Power Women: Connie Steele of Flywheel Associates On How To Successfully Navigate Work, Love and Life As A Powerful Woman

An Interview With Ming Zhao

Community. Women build villages around each other. No powerful woman gets to where she is without a village supporting her. And we can all get where we want to go when we support each other.

How does a successful, strong, and powerful woman navigate work, employee relationships, love, and life in a world that still feels uncomfortable with strong women? In this interview series, called “Power Women” we are talking to accomplished women leaders who share their stories and experiences navigating work, love and life as a powerful woman.

As a part of this series I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Connie Steele.

Connie Steele is a Future of Work and Life Expert, Author, co-founder of management consultancy Flywheel Associates, and host of the Strategic Momentum podcast.

Having been a marketing and strategy executive working at Fortune 500, start-up and scale-up organizations, and now consulting with C-level executives, Connie has observed firsthand how business is no longer rigid and linear but collaborative and fluid. Connie has always been intrigued by the “why” behind companies and careers that thrive and she has spent the last ten years studying workplace trends that are now permanent changes.

Today, she partners with organizations to help them adapt to the new world of work so they can drive real progress in their company. She is also passionate about helping individuals navigate the ongoing changes in the workplace so that they can achieve personal and professional fit in their careers.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood “backstory”?

Growing up as the child of two immigrants, there are certain expectations about what the perfect Asian daughter does and how she behaves. You are a reflection of their success, and you’re always trying to do well by them, but that can create tension when who you are doesn’t perfectly fit the societal mold. I was vocal, outgoing. I always had a strong personality. And while I still wanted my parents to be proud, I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself to fit everyone else’s expectations.

Can you tell us the story about what led you to this particular career path?

One of the expectations I felt I had to live up to was getting a certain kind of education — I had to go into the field with the greatest likelihood of getting a job that would have some stability and success. My parents pushed me towards Math & Statistics. But unlike most of my peers, I wasn’t trying to get a PhD and do qualitative work. I was trying to take this knowledge and apply it to the burgeoning tech world.

But I didn’t really have a role model for any of this. I didn’t have a mentor. So I had to figure it out on my own. And while I hope that young women and the children of immigrants today might have more support systems available to them, I do think this helped teach me to be the type of strategic thinker that can work for herself and work in new marketplaces.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I was working in a start-up company and I ended up having to manage some extreme situations. I had a fully remote team, but I didn’t have all of the tools and resources we have today. I just had a phone and internet chat to build and train this new team. And even though the team was remote, I still had to go into the office which involved a very long commute.

I knew it was unsustainable. This wasn’t the situation that was best for me, and especially not my family. So I had to take a step back and ask myself: what does success look like for me?

And for me, success did not look like being part of a company doing the 9-to-5.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Resilience. Navigating a world that is constantly changing because of my evolving roles in it as a mom, business owner, people manager, care manager to aging parents (among several others over the years) makes it challenging to continue to push through when there are societal, cultural, and personal expectations put on top of that. I’ve had to navigate through a lot (and I put up with more than I probably should have as I figured my own things out), but I’ve gotten to a place where I feel more fulfilled in every area of my life than ever before.
2. Empathy. Just being able to connect with people, understand them, relate to them.
3. Operationalizing into action. Anyone can come up with a plan. But not everyone is willing to put that plan into action.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. The premise of this series assumes that our society still feels uncomfortable with strong women. Why do you think this is so?

Nobody is comfortable with change. People especially aren’t comfortable with change when they’re already in power. So strong women can be threatening because they challenge the status quo; they make some people feel scared, insecure, and irrelevant.

But there are also people out there who understand that there’s a different way, a stronger way, a more equitable way. There are more allies in this fight than ever before.

Without saying any names, can you share a story from your own experience that illustrates this idea?

I’ve been pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things. But in meetings at large tech companies, you could see the power struggle. It was easy for women to feel minimized because there was no representation. You could see a desire for those who have been in charge their whole lives to be dominant regardless of their role. And as a woman, you just had to fight harder in those rooms, just to get to where everyone else was starting.

What should a powerful woman do in a context where she feels that people are uneasy around her?

Women are seen as nurturing, softer. And you don’t have to fill that role, but you should be aware of the expectation if you want to effectively manage situations where people feel uneasy.

I suggest using what Kim Scott calls Radical Candor; call it out, be direct, don’t be apologetic, but do it with respect. How can you be firm, direct, and care?

What do we need to do as a society to change the unease around powerful women?

Acknowledge and address the societal, political, and business systems that perpetuate patriarchy.

In my own experience, I have observed that often women have to endure ridiculous or uncomfortable situations to achieve success that men don’t have to endure. Do you have a story like this from your own experience? Can you share it with us?

Taking on emotional labor for other people — bosses, subordinates, family members. There is always an expectation that you will fill a maternal role and you’re subconsciously punished for deviating from it.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women leaders that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?

You’re judged on so many more things than men, especially superficial things. It’s not just your ability to deliver great work — sometimes it barely feels like that matters at all.

Let’s now shift our discussion to a slightly different direction. This is a question that nearly everyone with a job has to contend with. Was it difficult to fit your personal and family life into your business and career? For the benefit of our readers, can you articulate precisely what the struggle was?

This is why I quit the corporate world. I couldn’t fill all the roles that were expected of me (or that I expected of myself) as well as I could. The ways the structures were set up to support women and families, I had to choose how I could serve best. But not being in the corporate world serves me, too, so it ended up working out pretty well.

What was a tipping point that helped you achieve a greater balance or greater equilibrium between your work life and personal life? What did you do to reach this equilibrium?

I chose to pursue independent consulting to regain control, freedom, and flexibility in my life. And that’s when I first started to reach an equilibrium.

The tipping point was my last job in the corporate world. I mentioned it a little before, but there was just such an imbalance between the energy I had to put in at work and the energy I was able to put in at home. I had to explore other ways of working.

I work in the beauty tech industry, so I am very interested to hear your philosophy or perspective about beauty. In your role as a powerful woman and leader, how much of an emphasis do you place on your appearance? Do you see beauty as something that is superficial, or is it something that has inherent value for a leader in a public context? Can you explain what you mean?

I do place an emphasis on my appearance; feeling put together or dressed for the occasion can help you feel more confident, more powerful. So there is an inherent value to aesthetics.

But beauty has to be internal and shouldn’t be strictly defined by external factors. And the standards of physical beauty certainly shouldn’t be wielded as a weapon against women. Unfortunately, it often is, extremely unevenly.

How is this similar or different for men?

Attractive people always have an advantage, but men don’t face the same cultural stigma and expectation of always being attractive and presentable. And when they don’t meet some invisible standard, it isn’t held against them to nearly the same degree.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Powerful Woman?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Resilience. There will be times when going against the status quo is hard. It’s not fair, but you need to be able to get through that.
2. Conviction. You can’t exude power if you don’t emphatically believe in what you’re trying to do.
3. Presence. This doesn’t mean you’re extroverted or loud, it means you have an impact on the room and draw people to you.
4. Persistence. You’re always going to run into roadblocks. You’re going to have failures. And you need to be willing to keep going.
5. Community. Women build villages around each other. No powerful woman gets to where she is without a village supporting her. And we can all get where we want to go when we support each other.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Simon Sinek. I am an avid listener of his podcast A Little Bit of Optimism and I always walk away inspired, informed, and armed with how to navigate the world a little differently.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.