Dr. Linda L. Moore is a licensed psychologist practicing in Kansas City, Missouri. She is President of Linda L. Moore and Associates, which offers individual and group therapy, executive coaching, management consulting, and presentations for organizations and associations around the country. Dr. Moore writes and publishes on women and power, leadership, and stress management.
Books/Resources by Dr. Linda Moore
Quotes from This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Dr. Linda L. Moore is a licensed psychologist practicing in Kansas City, Missouri. She is President of Linda L. Moore and Associates, which offers individual and group therapy, executive coaching, management consulting, and presentations for organizations and associations around the country. Dr. Moore writes and publishes on women and power, leadership, and stress management.
Books/Resources by Dr. Linda Moore
Quotes from This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen
Everybody, today, on the podcast, I have Linda Moore, Dr. Linda Moore, and she is a psychologist and reached out to me about coming on the podcast and we kind of in it, she's angered the tech gods, I need to let you know that she's in a previous life, she either did some bad things to the technology gods or she has angered them in this life. We don't know which. But we've, we've kind of worked a little bit to get to this point today. We're very excited. But she is a psychologist. And she has a unique perspective. And I'm excited about this conversation today. Because I think it's a very, very important topic. I'm excited to learn throughout this process. And so, Linda, why don't you introduce yourself, and then we'll share with listeners what we're going to explore.
Linda Moore 8:00
Hey, good morning,
Scott Allen 8:01
Hey there,
Linda Moore 8:02
I have been a psychologist for way too many years to be counting probably about 35. And have been a speaker, a consultant, a writer, in the context of looking at what women deal with, face that men have literally no idea. I watched the convention last night. And the incredible shift and energy and in power that is expressed are reflective of a root system I was connected with when I lived on the East Coast, at the University of Virginia. And we actually started the women's movement and began to look at the psychology of women, particularly in terms of leadership roles, and how stymied most of us were. So my specialty has been working as a therapist, with women who are leaders held leadership positions. And I've done that across the country primarily with women who wanted to be college presidents. So I have lots of disgusting stories and lots of successful stories. But it's really important for us to be able to get a handle on the underlying socialization process that teaches women not quite what they need to know to be successful, although from what's happening now. I'm seeing that that has changed and I think it has to do with numbers. That makes any sense to you. I many years ago, Dr. Rosabeth Kanter wrote a book called Men and Women of the Corporation I think it was 1970-71. The most profound takeaway from that book is nothing will change until there are more numbers of women and that we will continue to be too discriminated against and taken not seriously until numbers increase. So I think we're experiencing that increase in numbers.
Scott Allen 10:09
Well, certainly there are more women in public office at least at the national level than then than ever before. Yes, it's exciting, more women running for candidacy, I believe, than ever before. And I couldn't agree with you more. I think the countries that have a balanced approach to this, I believe it's New Zealand, where it can't go out of a 60/40. Kind of out of balance. I think my layperson's observation is that organizations of all men have some toxicity organizations of all women, there's some toxicity there as well. But that that blend in that balance provides a nice perspective. And you said something important? You said I'm not going to get it correct. Perfect. But you said something of we teach women almost everything that they need to know or Let's go there. Let's start there. What are you experiencing? As you are working with women? Who are assuming leadership roles? What advice can you share with listeners? What stories do you have? I'd love to explore that.
Linda Moore 11:22
Well, let me give you a couple of sort of, I would say elementary psychological principles about differences with women and men. And some people might not agree with me, but when we grow up, little girls are taught to feel versus think little boys are taught to think versus feel. And we begin a very, very different socialization process. It means that we are as women, incredibly sensitive to what people are thinking of us, we're sensitive to our feelings. And most of us learn to be nice girls. My basic message to women leaders, whether they're looking at college presidencies, or whether they are wanting to run an organization is, "please if there's one thing I want you to do it is to stop immediately, being nice." Please trade nicely for kind nice to self-negating nice makes you disappear. Nice eliminates you from the conversation because you're too focused on how the other person is feeling. That gets activated more with men for some reason. But we also do it with one another. And so a lot of people get very uncomfortable with that message. But kind is interacting, connecting, caring, really being able to say what you want to say, but also listening carefully to the other person. Nice just means I'm paying attention to you, and I'm trying to make you like me. That's, that's really in there. I like to think that today, women are doing a better parenting job, men are doing a better parenting job. But I still think that's a basic socialization process that we have to shake off. It's tough.
Scott Allen 13:13
So it's, it's, it's, that's the starting point, at least one starting point for you is the socialization. And then because of that socialization, we have this "nice," right? I am sure subconsciously that's even some expectations of men. That that that's what they expect is you know "her to be nice." I love your distinction of nice versus kindness. What are some others? What are some other results of that socialization that you see?
Linda Moore 13:45
Another big one is that we put more energy or believe that we need to and therefore try and to maintain the primary relationships in our lives. So women frequently run into huge amounts of conflict between the way they behave at home, in their primary relationships, and the way they behave at work. And sometimes it's so different. I'm working with a couple of women who are in fairly high leadership positions right now, who are so competent in the work that they're doing, and do such a fine job and are highly regarded by their companies, by their agencies. And they are a mess, that would be a deep psychological term, and their relationships at home. And that they struggle constantly. So part of it has to do with psychological boundaries. And women have a tendency to allow people to cross their boundaries, again, that pulls in the nice part. But it's also about our intense energy, about connecting and relating and staying connected and relating. So we will allow people to interrupt us, we will allow people to come into our space when we're working, we will allow anything that the connection pulls us to. And obviously, this is a huge generalization. And there are many women, thankfully, who do not do this, but these are the pitfalls. Yeah. And then we construct what is called by some people, a false self, some people would call it fear of fraud. But we get a disconnect between our authenticity and the person that we project out into the culture, or in the organization or in relationships. So a lot of women in therapy, at least, those of those women who are not in therapy now listening to this will say, "what the heck is she talking about?" But experience is a huge gap between my authenticity and the person who's out here, and you're going to discover that I'm not as smart as I appear to be, or you think I am, that I have constructed this external false pseudo-self. And there is a different person inside and you will eventually discover who she is.
Scott Allen 16:12
And that has to be incredibly difficult to walk around with.
Linda Moore 16:16
Yes, ready, it's heavy. And if you have a voice, if you have a voice, and you have learned to use it, in my first job interviews out of my doctoral program at UVA, were in a time when there were no rules about discrimination. And so if you talk to people like me, or women, my, in my age, who grew up in that time, the incredible discrimination, the ability to ask women questions that nobody could do today without being arrested was phenomenal. And so we have that multiple generational processes. If you sat down with a group of say, five or six women who went through the 70s and 80s, and ask them about discriminatory behavior, you cannot find a woman who has not experienced it. Even you know, whether it's in an interview or inappropriate behavior, but I was asked all kinds of bizarre questions by men with PhDs at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia, that day, they could get thrown in jail for hopefully, but not then. And so there is a history I think, is my point. There's a thread of history that has not been healed, to the extent that it needs to be for women today to be as comfortable as they would like. Now, when I work with women in their late 20s, early 30s, I'm incredibly encouraged. I need more clients like that to keep me from getting depressed.
Scott Allen 18:06
Well, I'm excited to jump into this conversation around things that men might not know that women experience in the workplace. I've done, I do some work in my community with some of the Women's Professional Staff Association at the Cleveland Clinic. There are some other women corporate women's interest groups that I do some work with. And our YWCA has programming for women. And I've done some programming in all of those, those organizations. And I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot. I'll give you two examples that I never even would have. They never would have been on my radar. I had one senior executive once say in a session, she said, Look, all of my male counterparts, I'm the only person at the C-Level role. All of my male counterparts can at the drop of a hat because they have stay at home spouses and nannies. They can fly to China at a drop of a hat. And I can't do that. I have a spouse who works also has a career. I have a family. And I can't do that. And that's something that is never, never even would have come on my radar. And another woman once said, you know, it takes me about 10 minutes to figure out what I'm going to wear. Because I want to be I want to be professional and trendy and look put together. But I don't want to be suggestive, or I don't want it to be misconstrued. And I'm sitting there thinking as a facilitator, I was thinking as she was speaking I was thinking about my outfit that day. And you know, it was half or maybe a millimeter of a second but that went into the gray trousers in the shirt. Right, yes, not even, it wasn't even a choice.
Linda Moore 20:03
It's a uniform.
Scott Allen 20:05
Yeah. And so I think it'll be very interesting for listeners to hear your perspective on some of those types of things that women may experience in the workplace that maybe we would never even imagine occurs. And let's see where the conversation takes us.
Linda Moore 20:23
Well, this is triggering a thought, again, about a very old piece of research, these are the things that got me started writing and thinking about this in more depth, a million years ago, probably, again, around 1970, there was a research project, I think, well, maybe that the university will occur to me, but it was called The Solo Woman in a Professional Peer Group. And so what they were doing was studying what happens when a woman is by herself in a work environment. And what the discovery was that most men don't have a template for women, as colleagues, peers, equals, they see us as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, women, that we have affairs with cheerleaders, and when you can come up with all those multiple traditional labels. And what women were experiencing, is that men relate to them out of one of those templates, maybe one or two or three. And I don't believe that has really been shaken loose. In this particular time, we find ourselves and I think it's still there. I would say that among younger men, hopefully that is not the case. But to regard a woman colleague, as apparently, I think, is really hard for most men, that they have those programmed templates in their heads for how they related to women most of their lives. Does that make sense? And it's still hard for people to break through and to get out of. So I guess what I'm saying is, the research that was beginning back in the late 60s and early 70s, has evolved in terms of so many more women being in positions of power so that that can be shifting and changing. But our behavior is something that we have to look at. That is incredibly important in terms of our communication, in meetings, for example. And again, pretty older research, Deborah Tannen did an incredible amount of research on communication processes between men and women. We like to make eye contact when we are talking. men seem to be less comfortable with that. So I suggest to my clients, whether they are businesswomen, or they're just dealing with struggles in a relationship if you want to have a conversation with a man in your life, do it while driving a car because when men are looking straight ahead and do not have to make eye contact with you, they talk. Now, that comes from Deborah Tannen's, research about how important it is for us to be visually engaged with you while trying to make a point. And how men avoid it. So if you looked at some of her old recordings of meetings, and how women are struggling to lean forward and to get in the face of a man that they are talking to, and men are looking at the ceiling, or you know, down at their paperwork. It is incredible. And so again, I'm just pointing out that we have some built-in ways of being socialized that get in our way, but they're good. They're not bad things. There's nothing bad, but it's just different. And if we acknowledge it, we do better.
Scott Allen 24:02
Yeah. And if I remember correctly, some of that research was that they would put boys in a room and the boys would kind of set two chairs together and look forward. And the women
Linda Moore 24:14
or kick each other.
Scott Allen 24:17
And the women would face one another.
Linda Moore 24:23
Yeah, they move their chairs so they could talk to each other. Yes. Look, well, legs over the armchairs. Yes.
Scott Allen 24:34
So what else? What else are some, some experiences that you've come across or that you want to discuss?
Linda Moore 24:41
Okay, so I think one of the most common things I'm asked to talk about to groups, and I do as much volunteer work as I can now since everybody is so stressed, but one of the most common things I'm asked to just look to really, really describe how do you find balance in life? So topics like balance 101, but I want to destroy the mythology of balance. Yeah, particularly for women. So we are really motivated to create balance. And you've given some good examples of that already, that when we decide we have to go on a business trip, we are already thinking of all the people and the obligations and the necessities that have to come into play to do that, rather than relying on somebody else to fix it, and we just go get on an airplane. So my common comment is, there is no such thing as balance, quit trying to achieve it, it will never happen, and instead worked toward the concept of an integrated life. And that can change, psychologically, the way you think about it, because you're not going to have a day of balance, you might not have a week of balance, you could achieve a month of balance, but just let go of the word and think of integrated. So you say, Okay, I may not be able to work on this project for several days, rather than trying to say, How do I organize my day, so that I can work on the project, and get your partner or your significant other to, perhaps, work with you on that, that, you know, we can't do everything. And it can't be balanced, but it can be negotiated and can be integrated.
Scott Allen 26:36
We'll talk a little bit more about the negotiation and the integration. So what are somewhat are some indicators that someone is, is negotiating well, some of those competing commitments, or integrating those competing commitments, well. In, in your work? What do you see, when someone's doing it? Right? We need the template Linda!
Linda Moore 26:59
is doing it right. In a male/female relationship, it means that they have learned some of the basic communication skills and have to do with shutting your mouth and listening. I tell people, and this is so important. This is written about in every couple's communication therapy book that's been written. If you can't repeat back to your significant other or the person you're talking to almost word for word, what they said to you before you design your response, then you have not listened and you're on the wrong track.
Scott Allen 27:39
It's a good litmus test.
Linda Moore 27:40
Well, it's huge. And so there are techniques, you know, to discover that and to actually, embarrass couples in my office by letting them see and it's a two-way street. It's not just men or just women, we do not listen well, because we're formulating our thoughts. So if you want to hear a funny story about that, I could tell you a funny story. So I had a couple. I was working with a psychiatrist and social worker who came to talk to me about an argument they were having over their pet parrot. Okay, I said, "I'm getting paid for this. This is ridiculous." Okay. So we're having this conversation. And they're very angry with each other about the care of this parent, they also have two children that they seem to handle fairly well, but they can't come to grips with this ridiculous parrot. So I made them do this made him I instructed them in this technique of Okay, what we're going to do is you talk, and now you listen carefully and repeat back to your spouse exactly what you heard them say, it took approximately, I would say, 10 minutes of interaction to discover both of these people hated this parrot. Each of them thought the other was invested in keeping it. And they were arguing about something that they agreed with but had never heard the other one say...
Scott Allen 29:14
wow, that's fascinating.
Linda Moore 29:17
Well, it's my most extreme, ridiculous example from two really educated people who were not talking to each other. So when you imagine taking this concept into a work setting, and there is communication around a table or just in a one on one conversation. And if I am as a woman in my traditional role, I'm probably overthinking what I want to say and how I want to present myself and I missed part of the conversation. A man is likely so assured that he knows what to do and the right way to do it, that he's also not listening to the other end of the conversation. sufficiently. And so what I've discovered in negotiations and work settings, where I've done team-building or worked with a significant number of people on a team, is the differences between people are so extreme, sometimes just personality constructs, that it's really difficult to understand the differences unless you are listening so intently. Yeah, before you open your mouth before.
Scott Allen 30:31
I that can be hard because as you know, the conversations moving quickly. And in some, in some contexts, the norm is you'd better just jump in or you're gonna, you know, if you do raise your hand, you're gonna be ignored. So it's got to be very, very tricky. Right?
Linda Moore 30:48
Well, and I think you're absolutely accurate with that assessment, I think that people are afraid they're not going to be heard. And if I'm concerned, I'm not going to be heard, I'm going to speak before I have sufficiently listened. So reminds me of another story I had a woman college vice president, who was not getting her voice heard in cabinet meetings and in high-level meetings. And so, she really felt that people were taking her ideas and not giving her credit. Okay, so I really asked her to look at where she was positioned in the order of presenting ideas. And she liked to talk first, and I said, "bad idea." Don't ever be the first person in a group of men to talk first, because they will think your idea is theirs, they will. They will have heard it, processed it. And she wanted to argue with me. And I said, "Okay, so here's what most men are doing when you first come into a meeting (this is terribly insulting to men, I apologize) most men are jockeying for position, they're not listening thoroughly. They're not paying close attention. They're sort of I mean, I could give you a more graphic, you know, metaphor for this, if we were not, you know, like on a podcast, but women are trying to be seen and be heard. And they think if they get and I said, Okay, let them all talk. Because while you're talking at the beginning, and they hear just a, just a small construct of it, they will be convinced that it came out of their own head, but you need to wait until everybody has talked more. And the tone of the meeting has quieted down and then you talk then you speak. And if somebody actually says, puts put your idea into play as theirs, then you turn to him and say, "John, thank you. I didn't know if you heard that when I first expressed it, but you built up very nicely, and I really appreciate the input. Thank you." You can do that in a form that is not totally insulting. But
Scott Allen 33:11
well, it's, it's, it's an interesting puzzle because I think I think you're right in a lot of contexts. Sometimes it could be that the men are jockeying. Sometimes it could be that they're just really into solving the problem. They're just so consumed with the problem that they're not thinking niceties. They're not thinking about norms. They're just and so it's complex. And there's that quote, I'm sure you've heard that quote about Ginger Rogers, it's the old sure, sure, "Fred Astaire was great. But, you know, you had to remember she did everything backward and in high heels." And so I think, at times, you have to be better, you have to be better and more aware of what's actually happening in those dynamics and happening in your head and the voices that need to be pushed through. But then also just the dynamics and sometimes the other people that you're going to have to push through sometimes in some of my own leadership development work. And I'm going to grossly stereotype right now. We'll do some team building activities. And there'll be oftentimes an introverted male or an introverted female, who says, "Hey, guys, I think we could just go ahead and do this." And it's the right answer. But Paul, Steve, and Jim have jumped in, they didn't even hear all of the directions. Sally jumped in with those three. And they look at this person who made the comment like they're from Mars, and then turns back and start jumping back into whatever they think. And sometimes it's about helping them that young woman say, "Hey, you need to? You need to hear me right now. I spoke up and I have an idea." Yeah. Because they won't be they won't be heard. And of course, on the other end of that, it's about helping those other participants realize when they're jumping in, and that's the behavior they're engaging in.
Linda Moore 35:18
And you're also saying something that points to underlying role definitions in the culture and a woman feeling that she does not have the capacity to do that, based on however much she assumes that role or takes on the mantle of that role. Oh, if you if we did a diagram, of all the institutions in our culture, from the family to the church, to the government, to the schools to the corporation, and said, "okay, what's the role prescribed for women and the role prescribed for men in each of those institutions? And how does that manifest in the observed outcome, observe behavior?" And you will find that my personality is in interaction with the role that is prescribed for me, my behavior is what I have learned, that I need to do to be able to function well in this organization. And those are not those that have not been loosened up across the board, in our culture. So we are so programmed in that behavior, that the woman you're describing, who's a little introverted, does not see herself as capable of having that much of a voice without somehow breaking out of a stereotype that she has taken on and lived for much of her life.
Scott Allen 36:45
Yeah. Well, and of course, it's, she has the right idea, she had the breakthrough idea. But yeah, and it's a beautiful thing in some of the programmings that we do, where, in the end, maybe it's after three or four months of some pretty active coaching with the students and helping them become more aware of the group dynamics. It's about helping those three young men and that women realize that they jump in too quickly, they take over, and they're kind of "Bulls in China Shops" at times. And it's about helping maybe that young woman find her voice in that at that moment, and just and communicate in a way that's going to be heard, right? It's like, it's kind of a both/and.
Linda Moore 37:33
Does it feel like it, it takes does it feel like they're getting it?
Scott Allen 37:38
It's so beautiful, Linda, when it's so beautiful, when, in this way, it's in this one program that I'm thinking of, where after about three months of pretty active coaching with the students and a lot of practice with the students. We know we've gotten there, quote, unquote, when the students can look at each other in a debriefing session and say, Jim, you jumped in again. And Jim says, "You know, I know I did, I did," or that that introverted student can say, "Jim, you jumping in again?" Yeah, that's how we really know. And or if Jim pauses and doesn't jump in and says, "okay, you all I know, I can jump in. But what do you think?" that at least there's some greater level of intentionality behind the behavior. Because I, yes, I mean, people, people are entering that arena. And the people with their defaults to just jump in and start tackling problems can be challenging to navigate, very challenging to navigate.
Linda Moore 38:41
Absolutely. So seeing that that works with that kind of instruction is very encouraging to me. And you're pointing out something that I think we don't we don't understand well enough in terms of organizational settings. And that's the introvert-extrovert breakdown. And I once did a consulting thing for a pretty high tech company, where everything was breaking down in terms of communication. And I, went in there were, I think about three people who were the designated leaders in a large group of maybe, you know, 15-16 people. And it took me about 15 minutes to watch the interaction to see what was going on as the three leaders were flaming extroverts. The rest of them were tech people, all introverts hardly ever open their mouths unless they were encouraged to. So we did some testing, just so that they could see the differences. And it made a remarkable difference in their understanding of the dynamic, you know, back and forth. It's huge.
Scott Allen 39:49
Yep. Because sometimes Jim or it might be the extroverted, young woman that we're working with. Helping them pause, slow down acknowledge others check-in. Yes, it was their life skills that I don't know, in the normal flow of corporate life. We don't hear people saying that you know, it's not like people look at the Senior VP and say, Carl, "everyone's miserable when you just take over like this and Stop it, please." Right?
Linda Moore 40:23
Yes, exactly.
Scott Allen 40:25
Linda, we're a little bit close on time are we have flown by here. Any final thoughts maybe a suggestion or two for people who, who are aspiring to be leaders. And maybe for some leadership educators, one or two thoughts for leadership educators, anything come to mind?
Linda Moore 40:44
Well, I'm sitting here looking at all the books that I have my iPad balanced on. Which I just grabbed off the shelf, I have Adam Grant's Give and Take, which I think is, is an incredibly fine book, if you're trying to look at a way to measure yourself and understand the way you behave in organizations and you can actually take his inventory online, good. Am I a giver or a taker, or a matcher are his three categories. They're very useful in terms of self-analysis, I have The Coddling of the American Mind. I have Managing Transitions, Reframing Organizations, and a very old book that I didn't notice on my shelf, A Simpler Way by Meg Wheatley. So those are, those are all new to all that I pulled off a bookshelf. So I really love recommending the first book that I wrote on powerlessness is called, Release from Powerlessness: Take charge of your Life. It's full of inventories and questions to ask yourself to understand your behavior and your role in the organization. It's very cheap on Amazon or on my website. But if we go back to the introversion/extroversion, one of my favorite books is called The Introvert Advantage by Marti Laney, a psychologist. In the book, she has pages, she has two or three pages of identified behaviors. If you're an introvert, and you work with or live with an extrovert, here are the things you need to know. And then the opposite. And I have gotten her permission to print those off and take to presentations, etc. It's like a little Bible that you can look at. She's very good.
Scott Allen 42:41
Oh, very cool.
Linda Moore 42:42
Yeah. Good. First things I'm thinking of...
Scott Allen 42:47
Well, it's a conversation that we should continue because it's an important conversation, these differences, and I loved your distinction of work-life integration, and what that can look like, and gender differences and socialization differences and how that plays out. And I think at least for me, the theme that I kind of keep coming back to is, are we slowing down and actually watching what's happening in front of us? Are we present? Or are we on autopilot? And I think a lot of people, a lot of people are on autopilot for a lot of the day, and not in tune with their triggers, their values, their motivations, their behavior. And, and rightfully so we have a lot coming at us. But that intentionality and that awareness and that presence, wow, if we can help people
Linda Moore 43:45
when I'm interrupting you, but what you're saying right now is so important in terms of this whole pandemic. And one of the other things I'm looking at my books that I have here, one of the other workbooks I've written is called, What's Wrong with Me? Maybe Not That Much. And the reason that that's important is a big generalization again, when there's a conflict, when there's miscommunication, a woman goes immediately to what's wrong with me, men go to what's wrong with you. And that difference is huge in terms of the way we internally psychologically process. And I would say right now, in the middle of all this stress we're under, yeah, that's huge. In terms of how are we communicating with each other? Am I taking my responsibility for what's going well, and what's not going well? And am I taking my responsibility to take myself off the hook when I need to?
Scott Allen 44:44
Wow. And that's some serious metacognition or thinking about your thinking. You got to be good. You got to be good. Yeah,
Linda Moore 44:53
You guys, just remember you are not your thoughts. That's my main psychological principle.
Scott Allen 44:59
Maybe that's what we'll call it. The podcast you're not willing to thank you so much. I look forward to continuing the conversation down the road. It's been wonderful getting to know you a little bit and thank you so much for being with us today.
Linda Moore 45:11
Thank you. It's fun to talk to you.
Scott Allen 45:12
Yes, yes. Okay. Be well.
Linda Moore 45:15
You too.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai