards get very homogeneous in certain aspects. Now, there are initiatives in Europe where I live there’s the gender equality directive of for boards. But those are only applying to the biggest companies. But there has to be more equal representation of women and men.
So there is movement. It’s slow. But I think there are lots of opportunities for women on boards and what I generally hear, Alycia, you were talking about what the challenges are is women, we tend to sometimes downplay our skills. Say we’re not ready.
Data shows that when women have 85 to 90% of the competencies for a promotion, for the next job, for a board seat will say, we’re not ready.
During my time in European Women on Boards, and then men, when they have 45, 50% will say, we’re ready. They’ll held their hand up. I’m ready. That is not saying men or women, one’s better than the other. It’s just a gender difference. So with that in mind, we should go into it saying, look, I think maybe I am ready for board seat.
Or you tell your friend you should apply for that board where why aren’t you not doing your board bio? Why are you not pushing yourself forward or the next role, whatever it is. Because we tend to say we’re not ready and we are. So if you’re a manager and you have a man who says, I’m ready, and a woman who says, I’m not, sometimes without thinking, you’ll go and say, okay, let’s promote the man.
So then there’s the broken rung, whatever you wanna call it. There’s less women moving up. Not the only reason. There’s lots of, it’s a complicated issue. There’s the lack of flexibility. You mentioned it earlier, Alycia, that many women don’t see role models at the top. They don’t see people that remind them of themselves or who they aspire to be, and I always say just because that woman is managing or that man is managing the business the way they are, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way. I think it’s like putting yourself forward. It’s, even asking colleagues friends, should you think I should apply for this?
And then, getting some training on the role of a board or what you need to do in terms of your own personal development. Don’t put your personal development aside as less important. I think that these are some of the things that can help individuals move ahead.
And I think that the more, we gain the support and get a mentor, a sponsor, to help you move up the ladder and get ready for a board seat. I think there sometimes people don’t know the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. A mentor is someone who talks with you and a sponsor is someone who talks about you when you’re not in the room. So a sponsor doesn’t man or woman. It’s if they’re talking about promotions or who are board candidates? There’s a sponsor would say, Alycia is someone I met. I think she would be very good on the board for these reasons. And they have the data as to why you’re the right candidate.
Alycia Anderson: Okay, let’s talk about that for a minute. ’cause that’s really interesting and you’re making me think like is that a role that you’re, a relationship, a partnership, that you’re actively seeking out somebody who’s gonna sponsor you in those conversations? Or is that one of your buddies that you know is on, like you’re saying that is on the board where, like how do you gain that type of relationship in a sponsor?
Kristen Anderson: No, it’s a very good question, and that’s one of the ones that’s asked most frequently because a lot of people have mentors, but they don’t have sponsors. you can’t, it’s not something you can just go ask someone and say, can you be my sponsor? They’ll be like, what?
Alycia Anderson: I.
Kristen Anderson: people should be sponsors of others for reasons.
With examples like, I saw you delivering this great project, or you brought these skills that no one else did, and that’s why I’m gonna speak highly of you having the data. That’s what a sponsor does. So the way to get a sponsor is to actually, whether it’s in your role or in something, you can volunteer at a company or something like that, where you will be able to meet someone else, where you can show you are doing something that they will find impressive of value because I’m sure that these women will be able to really highlight and excel in what they’re doing. So sometimes your sponsor can be your boss. But not always. Let’s say your company has a DEI work, or they have employee resource groups and they’re looking for people to, lead them in the future or something like that.
That’s a way to get yourself visible where you might be visible now to a higher level person that you wouldn’t be seen for some years, right? So these are ways if they have a team. I’m making this up, but there could be a lot of ways where there’s some kind of, I call it volunteer.
You still have your other job, but it’s a way to get sponsored tickets. They’ll see you in a different light, they’ll see you doing a different thing, and they won’t be in the hierarchy of, I, don’t see Alycia coming into this role for five more years, but, a lot of times there’s very good leadership talent that’s farther down the pipeline that you see because of these other ways to get involved.
Alycia Anderson: I love that. Oh, so good. So the word mentorship you just mentioned, and I know that your mantra is, which I love by the way, your mantra is, rise to the top and open doors for other women, which is super powerful. How has mentorship or sponsorship, since you mentioned both, how has that shaped your personal journey and like climbing to where you have been and how do we do that for others?
Kristen Anderson: Yeah, so I think, if you look back, if I look back in my career, working in, eight different countries and having a lot of different mentors and sponsors, I think, the ones that really spent the time giving me the feedback. It’s a data point that shows that women get less developmental feedback. They get, more kind of general, you’re doing a good job kind of feedback, but less developmental feedback. And I don’t, again, this is not conscious, this is unconscious bias. Maybe people feel like that will be too upsetting. And then people, especially women of color, get even more. So the more diverse you have the less developmental feedback that you get.
So I think it’s having those mentors to give you the hard feedback. I had a boss told me one time that, you know that meeting you, you did not do a good job. You talked too quickly. You shut down questions, you need to be. And I had to, I either had to take it or, I could ignore it.
But always in feedback, there’s something of value. Even if you choose not to take it, you’d say, okay, that’s what that person said about what they think. I will take it in. Maybe it’s not aligned with my values or my leadership style to actually change it. It’s their feedback. And so I think taking the feedback, but having, being a mentor and sponsor, especially, a boss is giving that feedback.
And that’s where I really grew because the first time I did a 360, I was shocked. I don’t know if anyone in the audience has done those before, but it was like, really, that’s the way people that I work with perceive me. I had no clue. Not surprisingly, people thought I wasn’t listening enough. I was too assertive. I was pushing my idea too much and not coming across as being open. And so, I can say all of that doesn’t make any sense. It’s not me. Or say, whoa, there’s more than one person who says this and if I really want to be that leader who can manage a lot of different people with different diversities and different teams, I better change my way of operating. And then I took a course. I asked for a course and I said, I really wanna do more in terms of flexing my leadership style. we all have a comfort leadership style, one, but there’s others, and we need to have those in our toolkit.
Alycia Anderson: I love that and I think self-reflection and taking feedback, is probably one of the hardest things to do, especially when it feels or, sometimes it can feel, and I don’t know if this is like women versus men, it probably is we take it maybe a little bit more personaland taking that feedback and using it constructively is powerful.
So this is a disability podcast, so I’m gonna ask you a question about diversity on boards from a disability standpoint. What is your perspective from, and what do you see from all of the work that you’re doing? What, how, what’s the disability representation from the past present?
Where do you see it going?
Kristen Anderson: Are you talking specifically on boards or in general in companies?
Alycia Anderson: Leadership boards.
Kristen Anderson: It’s really very timely. You asked this because last week I was in London for the D&I Leaders Conference, and there was a lot of sessions on disability inclusion, accessibility, neurodivergence, and it was really some of the things that are happening in some companies that are very much in the forefront, but I think it’s. Very low. Very low. If you think about women on boards in Europe, in the 27 member states are not even right around 30%. And that’s including some countries that are more, 40%, that’s just boards, that are big companies, right? Think about the whole realm of all the companies and then you think that’s women. We have people that have disabilities and sometimes they’re disclosed and nondisclosed disabilities, and there’s other aspects. Of course, we all know the other aspects of diversity that’d be shockingly low. And then even though there are more women on boards because of directives, because of countries, putting in laws. There’s still not very many women in the C-suite, very few CEOs. So then you also ask, not only it’s the C-Suite as a leadership team, and then go down to other teams below. I think that’s really an area that has to be focused on. I know that companies that were presenting last week were focused very much on this and said, this is a key initiative for us. Also because if you don’t have diverse teams, also. Designing products, for example, you design products for certain disabilities. You can design it for everyone. So in short, not very well represented at all.
And I think considering it’s all like a drill down from just even gender, everything else below falls into a really shockingly low number.
Alycia Anderson: So then if you were a woman or man younger in your career, like what’s the key advice there to push forward and the theme of this podcast, like advocacy and like growth, like what do you think is the thing that needs to be done?
Kristen Anderson: What advice I like to give is what I wish someone had told me when I was my more junior self is to really network. We say we network at companies, but to really focus on, I need to expand my network and I need to make sure I don’t just have an inner circle that I’m going to lunch with all the time and I need to really push myself out there a bit and figure out how I get involved beyond my job, because you’ll be seen in a different light.
You’ll be seen by people. If you find something you’re passionate about, whether it’s in your company or it’s you’re, decide to volunteer for a nonprofit., You will learn something. It will help you with your skills, and you will be seen in a different light. It will help your leadership skills too. A lot of people start with a nonprofit board or they volunteer to lead a committee on a nonprofit. Think about it. You’re leading groups of volunteers that maybe you don’t have a people leadership role in your company yet, so you can learn something Don’t only think about the next step up promotion. Think of sideways ways or volunteer ways or things that can give you skills. it should be about what skills am I bringing into my ability to lead that will make me more successful in the future for wherever I wanna go. Sometimes people, come to me and say, I was offered this position. Let’s say it’s in France and I’m in Italy. What do you think, Kristen? Should I take it? It doesn’t seem like it’s a great position. I have 10 people reporting to me in Italy and I only have two, the size of what I’m leading is smaller on paper. Butif you look at it that way, most opportunities won’t look good unless I’m getting promoted, unless I’m getting a new title. But the things that I learned so much were the lateral moves or the moves that appeared to be smaller, but I actually learned so much about my leadership style, flexing my style and figuring out how to be a better overall leader and people developer. Because for example, in China the team was a hundred people more than a hundred. the role in Barilla and I had a team of five. But, new company, new culture. Not everyone speaks English, so I need to learn Italian, you know family owned company. But I thought, I’m gonna grow and I’m gonna learn something.
And eventually, if I, hopefully I will do well, they’ll gimme more responsibility. I eventually took over as Chief Diversity Officer, would I have ever predicted this? I didn’t know. But if you’re open to the opportunity, and I know there’s, constraints that you need to, people have children, they can’t just move everywhere, but be open to it and don’t look at, on paper it seems smaller because if you think.
There’s some skills there that I will need, that I could learn, and it’ll be good. Almost like you’re making your own cv, your own curriculum on what are the blanks, and I wanna fill in those skills because that’s gonna be necessary for the role that I ultimately want in five years, for example.
Alycia Anderson: Oh, I love that. And filling those gaps. Like I know when I was growing my career, I’m like, oh, I know I need to do this, and then I need to do this, and then one day I’ll have enough, and, it always seemed oh, I’m never gonna get there. But chipping away at those little lessons.
And I like how you said be nimble. It’s not just from the bottom to the top, it’s lateral and moving in different directions to gain that experience. Being creative in outside of your role. Like how did we meet? We met because I want to meet more women like you and have a network that is surrounding women empowerment, like disability, and also outside of it, and so creating those relationships to build new opportunities, relationship networking. I think that’s all really important.
Kristen Anderson: But I think, I think that the thing we have to tell ourself is, I see sometimes people saying, okay, my next role, I will have a team. I need to start with three people. Then the next role after that, I need to move to 10 people and get this title and the next role because, but maybe if you really think about, do I wanna manage people?
If you wanna manage people, it’s not about power. It’s about do I really care about people job? If you say, I don’t care about, I’m not good at it. Not good at it means it’s okay if you wanna do it, but you’re not good. You can get, you’re gonna be trained, right?
But some people just say, I don’t really want to manage people. Fine. That’s not the only way to move ahead, and it’s not the only way to grow as a manager. Don’t look at the things on paper because sometimes people think, I have a team of 10, so I’m more powerful than that. Colleague was a team of three and a team of 20. That doesn’t do anyone any good, and especially not the people under you, because if you are really focused on the numbers, because that gives you more, power or prestige at the organization, they’re gonna suffer because you aren’t gonna spend time developing them as people.
’cause you ultimately wanna develop them to take your role. If I tomorrow left, I should have someone, one or two people in my team who can do my role. That’s the ultimate goal.
Alycia Anderson: That is all really good advice. I think it’s a natural inclination that we think we need to move up, get into management, like manage more people more. And you’re right. Like maybe that’s not your thing and you don’t enjoy that, and you’re not the best at it or whatever.
Did we miss anything?
Kristen Anderson: I think one thing you asked me last time, I had to spring this up ’cause people say, what can I do tomorrow to be more inclusive? That’s one of the things because sometimes, people say I’m not a hiring manager so I can’t bring diversities into the team.
I don’t hire people or I don’t lead a lot of people. What can I do? I wanna be an inclusive leader. I wanna be an inclusive person, inclusive colleague. And there are things you can do because we see it, and you and I talked about this last time, Alycia, you see it all the time. The type of behavior that’s either. Conscious or unconscious than people do during meetings. They tend to cut off people who are different, who have different diversities. Women are more cut off from finishing what they’re saying than men, women of color, more women with disability so you can, the more diversities you add on, the more the challenge and the barrier becomes higher. There’s things that both men and women as allies can do, and everyone should take an ally role. So if I’m in a meeting and I, Alycia, you started speaking and someone cuts you off before you’re finished, I’d say wait. Alycia hasn’t finished yet. I’d like to see what the rest of what she was saying.
Or if someone, sometimes it happens that someone ignores, you said an idea and everyone’s that’s nice, and they polite, but move along. And Three speakers later, someone else comes to the same, almost basically say your idea, the same idea.
And it’s like, why? Why does it happen? No one says anything. So you know, oh, that’s, you can say, that’s nice, Luca, let’s have Alycia also, Alycia brought this up a few minutes ago, so why don’t you two. Work on it together, something like this. So you can do it in soft ways, which doesn’t offend people, but I thinkthe role of an ally is not a bystander.
You can’t say I’m, I am really supportive of DEI and my colleagues. Yes. But then when someone’s telling an inappropriate joke, do you laugh? Because saying nothing gotta tell you. Saying nothing means everyone interprets that as you agree.
Everyone will think you thought it was funny and there’s easy things you can do. If someone tells it, say that joke, I don’t find that joke. Very funny. let’s not tell those type of jokes or this isn’t the place where we tell, something like that. if you don’t feel comfortable ’cause it’s a boss or something, then go outside and talk to someone saying that wasn’t, but I think the point is there are little things we can do every day. And that sends a sign that we’re much more inclusive, protecting others, trying to help others and they don’t have to be alone off there to the side by themselves as the minority and the team.
Alycia Anderson: I love those examples of being a good ally in meetings. I think we don’t talk about that enough, and I love what you just said, the role of an ally. It does not sit silent as a bystander like that is absolutely true and there is ways to approach it that can be comfortable for everybody.
Kristen Anderson: don’t have to be, because people, I think people don’t take an active role because they’re worried that what they’ll say will cause an argument that people will be offended. Like I hear people saying oh go talk to the girls in marketing. Why are they girls? I would just say. Who do you mean? You mean Natalie, the chief marketing officer, or do you mean It in a way, and I’m not talking, this isn’t about politics, it’s not about things like that. It’s about just making sure that people are included and that people are, it also gives a kind of an example of what conclusive leadership looks like.
Alycia Anderson: I love it.
Yeah. So we wrap the show with the pushing forward moment, so I’m gonna put you on the spot.
Kristen Anderson: Okay.
Alycia Anderson: Do you have a little mantra or something that you can share with our community that you know, something you live by, a little nugget of gold that you can give away to inspire our community to go off into their careers and hit the ground running.
Kristen Anderson: Definitely. So you already mentioned one of the things that I love, which is European Women on Board’s motto, rise the top and open doors for others, because I think you really have to do things for others. It should be, yeah. We all wanna move ahead too. We wanna but we need to, do this with others.
Not on top over, over top of others. thing that I really like this quote, I think a lot of, Maya Angelou and she said, people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. The part of inclusion, and this is not making people feel warm and fuzzy. It’s making people feel listened to.
Alycia Anderson: Yeah.
Kristen Anderson: find you, listen to me, you heard my opinion. You might decide otherwise ’cause you’re the boss. But you didn’t just like glance over it and didn’t really, and just waiting to formulate your own argument.
You listened to me and you made me feel included. And this is really, I think, the heart of an inclusive leader.
Alycia Anderson: Kristen, thank you so much for doing this.
Kristen Anderson: It was fun. You, I think we could talk for a long time,
Alycia Anderson: I know I gotta Italy and visit you.
Kristen Anderson: Yes. Come with your husband.
Alycia Anderson: This is gonna be a really empowering episode for our community. I really appreciate your time and your expertise and just your brilliance and just all the powerful work you’re doing in the world. Thank you so much for leading for a lot of us. And I really hope, I hope that our community enjoyed this episode.
We will be back next week. This has been pushing forward with Alycia and. You know that is how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next time.
Kristen Anderson: Thanks Alycia so much for the invitation.
Alycia Anderson: Thank you.