The Broad Experience

In her early twenties, bored by her office job, Kelly joined the British Army for a life of adventure. This was just before 9/11. She’d grown up a relatively conflict-free world. Suddenly everything changed.

Kelly spent almost 19 years in the Army doing multiple jobs in different parts of the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. She loved much of what Army life gave her. Other things were less appealing, from sexual harassment to fellow officers who couldn’t handle women in authority...to the loneliness of being a woman in command when one of your soldiers is killed.

In this show Kelly - who asked me not to use her last name so she could speak freely - looks back on her career, what she learned, and what she wishes could have been different in the ultimate male environment.

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Business and economics reporter Stacey Vanek Smith has not only reported on the gender pay gap and other workplace discrimination, she’s experienced it firsthand. But it hasn’t put her off the workplace. Far from it. In her book, Machiavelli for Women, she explores how women can thrive in a setting that was not designed for them.

In this show - the tenth anniversary episode of The Broad Experience - we focus on a few areas that are rarely discussed, in particular the relationships women have with other women at work, and how to manage them when things get tricky. We delve into the inequities mothers face after coming back from parental leave, and our shared experience of receiving vague, discouraging and useless feedback - and what to do next.

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Bobbi Thomason studies gender for a living. She was aware of the pitfalls couples can fall into, even those who assumed their relationship would be absolutely equal. Still, when her own marriage foundered over career equality (or the lack of it), she was gutted. At the same time she was reading social media comments urging women to demand a ‘50/50 partner.’ ‘I tried that,’ she thought, ‘and it didn’t work.’

In this episode we hear Bobbi’s story. She says sticking to her belief that she deserved a partner as willing to sacrifice for her as she was for him, has cost her a great deal. But she’s learned through academic research and personal experience that support comes in many forms, and that all women need a ‘village’ to get ahead.

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Two years into a pandemic many of us are overwhelmed at work, feeling we have little control, and dealing with a lack of support from our organizations. Burnout rates are up all over the world. But they were bad even before Covid-19 came along. So what can we do about it?

In this episode we meet three women who know burnout first-hand. Danielle Fried works for a small business that exploded during Covid. It took a health crisis for her to realize she was a frazzle of her former self. Jennifer Moss is the author of The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It and a longtime expert on happiness and unhappiness at work. She says it's up to leaders to solve this problem, and there is plenty they can do about it. Jamie Hand is one such leader, managing her own stress levels while tackling burnout one team member at a time.

Jennifer's pandemic dog Maple made her presence felt during our interview. For an outtake, go to the episode 188 page at TheBroadExperience.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the start of a new year - a time when a lot of us think about changing our lives. In this show we re-visit a conversation with two traditionally successful women who left their old work lives for the unknown. But jumping meant leaving their identities behind as well as their paychecks.

Radio journalist Tess Vigeland left her job at the top of her game, and initially wondered if she was nuts to have done so. Whitney Johnson was itching to move away from her comfortable existence at Merrill Lynch and challenge herself in new ways. She invites other people to do something similar, even if you may not think you need disrupting.

This conversation feels just as relevant in pandemic times as it did when we recorded it, as more and more people re-consider what success actually means.

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The culture of winning pervades our lives. From sport to the classroom to the workplace, we're supposed to 'kill it' or congratulated for 'crushing it.' But all that crushing can take a toll on the psyche, as Olympic athlete Cath Bishop can attest. Cath spent years training in her sport, rowing, and competed in three Olympic Games. When she left sport she thought she'd left the obsession with winning behind. Instead she found it was pretty much everywhere.

In this episode we discuss what winning actually means if you want to achieve long-term success (which looks a lot different than what most people think of as 'success.') We talk about the gendered language around winning, and the young female sports stars who are rejecting the winning narrative.

Cath is the author of 'The Long Win: the search for a better way to succeed.'

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In this show we're talking about women getting paid. Two business owners weigh in on how to charge for your services and how to respond to people who ask if they can 'pick your brain.' We tackle a question from a woman who knows she's paid less than the last man who did her job, but asks if she's happy, how much should she care? And we hear from a negotiation expert on how to use the negative voice in your head - the one that says 'you can't ask for that much!' - to help you get what you want.

This episode distills some findings from past shows. I'm using it as a springboard to more coverage on women and money in 2022. Guests today are Adrienne Graham, Kathy Caprino, Jacquette Timmons and Natalie Reynolds.

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A lot of people are quitting their jobs at the moment. In the US, more than 12 million people left jobs voluntarily between July and September. They are fed up, burned out after months and months of pandemic working, and some are wondering, what am I doing this for anyway? Is this what I really want to do with my life? If not, what do I want to do instead?

In this show Dorie Clark helps us answer some of those questions, which all involve the need for long-term thinking. She talks about the ideas in her new book, The Long Game: how to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. We discuss how to carve out time to think about the future, identifying what’s most meaningful to you, and casting off the expectation that you ‘find your passion' (too much pressure!)

We also meet consultant Tom Waterhouse, who had a long-term plan to have a family before it was too late. But realizing his dream meant infuriating his bosses.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.