Are you putting in the work and getting some results, but still feel stuck in your career? Perhaps collaboration is the career superpower you are not paying attention to. Rosie Zilinskas sits down with Carol Lucas, Founder of Frame The Discussion, who discusses the three core elements of collaboration and how it can get unstuck and gain the visibility you deserve. She explains how to rewrite your failure narrative and finally lead with impact, not just effort. Rosie also discusses how to show up confidently despite the external forces out of your control that would tell you otherwise. Learn how to stop going on autopilot and finally leverage your most underrated skill.

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Collaboration Is The Career Superpower You’re Underusing With Carol Lucas

I have a question for you. Think about your career. You’re putting in the work. You’re getting results and you’re still not moving up. What if the problem isn’t the work that you’re doing, but instead how you’re showing up in your own head for yourself? In this episode, we’re going to be talking about collaboration. Collaboration is about working together and there are three reasons that collaboration could be your underrated career skill. We’re going to talk about what failure narrative is and how it might be driving your career without you even knowing it. We’re also going to go through a practical framework for leading with impact and not just effort.

I want to talk to you about our guest, who is Carol Lucas. Let me tell you a little bit about Carol. Carol is a Licensed Professional Engineer. She has worked as a certified project management professional and she has built her career leading strategy and operations across the US Army, across the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. Carol knows exactly what she’s talking about. Now, she runs Frame the Discussion LLC, helping high-performing leaders and teams accelerate transformational change. I am so excited to welcome Carol Lucas to our show, so stay tuned for my conversation with Carol.

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Carol, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing?

Just fine. Thank you so much, Rosie, for having me. I love what you’re doing.

What Is Collaboration And Why Is It So Hard

Great, thank you. Thank you so much. I invited you because I know that you participated in the Women in Manufacturing organization. You were there to speak about collaboration. Now, as a former corporate employee, I was in the corporate world for over 30 years, and I know that collaboration is one of those keys that help you get unstuck in your career, but at the same time, it’s so daunting to collaborate, to build relationships. Why don’t we start with what collaboration is and why it is so hard, Carol?

Most people, if you ask them how they define collaboration, they’ll say something along the lines of it’s about working together, it’s about getting along, or it’s about getting people to cooperate with me. I would propose that it’s much more than that. It’s also about thinking together. That is why it is daunting to think about facilitating not only conversation to reach agreement, but backing up and inviting others to engage on critical issues.

I like to call collaboration a superpower for three reasons. One is from the corporate perspective, the organizational perspective, it creates alignment, unity of vision. It helps facilitate the priorities and it enables people to take initiative. From an individual perspective, if you are engaging in true collaboration, not only working together but thinking together, you cannot help but develop perspective.

I think perspective, the ability to step into someone else’s shoes for a few minutes, whether it’s your boss, a colleague, a client, that is a foundational indicator of leadership potential. You’re not only advancing the organization and helping it work better, you’re also fostering leadership capability within yourself. The third reason I call collaboration a superpower is because it can be learned. By introducing tools, which could be templates, procedures, different techniques for facilitating conversations, practicing, getting better, learning as you continue practicing them, you’re going to develop the collaboration capability.

That word perspective, I think it’s so critical to understand because when I was in the corporate world, the one thing that I always thought is the senior leaders, and I’m talking like 3, 4, 5 levels above the person at the desk, why don’t they take the time to come and talk to the people at the desk? I know that there’s like levels and layers and stuff like that, but even once a year, get out of your office, come to the local offices and talk to the people because that perspective is so critical to know what are the problems for the individual contributors or the first-line or second-line managers.

What are they dealing with, what are their challenges because so often we would get direction from the very top down and we would be like, “How does that make any sense? Why are they doing that? That makes no sense.” That perspective is so important. Have you had any experience like that where it just just makes no sense how the top gives direction to the lower levels, if you would say?

Yes. I think you hit on a very important point. When we are trying to solve critical problems or leverage wonderful opportunities as an organization, every part of the organization sees different things, experiences different things. I think it’s such an important part of leadership. I’ve heard people say, “I don’t have to be good at managing things because I have other people to do it for me. I just have to worry about leadership.”

When we are trying to solve critical problems or leverage wonderful opportunities as an organization, everyone sees and experiences different things. – Carol Lucas Share on X

If you are on my leadership team, I want you to be able to do both because if you don’t understand the conditions and the up tempo that your workforce is experiencing, you’re going to miss some critical information and some critical data points. At the same time, you have executive middle managers that are responsible for being liaisons within the industry, within customer groups. If you’re not listening to what they see and what they hear, you’re also missing some critical information and you’re going to have blind spots when you make decisions.

I agree that collaboration is so important, but that perspective, so can you repeat the three prongs of the collaboration that you have determined are imminent?

I call it a superpower because, one, organizational perspective, it ensures alignment, a shared vision, and it empowers people to take initiative. Secondly, on an individual basis, it helps you develop perspective and the ability to create a space, curate perspectives that may not necessarily match your own. On the third level, it can be learned. Collaboration is a skill that can be learned.

How To Deal With The Failure Narrative

That’s where I want to go towards for this next conversation starter because collaboration can be learned. You and I talked briefly on the pre-call and we know that collaboration is one of those things that can actually help you get unstuck. Many women in the corporate world feel stuck and they don’t know where to go. The thing is, Carol, that they’re already doing the hard work. They’re already doing amazing work.

One of the things that I teach my members and my clients is that, again, they’re doing the hard work, they’re putting in the time, they’re getting results, but they are not able to articulate translate how those results are bringing value to the organization. It seems that men are better at doing that, vocalizing those things. How can collaboration help those women that are in that spot where, again, they feel stuck and what can they learn to collaborate to get that visibility? It seems that articulation plus the visibility, that’s what gets them to the next level.

I think part of it begins with shifting your mindset. Something that was really transformative for me was this realization that, and I was stuck, I was applying for positions, initially wasn’t getting picked up for interviews, finally figured out how to get picked up for interviews and then really wasn’t closing the job. I was stuck.

What I realized was my failure narrative was written all over my resume. That was a very sobering moment. I use the term failure narrative, there are other terms, perhaps out there in other frameworks that people are familiar with, but I was introduced to this mid-career that we have our story, the facts narrative, our success narrative that we want others to believe, we want to believe, and then the failure narrative, which is typically something in terms of we’re not good enough or we’re not able to do something.

It goes back to, I think, our natural human condition where we talk to ourselves, we have inner dialogue, and it goes back to our days of primitive mankind where that was a survival technique. Sometimes in the current modern world, it goes down rabbit holes and really doesn’t help us. The realization that I was putting all of this on my resume, and I’ll share with you, most failure narratives are pretty personal, this one’s more than one, this one’s I think common, the more people I talk to, but my failure narrative for pretty much my whole life was I’m not smart enough to be relevant.

What I realized, when I realized this is what was going through my mind and this is what was preceding every interview, every elevator speech, essentially, what I was writing my resume to tell people that I was worthy being part of a team rather than highlighting the impact that I had in my leadership roles. It took a while. People tried to tell me. I would ask for feedback on the resume and one hiring manager said, “Your resume says you’re a great team player, that’s awesome, but I need a leader.” I was, of course, really confused by that, so it takes a little while to actually figure that out.

Once I figured that out, I started reshaping my own narrative and it’s hard. You need to maybe talk to some mentors and get their feedback as you’re reshaping your resume, your narrative, a thought partner. If you can develop a network of thought partners, these are professional contacts that don’t necessarily have an influence over your career progression, but are interested in professional topics, are rooting for you, they help you dig deeper. Sometimes, they’re really great at holding up a mirror to reflect back what you’re doing. Once I recognized that failure narrative, it got much easier. It’s hard work, but it got much easier to rewrite my own narrative in a way that would actually help.

Interesting. You know that failure narrative, it’s like there’s a lot of neuroscience now saying that, for example, if you’re saying, “I don’t want to be bad at collaboration,” the brain doesn’t recognize that you’re saying, “I don’t want to be bad,” so it’s like a double negative. Instead, you can say, “I would like to be proficient or I would like to be great at collaboration.” The mind doesn’t recognize the negative stuff, it recognizes the positive. That failure narrative that you’re talking about is so critical because we all do it.

We all do this whether it’s in a personal level, professional level, we’re constantly highlighting the negative stuff of whatever we’re our actions are. The cool thing about what that hiring manager said to you, “You look great on paper, but I need a leader,” that’s like a little golden nugget of information that you’re like, “That’s great. Now the next task is how do I you know change my resume so that I am showing up as a leader and not just a great team player.” The great thing is that we now have AI to help you try to improve some of these things too.

Yes. The other interesting thing about acknowledging the failure narrative and tamping it down is you see more clearly. It’s not just about fixing me and how I show up, you also see the organization around you more clearly. There are sometimes we are stuck because we’re just in the wrong place. We’re in an organization we’re expecting validation and appreciation from an organization that cannot possibly give it to us.

That’s gold right there, Carol, because you’re absolutely right. There are people that I talk to and you know that famous phrase that says insanity is the definition of doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. You’re absolutely right because a lot of times, people get comfortable wherever they are and they’re just waiting for that promotion, they’re waiting for that raise instead of looking for opportunities elsewhere.

How To Handle With The Struggles Of Showing Up

That’s where I think the values of an organization and that’s where you can see that even if you are trying to collaborate and your leader won’t collaborate or other team members won’t collaborate, that’s when you have to start figuring out what else can I do. What if there is a woman that is trying to do all the things, they are trying to collaborate, they are trying to be visible and nothing is happening? That’s what you were saying just a minute ago that maybe the organization is not the right fit. What would you say to somebody that’s in that situation?

I would suggest a couple of things. Take a moment to understand how you are showing up. By the way, this is not advice I would give my workforce if I were the leader. This is the advice I’m giving to a colleague who is stuck in a place where they’re unhappy and it’s not working for them. I hope as a leader, I would be taking some proactive measures to make sure that my workforce doesn’t have to go through this, this dialogue.

I would say check how you’re showing up because how we show up affects how people respond to us. None of us are at our best when we’re angry or come from a place of frustration or even maybe a sense of entitlement. Even if it’s justified, we’re not going to be at our best and it’s not going to bring out the best in the others. Part of the challenge is to diffuse tension as you’re trying to work through this. There are several things that we can do to diffuse tension and create a space for others to really help us think through this, whether it’s a boss, whether it’s a colleague.

I recommend starting with a mindset of appreciation. Recognize what’s going well, recognize effort, not just results, but effort. When you recognize effort in and sometimes with a colleague, it’s like I see how hard you work to build the interns program and how you engage with them and I think that’s going to go such a long way to helping them start their careers.

Just simply recognizing effort requires you to scan for what’s going well and helps the other person create some space from the tension or whatever it is because if you are struggling and you want things to change in your environment, they probably know that you’re not entirely happy and that can be a source of tension for starting out.

The other is ask yourself what’s going on in the other person’s mind. This was a big one for me. Mid-career, I had started a new job and my mentor said to me, “Carol, you know you’re really hard on your supervisors.” I said, “I’m not sure I understand what you mean because I don’t expect anything more of them than I expect of myself.” He said, “Yeah, I know. Just think about it.”

That was the full scope of the conversation, but I did think about it for many years. What I realized he was talking to me about was empathy and that perspective. Just take a moment to step in the other person’s shoes and just see what they’re experiencing. Part of the lesson there for me was I had this in retrospect is naive, but this belief that if I work really hard and I do the right thing and I show up with a positive attitude, I’m in. That’s all I need to do.

You realize that the people around you, your boss sometimes is dealing with some very complex things, competing priorities, opposing agendas. You also realize that people don’t necessarily absorb information and make decisions the way you do. I have an engineering background, so I have been accused from time to time of being a linear thinker.

My default mode is yes, no, right, wrong, go, no go. That’s not necessarily how other people view the world. Doing these two things, look, appreciate effort, which requires you to scan for what’s going well and taking a moment to step in the other person’s shoes to see how you’re received and that might actually shift a little bit how you choose to show up. It puts you in control.

I like the empathy perspective. If you’re a leader and you’re reading, I know you’re probably thinking, “I have a full day, I’m really busy.” Now we can utilize technology, so put a reminder on your calendar twice a week and say, “Today, I’m going to focus on you know appreciating one of my direct reports or somebody in the organization.”

I know when I worked at my former company, we had this recognition program, but you get into your day-to-day. Especially, again, when you’re a leader, you have maybe 7, 10, 20 people reporting to you and you’re busy and you’re so focused on you know getting the task done, so you forget. This is where we can leverage technology and put reminders on our calendars to say, “I need to appreciate two people this week every week.”

That diffusing the tension, Carol, is so critical because again as an entrepreneur, a lot of times entrepreneurs were we keep talking about our business and me and whatever, but we really should be talking about our clients and their struggle and what’s happening for them. For you to showcase that that putting yourself in the other person’s shoes can actually diffuse tension by simply thinking maybe they’re just having a hard day, maybe they’re having family issues.

There have been many occasions where I’ve seen in my career where we had someone that was a great performer and then all of a sudden, their performance started declining or they started missing things or whatever and it was because some big personal thing was going on and they were just going through a hard season. From a leadership perspective, to have that empathy of like, “What’s going on, what’s happening, is there something I can help you?” That diffusion of tension is so so important. I’m glad that you brought that up.

How To Get Yourself Unstuck

Let’s say somebody is in the right organization, their values are aligned, they want to continue to advance in their career, but they feel stuck because a lot of times, we just were in our own head, we don’t have that perspective of what’s happening in the organization because we’re very much like this is my little piece of the pie here in this organization and I don’t need to look at anything else. What can somebody that is in that position that you’re feeling stuck and what can they do to get unstuck?

I would begin by taking ownership of your own narrative. I say that because if you don’t, somebody else will and they’ll probably get it all wrong even if they mean well because there is bias still in our workplace and everybody encounter bias. As challenging as it may seem for you and maybe a little bit uncomfortable, take ownership of your own narrative.

Take ownership of your own narrative. If you don’t, somebody else will, and they will probably get it all wrong even if they mean well. – Carol Lucas Share on X

That means explain to your mentors and your champions, your sponsors and your boss and your colleagues, “I would really like to be positioned for the CTO position or the CTO function. What can we do to prepare me for that? What positions do I need to pursue?” Say it often. Not obnoxiously, but saying it once, boss has a busy day, it didn’t really sink in. Be calm and consistent in taking ownership of your own narrative.

Leverage thought partners and I keep going back to this. This is a unique relationship that maybe early in our careers we really don’t understand that we need but absolutely, those thought partners are those relationships that stick with you through the highs and the lows and sometimes throughout your entire career. They become lifelong friends, lifelong champions for you. Build those thought partner relationships.

I would also suggest that you challenge perhaps some of your thinking. I think there is an assumption a lot of times that leaders are big, gregarious, charismatic personalities that have this fun persona. I would offer that, yes, if you have charisma, use it for the greater good, but for the rest of us who have calmer perhaps more analytical, quieter personalities, there’s still tremendous need for leaders with that persona. Please don’t count yourself out because you may not look like some of the role models that you see in our current society.

Another thing I would consider is double check the assumption that your skills and experience don’t translate to other industries. I have learned that, at least in my opinion, the ability to talk about risk as a common denominator across government, industry, academia, nonprofits, every entity is balancing risk. The context might be different, the vocabulary might be different, but it’s still the same idea of understanding the tradeoffs.

This brings me to something I also wanted to weave in here is it is related. The name of my company Frame the Discussion came from this eye-opening concept I came across during some of my executive education. It was this notion that leaders frame the discussion and make the tradeoffs explicit. That just completely shifted my understanding of what leadership could be because when you talk about framing the discussion, you’re talking about having impact through other people.

While that can be through formal leadership positions and titles, it doesn’t have to be. Making the tradeoffs explicit, I think, refers to risk. The balancing. If we do this, we have a vulnerability here. How are we going to manage that vulnerability? Are we willing to accept it? That’s a dialogue that needs to happen, should be happening across every sector of professional work. That thought that I have a background in this field and I can’t ever go over to that field, don’t let that stop you.

The tradeoff is like the risk management of like what are the risks that that we’re taking here. Now this conversation, this tradeoff of explicit risk, is it amongst yourself, is it with your leader? Give us a little bit more information on how to actually do that process.

Sure. I think that dialogue shows up process-wise in a couple of ways. Certainly, with project management in terms of resources and timelines and vulnerability spots in terms of if this piece of the process isn’t done by this date, here’s what’s going to happen. Are we okay with how do we manage that? It can show up, I believe, in process management when you’re trying to reduce variation and trying to streamline and ensure consistency. We have a root cause of a problem here, we’re going to adjust this. Is that going to impact other parts of the process and if so, how bad is that, are we okay with that?

Obviously, these are all these are team conversations. You can run through it in your head, but the actual best decision is going to come from the group discussion. The other one that I love is strategy. Organizational direction, organizational change. We want to pursue this technology, what are the pros and cons financially, culturally, with our customer, with our messaging to the markets? Is that a risk a showstopper or is that something that we can manage and we can mitigate if it happens?

What I see here as far as the common thread is that conversation, that communication, that exchange of ideas amongst your team. I like the framing the discussion because you can do that with yourself. You can take the time and understand what your vulnerabilities are when it comes to your role, the organization, potential jobs and stuff like that.

Also, a little bit earlier, you said something like you want to go in there and talk about what you’re expecting or hoping with your manager, maybe not in an annoying perspective, but I always tell people that if you don’t tell them what you want, they’re going to tell you what you want. You’re going to be stuck in that one track mindset of, “I was hoping to be in marketing and they’re telling me to be in sales,” which are very different disciplines.

It is so important for someone to have those open conversations, that open dialogue and make yourself vulnerable but come prepared. If you are trying to have those conversations about risk vulnerability within the organization, if you don’t know how you’re contributing, what your key performance indicators are, all of those metrics, you need to keep track of those things.

Sometimes, I feel that, especially women because we’re their caregivers, we allow our careers to just go on autopilot and then all of a sudden, it’s like 1, 2 3 years later and you’re like, “This isn’t where I was at hoping or expecting to be.” That’s where I think the frustration comes about and then you’re feeling stuck and so on and so forth. That framing discussion is so important.

A great way to get started, and you’ve asked me this a few times about collaboration, how do you start it, how do you do it, a great way is to ask generative questions. There is a lot of study out there, if you can do some research on catalytic questioning, generative questioning, but these are questions that spur creative thinking and critical thinking. It’s not the gotcha question, we’ve all had experience with that I’m afraid. It’s not about backing someone in the corner, but it’s really asking them how they think about it.

It might go something like this. “I know over the past few months, your team has been working to figure out which type of platform they want to introduce to the organization. That must have been challenging because there are a lot of things I guess to consider. What are some of the criteria your team used to make that decision?” They then talk about what they see, what they think, what they struggled with.

Difference Between Collaboration And Networking

They’re almost like exploration conversations as you’re just trying to brainstorm things, think. I love that. I want to focus back on collaboration because we’re everything that we’re talking about is about collaboration. How is collaboration different than networking, Carol?

I think possibly networking is a little more transactional than collaboration.

That’s a great explanation because you’re absolutely right. When I network with people, and I’m trying to reframe that networking word because so many people are so intimidated with that word networking. I’m trying to refer to it more as like relationship building. You’re absolutely right because a lot of times, it’s like a once-and-done maybe 2 or 3 meetings and then inevitably people get busy.

When you’re at work, I think that relationship building does translate into collaboration because it’s more ongoing, more permanent because it’s really a partnership. That makes a lot of sense. I’m now thinking of that networking of more transactional whereas collaboration is more of a partnership. I think that’s great.

I like that. I’m going to write that down.

Falling In Love With Collaboration Through Engineering

I want to shift the conversation a little bit to you and your story because obviously, we want to learn from the experiences you said that one of your managers said that you were really hard on your supervisor. First of all, how did you get so passionate about collaboration now? What were some of the things throughout your career that you noticed that you really wanted to teach and talk about collaboration?

Well, if I may, start with my first love which was civil engineering. I think what drew me to that in college was the science of engineering, which this notion that you can understand very complex relationships, in this case, through structural members in a bridge or a building, but you can actually make sense of everything that’s going on in a very complex, complicated scenario.

The art of engineering is the notion that we can actually change how people feel and think about their lives, their day through the structures that we put around them, the infrastructures that we provide for them. The third was the teamwork of engineering. Our student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers did community service projects when I was volunteer projects during those college years.

That was my first experience with teamwork, truly teamwork, to focus on something bigger than ourselves. I absolutely loved it. I’m bringing this up because those are the three things, working through complexity, changing how people feel about their environment, their quality of life, and the teamwork that stuck with me throughout my career.

This is why sometimes when I am mentoring, I remind people to pay attention to what brings you joy because eventually, those things are going to shape how you make your career decisions. I had the privilege of working on some really wonderful, complex, challenging projects throughout my career. Fast forward to when I retired in 2022, I was tired, so I thought I was done. It started weighing on me a little bit that that I have a lot to offer still. Why don’t I think about the things that I learned and figure out how to help the next generation maybe come up that learning curve a little bit faster than I did.

Principles Of The Fearless Collaboration Mindset

That’s how I started Frame the Discussion. Throughout this dialogue of framing the discussion and making the tradeoffs explicit, I realized it expands the definition of leadership that I had always experienced and been exposed to. That’s where this notion of fearless collaboration comes in because if you can expand your definition of how to have impact, you can collaborate fearlessly as you frame the discussion and take on whatever type of leadership role whatever type of impact that you want to have. That’s the impetus behind developing the fearless collaboration mindset. If I could just run through some of the principles and I think you and the readers will start seeing how this might differ from some of the leadership models that have been a part of our careers up to this point.

All right. Yeah, let’s do it.

Okay, so the first one is roll up your sleeves. Take initiative and to make things better, you do not need an invitation to think and take action. Some of the dialogue skills will come in there because you certainly want to get cooperation as you take this initiative. Don’t wait for someone to ask you or to recognize whether or not you have the skills to do it. Just jump out there. Get curious. Ask great questions. We talked about those questions because they help you develop new perspectives and a new understanding of what’s happening in your environment.

Find thought partners that help you dig deeper, help you figure out when it’s time to take a different tack. Sometimes they keep you grounded, they give you some pretty frank feedback and you’re like, “I won’t go down that path and I’ll try something else.” Enable others. Generosity of thought and action really spurs creative thinking for you and for the other people.

If you see a colleague who has a big briefing coming up and they’re struggling, just go to them one-on-one and say, “Would you like to use me as a sounding board? Would you like to run through this?” Always thinking about how do you enable the people around you. It becomes a habit after a while and it’s a really good habit because it develops trust and it does come back to you. You’ll find people are now trying to help you also.

Connect the dots. Engineers like me are probably really happy to focus on matrices and process maps and tools like that, but if those are not part of your necessarily comfort zone, start exploring how you can leverage thought models and processes to help connect the dots and provide a logic connection between different ideas and different kinds of data.

Seek feedback because continual learning is so important to continued growth. Finally, tell the whole story. What I mean by that is we see so many people talk about metrics, and metrics are great, I love metrics, but it’s not the whole story. It’s so interesting trying to coach mid-level managers to talk about the impact. The impact of the project, impact of the work, and as you were referring to earlier, talking about the impact of their career.

Yeah, I love that. I really think that the generosity for thought, that is so key because you’re right, sometimes you see people struggling and you’re like, “That’s not my problem.” It’s so disheartening to be in that in that mode. We know that the Gallup World Poll does the survey every year and like 70% of people are just simply not engaged in their job.

It’s unfortunate when you’re not engaged because when you start doing that generosity for thought or connecting the dots, trying to help people, I think that’s when people really light up. And you and I are in this work because it’s like our second career because we know that we have a lot of knowledge, we have a lot to give back to those people that are coming up behind us. I light up when I know I’m helping somebody else. I know that’s the same for you as well. I love the generosity for thought. That’s really key.

May I add one thing there? It occurred to me as you were speaking. Most the majority of people do not understand how they add value. One of the kindest things you can do is to point that out to someone else. Say, “Do you realize when you set up this tiger team, you actually coached a lot of entry-level employees or you have tremendous impact on how we talk about risk or how we talk about success.

The majority of people do not understand how they add value. One of the kindest things you can do is point that out to someone else. – Carol Lucas Share on X

Yeah, I like that. Again, going back to AI, we need to leverage AI because sometimes as a leader, especially when you’re writing performance reviews, for example, you’re like, “I don’t know what to say,” but now with AI it’s so easy because you can talk in your situation and just have AI help you, “Help me come up with some value to provide this this individual. Give me some key leadership points or some key things that they did that added value.” It’s so easy now, so again, from the leadership perspective we need to leverage that AI to help us come up with those golden nuggets that can help others as well.

You bring up a great point. It’s about asking a generative question and I assume we’re always going to ask it of a human being, but you ask it of AI too and see what happens.

Carol, thank you so much for this great conversation. I think the collaboration again, we said that collaboration is that partnership, that ongoing relationship building. In my career, when I was adding value and I was in a unique position because I was a Vice President of Learning and Development for a team, I was able to speak to like legal and marketing and operations and all these different people that I would not normally have spoken to.

A lot of that I drove, like, “I want to learn more about this team,” so I would talk to them like, “Let’s have coffee,” that kind of thing. You can still have that narrative, that control over your little piece of the pie by just having conversations with people and say, “Tell me about what you do. Tell me about how I can help you or give me a little bit of enlightenment on your job.”

Difference Of Men And Women In Managing Their Careers

The last thing that I want to ask you, throughout your career, have you noticed how men manage their careers versus how women manage their careers? Is there any 1 or 2 things that has shown up for you, especially in engineering because it’s such a male-dominated discipline now, but what have you observed throughout your career on how men manage their careers versus how women manage their careers?

In my experience, and this is just one person’s experience, I have seen many of my male counterparts rely on assumptions. Assumptions about what leadership looks like and if you display leadership in this manner, you will be considered a candidate for promotion. I see them relying a lot on those external things to quantify leadership and define leadership. In some cases, some organizations, that works very well. If you are really focusing on trying to have impact, there can be a disconnect.

Thank you so much for that. I always like to ask that because like you said, it’s the experience of one but you may have noticed something completely different than other people may not have noticed. I do agree. I always joke, this is just a funny thing, so if we have like all female cabinet in our government and we’re going to war and the woman, the president or whatever the cabinet members they’re about to push the button, they’re like, “No, but how are they going to feel? Let’s talk about it.”

Whereas men, they’re just like, “Push the button.” I always have that narrative because, again, men and women are so different biologically, neurologically, emotionally, and a lot of times, we try to change men, make sure that they know and understand and are more empathetic, but sometimes men are just not built that way.

Again, we are much more nurturing and caring. One of my goals would be to have that gender parity in the corporate space in the business to be equal, but I don’t know that we can ever get there because we’re such different creatures and how we think, how we feel, how we act. What would you say to that?

I think we’re also different because of society. There are a lot of shoulds and should nots that are put on both men and women based on society. I will share that my experience with now and I’ve worked in male-dominated careers pretty much my entire my entire life, but once in a while, I had the wonderfully unique experience of working with an all all-female team.

What I noticed is women don’t necessarily have to like each other, but they always come back to the table. No matter how messed up it gets or how many misunderstandings you have, they come back to the table to say, “Okay, we have a mission. Let’s figure this out. Let’s get this done.” In my experience, there’s a lot less time spent on ego and trying to help people feel validated when I’m working in the team of women.

Get In Touch With Carol

All right, sounds good. All right, Carol, do you want to tell the audience how they can find you?

Yes, please. My website is FrameTheDiscussion.com. I encourage you to take the challenge, the Fearless Collaboration Challenge. You can download the infographic, post it where you can see it every day, experiment with applying these principles to your work for about a month, and then decide what you’re going to pursue, research and pursue and develop as a habit over the next six months.

All right. Carol, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for all of your knowledge and your expertise. We got a lot out of this collaboration conversation and I am going to share that infographic on social media, so I’m excited. Thank you again for all your knowledge.

Thank you so much, Rosie. It was wonderful.

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All right. I thought Carol gave us a lot to sit with. The collaboration conversation that we had was awesome. One of the things that we made a differentiation about was that the big difference for me between collaboration and networking is that networking feels more transactional whereas collaboration is more of that relationship building, that transformation, sharing information. There’s so many ways that you can collaborate within your organization.

She also made the case about the way that we show up for ourselves with that failure narrative. Sometimes we’re so focused on that failure narrative that we don’t see all the good things that really determine your leadership potential. If you’re stuck, you might not be doing anything wrong. In fact, you might be doing all the right things and sometimes it’s the organization and not you. Definitely something to consider when you’re thinking about your career in the vein of are you in the right place or not.

I just want to thank Carol for being so open and so practical. This is exactly the kind of conversation that women in the corporate space need. If this episode resonated with you or if you think somebody in your network needs to read it, by all means, share this information because we need to help each other. We definitely need to help each other out.

Also, grab the free infographic from Carol, the Fearless Collaboration Mindset and then take the challenge. Implement one thing a week over the next 3 to 6 months. You are already doing the hard work. Now you need to let the right people know the work that you’re doing. I always tell my clients, “You need to showcase how you are bringing value to the organization through your knowledge and your skills.”

One other reminder, I would love for you to check out the Unlock the Leader Within Membership. This is a great way for you to elevate yourself in your career through this amazing community. There’s training, there’s implementation sessions, there’s Q&A, so come check it out. We have links to Carol’s website, the membership, and the infographic. With that, remember to be brave, be bold and take action.

Important Links

• Carol Lucas
• Carol Lucas on LinkedIn
• The Fearless Collaboration Challenge
• Unlock the Leader Within Membership
• Rosie Zilinskas on LinkedIn

About Carol Lucas

“Carol is a talented collaborator, a capability developed while working within high-visibility mission-driven organizations.

Following a career focused on strategy development, operations planning, and implementation leadership in the public and private sectors, Carol established Frame The Discussion LLC to help high-performing leaders, project teams, and executive boards accelerate transformational change.

Carol’s experience includes project and organizational leadership in service to U.S. Department of Homeland Security biometric identity operations, U.S. Army military construction programing, and U.S. Department of Defense consequence management operations. Carol began her career on active duty with the Army Engineer Corps in the 62nd Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Heavy).

Carol is a licensed Professional Engineer and a certified Project Management Professional. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Northeastern University and a Master of Science in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration (now Tepper Business School).

She is a graduate of the Army Civilian Education System Advanced Course, Harvard Business School’s General Management Program, and the Center for Homeland Security and Defense (CHDS) Executive Leaders’ Program at the Naval Postgraduate School.”