To wrap things up in this final episode of the first season of BEYOND LEANING IN, Melanie and Carla discuss what organizations are up against and why Melanie is passionate about using the imaginative arts as a surprising tool to solve today’s problems. Melanie also shares what her company Strategic Imagination is all about and how she hopes to utilize the arts including fiction, theatre and drawing to help organizations find new solutions to increasingly complicated problems. Tune in to learn why Fortune 500 companies like Lowe’s and Nike are hiring science fiction writers to help them envision their futures, and how Melanie’s innovative work aims to revolutionize the way organizations approach DEI. 

Thank you so much for tuning in during this first season of BEYOND LEANING IN. Please leave your suggestions for Melanie through her website, pick up your own copy of the book, and stay tuned for information on Strategic Imagination workshops and events!

Jump straight into:

(00:40) - Introduction: Sparking discussion and further change - “Beyond Leaning In is what I see as the inaugural or first initiative of my company, Strategic Imagination.”

(04:13) - Why artists are being hired to envision organizations’ futures - “Lowe's was suddenly really seen as an innovator and that happened because they were able to unlock the power of science fiction and the arts.”

(08:02) - The importance of liberal arts - “I ended up designing my own major because that was really the only way to figure out how to unlock what the arts could do to help people think about these different kinds of topics.”

(12:36) - A set of tools to problem-solve in a different way - “You can actually think of drawing in a different way, which is just drawing as a way to free your mind, and to think more creatively and think differently.”

(16:27) - The top goals for Strategic Imagination - “My hope is that participants are able to use that power of drawing to begin to envision a whole wide range of potential solutions.”

(19:40) - How to get out of the default answer through art - “Art therapy has become increasingly popular among psychotherapists because it actually does help people deal with difficult issues and talk about things in a different way.”

(22:15) - What is next for Beyond Leaning In and Strategic Imagination? - “What's on your wishlist for how I can help?”

Resources

Learn more about Melanie’s workshops 

Sign up to host a book club with Melanie

See and share Melanie’s 31 Days of #BeyondLeaningIn Webcomics 

Get the book Beyond Leaning In by Melanie Ho

Learn more about Strategic ImaginationSee MacArthur Genius & Cartoonist 

After six podcast episodes, including many discussions with men and women in different fields and at different levels in their careers, co-hosts Melaine Ho and Carla Hickman discuss the top five takeaways for gender equity from the book BEYOND LEANING IN. These are concepts shared in the book and discussed in previous episodes; key ideas that resonate with the early readers that are fundamental to keeping the conversation about equity moving forward: Mental Autocompletes, Points vs. Assists, Generational Differences, Creating Empathy with a Novel and Organizational Impatience. Join this conversation with Melanie and Carla to reflect on everything we’ve learned on this six-episode journey!

Welcome to BEYOND LEANING IN, a podcast designed to inspire candid discussion about gender gaps in the workplace. All too often, the “real talk” about the challenges that professional women face happens behind closed doors. Author Melanie Ho is on a mission to change that through her new book, BEYOND LEANING IN. She is joined in this podcast by co-host Carla Hickman as the two longtime friends discuss the ideas and research that inform Melanie’s book. You will also be invited to listen and join the conversation with early readers, women and men across generations and a wide range of professions, as they reflect, discuss and debate the ideas in the book. Also, don’t forget to get a copy of BEYOND LEANING IN in any of its formats, now available on Amazon. 

Resources

Get the book Beyond Leaning In by Melanie Ho

See and share Melanie’s 31 Days of #BeyondLeaningIn Webcomics 

Follow Melanie Ho on Instagram or Twitter

Follow Carla Hickman on Instagram or Twitter

How Reading Fiction Increases Empathy and Encourages Understanding

Training to Stop Anti-Asian/Amerian and Xenophobic Harassment

Thanks for joining us today! Don’t forget to visit our website for more information, and feel free to reach out to contribute to these important discussions. This show has been produced by StudioPod Media. 

Jump straight into:

(00:39) - The 5 most important concepts to take away from BEYOND LEANING IN - “What I love about the novel is that it gave people from different perspectives a way to engage in these really complex and often emotionally charged topics.” 

(04:32) - #1 Mental Autocompletes - “If someone thinks CEO and automatically thinks of a male person, it's not because they mean to be biassed, it's because of all of the programming throughout their life, since childhood.”

(08:08) - #2 Points vs. Assists - “Men are socialized to speak up more and highlight their own voice, and women are socialized more to listen and amplify others.”

(11:34) - #3 Generational Differences - “Gen Xers and Boomers in the workplace, really understanding the sacrifices that they made in order to shatter glass ceilings, to make it into the C Suite.”

(13:04) - #4 The benefits of a novel - “The...

In this episode of BEYOND LEANING IN, Melanie and Carla talk about allyship between different generations of women in the workplace. As always, we listen to an excerpt from the book, in this scene we join a meeting where a group of interns is assigned different tasks but the male intern is given more rewarding and meaningful work than the women. Then Melanie has a conversation with Alexandra Jacobson the CEO and founder of Worked Up, a community of professional women seeking meaningful opportunities to grow their careers. Join this conversation on the opportunity gap and it’s compounding effects, and hear what younger generations entering the workforce think about gender bias.

Welcome to BEYOND LEANING IN, a podcast designed to inspire candid discussion about gender gaps in the workplace. All too often, the “real talk” about the challenges that professional women face happens behind closed doors. Author Melanie Ho is on a mission to change that through her new book, BEYOND LEANING IN. She is joined in this podcast by co-host Carla Hickman as the two longtime friends discuss the ideas and research that inform Melanie’s book. You will also be invited to listen and join the conversation with early readers, women and men across generations and a wide range of professions, as they reflect, discuss and debate the ideas in the book. Also, don’t forget to get a copy of BEYOND LEANING IN in any of its formats, now available on Amazon

Jump straight into:

(00:39) - Behind the writing: Spanning across multiple generations - “I definitely had in my head, as I was writing the book, all different kinds of readers across genders, generations, different kinds of industries, what did I want them to think?”

(03:29) - How the workspace looks for millennials and Gen Z’s - “If a woman in college reads this, even high school, this is a way for them to understand what they're going to be up against and be ready for it.”

(06:51) - Book Excerpt: The assignment meeting - “Cassandra knew the finance department's leadership team, they weren't people who consciously thought men should do the financial analysis work and women should plan the parties and help with slides. That was the problem though. The unintentional nature of these opportunity gaps made it even harder to root them out.”

(17:13) - Alexandra Jacobson on starting the Worked Up internship program - “I ended up interviewing over 200 women, and I kept hearing the same things that I experienced echoed by so many of these women’s crippling fear of failure, lack of confidence, internalization of gender bias experiences, and imposter syndrome.” 

(21:16) - Gen Z and the opportunity gap - “Progress has been made in getting more women into senior leadership positions, but what's really affecting the talent pipeline happens way earlier than the glass ceiling. It happens at the first promotion to manager.”

(24:52) - Informal work culture, allyship and how it may affect women - “So many deals and decisions are primed, if not made, in out-of-office informal settings. Those informal settings are so critical for developing that trust and that bond.”

(30:12) External mentorship for Gen Z and their expectations for building their careers - “There is this huge level of uncertainty around what the future of work is going to look like and how to make a career plan when there is so much up in the air.”

(35:04) - A socially and politically inclined generation - “They're not waiting for the older generations to solve these problems for them, they're really taking matters into their own hands.

And I think that they're going to continue doing that in the...