Q: What is it like to be a woman in the corporate world?
A: Ninety-five percent of the time, I was the only woman in the room. It was like high school and breaking into the popular set of kids. Women are the outsiders.
Men executives have often been together for a long time. So success is about who you know and having the right mentor. It’s about knowing how to speak the language. It also takes tenacity. “Cowgirl up” is a cowboy mantra. It means, when you’re down, get your gumption and get back on the horse.
Q: What are some examples of discrimination?
A: You are traveling and people ask, “Who is with your kids?” That bugs me. So I joke and say: “I don’t know! I need to go check on that. Gimme a minute!”
Before this conference in Boston, I was in the bar and was asked several times if I was setting up the show. I said I was one of the presenters. They said, “Oh, I thought you were a marketing person.” As a woman, people judge you on your appearances.
Q: What strengths do women bring to business?
A: We have a collaborative leadership style as opposed to the go-and-conquer style prevalent in businesses run by males. This doesn’t mean we are soft. It means we are relationship builders. We want people to come together in order to get them to work harder and better.
Women also have a strong moral compass. In corporate America today, executives are rewarded for bending the rules and sometime breaking them to get things done. Employees have asked me whether we were going to have a downsizing. I have had to say, “I know, and I can’t tell you.” I don’t say, “I don’t know,” because that would be a lie.
It’s a slippery slope. If you start slipping, soon you are breaking rules and you’re Enron. It’s about staying true to yourself and maintaining integrity.
Q: What were your toughest moments at Avaya?
A: As you go up the ladder, you are asked to do tough things. Like let the bottom 10 percent of workers go. That is very difficult to swallow when you have spent so much time building relationships.
Q: What is the emotional toll?
A: Stress. Overload. I even got glasses because I was getting headaches. But it was stress. I thought I had an ulcer once.
What also happens with me, and maybe this is typical, is that I take it out on the ones I love. You come home and you kick the plant and yell at your kids for something small because they are not “cooperating.” You just lose it sometimes.
I will never forget this one day. I got a call from one of our top customers when my daughter was home from school. We were playing in the park, but I needed to take the call. She had to go potty. So I’m on the phone, and my daughter is squatting behind a bush. I stopped and said to myself: “This is madness. What am I doing?”
Q: Your husband works full time. What is your strategy for achieving a life balance?
A: I have a tremendously high-energy husband who does as much as or more than I do. We try hard to have one of us here at all times.
Here’s a typical day: He gets home at 2 p.m. from the airport. I leave at 8 in the morning. I take the kids to school, and he picks them up. Now if his flight is late, I have to have a backup plan. This is my day. This is what I do.
Q: How do you relax?
A: I write the book (“Cowgirl Up: A Woman’s Guide to Navigating the Corporate Frontier”). It’s very therapeutic.
When I started the book, I was in the “I have left Avaya; what am I going to do with my life?” stage. One night I worked three hours in the middle of the night. My daughter came in at 5 a.m. and asked, “What are you doing out of bed?”
I said, “I am writing a book.” And she asked, “Who is going to read your book?” And I said, “Well, I am not really sure, but I think I am writing it for me and for you.”
I want her to have all of this insight that I have learned over my life. I want to make the road easier for other women. She said, “That is so special.”
Staff writer Ross Wehner can be reached at 303-820-1503 or rwehner@denverpost.com.
