My family laughs at me when a stranger volunteers intimate details of their personal story within seconds of our meeting. Inevitably, their experience offers some piece of wisdom that I later relay to my teenage kids, who often don’t immediately see the relevance in quite the same way as I do.
I credit my gift of connection to growing up in a small town where everyone shares a connection through a mutual friend or relative. But it’s more a reflection of my natural approach-- equal parts curiosity, empathy, and appreciation for each person’s journey through cycles of challenge and victory. Everyone’s unique narrative is inherently rich and often complicated.
Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
Real stories illustrate emotion via a raw retelling of a firsthand experience; action amidst rejection, sacrifice, and uncertainty; and wisdom generated through iteration and creative problem-solving. As life unfolds, we each evolve in ways that we may have never planned or even anticipated. As a personal example, I could have never imagined mustering the inner strength to pivot my career into executive coaching, had I not endured what could have been a life-ending ski accident eight years ago (foreshadow a future blog post!).
Stories connect generations, create communities, form traditions, and drive societal change. Through exposure to others' stories, we not only uncover some of the greatest gems of human existence, but we might even be able to short circuit some of the toughest learning and decision-making roadblocks as well.
A novel platform that will inspire professional women to design their lives with intention
A year ago, I launched the JEWEL Project: Joining and Empowering Women in the Exploration of Lived Experience. JEWEL celebrates professional women leaders' journeys, with the intention of using their narratives to provide career insights and navigation support to early and mid-career women.
We're building a library of stories from real women with real stories: CXOs, VPs, executive directors, partners, medical administrators, university deans, clergy, and entrepreneurs. Just like a coveted piece of (your great-grandmother’s) jewelry, these diverse leaders' vignettes are authentic, personal, and multi-faceted. With a vision of becoming a platform that shares research insights, offers unique themed gatherings, and provides a variety of networking opportunities, JEWEL will drive a movement to better connect emerging and established women leaders.
The power lies not in a handful of women struggling to best navigate a complex world juggling priorities of career, family, community and self. By joining together and emboldening each other, women can explore each other’s stories as a primary vehicle to best understand and optimize lived experience at scale (JEWEL).
Why should each cohort have to struggle as if for the first time? The self-reflections of today’s women leaders can inform and inspire the next generation to harmonize a set of often competing priorities in order to design intentional, sustainable, and fulfilling lives.
A disconnection dilemma emerges when technology hits a point of diminishing returns
While hybrid and remote work environments have expanded collaboration across borders, we've lost opportunities to learn from each other in ways that help us navigate careers and develop an authentic executive presence. Emerging leaders have fewer and fewer chances to observe decision-making, negotiation, and crisis management up close.
Social media algorithms push content in ways that reinforces demographic stereotypes instead of challenging us to try on new perspectives and ideas. Only recently have platforms introduced a setting where we can opt to expand our content bubbles into potentially antagonistic material. The professional women I’ve interviewed confide that they ask questions and search for answers 1) on their own; 2) within their inner circles of friends and family from similar backgrounds and perspectives; or 3) from the cover articles and reels about Fortune 500 CEOs and Hollywood stars, via professionally produced and edited interviews.
We've constructed protective barriers that prevent us from understanding our colleagues' motivations at and beyond work. Younger professionals are missing the stories that used to keep the (now) older half of us lingering around a role model who would hold court in the lunch room or at the proverbial water cooler. Today, these spaces are often silent, with eyes glued to screens and without the impromptu laughter and healthy debate of decades past.
As long as there are more men than women in boardrooms, a woman president has not yet been elected, and “working mom” is regularly used within our societal vernacular, there remains a need to support the gender that is most often tasked with holding together their communities, families, workplaces, and themselves. The mythical rulebook, or one-size-fits-all recipe, for successfully balancing the elements of a full life is still unpublished.
I’ve spoken with a portfolio manager who felt forced to hide her fertility struggles from her peers, afraid that at least one of them would race her to win the firm’s support for a three-month maternity leave that year. Numerous married leaders without children discussed their ongoing challenge to find (and not overuse) acceptable reasons to set personal boundaries at work because they don’t have child-related distractions as an excuse. And the list of women’s silent struggles goes on.
Few women can name more than a handful of relevant examples of well-lived experience from which they can create personal meaning. While our paths today may seem groundbreaking, women have been charting courses towards growth and fulfillment for generations. These women have been juggling competing priorities, learning from their mistakes, and traveling similar paths a few steps ahead of us. We can all benefit from learning from those two or three degrees of separation removed: close enough to be relatable, yet typically walled off due to a lack of candor or meaningful on-ramp to connection.
Mining diamonds through the collective power of lived experience
Even the best schools don’t educate women about how the workplace really works. A COO with multiple degrees from top schools reflected, “We all think we're treading some version of a unique path, and then you think about the stages of life, and so much was actually predictable. Why didn’t we talk to more women 10 or 20 years ahead of us, who’ve been through it already?”
Despite vast networks of hundreds, if not thousands of contacts, we don’t typically allow ourselves to truly and deeply know the people in our daily lives. Women breaking the glass ceiling too often immerse themselves in literature and media to advance their learning when they take on the more challenging roles. That’s only part of the education needed. In this digital age, how can we learn from generations past and send them to a room with the “aunties” or the red tent? How can we support today’s leaders with the scaffolding of diverse, experienced perspectives in order to enhance their chances of success?
Few tools are as impactful as lived experience and their resulting wisdom. One woman's problem-solving becomes another's decision-making framework. Another's accomplishments redefines a young person's career outlook. These vignettes can inspire the next generation of strong women to show up authentically at work and in life, ready to lead with their heads and hearts and help to retire “working mom” from our collective vocabulary.
Coming in 2025! We have an exciting JEWEL agenda planned for this year. Follow @rwexlerleadership on Instagram for more insights and stories drawn from both qualitative and quantitative research. Stay tuned as JEWEL expands to a series of live events, recorded dialogues, and maybe even a podcast. If you are leader open to sharing your experiences and reflecting on the wisdom you’ve gained, please reach out to me at rachel@rachel-wexler.com.
Comments