From the Boardroom: Wisdom From Women at the Top Part 1
Exploring the essence of leadership: Join Claudia Healy, STOBG’s Chief Human Resources Officer, as she interviews three independent members of STOBG’s Board of Directors—Jane Chmielinski, Natalie Gochnour, and Julie Schoenfeld—on their experiences, challenges, and lessons on shattering the glass ceilings and redefining leadership in their respective fields. (Part 1 of 2)
HOST
Claudia Healy
Chief Human Resources Officer, STO Building GroupView Bio
GUEST
Jane Chmielinski
Independent Board Member, STO Building GroupView Bio
GUEST
Natalie Gochnour
Independent Board Member, STO Building GroupView Bio
GUEST
Julie Schoenfeld
Independent Board Member, STO Building GroupView Bio
Narrator:
Welcome to Building Conversations, a construction podcast powered by STO Building Group and Part 1 of From the Boardroom: Wisdom from Women at the Top. On today’s episode, join Chief Human Resources Officer, Claudia Healy, and three members of the STO Building Group Board of Directors, Jane Chmielinski, Natalie Gochnour, and Julie Schoenfeld, as they take a deep dive into their experiences, challenges, and triumphs as women in leadrship.
Claudia Healy:
Welcome to From the Boardroom Wisdom from Women at the Top. Join us today as we uncover pearls of wisdom these trailblazing women have gathered on their journey to the top. Whether you’re aspiring to climb the corporate ladder, seeking to enhance your leadership skills, or just curious about the dynamics of high level decision making. This episode promises to offer enlightening and inspiring exploration into the world of executive leadership. So grab your headphones, settle in, and let’s embark on a journey of discovery with women who are not just leading the way, but paving new paths for future generations.
Claudia Healy:
I’m Claudia Healey, the CHRO of STO Building Group, and I’m privileged to be here today to moderate the podcast with these remarkable women, Jane, Julie, and Natalie have each led successful careers and are still active today in addition to being members of the STO Building Group board of directors. Each is also on several committees as well. So let’s take a moment to get to know each of these leaders and the career journey that they have each been on to get to where they are today. Then we’ll explore insights and pearls of wisdom that they have to share. So, we’ll get to know these ladies a little bit more intimately now. So, ladies, please share with our listeners who you are, a bit of the backstory of your leadership, and your career story as well. And within your introduction, please finish by completing this sentence from a very young age, I dot, dot, dot. So, let’s start with Natalie. You’re the most recent member of our board here, so Natalie, take us away.
Natalie Gochnour:
Yeah, happy to do that, Claudia, and thanks for having me. From a very young age, I knew that I wanted to be in public service. My mother gave me a book when I was in high school that got me interested in economics, and I took every economics class I could take and eventually found myself working for Utah Governors. I worked for three different Utah governors eventually did a tour of duty in Washington, DC as they say in public policy. Worked for George W. Bush as a political appointee. And then I’ve spent my last 10 years leading a public policy institute in the state of Utah at the University of Utah. I’m a westerner by birth and by preference. I love the mountains. I’m an active skier. I love to hike and spend a lot of time in the beautiful Red Rock the national parks that we call home in the state of Utah. And it’s been a real privilege to serve as a director on the STO Building Group Board.
Claudia Healy:
Well, it’s great to have you. Julie, how about you? You’re the second newest here today.
Julie Schoenfeld:
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Julie Schoenfeld, and from a very early age, I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. The reason is that my father was an entrepreneur. We had kind of a crazy life in that we’re not always sure that the payroll was going to be made. And, you know, my mother would have to tighten her belt and figure out how she was going to pay for the groceries for the six kids. And I always thought, what an exciting way to live. So but I didn’t just start out saying, I’m going to just jump in and become an entrepreneur. I went to engineering school, got an engineering degree and an MBA, and I decided, well, if you’re going to learn how to run a company, you should go work for good companies, companies that are very well run.
Julie Schoenfeld:
So I went and joined Proctor and Gamble, and I had a job at Hewlett Packard, and I kind of did every position you could do from sales, marketing, operations, finance, till I finally started my own company back in the first internet wave. And it was a chat company that was acquired by one of the early search engines called Ask Jeeves, which was a really up and down crazy time. And from there, I led four venture backed startups. My most recent startup was a sensor for the self-driving car that was acquired by General Motors. And I worked at General Motors for a period of time. So, my career has been all over the map. I’m originally from New England. I grew up in the Boston area, but I’ve spent the last 30 years in Southern California: a place that is really, really lovely, I might add. And it’s just joyful to be on this panel with all of you and appreciate the invitation. And since I have worked for some very well-run companies, I can also say that as the board member of STOBG, this is a very well-run company.
Claudia Healy:
Well, thank you Julie. So, Jane, as our most senior person here on the board who’ve been on our board the longest amount of time, and you’re also the chair of one of our important committees, the Compensation Committee. Bring us home and introduce yourself to the team.
Jane Chmielinski:
Thank you, Claudia. Name’s Jane Chmielinski. I’ve spent most of my life living in the Boston area, another New Englander. I think my accent proves that. From a young age, I think I was more serious than I probably am today. But I always knew I came from a family that believed in service, believed in the political system and how things work, and that there was a path to power through politics. Enjoyed it immensely. I could have been, I never ever aspired to be in engineering or anything like that, but, so my career has been more of a lattice than anything particularly planned. I always used to laugh. At one point in my life, I thought, I want to live a life that I have the best stories to tell at the nursing home. And that seemed to be something very important to me.
Jane Chmielinski:
I’ve been in the engineering construction business now 45 years, so we’ve been at it a long time, seen many changes. But what I’ve always loved about it, I think, I love the aspects of engineering and construction because it touches everyone’s lives. There’s so many jobs that, you know, when I think of it, I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you are working in engineering and construction, everybody walks in over under something you do. And you do make the world a better place than the built natural and social environment. So it really all came together to be exactly what I wanted to do. And I think everything, every experience brought me to where I am today. And I share with Natalie and Julie that STOBG has been probably one of the most exciting or best experiences in that very long career.
Claudia Healy:
Oh, wonderful. You, like I said in the introduction, you all three are so amazing in every time I have the opportunity to speak with you, I find something new. Interesting listening to all three of you. You talked about the importance of family in the formative years of who you are and who kind of influenced you to become who you are today. And you also talked about service. Every single one of you talked about service being important as well. As you think about as successful leaders, yourselves, but also women often have somebody who believed in them at a very early age. As you think about the one special person in your formative years, who was that person for you who helped to guide you and to give you that inspiration to maybe push you at times and help shape your career? Who is that person and how did they impact your leadership style and decision making? Jane, would you like to get us started?
Jane Chmielinski:
I would say I had different folks along the way because as it progressed, but at a very early age, I actually had an uncle that was both an attorney and an engineer. And I was fascinated by what he did. And he sort of set that, I saw that it was a path to travel, interesting projects, meeting interesting people, and solving really big, big problems. I love the idea of working in the urban environment, how do you change things? So I would say that was the person that might’ve turned my head that way. But then throughout it, I’ve had wonderful mentor sponsors that each one taught me something unique and special.
Claudia Healy:
That’s fantastic. Great. Julie, how about you?
Julie Schoenfeld:
Well, when I look back, I, I would say the, the person that really got me going and really believed in me was my father. He understood what made me tick. When I was leaning toward going to a liberal arts career, he suggested I become an engineer. And I said, I don’t want to do that. And he said, well, maybe that’s because you think it’s too hard and you can’t do it. So that’s all it took to manipulate me into that career, which turned out to be a brilliant maneuver. But over the course of my career, I have noticed that there’s always been in every job somebody that believed in me, and they pulled me aside when they saw me going astray, or they suggested that I handle things a little bit differently, or they gave me some great advice. And so, as I hit this stage in my career, and I’m at Caltech as the entrepreneur in residence, I feel compelled to do that when I see young entrepreneurs or see young students who are sort of lost in a direction just to pay it forward to all the mentors that help me along the way.
Claudia Healy:
Oh, that’s great.
Natalie Gochnour:
I know you’re coming my way, Claudia. You know, listen, I’m the youngest of eleven children, so just try to just let that you know, go over you for just a minute. I have seven older brothers, and I can’t think of anything that’s been more influential on me than coming from a large family and being the baby of a large family. When I grew up, there was already the beauty queen, the artist, the 4.0 student, you know, the athlete. I mean, there were all these things already filled. And I think it took me a very long time to just sort of gain the confidence to know that I had my own path and that I could discover it. I’m no different than, you know, Julie and Jane in the sense that my parents were incredibly formative for me.
Natalie Gochnour:
My mother read to me at a very young age, lots of very intriguing books. You know, she read to me the Gulag Archipelago, you know? At what age? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I mean, you know, I’m in fourth grade and she’s reading me this. Wow. The Diary of Anne Frank, I remember very early her reading that to me. And so this, this way that my parents ingrained in me this idea of discovery and using your intellect to, you know, find answers to things. And then my dear father who supported me in internships and, you know, in college and different things. So I don’t think anybody succeeds alone. It’s always a group, a team, a family endeavor.
Claudia Healy:
That’s great. It’s interesting because before, while we were, you know, talking and preparing, we were talking about you and Jane had said, Hey, I think you should actually start a book club.
Natalie Gochnour:
Leave it to my mother.
Claudia Healy:
Leave it to your mother. But she also gleaned that you’re really strong at storytelling and bringing other people along on the journey. And it seems like that also might have had its roots very young and early in, in your life and in your personal family.
Natalie Gochnour:
I work in public policy, and we spend so much time analyzing data, putting together the evidence. But it turns out that every public policy success is a triumph of communications and I think this is a lesson, I think all of us would share that it’s not enough to just be good at something. You have to be good at explaining something, conveying information. Right. Would you agree, Jane? I mean, in your engineering.
Jane Chmielinski:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because You’re taking complex situations. You need to explain it. So I actually think the best tool I ever had was communication skills or is communication skills. So, totally agree. Yeah.
Julie Schoenfeld:
And I find that when someone tries to explain something to me and I’m not getting it, I think, I used to think, what’s wrong with me? I don’t understand that. I’ve come to realize that if you can’t, if I can’t understand what you’re saying, you’ve got the problem. So communication, if we’re going to give pieces of advice and pearls of wisdom, storytelling, communication, ability to get your ideas across, selling your ideas is one of the most needed skills.
Natalie Gochnour:
Yeah. And I’ll just add in public policy work, when I went to Washington DC, what I noticed is, you know, in public policy, it’s crazy to say this, because Washington has so many problems right now, but the very best make it to DC in doing what they do. You know, if you’re, if you’re in charge of air quality at a state level and you go run air quality for a nation, it’s because you’re really good at what you do. But what I noticed in the public policy professionals in Washington, was that they had both the technical skills and the communication skills. That was what differentiated them. And so that, I think that’s a lesson in corporate America as well. That the people that are our leaders that really succeed are ones that not only know the substance but know how to talk about it.
Jane Chmielinski:
But I think that goes back to we were also discussing you need to know your craft. And I think that’s something that putting the time in, because sometimes it can feel a little laborious, knowing your craft is incredibly important. And I do believe life is told in stories. Everybody will remember how they were told something versus every number, every perfect PowerPoint. So I really feel the combination of knowing your craft, being comfortable with that and the ability to communicate is something worth spending time on.
Claudia Healy:
Well, and I love that too. And again, I’m thinking about a story you told us earlier at lunch about how you have to prepare. And actually, would you mind just sharing? Cause I think this is a real pearl of wisdom, but it’s also an actual strategy, a tip of how you can be best prepared. You don’t just show up and miraculously deliver an amazing story that is compelling. Everybody gets it, it takes work. Do you mind sharing?
Jane Chmielinski:
Oh, it absolutely does. Sure. And I used to have to do a lot of pitches for consultant selection. And one of the things, you only have so much time, and if you go over the time, you’re cut short, and you possibly could lose this very big job. So in coaching, what they would do is you’d submit your slides. First of all, you had to answer like, so what? Why does that slide really matter? So you did that and then to keep you on time, it would do your presentation in three minutes, do it in two, do it in one. And it helped you to really focus and stress what was the big, important message because the droning on sometimes can really kill you.
Natalie Gochnour:
Well, and you make the point that you may think before that you’ve got 10 minutes, but when you’re live, you may only have three. And so you have to, in your preparation, be so good that you can give the elevator speech, which is, you know, just 30 seconds or something bigger.
Jane Chmielinski:
Exactly.
Claudia Healy:
Longer. And I would imagine as an entrepreneur, you never know when a pitch is going to come, Julie. Right? So, you have to be prepared and on your feet at all times.
Julie Schoenfeld:
Well, you know, what we’re talking about here with communication is another way of saying is it’s really sales. And just as a strange anecdote in my career, at one point in my career, I, the age 30, I was the officer of a publicly traded company. And I went to a startup ‘cause I wanted, before I ran my own, I wanted to learn how to do this. And I was the vice president of marketing for the startup. And all of a sudden the company got acquired that I was working for. And I was only there like three weeks. And then, so the VP of marketing job was going to another person in the acquisition. So all of a sudden I was adrift, and I decided, you know, I might as well use this as an opportunity. They needed a sales rep. I was the, you know, I was fairly high up in the organization.
Julie Schoenfeld:
I said, you know what? Gimme a bag. I’m going to go out and sell. Good for you. This turned out to be probably the pivotal move of my career because what I learned is that as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as a public policy person, you are always selling. And when you don’t get your point across or you lose, somebody sold better than you. And if you’re an entrepreneur, your employees, they don’t want to work for someone. You’re selling them to come be with you. And so if we were on other pearls of wisdom is learn how to sell because you’ll be doing it every day of your life.
Natalie Gochnour:
Yeah. I want to add to that. I love the point and totally agree with it. There’s also something about that you had a transition that you went through, you know, that you had to pick up and do sales. And I have found very specific moments in my career where an inflection point happened, and you had to decide whether to cross that bridge. Mine came. So I was a professional economist. I’m, I’m helping to forecast revenues. I’m looking at the economic outlook. And I worked with the media a lot in doing that. And I had a governor who said to me, will you come be my spokesperson? Hmm. Now, you know, you don’t take economists and make them spokespeople or running the media shop of a governor’s office. But I made that transition, and this governor told me that if I could combine my technical skills with the ability to work with the media or to work with communications, that would serve me well. So I latched onto it. And you learn the same thing in sales. Yeah. Yeah. <Affirmative>, And I’ll bet you have examples of hinge points where you took a challenge in combined fields and something good happened.
Jane Chmielinski:
Oh, absolutely. There’s always pivot points. Yeah. And I think you just have to figure out, and it kind of goes to decision making that I don’t think there’s really bad decisions. You just have to be willing to accept the consequences if it isn’t what you expected, and dust yourself off and get up and do it again. Yep. Yep. So I think those pivots probably define you more than the great success stories. Yeah, it is. The pivots
Julie Schoenfeld:
And, and they can be terrifying. I remember when I made this decision to become a sales rep, people were saying, you went to engineering school, you got your MBA at Harvard, and now you want to be a sales rep, like incredulous. And something inside me just said, you know what? This is a skill you need to know. So within the first five months, I tripled what I was making salary wise, as a VP of marketing. And then from there it just, I realized that you walk into a room and, you know, I used to be able to feel the energy in the room thanks to sales. And the sales job is you run at this door as hard and as fast as you can, and three times you smash into the wall, and the fourth time someone opens the door. And so if you want a career as an entrepreneur, that would be my description.
Claudia Healy:
It had to be absolutely terrifying. And also humbling in some ways as well, because here you are at this pivot point, you think you’re going to do one thing and then you take a few steps backwards. I think you talked about sort of a career lattice. It’s not just a straight trajectory to the top. You all just were talking about different key critical points in your careers and key milestones. And several of them were terrifying at the moment but turned out gratefully very successfully. Can you tell us about when you, as you reflect on those moments did you have any mentors who were in your life and in your career, who in particular helped you to give you the courage, support, truth, or that really helped to make a difference? Or did you just manage it on your own?
Jane Chmielinski:
I’m going to, no, of course I did.
Claudia Healy:
Of course. Of course, you did.
Jane Chmielinski:
No, I think everybody does. I can’t imagine that anyone ever stepped into some of these situations, and it became abundantly clear. Again, though, I think it’s a different point. There were sometimes it was worrying more about maybe getting ahead, then you want to be better at something, then you might want new and more creative outlets. But always there was someone, but I would say more than mentors, there were sponsors. So I probably believe more in a sponsorship model than a mentor. And I think the difference is in life, you sort of hope when twelve people are together talking at least eight of them, kind of like you. And that’s what your sponsor does. So—
Natalie Gochnour:
That’s good. If I look back I have very distinct mentors. All male, all males. You know, one in economics you know, two in public policy. The current president of the University of Utah is a mentor to me. I really respect his leadership, but they’ve all been men, which is interesting. Not surprising. Right. Julie?
Julie Schoenfeld:
All of them, because at our age. Yeah. That’s who was in charge.
Natalie Gochnour:
Right.
Claudia Healy:
Interesting. How did you develop mentors and sponsors in your career? Because I hear that a lot from, from people who are coming into organizations and they’re just planning their career and they’re looking at more senior positions and people are telling them, you need a sponsor. And they’re like, great, where do I sign that sponsor up? How did you go about developing those relationships with both mentors and sponsors? We probably all had both. They do different things and serve different needs, but they take cultivating or earning that kind of a relationship. How did you approach that?
Julie Schoenfeld:
So this is one of those things that happens, in my opinion, very organically. It’s kind of like getting married. You know, you either like a person or you don’t. And what I find in the generation that’s coming up right now is that they’re told, go find a mentor, go find a mentor. But that wasn’t how it happened in our day in age. People would just sort of gravitate to you and give you advice and it would just happen. So, I would say that just looking, saying, looking at someone saying, boy, she has great skills. I wish I; she would be my mentor. That’s not the way to do it. Right. The way to do it is, you know, someone sees you in a meeting and you say, Hey, what’d you think of my presentation? You just develop a real honest to goodness relationship, and then the mentorship occurs.
Julie Schoenfeld:
The other thing that I would say, if we’re, again, I’m giving a few pieces of advice, is I am mentoring a lot of people and the ones I remember are the ones who stay in touch who say thank you, who don’t waste my time and recognize that the wisdom that is being exchanged is a gift and you feel appreciated. Not that I do it for that, but I would just say that it’s recognize that people who have achieved what my colleagues here have achieved their time is very precious. And it’s nice to be able to help young people coming along.
Natalie Gochnour:
I’m in the same camp as Julie on this. I think that mentorships are they’re organic in the sense that you have a shared, almost like worldview or something with the person that you’re mentoring or being mentored by. At least that’s been my experience. And this person will have an eye for you, and you’ll have an eye for them, and then an affection develops and the rest, you know, comes naturally.
Jane Chmielinski:
I do think though, there’s something about the person being the bright spot. I often found that through my career and I’d be mentoring people and I’d realized all they wanted to do was complain.
Jane Chmielinski:
And I just thought, life is just too short for this. Yeah. So you also have to work at kind of being the bright spot, asking the questions, saying Please, and thank you. And kind of having an understanding of where you want to go. And I will say, at least my experience was everybody always thought as I went up, it was like, oh, you broke the glass ceiling. That was the easiest thing was getting off the sticky floor because that was the tough thing, getting that first break that put you in the path. But that’s probably what I look at more now when I’m involved with companies to see who are those people that really are the bright spot. They’re just stuck on that sticky floor. Male or female?
Natalie Gochnour:
Yeah. Great. Super interesting to think of it that way. And I also think that the people that have been so influential to me, they were givers. They helped me. And that’s, it was their generosity that helped me. And I just think we all have to think of that. How can we help others?
Claudia Healy:
Yeah. I think as I’m listening to you all, there is a common thread, again, that runs through, you have to be amazing at what you’re doing for people to want to invest the time. So they’re seeing that you are worthy of that investment of their time, which they have a limited amounts of. And they know by investing in you that you’re going to benefit. And then there’s, and you’re going to continue to learn and grow. And there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing people that you’re mentoring or sponsoring move on and learn and grow and do bigger and better things in their careers and achieve their full potential. Right. Yeah.
Natalie Gochnour:
Don’t forget the value of just asking the question, how can I help you? Yeah. So if you’re doing that to people, they’ll mentor you if you have that sort of attitude that you’re there to serve and help.
Claudia Healy:
Again, back to that service mentality. Right. Yeah.
Julie Schoenfeld:
But I will also say is over the years, I run internship programs, and I found out a long time ago that if you bring on one intern, you could bring on 10 interns. It’s about the same amount of work. You still have to figure out how to keep an intern busy. But every time I run an intern program, and these are sometimes the earliest I ever did, it was seniors in high school, but I do college and grad students. And what I found in the companies where I brought interns in, I always got way more back than I gave to that intern program because interns and young people come in with an energy and an enthusiasm. So there’s a great exchange if you’re open to it.
Claudia Healy:
Oh, that’s fantastic.
Jane Chmielinski:
I’m curious, do you feel that some days you’re as much the student as the teacher?
Julie Schoenfeld:
All the time. I mean, I’m at Caltech and I’m meeting with professors every day and I’m looking at fields from quantum computing to drug discovery, to artificial intelligence. In fact, some days I come home, and I think I cannot fit one more fact into my brain. So it’s joyful to be kind of a lifelong learner. I think it brings happiness. Really.
Jane Chmielinski:
I agree.
Claudia Healy:
That’s wonderful. So you all have made it to, you know, incredible heights in your career. And I’m sure that it wasn’t always easy, and I’m sure there are plenty of times that you actually didn’t get the big job, that for one reason or another, somebody else got that job. I’m curious, as women, women executives, and leaders, was there ever a moment in your career at any of those critical milestones or moments where you felt like your gender played a role in you getting a role or not getting a role?
Natalie Gochnour:
Who wants to go first?
Julie Schoenfeld:
I’ll do it to you now.
Natalie Gochnour:
You know, I mean, my personal opinion is I’ve been the beneficiary of a lot of great opportunities because I am a woman and I’ve also been denied opportunities as a woman. Yeah. And I just think that’s just reality. And you just work from there. In the end, if you’re adding value, you’re found, you know? You might be, you know, passed over once, but you won’t be passed over forever. I don’t know Jane.
Jane Chmielinski:
No, I would agree. But I think really, what I found interesting, one, I truly became committed to something, that’s when I became the success. And it wasn’t about being committed to getting that job, that role that it was. And I think there’s a quote, when you’re truly committed, the world will conspire to make you a success. And that has been very true in my life. I also think when you get rejected, you know, lick your wounds, but get up again. I mean, we talked some many times about the mental toughness as you move up because I had jobs that were so comfortable, I could do them on automatic pilot. Just didn’t want to live that life, which you have to be willing to accept. There will be a no, have the mental toughness and move on. It’s not always easy. And a lot of it is ego. You feel embarrassed, But yeah, I’d probably do something way worse than that to be embarrassed about. So—
Julie Schoenfeld:
–So, on the male female thing, when I was a sales rep, my big pivotal job what I noticed is as a woman, I could get the meeting. People like to hear a female voice at the time, they’d let me. So I would always get the meeting. And then if something bad happened in the sales process, no one would yell at me. Now that, on the other hand, the men, they could go out and, you know, drink at the bar, they could go play golf, they’d be in the locker room together. They would develop a different kind of relationship. So to Natalie’s point of, for as many times as being a woman or a man helps you, it hurts you, is in the same, in the same breath. And so we, we have this conversation that play the hand, you’re dealt, you’re never going to change who you are. And sometimes it’ll work in your favor and sometimes it won’t. And when I started my first venture backed startup there were no female VCs. I couldn’t find a single venture capitalist who was a woman. And so therefore, when they would see me as a female CEO of a startup, they never saw one of those before. So they didn’t know what a good one looked like. So I had to kick and claw and scream to get funded. But rest is history.
Claudia Healy:
So, I’m hearing a lot around resilience, mental toughness, the ability to adapt, be agile, and to overcome. So, as you, as you think about that in your life and in your career, have you had the opportunity to help others develop that same inner core, that toughness, the ability to be brave even when they’re terrified? The ability to pick themselves up off of the floor and try again, to go back and ask for, you know, the opportunity again. As you think about that, how did you develop it and how have you helped others or advised others in this space?
Jane Chmielinski:
I think I probably developed it because I only have one sister, so I don’t come from a family of twelve or six. My sister was older than me. My father never, I don’t think we ever actually thought there was anything we couldn’t do. So there was just always a sense, it wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, I just had to do it better than somebody else. And he really instilled that in us. I think what I’m finding as I continue to stay in the workforce, it’s getting a little harder because the resiliency, so many things have changed the way our world looks at things, getting people to understand failure is not fatal, it happens. You will wake up the next day, eat your yogurt and move on. But it’s, I think it’s a harder message today for people to take. ’cause There’s a lot of coddling and understanding that you’ve got to just sometimes nurture it, lean into the hard feeling, and then move on. I just, I don’t think there’s a magic bullet for that. There has to be something in you that decides that’s what you want to be.
Julie Schoenfeld:
So I, you know, the first half of my career through my first couple of startups, I was motivated by trying not to fail. I refuse to fail. And, you know, that was, I was very committed to not failing. And so I didn’t. But that takes a lot out of you. If that’s what you’re driving, that’s what’s motivating you. And my husband has this expression, he’s always says, be the ballerina. A ballerina is someone who is, looks just so beautiful and graceful, and they’re dancing on their toes. And so, by the time I got to my third startup now, I was getting more comfortable with it and realizing, okay, who cares if I fail? And once you shift the mindset to wanting to achieve something bigger for your team, and you’re doing it for a better reason, you’ll get more joy out of it. And I think with that comes resiliency is maybe being not afraid. And this gets to what you’re saying, Jane, being not afraid to fail makes you even more powerful.
Natalie Gochnour:
<Affirmative>, I guess I’d just add that sometimes in the failures or in the struggles, the other side of it is triumphant. In public policy, you might have a bill that you want to see pass and it doesn’t pass. But then in the, you know, off season, you perfect it, and you get it Next year, you know, we lived to fight another day in, in Salt Lake City. I mean, we hosted the Olympic Games in 2002. That was a big career moment for me. The eyes of the world are on your city. One point, you know, 2 billion people are watching opening ceremony and it’s your hometown. But we had a bid scandal before the Olympics if anyone remembers that. Yeah. And but we got through it, you know, like we figured out that this type of controversy didn’t start in Salt Lake City, but it was going to end in Salt Lake City. And then we went on and put on a really terrific games. And so I think it’s just a reminder that when you do fail, when you have tough times, that it’s getting through it that, you know, propels you to new lessons, new horizons, and makes you better overall.
Claudia Healy:
Your mental framework really does, your worldview really can make such a positive, powerful impact in how, you know, adapt, and adjust to situations. A few other pearls that I kind of got out of some of what you shared is sometimes it’s not a bad idea, it’s just a bad time, bad timing. So, you know, be, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. Yeah. Maybe it’s just the moment, maybe budgets got cut or whatever happened. So you have to believe in your product or solution and then just not give up and find a better way to maybe tell the story or go back at it again at the right time. So those are a couple of things. I think. Jane?
Jane Chmielinski:
You used the word adapt. I actually think if you just look in nature, the strongest of the species are those that adapt to situations. Change is field conditions. Yeah. So I think that if you freak out at every turn, that will just deplete you of all your energy and your focus. So I think the ability to adapt, and I personally think focus is one of your greatest tools. And I think we talked about this. You know, a lion tamer has a stool, a whip, and a gun. The most important tool they have is the stool. ’cause If you’re already shooting and whipping the lion, I think the game’s going over. So I think focus is an incredibly important thing to have. And we underestimate it, and we can learn to do it better. So, I’m a big fan of that.
Natalie Gochnour:
I want to make a point about being grounded in what you do. ’cause You mentioned change the pace of change, whether it’s technological change, you know, whether it’s just, you know, you have to be able to change to survive. But it’s dizzying and it’s mentally challenging. And it’s really ravishing our youth in many ways. The way that we feel so many pressures from change, and the way I cope with change is by being grounded at some level, either with my family, with nature, with my faith, you know, whatever it is that brings you to a spot where, you know, you feel peace and you have to just keep returning to that spot. Because this world is so complex right now with so much disagreement, so much undignified speech so much division that it can be, it could really tear your heart out. And you have to find a way to be grounded and then lead, you know, in a positive way.
Claudia Healy:
You know, this conversation’s making me think about something we talked about at the retreat in September. And we were talking about how important our people are to us as a business. And we were talking about all the things that we do to make sure they feel valued, appreciated, recognized for their efforts and the contributions they make to our clients and to the firm and to each other. And one of the things that we talked about was employee engagement. And we talked about some of the things that our leaders do all the time to make sure that we have the right culture. And Natalie, you brought up a thing called flow. And one of the things that you look at and you consider and some of the work that you’re doing, would you mind just talking a little bit about what that means and why that’s so important?
Natalie Gochnour:
Oh, yeah, sure. Happy to. I mean, it’s one of the secrets to happiness. And if you think about happiness, you’ve got to have relationships and you got to have achievement. You got to have collaboration, different things. But one of the things you need, you need positive emotions. Something good to eat something good to wear. I mean, those things that you can buy. But in the research, they also talk about flow. flow’s, a form of engagement. It means that you’re lost in the moment. It’s a beautiful thing for me. I’m a, I’m a team sports player. Played a lot of soccer in my career right before kickoff. It’s like some of the happiest moments ’cause I know for 90 minutes I’m just going to be focused on that ball. Nothing else can touch me, you know? But I flow in work is really important. You can’t come to work and dread it. You have to come to work and feel like, you know, you’re part of something bigger than yourself, and it’s up to our leaders to help develop that. You have a responsibility as well. But I find the flows immensely important to wellbeing.
Claudia Healy:
I do. I mean, I think it’s about how you find joy, and it’s really important to find joy in all aspects of who you are. Because as a whole person, you have to be fulfilled. You can’t be getting an A at work and an F at home or an F at work and an A at home. Like, so you have to have, you have to be getting an A or a B in both, right. At all times. Maybe not maybe time times they flip, but you can’t feel really good about who you are or what you’re doing if you’re getting an F somewhere. So how do you find that balance? And how do you, if you realize you’re going sort of to the left hand column and you’re getting negative, how do you get yourself back to the right? And a lot of times it might just, you might be stuck yourself, but either a mentor or a sponsor or somebody in your circle of support can help do that for you as well, to bring you back to where you can find joy and where you can get back into the flow.
Jane Chmielinski:
Yeah. I do think when you say we always used to talk about work life balance, I think now it’s a little bit more realistic integration. I’m not sure it can ever be equal. I don’t think it’s either you’re an A here and an F here. Sometimes you might be a C at everything you’re doing. And
Claudia Healy:
I hope not.
Jane Chmielinski:
No. Well, you hope not, but it does happen. And you need those people around you to maybe ground you and correct you. But I think struggling so hard to make everything balanced at, in terms of work, home, children. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I think let the joy wash over you and it will happen organically, but when you worry about it, I have to admit I’m exhausted because I read so many books about I have to get up at three in the morning to do all the things they’re telling me to do. It’s like, you know, find your center. What’s your mission today? Do this, do crossword puzzles, you know, walk with your eyes shut, brush your teeth on one foot. I barely can get out of the house. I mean, we generally tell you this just so I kind of, I’m more let the joy wash over me and do it organically.
Claudia Healy:
And I think that’s great. I prescribe to you can have it all. You just can’t have it all, all the time.
Jane Chmielinski:
Same.
Claudia Healy:
Yeah. So it’s about choices and trade-offs. Right. and if you’re good at doing that and having others who care about you, keep you in check. If you’re getting too far out of balance, then you’ll be fine.
Narrator:
Thanks for listening! You can find part 2 of the interview wherever you listen to the Building Conversations podcast. If you want to watch the full conversation, check out the Building Conversations Podcast playlist on Structure Tone’s YouTube channel.