“Society teaches women how to listen to men; it doesn’t teach men how to listen to women.” In this episode, speaker, coach/trainer, and former opera director, Elizabeth Bachman, shares about overcoming communication problems at work, particularly between men and women.
In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, speaker, coach/trainer, and former opera director, Elizabeth Bachman, shares about overcoming communication problems at work, particularly between men and women.
We cover:
- The two main thinking styles
- What gets lost in translation
- Showing the value of things NOT going wrong
- How women get better at communicating who they are
“Society teaches women how to listen to men; it doesn’t teach men how to listen to women...” But we need both; companies and society are better for it.
Listen in to find out the gendered expectations and "proud victimhood" we have around communication breakdowns at work, what to watch for, and how to speak up in a way that you can be heard.
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Elizabeth Bachman is THE go-to person for advanced-level training in Speaking, Presentation Skills, and Leadership. With a lifetime spent perfecting the art of presenting, she helps high-level clients show up as a leader who should be followed, promoted or hired, thus getting the recognition they deserve. A sought-after speaker and strategist in Silicon Valley, nationally and internationally, Elizabeth works with leaders and influencers who need to become concise and compelling presenters. Having spent over 30 years directing such luminaries as Luciano Pavarotti & Placido Domingo in more than 50 operas around the world, Elizabeth brings a wealth of tools to help business professionals become respected presenters. Fluent in 5 languages, she brings her global experience to her clients.
Learn more about Elizabeth and her work at elizabethbachman.com. Or connect with her on social…
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethbachman
Facebook: www.facebook.com/StrategicSpeakingForResults
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCJhAhQGSpCOeBIkyO7MUCJg?view_as=subscriber
Céline Williams: [00:00:00] I am Céline Williams and welcome to the Leading Through Crisis podcast, a conversation series, exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. My guest today is Elizabeth Bachman, presentation skills trainer and executive coach. Welcome, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Bachman: Thank you, Céline. I'm delighted to be on your show.
Céline Williams: I'm delighted to have you today. I know this is gonna be an extremely interesting conversation, having read, even just reading your bio, the full bio. I know it's gonna be fascinating, so. Before we get into this, I always ask the question, the name of the show is Leading Through po, leading Through Podcast, leading Through Crisis.
When you hear that title, what comes up for you or what does that mean for you? Uh,
Elizabeth Bachman: it seems to me that nowadays lots of things come up but nowadays it seems like we're kind of in a perpetual crisis and, you know, how do you fix everything? So leading through CLI crisis I think is to be a leader and to [00:01:00] know who you are, communicate who you are.
That's where I help people mostly. 'cause there's always a crisis. There are always going to be fires to put out. And part of what you have to where you have to. Touch base with yourself and hopefully with good advisors is what's really, what's a five alarm fire and what's maybe just a, a little like a match and to not panic over everything because.
I work a lot as a presentation skills trainer. I focus on helping people show up as leaders.
And particularly what I do. Is help women's voices be heard in places of power, which could be managing a team, or it could be on a board, or it could be how do you, if you're [00:02:00] stuck at senior director perhaps and you're want to get to be vp, but they totally take you for granted.
Um, those are the people I mostly work with. Which means that you have to know who you are and what matters to you, and then talk about it. What are you good at? How do you talk about that so that when there's a crisis, 'cause there's gonna be one, everybody knows what you are particularly good at. How to, that you are the person who can do this and then that you get the credit for it.
Because I work with a lot of women, especially who are in operations or they're technical people, or they're scientists, they know a whole lot about something complicated.
But particularly, say they're [00:03:00] a, a project manager or a department head, their department runs just fine. So nobody notices.
Céline Williams: Mm,
Elizabeth Bachman: nobody notices the million little bitty things you have to do to stop a crisis happening.
Uh, one of the classes I take, I give is how to show the value of things not going wrong.
Céline Williams: I'm laughing 'cause I know. So many people who hear are gonna hear that and be like, how do you do that? 'cause that is such a problem, is when things go well, it's just assumed it's great. You wanna know. Absolutely.
Elizabeth Bachman: Okay. Okay. It's one of the advanced techniques that I do with my clients. Mm-hmm.
Usually if I start with. I start with somebody who's not being heard, [00:04:00] frustrated. That's the thing I hear the most when somebody calls me up. They say, I'm so frustrated. Can you get them to listen to me? And I said, yes, probably, but not overnight.
It's a process and the tool, one of the best tools is storytelling.
So I also have a program called, uh, storytelling Secrets for Women Leaders because women have their own challenges here. Men have challenges too, but women have their own challenges and that leads to a storytelling intensive where you've got a day where you put, you just spend three hours and you actually get your stories written and practiced and learn how to tell them.
Céline Williams: Mm.
Elizabeth Bachman: And all of that. Comes from 30 years as an international opera director where there were always crises and learning how, what can [00:05:00] we do in the time that we have? I always would often have a list of a next time list. Ooh. Of, this is what you find yourself three days before opening night, and you start.
Making a note of, okay, I'm not gonna do that one this time. Don't have time to do this, don't have to do this. These are the things next time around I'm going to try to add to the story, but maybe just for now. So that was a tangent. That was not a tangent, that was a background. I'll talk to you later about context.
Yeah. That's the context to how do you talk about the value of things not going wrong. Stories and metaphors are part of this. And so the metaphor I love was done by Alison Arnov, I think, is that we are conditioned to pay attention to the firefighters. Everybody [00:06:00] loves the people who are putting out fires, which is and we should, but if you think about.
The people are gonna put out the fire. Nobody talks about the person who made sure the sprinklers are working, made sure that they're, they don't have trees, flammable trees next to their house who have did the preventive things so that their house doesn't burn down. So the firefighters get all the applause and they should, but meanwhile, the house is burned down and the family has no place to live.
And the person next door who took the preventive measures, who did lots of little bitty things to make sure that their house is still standing. They get, they don't get any respect at all.
Céline Williams: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Bachman: The way you talk about this is to track the crises in your industry and just put someone on your team on that or set up a Google alert and then you can say.[00:07:00]
Oh, hey, look at this terrible mistake that this company made. Or they know this, this company who where the boss said, I don't see why I have to pay women and people of color the same as I pay the men. I'm just hiring my fraternity brothers. And then gets hits with a lawsuit. Then you can see this and you can say.
Wow. Did you see what happened at Company X? I am so glad that's not happening here because I've taken these preventive measures. Uh, it works, say, uh, in departments that are well re run well and you've got good employee engagement. I've got a client I'm working with right now who's finally cleared her schedule enough so that she can do the engagement work.
And now we're talking about how does she let upper management know that [00:08:00] her team is producing better results. Because of the things, because of her asking them what they want and making them happy. So there's another department that has, 50% turnover and turnover's expensive. And her people want to stay with her because she's made it worth staying there.
That is, you can do a comparison. I wouldn't do the comparison with another department in your company, but do the comparison with another organization in your industry. Yeah. And say I make an effort to I make an effort to do the little things.
Céline Williams: Does that make sense? It does. And what I love about that as well, thank you for sharing that is.
To go back to the firefighting scenario for just a second, if you [00:09:00] are, I think a lot of times our natural inclination is to compare to the firefighter. Who gets all the, who's getting all the glory right. In that moment, it's like, but why is this person, team, group, organization getting all the glory?
Because yes, they did something heroic, but they had to do something heroic because the house was on fire As and. No one's paying attention to the fact that my house never went on fire at all. Right. And we have a tendency to look at that. And I, I say that because the example and the comparison that you're talking about doesn't take away from the heroism of the firefighter in that scenario.
Make it whatever version you are. So it's not com it's not comparing in such a way that someone's gonna say. But they're a hero. Look at what they did to fix it, you're saying? There's something that has gone wrong comparatively. Mm-hmm. And [00:10:00] I've managed to prevent something that is comparatively without the hero at the forefront.
And I love that. 'cause I think that is a very. It's not as obvious for people. It's
Elizabeth Bachman: not as obvious. And then so then part of the strategy and I usually do this with people over six months. Yeah. Or a year, you know, I wish I could do it overnight. Everybody wants overnight results. You know, wouldn't we all be billionairess if that were the case?
That's, yeah, exactly. I would bottle it and sell it and I'd be a bazillion, you know, I'd be competing with Red Bull or something. So. What I think is if you have a plan, if you think of it as a long-term solution, and part of what, uh, people like you and I do as a, as executive coaches is to make an appointment so that once a month or once every two weeks or so, you're talking to [00:11:00] clients and you're making them slow down.
For an hour to think about the longer range implications. Mm-hmm. And you really need someone who's apart from the situation to do that. Yeah. Because it's natural to be overwhelmed by all the stuff that's going on.
Céline Williams: Of course.
Elizabeth Bachman: And you know, and it's just, it's human nature. Having somebody from the outside who's not involved.
Who's not involved in, you know, it's not part of the fuel of the fire who can give you some perspective, this is what coaches are for, and it forces you to just slow down and think for the duration of that. Yeah. Yeah. I, another story for instance, is I also have a client who who leads a department for an organization that helps people [00:12:00] in trouble.
People who are having, people are having a hard time.
Céline Williams: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Bachman: And part of what we are working on is how to get out of the, being surrounded by misery and. And difficulty and people who are hurting. How do you do that? Is to remind the world outside that there's a reason for that. And it might just be that fewer than 5% of the people you help wind up.
Getting the kids through school and going to college and getting a laundry and becoming a senator, for instance, or becoming Oprah, for instance. Oprah. Oprah started out with humble beginnings. Mm-hmm. You hear the stories of the people who start out with humble beginnings. Many of those people say they were on welfare or say they [00:13:00] had, they had a broken family.
98% of the people in that situation do not become stars. But what her company does is she helps those people early on in the program so that at some point, one of them turns into Oprah, one of them gets out, gets the support, and says, I don't have to repeat this pattern. I could go have a happy life. I can be a productive person in, have a productive family.
I don't have to repeat the mistakes my parents made.
Céline Williams: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Bachman: There might only be one or two in a generation, so, so that has to be good enough. 'cause the other thing is people from the outside say, well, why can't you save everybody? [00:14:00] How come? I dunno. The people who work with the homeless, there's a wonderful organization in Seattle, Washington called Plymouth Housing that builds apartment buildings and they get people off the streets and into apartments.
And of the thousands of people who are on the streets, maybe a hundred or 200, get into each building. Of course. And then once they're in the building, it might take six months before they're, they are trusting that they don't have to shoot up again before they can actually get out of addiction or whatever.
Céline Williams: Yep, yep.
Elizabeth Bachman: Because of the hu the trauma there. So you can't help everybody, but if you could help some, that has to be enough. And so also it's a way of how do you look at the situation?
And say, [00:15:00] if I can save one person from this family, if I can save the whole family, I'll be thrilled. But if I can save one person, that kid and help them grow up as a teachers, do this all the time.
Who's the one who's gonna go somewhere then? That makes it worth it.
Céline Williams: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, you said something earlier that, that is still in my brain and I wanna go back to it. 'cause some of what you're talking about references back to it. But one of the things you said was that you help people know who they are and communicate it.
Yes. And the reason that's still in my head is what you're talking about is com It's telling the story, right? Communicating. It's all communication. Yes. Right. It's all like what's most important? How are you telling the story about the importance, the fact that you can't save everyone, but you are saving.
So it's all versions of telling a story. Mm-hmm. [00:16:00] So I, the question I have for you is, and I'm going to focus specifically on women 'cause that's who you focus on. And I do think generally speaking. Women are not great at promoting themselves. They're not great at communicating who they are, even though we are trained not to be.
Right. Absolutely. And I will say, even though in my experience, sorry to men, I have wonderful male clients, but women tend to know themselves more deeply. But don't communicate it as effectively. Mm-hmm. Whereas I find men communicate it who they are without always having done that deeper work. So that's an observation.
Mm-hmm. And I'm, mm-hmm. I'm giving that context to say how do you, I don't even know if I am saying, how do you help? And I don't think that's what the real question is, but that going from how do you It is. How do women is the really good question. How do women [00:17:00] get better at communicating who they are?
How do they, mm-hmm. Because it feels like there's a shift there in terms of, to your point, we're not, we're trained not to tell those stories about ourselves. Mm-hmm. So what's the shift? How do women get there? What's the.
Elizabeth Bachman: Why
Céline Williams: Elizabeth, why this is,
Elizabeth Bachman: this is why my mission is to get more women's voices heard in places of power.
Mm-hmm. And, we're, we are, everybody's unique, so it's gonna be a little bit different for everybody, but there are patterns that you can recognize. I don't blame anybody for this except maybe our foremothers who said, good girls don't brag. Mm-hmm. That's what I was taught. You know, who's, you know who are the good girls?
They don't brag, so don't talk about yourself. And I've had to learn how to talk about myself, but it [00:18:00] held me back for a long time. I think it comes down to language actually, and this is what I'm seeing more and more. Uh, when I was early in my opera career, I worked on a Japanese American program and I was all excited to learn a little bit of Japanese.
So I like languages. I've always wanted to be an international, a citizen of the world to live. And I've lived and worked internationally since I was 17 years old. So there's always been a passion of mine, and that's why opera was such a great fit because you've got music, you've got lgu, you've got theater, you've got language, and you've got travel, and you have glory, just glorious.
What I heard about was that in Japanese they have women's words and men's, there's vocabulary, different vocabulary for men and women. [00:19:00] And the more I started working with speakers, and the more I saw the mistakes, what if I realized the mistakes that I made? The more I realized that we have that pretty much in every language.
What I discovered was, let's just say English. 'cause that's the language I can, I don't have to think about. It's as if, so the short version is women think men don't listen.
Men think women go on and on and on and never get to the point. Both are true. And it's not that simple, so it's not that binary.
But it comes from historically men's language and I actually think of it as ways of thinking, the way the brains work. You've said the single focus thinkers and the multi focus thinkers, [00:20:00] and nobody is all one or another. There's a whole spectrum, but. For the sake of clarity. S curious wants to hear about that, just contact me.
I can talk your ear off, but I'm Try not to, try not to kill your, your listeners here with too much single focus thinkers tend to be task oriented.
Céline Williams: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Bachman: And they're, which is great 'cause they get things done. That's how you get things done. And Western business was built on task oriented, single focused thinking.
It was, it's historically men. Traditionally men, but not always. I have a lot of women who are single focused, and I can be single focused if I'm working on a project. What that means though, is that you don't hear, you don't hear what's not, what you're not focusing on. So the disadvantage is tunnel vision.
If you're focused on something, someone can come in and tell you that you know, we're gonna have chicken for dinner tonight and you don't hear it. [00:21:00] Then you have the multi focus thinkers who see the world in a web of relationships. So they're the people who can keep five ideas going at once, and that has been traditionally women.
Historically women, but not always. I now more and more men are admitting that they are multi focus thinkers. The problem comes when the two try to talk to each other. And what we, I think of it as languages. I'm used to working in multiple languages, so it's as if the men spoke Spanish and women spoke Italian.
And if you are an Italian, you're speaking to a Spaniard, they'll understand more or less what, you're gonna have to say, the basics, but it's actually a different language. So if you wanna be sure. You're gonna have to get a translator if it's something important. What happens is women think men don't listen.
Again, gross generalization, but women think [00:22:00] men don't listen because if a man is focused on something, a single focused person is focused and the woman comes in and says, Hey, I need to talk to you about such and so, such, and so they won't hear it. You can walk in on a multi focus thinker and say, Hey, we're gonna see, we're gonna see Joe next week and we need to talk about this.
And there's a problem with the, with the software and there's this and that. And the multi focus thinker will remember all these, hear all these, keep them in their head. The single focus, we just won't hear it because they are focused.
Then what happens is, because the multi focus thinkers are relational thinkers, the advantage is they're gonna see the side issues that are gonna affect a project, for instance.
But because they see everything in relationships and because context is everything, they're gonna tell a story by starting back where it [00:23:00] began, as I did when you first asked me about. The value of things not going wrong. I had to say, for me, I'm a multi focus thinker. I had to put that in context. How you get there.
It's not something you do, it's not the first thing you do. It is something you do once you've mastered some of the earlier skills. And so, the disadvantage to that of seeing the world in a web of relationships is that. When somebody says no or challenges you, it feels like it's personal. It feels like you are being personally insulted because everything's a relationship.
Whereas the single focus person has probably been socialized as a child to test ideas by challenging them by competing. And so the more you, if someone has an idea, you're gonna knock it down. And I mean, you ever see guys insult each other? You know, they on a [00:24:00] sports team, they're having a good time and they're insulting each other.
Everybody's happy. 'cause everybody understands that's part of the process. Whereas the woman walks in and she says, why are you all being so mean?
This is one of the biggest communication breakdowns in modern life. I mean, it happens in families too, but also hap Let's talk about the workplace where it's so common that we take it for granted.
The danger is, and here's where I come in, is. If you don't recognize that, it's actually, if you can recognize it's two different languages, then you don't have to get insulted.
It's just, oh, whoops. I was speaking Italian and he thinks in Spanish. I have to just do that, and I will talk about what the Spaniard needs to know in a minute. But the disadvantage is over and over. Senior women [00:25:00] quit their jobs. Because they don't feel heard. Mm-hmm. They don't feel recognized. And the men in the company will say, but why?
I thought you were great. You did a great job. But the men weren't telling the women in a way, the women they were speaking, they weren't speaking Italian to the Italian thinker. They were speaking Spanish and the Italian person didn't get it. Mm-hmm. So I have been in this situation and. And then the thing is that you have the loss of talent.
You have the loss of diverse leadership, which makes companies better.
And for the women, they get fed up and walk away. Whereas I find that if you can recognize it's just a different language. Nobody's wrong, it's just different, just different languages, different ways of speaking, then. Then you don't have to go through the [00:26:00] pain of quitting your job and then, that's ex, that's expensive.
It's no no paycheck for a while. And for the company, the cost of hiring a recruiter, the cost of the lost work, because the person with all the knowledge. Isn't there? I mean, it's expensive for everybody. And so for me like we were talking about my client, one or two people what I find is that if I can get enough women to learn how to speak the language of the people and learn how, and to teach them how to listen, then we don't have to go through this pain of women getting fed up and walking away.
Or if they're getting fed up and walking away, they're walking away for a reason.
Céline Williams: Yeah.
Elizabeth Bachman: So
Céline Williams: I think that's really important, and I think it's equally as important that [00:27:00] the default that Spanish is, the language that is communicated in business also needs to shift. And that I think. And I'm saying that is I have a lot of male clients and I'm very grateful that they are, they recognize that these things need to change.
So they're, and they're often in environments where they are not the majority. Right. It's just assumed mm-hmm. That everyone is going to speak Spanish and when, someone is speaking Italian. It's but the default is Spanish. Like why would you be speaking Italian? And so, mm-hmm. I hear top to bottom for men and women across organizations.
Mm-hmm. That to what you're saying, that, women talk too much or they go, you know, they take too long to get to a point like that is consistently across the board. Yeah. Um, and it escalates into. You know, one of the things that I hear a lot, and I am, I will get to a point I promise, is I often [00:28:00] hear women, especially feeling like they are, the conversation is really different in the sense that a woman, like they're talking about something, they start on the same page and.
The man, and I don't love gendering it, but there's a point to this. Mm-hmm. The, you know, the man is repeating the same, like whatever the point is, right. I, um, I need you to hear this, or this is my point. I need you to hear this is my point. And the woman is acknowledging it. This is the multi mm-hmm.
Acknowledging it and saying, I hear you. You, and this is what I'm talking about, or this is the additional information, or here's what you're missing about the project. Whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And it just keeps happening. 'cause the default is that this is the way we communicate, not right this. So all of that is, the point that I'm making in that very long sidebar.
I appreciate your patience with that is ha. [00:29:00] The burden shouldn't only be on the woman. To change it. Mm-hmm. And it's happening regardless of age, regardless of title, regardless of whatever. In my experience. And I'm curious your perspective on that and mm-hmm. What else do you you do,
Elizabeth Bachman: what do you do?
Right, exactly. Okay. So the other thing is, so again, and this is, this is like step one of a very complicated Yeah. Subject.
Céline Williams: We love complicated subjects here, Elizabeth. We're okay. Is
Elizabeth Bachman: like, this
Céline Williams: is,
Elizabeth Bachman: I
Céline Williams: love this kind of stuff. So, so
Elizabeth Bachman: this is, this is step one that we can do. I take six months or a year to help to work on this.
Yep. Yep. The single focus thinkers. The multi focus thinkers are the ones who have to change first because. They can. That's part of the multi focus thinking. They're just more adaptable and it's not [00:30:00] fair. It just is. However, when you get the single focus person's attention, they're single focused on you, which is great, which is wonderful that you can train the single focus thicker as long as they recognize there's an issue.
And so part of that is to say the single focus people need to know that if you've got a relational thinker on your team, they have to be acknowledged. So this again is like recognizing that this is an issue. If they come in to tell you something, then you could say. I'm sorry, but I can't think about that now 'cause I'm focused on something else.
Let's book a time where I can be fully focused on you and you [00:31:00] can, and give you, I'm not gonna be able to give you the attention you need. I care about you. I care about what you have to say. I recognize your expertise. Just help me do this.
So that's one piece of it.
Also, if you are having talking to someone, if you're a single focus thinker and the multi focus thinker is going on and on and on, then you could say, I care about you and I understand this, but I don't have a lot of time.
Can you just give me. Give me the point, and one of the key things is, so for the multi focus thinker, single focus thinkers are trained to fix things. Not the same as solving a problem. It's fixing things and it just, society adds it up. Boys are given tool chests and girls are given toy ovens.
Things like that. It, it just, you know, it's not, [00:32:00] society does this, I don't think anybody does this on purpose. I think society does this and because it's so common, we take it for granted and then we complain about it when actually there is a solution. But you have to be recognized that it's an issue.
Céline Williams: Mm.
Elizabeth Bachman: So if the single focus thinker can say, I only have space in my brain. For one thing first of all, tell me, is this something I'm gonna need to fix? Or is this an update? Tell me how you want me to listen. And then the multi focus thinker can say, oh yeah, okay then so here's an update, and this is why.
This is why executive summaries were invented. Mm-hmm. I think this is why bullet points were invented. Because you want to keep it small enough so that the people who only think on one track. Can take it in. You, you can't, in some ways, [00:33:00] you can't dump an entire waterfall on someone who only has a glass and they wanna get a glass of water and you give them an entire waterfall.
It just annoys everybody.
And because this has been going on for centuries. The complaints are also, we learn the complaints as children. How many times have you heard men don't listen to women or women? They go on and on. They don't get to the point. Even though there's a man who may go on and on and not get to the point.
I have people in my life who do that. It's not the, there is a gendered expectation.
And I think it's gonna be our grandchildren who are going to, this is by the time our grandchildren are in the workforce. Maybe this will have resolved itself, but I think it's the big I, there's a talk that I do regularly called Lost in Translation, [00:34:00] the Workplace Communication Breakdown that nobody talks about.
So a huge part of what I do is to raise awareness of. Here's this problem. Once you're aware of it, that's what happens with my clients. Once they're aware of it, then you can manage it. So then you say it in Spanish and then maybe you try to teach them a little bit of Italian. Um, and. That's sort of, there's one other caveat.
I work with women because this is my lived experience and I have made all the mistakes. So I've been, I've made all those mistakes is there's kind of a proud victimhood on both sides. So you can say, yeah men, they don't listen. If you talk to other men about other women about it, they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't listen or he must hate you 'cause he didn't hear.
Whereas the men will sit together and say, [00:35:00] women, they go on. They don't give away, I don't get it. Why don't they talk a language? I can understand. If you think of it as two different languages, Spanish or Italian or maybe dog and cat then you know, you have to put a little effort into translating.
Once you learn that then you can actually communicate, then you can act, get to the point of what someone's trying to say.
Céline Williams: Yeah. I love that you, that you started with saying that the, acknowledging maybe is a better way of saying that the reality that the multi thinkers. Are going to be multi focus thinkers.
Multi focus. Thank you. Multi focus thinkers are going to be the ones who have to adapt first because they can. Yeah, I think saying that out loud and acknowledging that is, is really important because it does require awareness on both sides. Ultimately Uhhuh, and [00:36:00] I think without acknowledging that, it's feels like the burden is on the women.
Multi focus thinkers, often women to do all the changing, which is,
Elizabeth Bachman: you know, there society teaches women how to listen to men, doesn't teach men how to listen to women. And I had a friend, there was a great book that came out probably 20 years ago, the mid nineties I think. Mm. Called You just don't understand me.
And it was a sociological analysis of this, which then John Gray took that information and rewrote it into, men Are from Mars, women are from Venus. Mm-hmm. He made it easy to reach, uh, Deborah Burnbaum. You go back and you, you read it. It is heavy sociology. And a male friend of mine. Who read it [00:37:00] said, oh, I see.
It's it works for men until they've had therapy and then they learn to think like women, and that makes them better men.
Céline Williams: Hmm.
Elizabeth Bachman: It's like the movie Tootsie, and, and at the end, Dustin Hopin says, I was a better man with you as a woman than I was as a man. When you see the men who've, who are, who've paid attention to this self-awareness, who take the time and the trouble to be aware of who they are and how that works.
You see CEOs talk about this all the time. It's not called the same thing, but then they're the people who learn how to listen. The challenge is that society lets men get away with not listening to it because it's been that way for centuries. The other piece of this is, and this is why I think it's [00:38:00] our grandchildren are gonna learn more about this, is that for centuries, women have had to adapt to what men wanted because women had no temporal or financial power.
And it wasn't until the late sixties, early seventies that women started going to work and started going to work in getting equal, equal positions and really only the last 20 years. Well, if you think of that compared to the centuries of human society, that's a very short time.
And you know, so I spent 30 years doing opera, doing literature from the 18th, 19th century, and often based on stories from the Romans and the Greeks.
So I tend to think in historical cycles, and it helps me not [00:39:00] despair. Helps you think. Okay. You know, it's a cycle. It's a spiral. Basically, we go around the circle and we go around and around and hopefully each time we get a little farther up and we get a little bit better each time. And the cycle is shorter each time.
Um, I was just explaining to somebody about the Opera Lab, which takes place in Paris in the 1890s during the Industrial Revolution. When you had young women who left the farm and came to live in the city and to work in the factories, and then they came out after they came out at the end of the day and they were called in Paris, which means, um.
RI is the French, you know this the French word for twilight. And suddenly you had young women who were outta the family, had money of their own and could have affairs with. So you have Mimi, the seamstress, who [00:40:00] falls in love with Rudolf of the poet. That's part of the historical cycle.
And we are living through a version of that now.
With you know, think about the women who went to war, went to work in the factories during World War ii, and then, then there was a pushback and they had to go back into the, back to the house because, back to the family because the men came home. And then the women who. Who protested against the war and said, we want to have, you know, women's lib, Gloria Steinem and all of that.
And then there was a backlash. And then you've got more and more women in the seventies, especially in North America. Women had to go to work. You had to have two working parents. So women were working. And now women are taking more and more [00:41:00] of, uh, an equal part. And when they are listened to, the results are better.
You need both. You can't just have all one and all the other. You can't have Wonder Woman on her Amazon Islands. That's all women. You need both. And society is better. Companies are better. If we recognize that you need both, you need the mix. And the more we can listen to each other, the better. And so that's what I'm about is how do you help people listen?
How do you help people speak up in a language where they can be hurt?
Céline Williams: Yeah. Um, thank you for sharing all of that, your stories and your insight. It's extremely valuable and it's such an important conversation to be having. Because it is incredibly relevant always, but today especially, it feels incredibly relevant.
So thank you for sharing all of that. [00:42:00] It's greatly appreciated. For anyone who is listening, you can find out more about Elizabeth elizabeth@elizabethbachman.com or you can find her on LinkedIn. And all of that will be in the show notes. And I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.
It's been a pleasure to get to know you and hear your stories and. It's definitely a first for me to have someone who was an opera director on, so it's very pretty. Thank you.
Elizabeth Bachman: Just one very quick story was, yeah, I had to work in multiple languages because in the international opera world, you know, once you're, once you're good enough that you can do multiple languages, you get together on day one and vote, what language are we gonna work in?
It's either, usually either English, Italian, or German or Russian. If you've got Russian singers, I was used to working in multiple languages, and that informs the way I see this now.
Céline Williams: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Bachman: When I'm working with women in business and we have a global business world, so you're [00:43:00] working with people who, for whom English is their second or third language.
So for me, it's all about. All about languages. And Céline, thank you. I am, I really appreciate having been on here and letting me rant about my
Céline Williams: favorite subject. You did not rant. It was very informative and I appreciate the insights. So thank you again. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for joining me today on the Leading Through Crisis podcast.
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