Summary
Rosina Racioppi, President and CEO of Women Unlimited, shares insights on self-advocacy in the workplace, particularly for women who expect their work to speak for itself rather than actively self-promoting. Racioppi emphasizes that meaningful growth requires getting out of your comfort zone, seeking specific feedback, and leveraging diverse perspectives for business innovation.
Learn more about Rosina Racioppi and Women Unlimited.
Transcript
00:00:00 Natalie Lorenzo: Welcome to the A Better Paradigm podcast where we inspire individuals from all walks of business to create a better workplace.
Hello everyone. Today we are welcoming Rosina Racioppi, President and CEO of Women Unlimited, a leadership development company that prepares employees for the next level of leadership. Their approach creates crucial advocates who learn strategies to evolve their culture to be more inclusive.
Thanks for joining me today, Rosina.
00:00:29 Rosina Racioppi: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Natalie. Looking forward to the conversation.
00:00:33 Natalie: Great. So you started working out in HR for 25 plus years. Your experience gave you that bird’s eye view on the workplace, especially for women. What specific things did you notice while working in these roles?
00:00:49 Rosina: Well, and you know, it’s such a great place to start, Natalie, because you know, as we talked about before, I loved being in HR because it helped me understand how I can partner with organizations to ensure that we’re preparing employees not only for their roles today, but more importantly for their roles tomorrow. How do we evolve our capabilities to ensure that we have the skills, the expertise, the experience that answers questions and needs of our customers and that’s as relevant today and even more so than it was 30 some years ago? So, it’s interesting because in one of the roles that I had in a chemical business, we always thought about what were the experiences that we needed to provide employees to prepare them for other roles down the road, and it was interesting to me because this was done in a very transparent fashion. People knew that.
And most of the men were coming up to me, telling me, you know, this is the role that I’m aspiring to, or I’m interested in this. So I would hear an awful lot from their point of view, but the women were nonexistent in those conversations. I had to seek them out and ask them, you know, what are you thinking about for your career? What would you be interested in?
And so it saddened me, right because they were missing an opportunity beyond the work that they’re doing today. What’s your curiosity about the work you can do tomorrow? And that’s a small example of what we see happening in the work that we do in our programs that often women are focused on their work and they want their work to promote them and speak for them because they’re uncomfortable talking about their own capabilities.
00:03:02 Natalie: In our last talk, we discussed the power of self advocacy at work and you kind of brushed on that right here. So you notice that some women expect work to speak for itself, but a lot of the times leadership doesn’t see all the work that’s being done behind the scenes and accomplishments need to be highlighted to them so they can take that into their decision making.
00:03:25 Rosina: Correct.
00:03:26 Natalie: So a lot of people end up job hopping because they feel they’re overlooked for opportunities only to face this same problem of being overlooked elsewhere, right? How do you recommend somebody self-advocate for themselves at work?
00:03:41 Rosina: Well, and you know the challenge with not talking about yourself – I understand the artificial nature of self-promotion, right? That feels uncomfortable. I’m not talking about walking around your organization telling everybody how great you are. That’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about being clear about all the skills and capabilities that you bring to your organization. What are those skills that when you’re using those skills, you’re really excited about that work, you really like it? Not that it’s easy, but it really is the thing that at the end of the day you’re going home thinking, wow, that was really cool what I did. I helped a customer solve its problem, or I was able to do a great analysis that prepared us to be thinking about opportunities for the future. What are those things?
Because that’s what you need to be talking about. That’s what you need to be articulating to others and those others are leaders in your organization that makes decisions about opportunities that you’re interested in, who needs to know that and then create a plan to help them know it.
We see so many people that are in roles that they are exceptionally good at and they’re tired of doing that work and they can’t find a way out of the corner that their career is in because they don’t talk about what they want to do. So if you’re one of those people that is like, wow, I’m really tired of doing the work that I’m doing, start getting curious about what are other ways you can use your expertise in your organization that might afford you a new opportunity.
And by self-advocating, it’s really about being curious about how my skills help my company solve our customers’ problems. And being curious about that, having conversations with leaders can lead to opportunities beyond something that you can imagine for yourself.
00:05:57 Natalie: Those are some great, great points. Going into a new role is going to be uncomfortable. Just like talking about yourself to the right people sometimes can be uncomfortable, so you need to get used to just being a little bit uncomfortable in order to be able to advance yourself in your career to advance yourself as a person.
00:06:17 Rosina: Right. Well, and growth and comfort don’t coexist, right? So if you are stretching yourself and you are feeling a little uncertain in the back of your mind, you should congratulate yourself because being uncomfortable is a clear sign that you’re stretching and growing.
00:06:36 Natalie: Between your work in HR and obtaining your doctorate in education, you ended up becoming the CEO and President of Women Unlimited. How did that happen? How did you fall into that?
00:06:49 Rosina: Yeah, I wish I could say it was all part of my master plan.
00:06:55 Natalie: Is anything really? You know, sometimes you just end up on a path that was supposed to be the right one.
00:07:02 Rosina: I know. Yeah. In hindsight, it seemed so appropriate. But I’ve always been a person that valued relationships, especially with people that were very different than me. Along the way, I met a woman, Jean Ott, who started Women Unlimited. I was head of HR for one of the businesses and I started identifying women in the program. I was a mentor. Jean had asked me for feedback on the program, and we began a friendship, a professional friendship.
After my youngest daughter was born, I decided to shift gears, start a consulting practice, still had a friendship with Jean, and eventually she asked me to join her in building the business because the business was growing and it was more than what she could handle.
So it allowed me to follow two of my passions. I am intrigued with businesses. I’m intrigued with how they function. How are they? How do they create profit for themselves and benefits for others? So I always had that point of view when I was leading HR functions in organizations.
But then I also had a passion around helping individuals find the joy in the work that they’re doing. You know, many of us can have jobs that we are functionally capable of doing, and we can or we can have jobs that really we’re so excited about the work that we’re doing and I see that often when we don’t advocate when we don’t have that curiosity, we’re not going to get to that place of our career joy and that to me is a missing opportunity. And so working at Women Unlimited allowed me to do both.
I work with phenomenal companies who see as part of their strategies helping individuals grow as leaders. It’s part of their success, and in my role, I work with a great group of people at Women Unlimited who help people understand that. How can they own their career? What are the things that they can be doing? Who are the people that they should build relationships with so we’re able to create an understanding for the individuals that participate as well as for the organizations on the value that that process makes for not only the individual but creating impact for the company.
00:09:40 Natalie: Being able to take charge of your career and say, OK, well, I don’t have to let this fall into the hands of fate. I can help sway this in the direction that I want it to go.
00:09:51 Rosina: Yeah. And we all know that no one’s going to care more about our career than us. And assuming that my manager will or my leader will just take us down the road of really being unhappy with our work.
00:10:08 Natalie: We see this in the way that people are staying at their jobs. The average amount of time people stay at their job has decreased over generations. Gen Z on average stays at their job for around 2 years and then 2024 labor statistic research shows that women have lower job tenures than men. Do you think these companies are having a hard time retaining younger women, identifying professionals? And what do you think they could be doing to keep them?
00:10:38 Rosina: Well, I think some of it may be what we talked about earlier, right? When I did my research on how women engage in mentoring relationships that informed their career development and career advancement, I heard from every single woman that participated in my research the same thing.
At a point of frustration: I’m doing all the work I feel. I see people that I feel are less qualified than me getting promoted, so I think I’m just going to leave my business my company.
If we work in a vacuum right of our own mind, we do the work we expect the work to speak for us, but we’re not having conversations with people. We’re not building the web of relationships that keep us informed about the business or about ourselves. It leads to feelings of isolation and feelings of frustration. So of course, it leads us to think, well, it’s got to be better someplace else. And then what happens is we get a new job in a new place. Rinse, repeat. It’s the same conversation. So, we need to look at do organizations have a piece of it? Absolutely. But in equal measure, so do the individuals.
Right? We own how we show up in an organization. We own how we interact with others. You know, I was just reading a study with Deloitte that organizations are seeing a lack of professionalism and how people are coming into organization.
So there’s so many different pieces as to why this happens. I also think companies are not providing individuals with experience broadening roles, right? So you get hired for a job. You do that job, accounts payable, whatever it might be. But how can you look to broaden your experience, your understanding of how the organization operates so that you can broaden your experience to be more viable in other roles that you might want to pursue. And that’s something that I think both the individual and the organization own. We should be looking as a company to give people that exposure and the individuals should be advocating for those opportunities as well.
00:13:18 Natalie: Yeah. We also talked, in our previous discussion, about feedback and how there is a difference between nice and kind. We need more insight than “good job” to grow. We need more insights than just the general “that was OK” to be able to advance and learn more about ourselves, to be better professionals. How can you ask for the right kind of feedback if you’re not currently getting it from your leadership?
00:13:52 Rosina: Right. You know, many people are uncomfortable providing what I would call critical, helpful feedback, right? They think it’s nice to just say, you know Natalie, good job, just keep doing what you’re doing. Well, that’s nice to hear in the moment. It’s not very helpful. It doesn’t provide any clarity on what I need to do more of or less of.
So I think for individuals who may have managers who are not capable of providing that critical feedback, you have tools available to get that information and you can do that by asking 2 simple questions. When you finish a project, when you’ve completed a presentation, if someone comes up to you and says, wow, you know Natalie, that was a really good presentation. You can say thank you. Can you tell me what’s one thing about the work that I just did, this presentation that really resonated with you?
So that helps you understand all the approaches, all the things that you brought to bear in this work, what that person appreciates, right? It gives you an understanding of maybe one of your competencies or capabilities that they’re seeing in you, so it validates right? So, it gives you validation. The next question you should ask is if I was going to do a similar project or a similar presentation in the future, what’s one thing I can do differently that would really elevate the outcome?
Now the work you did is done, you’re not going to go and redo it. But what this gives you an opportunity to understand is to expand your understanding of your capabilities. Maybe there was a way in which you presented the information that could have been more condensed or more impactful if you did just one thing differently, it broadens your understanding, right? So when people ask the question, can I have some feedback?
You don’t really know what the person wants to know, so you’re going to give them generalized feedback. If you are really interested in learning and growing, you need to ask very specific questions and that will help your manager and others give you feedback that’s meaningful that you can incorporate in your own development.
00:16:26 Natalie: Wow. Yeah. Those questions are very, very helpful because when you look at somebody who wants feedback and even as somebody who’s doling out the feedback, you feel pressured to give them a “good job”, you feel pressured to tell them what they did good, but that’s not going to help them. You have to give them the full explanation. You have to give them something that they can work on because a lot of times you’re going to find something that somebody else may not think of or that person may not have thought of just because you look at things differently.
00:17:06 Rosina: Right. I would often say to managers who would be frustrated with an individual that maybe wasn’t performing at the level that they wanted, you know, no one really goes to work or most people don’t go to work wanting to underperform and under deliver, they just lack the understanding of what do they need to do differently.
And you asked about what’s the difference between being nice and being kind? I think the difference is when you’re nice, you’re just saying things to make someone feel good, but it’s not going to affect the outcome or their capabilities.
Being kind means that you care enough about the individual’s performance and their growth and development that you tell them the things in a way that they can hear it, in a way that they can do something about it so that they can affect the changes that will be meaningful for their growth and development. That’s being very kind.
00:18:05 Natalie: Right. Yeah, we talked about that a lot with a better paradigm being nice to somebody is doing the work for them when they need help, but being compassionate is saying, OK, I see you’re having an issue. How can I help? But not doing all the work for them. It’s not getting in the hole and doing everything for them or healing all that trauma with them or all of it, you’re trying to help them from where you are at your vantage point.
00:18:31 Rosina: Right. Absolutely, absolutely.
00:18:40 Natalie: Yeah. And Women Unlimited is about increasing inclusivity and making sure that all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life are reflected in the business leadership. And it’s at the base of developing any kind of workplace. What movements or research or findings are you seeing around inclusivity and how those inclusive principles can enrich a business?
00:19:08 Rosina: Well, you know, we do know and this has been research that has benn proven so much over the last decade or so that the more diverse the workforce, the higher the profitability, the higher the innovation. So that’s that business case, if you will, has been borne out for quite some time.
But what I think often gets lost in the conversation is that the more diverse the organization, the more challenging it is to take advantage of that diversity, right?
So, it sounds like, oh, if I want to be a successful business, I just need to have a very diverse workforce. Problem solved. No, it actually just… You really need a strategy. If I truly have a diverse workforce and that means diversity from on all levels – background, experience, not just race, gender, etcetera, that means that I have a group of people who lack common connections and then I need to think differently around how do I create an environment where they feel valued, where their voice can be heard, where their contributions can be acknowledged?
And so it’s being mindful of and honoring the diversity in the room and creating an environment, a culture, if you will, where not only it is valued, but it’s visibly valued so that it kind of becomes an iterative process where it increases the receptivity and understanding of the value of inclusion.
00:21:07 Natalie: Can you explain a little bit more about that visible value concept that you’re talking about?
00:21:15 Rosina: Well, I think leaders have an opportunity to showcase and demonstrate what when they say, “I value inclusion” and the actions that they take in elevating that so that everyone sees that this is what inclusive leadership looks like. It doesn’t mean that we’re all just sitting around liking each other and being nice to each other, but rather we’re leveraging our differences to create deeper understanding of how we can do better work in the work that we do.
I think the power of diversity lies in that comfortable dissonance, right? That you can… You and I can see things very differently, but as we try and solve a problem or create a solution, because we’re so different, that tension allows us to get to a better outcome. And so, leveraging and really channeling those differences can be a powerful engine to the growth of an organization. But it has to be visible.
00:22:37 Natalie: Wow. Yeah, I love that explanation. Having someone who’s different than you say something different and you believe something different than you is going to make the whole company, as a whole, better stronger because there’s going to be so many more perspectives that can give insights on every issue on every problem and solution that you offer.
00:23:03 Rosina: Absolutely.
00:23:06 Natalie: And moving to my favorite question, what is your favorite part of your job?
00:23:13 Rosina: My favorite part of my job is that no two moments are ever the same, so it could be working with an organization to better understand their needs for developing their talent or thinking about what are some new opportunities, new development approaches that we can provide as resources to our partners. So, always having something new to contemplate is what I find still refreshing.
00:23:44 Natalie: That’s lovely. I understand. I am a chronic multitasker. Sometimes you just gotta put your hands on a lot of different buckets to see what you like and where you can help. And that’s something that I value as well. I understand that.
00:24:05 Rosina: It’s nice to meet a kindred spirit.
00:24:07 Natalie: Yes, yes, yes, thank you. Thank you so much for your time and your insights. How can listeners find you and Women Unlimited?
00:24:19 Rosina: Oh, they can find us on our website, women-unlimited.com. And you know you can access… Send me a message through our website. We’d love to stay in touch.
00:24:29 Natalie: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much.
00:24:32 Rosina: Thank you, Natalie.
00:24:34 Natalie: Hey, are you interested in making your workplace better, but don’t know where to start? Check out our free Kinder Workplace Journal. It offers 52 weekly thought-provoking prompts to boost self-awareness and empathy.
If you’re interested in learning about A Better Paradigm and what we do, visit us at abetterparadigm.com and follow us on social media. You can find us on Instagram at a better paradigm, ABP, and on LinkedIn at a better paradigm. Catch you next time.