THE FIGHT AGAINST GASLIGHTING IN THE WORKPLACE

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“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Julia Carreon’s Fight Against Corporate Gaslighting”

In this episode, Frazer Rice sits down with Julia Carreon to explore her recent high-profile litigation against a major financial institution and her powerful insights on women in leadership, corporate culture, and overcoming systemic barriers.

We discuss:

Julia’s experience with workplace gaslighting and her litigation journey with Wells Fargo
The importance of transparency, accountability, and protecting yourself in corporate environments
How societal and corporate cultures disadvantage women, especially around motherhood and leadership
The themes and motivations behind Julia’s book, Walking on Broken Glass
Practical strategies women can use to build political capital and safeguard their careers
The significance of external networks and understanding your personal strengths
The evolving landscape of equity, ownership, and governance in corporations
How to proactively prepare for and respond to systemic workplace challenges

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction: Julia’s litigation and book overview
02:03 – Gaslighting in corporate culture and early experiences
04:14 – Dealing with systemic backstage politics and fighting for justice
05:10 – Motivations for writing Walking on Broken Glass
08:08 – Diagnosing workplace culture and gender dynamics
09:33 – The weaponized HR department and accountability
11:38 – Protecting yourself: cultural awareness and bias
13:12 – Demographics, gender disparities, and moving forward
15:12 – Institutional misogyny and societal shifts
16:05 – Motherhood, work-life balance, and corporate support
18:28 – Questions of corporate culture change post-COVID
22:21 – The fear factor and change in workplace loyalty
27:12 – Tactical career strategies and building political capital
28:15 – Always Be Executing (ABE) and tracking success
30:53 – The ownership mentality and equity’s role in career resilience
34:45 – Building internal and external networks for support
36:49 – Understanding personal aptitudes through testing and reflection
40:12 – Leveraging political capital and seizing opportunities
43:31 – How to follow Julia and stay updated on her journey

Transcript

Frazer Rice (00:01.004)
Welcome aboard, Julia.

Julia (00:03.32)
Thanks for having me.

Frazer Rice (00:04.652)
Well, as I said in the opening, the concept of gaslighting in the boardroom is something that certainly isn’t new, but it doesn’t make it any more comfortable for the people who deal with it on a day-to-day basis or as part of their career. And you’re in the midst of litigation right now with a major financial services company. Maybe talk a little bit about what’s going on there.

Julia (00:24.801)
Yeah, so I am in a high profile lawsuit with my former employer. I would say this is not a path that anyone chooses on purpose. In my particular case, Frazer, I spent 20 years at Wells Fargo, 15 of which were pretty spectacular. I have come to realize almost maybe fairy tale like in terms of my experience.

I want to talk about some of the things later on that made it a fairy tale. So yeah, I wouldn’t have chosen this. I did not see the culture at my former employer coming for me. I was blindsided by it and it got ugly quickly. One of the things that I think I am doing here. Or at least trying to do is not be shy about it. Not hide from it. Try to show women a different way for how to deal with these situations. Because I have very strong feelings about the fact. With the rollback of DEI and the current administration’s point of view on women, that we’re going backwards. If women don’t start fighting for ourselves in a more public way and without fear, then I don’t know where we’re going to be in the next five to 10 years.

I am soldiering on and it’s not easy to your point. But it is what it is and it’s a fight that I believe is worthy.

Frazer Rice (02:03.608)
So it’s a daunting task taking on a big bank. Big financial services firm, whether it’s in this situation or frankly any. It’s just these well-resourced big behemoths. What has been the experience been like so far? As far as gathering information? Of getting the walls built that you need to in order to live your life while you go through this conflict with this bank?

Julia (02:29.822)
It’s hat that is the million dollar question. Right? I will say that in my case i got really fortunate and came across a quote. It’s going to sound really strange. But i came across a quote that said fear is fake and danger is real but fear is fake. I believe that the patriarchy wants women to be afraid.

So it tells us these bad things are going to happen if you take on a big firm like this. It is grueling. The days are long sometimes. But once I internalize the reality that it is all fake in terms of all of the bad things that you think could happen really can’t happen. Worst case scenario, there’s nothing

Like I’m not going to die. They’re not going to, you know, take away my family. Like all of these things, right? We tell ourselves that it could get really nasty. And in my case, I have to stay really grounded in the fact that what I’m doing is worthy. We tried my lawyer and I tried for 14 months to come to a different answer. And so in a way, not just telling myself fear is fake. But in another way, I kind of feel like it’s my destiny.

Because, I just want to say this real quick, I had 20 years at a place that was not toxic. And so I know what good looks like, and this is not good. So in that way, I really feel like it’s my destiny. And so that’s what you do, and you have to have a good support network. I have a great husband, so that really helps.

Frazer Rice (04:14.21)
The, as I’ve told people, sometimes doing the right thing or going after something that upholds justice. It can be expensive and hard. I give you kudos for standing up. Not only for yourself, but others who are going through a difficult situation. Where you’ve had a significant wrong done to you.

You’ve written a book about this experience as well. We can take some time to think, to talk about what the book tries to do. First of all, writing one in tandem with the process here, I think is a bit unusual. Some people do it after the fact. To go through a catharsis after going through a difficult process. Talk about first the why of the book.thhen we’ll talk a little bit about what you talk about in it.

Julia (05:17.241)
The book is called Walking on Broken Glass: Navigating the Aftermath of the Glass Ceiling.” It was co-written with a fabulous woman named Shannon Nutter. I hope people follow on LinkedIn. The book is not squarely about what happened to me the book came together.

With Shannon and I meeting on LinkedIn. Then discovering that we had a lot of the same shared experiences as we are Gen X. in hindsight. Our generation has had the opportunity to have the most benefit of the Gloria Steinem Women’s Movement.

Think about the fact that we got the advantage of the birth control and all of the DEI efforts that have been in the last 15, 20 years. And we really felt like there was still a long way to go. Then all of that is starting to go backwards. So last year when we met or the year before, we’re like, my God, the idea that we got the best of the best is shocking to us. And so what are we going to do about it?

We really wanted the book to speak to women of all ages in their career. But it was written from a lens of two then 53 year old women who had seen a lot. We wanted to give the book as a love letter or a gift to our 35 year old self. To say, this is what we should have or wish we had known 20 years ago. Because we would have done things differently if we had really faced kind of what the challenges were that women are facing at work. In a real way right not in a way that sugarcoats it or pretends to throw it under the rug.

And or always makes it the woman’s fault like the woman always has to be changing and evolving in order to adapt to the systems and i you know it’s exhausting right so the book was written for that reason and it does tap into a lot of the things that we both experienced.

Julia (07:35.17)
But it isn’t a kind of a personal journal of what happened to me with my former employer.

Frazer Rice (07:39.82)
Right, one of the things that I found useful about the book is you divided it into three sections. I think it brings us sort of clarity into what you’re trying to achieve here. The first one is just diagnosing the situation that you’re in. Maybe talk a little bit about that. Part one the understanding of your surroundings. What’s happening around you. The conditions that women are facing as they embark on these big situations in the workplace.

Julia (08:08.982)
Yeah. So the first part of the book does give a primer on kind of the history of feminism and how did we get here and what are some of the big open questions that are still left to answer. We also want to set the stage that makes it very clear that women are accountable for our actions in the workplace.

Like this is not in any way a book that seeks to make someone who’s failing feel good about the fact that they’re failing, right?

Shannon and I both reached really high levels of corporate success at major global firm. There is a lot of work to do. So we really try to dimension how, what are some effective ways for you to approach that work? What are some of the pitfalls and how are some of the ways that you can handle that?

In a way that’s kind of clear-eyed, but never about putting the blame or the onus on the company. And if you don’t mind, I want to say something about that because it relates to my lawsuit. One of the things that I’ve heard criticisms about is that people on social media often I saw when I kind of scanned the landscape of it recently are, this woman is naive. She thinks.

HR is her friend because one of the things that I have sued my former employer for is a weaponized HR department and I want to get very clear. mean, Frazer, you don’t manage hundreds of people in 13 states like I did for a very long time successfully innovating, having great client experience team scores and having great employee team scores, right? If you believe HR is your friend.

So that’s not what i’m trying to say what i’m trying to say in my lawsuit is. HR shouldn’t be picking off people for political reasons either. We are saying all the way along there is shared accountability between the employer and the employee. That’s really important. I think that you know one of the backlash is going too far field here.

Julia (10:27.401)
We went so far politically correct on some things that some employees do show up to work and think that they just need things handed to them. And I do think that that was part of the backlash, right? So I just am always striving for balance. I think we should all be always striving for balance.

Frazer Rice (10:45.13)
One of the concepts too, I think in the book that I sort of grabbed onto and enjoyed was the idea of taking steps to protect yourself. You’re dealing with a lot of different asymmetries when you work for a big company. You’re dealing with information asymmetry, you’re dealing with political asymmetry, you’re dealing with resource asymmetry. Sometimes you’re even dealing with just…

Accountability asymmetry in terms of, you some people get free passes at other times people are judged on things or unfairly judged on different criteria that just don’t make a lot of sense.

If we step back for a second and for people who are trying to understand, I’ll put it in quotes, how the world works and how to how to be aware of one’s and to protect yourself, what would be the first couple of things that you would tell people to think about on that back?

Julia (11:38.471)
The number one thing is I would be very aware of the kind of culture that you’re operating in. And it’s very easy to take for granted what a culture really is, what your own personal bias and history is, and then how is it that you are fitting. into that culture with your own shared history.

So I love to be candid, right? And provocative about my own situation. If I could do something different, I would be very aware of what my biases were going into Citi with 20 years of being at a place where

It was a really fair game, but probably because I had a lot of political capital and I grew up there. So I understood it. But I went into that place thinking that I was a fancy managing director, that obviously I was hired to be a change maker. I can do a lot of great things.

And I was, you know, doing my thing, not realizing that I was swimming in a different lake and that lake was filled. with a lot of different kinds of wildlife that I was unprepared for. So, I mean, that’s really important.

Frazer Rice (13:12.398)
As we talk a little bit about some sort of bullet questions as far as how your experience has gone, the demographics of the workplace are different and changing. On one hand, college graduates are now majority women or higher in just about every college situation. Yet institutions like the CFP, the women make up…

Believe the number is somewhere in the 24 % range. So you have this weird dichotomy of more women entering the workplace, but not in the numbers necessarily that would indicate that they are in places to make as much change as they would like.

They are still in the vast minority in terms of boards of directors and executive positions at almost every Fortune 500 company that I can think of. As we chart a path forward where, let’s call it merit.

Julia (13:58.813)
Mm-hmm.

Frazer Rice (14:04.494)
presides over sort of misogyny and I guess I would call it sort of political gamesmanship. How do you think about that in terms of advice for people entering the workforce?

Julia (14:16.461)
Yeah, look, so nobody gets to say that women aren’t in the pipeline, right? I mean, that just, doesn’t hold up, especially at the more junior levels, right, of entering the workforce after college. What starts to happen is that it starts to go downhill as you get higher and higher up into hierarchy.

And I believe that there is a mismatch between women who want to work and do the right thing. And we’re going to talk about this. Then what does it mean to also then become a mother and give birth and have to manage all of that?

And then coming up against institutional misogyny. Obviously my perspective in the last 18 months has changed about the degree to which institutional misogyny exists.

Because I had a fairy tale experience before I was able to be willfully blind about the realities. so a really direct way of answering your question is that our book is seeking to hit women in the face with the realities of this because I don’t think we’re gonna change it overnight, right? And it is so entrenched, it’s getting worse and it will get worse.

Before it gets better, but I do believe that it will get better eventually because the old system that’s, know, aging out, baby boomers are aging out. Like I think that there’s going to be cracks in that. And then there would be a tsunami of change. But right now the old guard is hanging on and, we are going backwards. And so we just have to be realistic about what it requires to go forward. And we talk about what that is.

Frazer Rice (16:05.58)
One of the things, right, and so let’s touch back on the motherhood issue, is, that is biology. And so women who go that route and have kids. Which is frankly one of the big precepts in society. Unfortunately. n some ways takes you out of the normal trajectory of a corporate path, just from a time perspective.

Certainly, the balance of work that happens at the household level. Where that ends up alling usually, creates a stress that is not well understood or received at the corporate level.

What are your thoughts on that front? As far as charting a path that recognizes that reality and at the same time doesn’t put upon going the other direction necessarily in terms of favoring one outcome or the other.

Julia (17:02.019)
I know a lot of women who did not have children because they felt like that it would, it would harm their career. And, um, certainly it’s a personal issue and there’s no judgment from me. I don’t think I would have had children if I hadn’t met my husband. He was willing to do 50 % of the workload and he has, and, always has probably does maybe more than 50.

It is a very deeply personal issue. What I have strong feelings about the fact that companies who lean in to, don’t expect the woman to lean in, but the company leans in to supporting pregnant women, have higher loyalty scores. They have better team member satisfaction. They get a lot from those women that they have supported.

This is a crazy story, Frazer. I was pregnant and or just coming back from maternity leave all three times I got major promotions at Wells. I mean, think about that. And I now, because I lived my life kind of in a vacuum for a long time, I didn’t realize that this wasn’t happening to other people, right? So look at me now. I am 25 years from when I got hired, still saying that Wells is a great company.

because of my own personal experience. And they got a lot out of me, but I gave a lot back. So to me, supporting women who are pregnant doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Yet somehow that is the narrative. And I would love to ask you why that is. Like, I mean, what has happened to corporate culture that this is such a pervasive issue when

If you were to scan a lot of my Gen X friends, we did not have the same experience.

Frazer Rice (19:04.147)
I mean, from my perspective, I don’t know. I think that I blame some of this a little bit on the COVID blip in the sense that managers of all types just have no idea where to go as far as how to treat people fairly, either from a work from home experience or how that reconciles with…

women in particular who are having careers and families in addition to what’s going on with other folks like the men in the world. My short answer is I don’t know. The longer answer is that I think between the shorter news cycle, social media, work from home, there are a lot of different change agents out there that have taken the focus off of.

maybe the issues that worth talking about right now. And as a managerial class, especially as millennials are taking up the mantle on that front, they’re either forgetting about this particular issue and understanding the importance that it has, or they are just so overwhelmed by change at this point and self-preservation that it’s just an area where they’re triaging the different issues that they can deal with.

Julia (20:22.492)
Do you do you at all think that it is a problem of losing common sense and like letting rigid ideology take over from common sense. I certainly was benefited from working from home for most of my career, right? So it’s fascinating.

Frazer Rice (20:46.061)
Common sense isn’t common. And depending on the institution that you’re dealing with, work from home is either an excellent tool or a cover to hide under if you’re a mediocre performer. If you’re a manager out of sight, out of mind is a difficult place to be.

I think that we’re I think everyone is reconciling to the relative absence of work and sort of acclimating to Zoom phone calls and things like that. And that gets you then away from taking care of the real issues, which is to make sure that the company’s doing right, the employees are doing right by the company, and at the same time that people are being treated fairly, because I think when people are so disparate, it just becomes a real management challenge.

What we’re talking about as far as making sure that women are treated fairly in the workplace,

Combine that with, I would say, message confusion that occurs in social media, where some loud voices may not be the right voices to be taking up this mantle, versus some of the quieter, stable people who are really the exemplars that we’d really like to point to. Sometimes that gets mixed. And I think the brew, if you stir it together, I think is created.

Maybe if we think that there was progress since the 70s on through the 80s, 90s, 2000s for fairness and women progressing within the corporate ladder nicely, I think this the COVID blip has been a bit of a toe stub on that front. That’s an opinion, extremely uninformed, but more of an observation.

Julia (22:35.713)
No, no, but well, listen, I just I love it because I do want to unpack it just a little bit. It’s what’s fascinating to me is that I negotiated 15 years before covid to work remote and then my boss knowing that I had to be on the road three to four weeks a month regardless was like, I’d rather you be happy where you live because you’re to be on the road regardless. So

I got to work from home and then during COVID when they tried to bring everybody back, they’re like, well, you can’t be the only exception. And I’m like, okay, I have been an exception for 15 years. So that’s where I go back to, know, where is this right balance? did, I mean, COVID is as good a reason as any that it’s things are upside down. I mean, really it’s a great theory.

Frazer Rice (23:22.671)
Well, it also bespeaks different corporations have different cultures and certainly some people are worried about other things than others. Muriel Siebert, who I think is an amazing example of someone who took a look at Wall Street and said, look, I refuse to be held back by anything here. She started her own company and to call it a company is to not give it the respect it’s due. She’s a major absolute force in Wall Street and one of the real legends.

To me, entrepreneurism is one way through this. to create the company that you want to work in is, in some ways, to me, one of the solutions for people who are having difficulty in a corporate environment that they’re in right now.

Whether they’re able to be the change agent within, which is often hard at a big, you know, bulky company that turns with the agility of a battleship as opposed to being nimble in doing things or going out and starting on their own, which involves its own risks.

That to me is one of the solutions. But again, not without risk, not easy by any stretch. Where did that fit into your mindset as you were thinking about this?

Julia (24:37.16)
Well, so, so she is an icon, not just because of what she was able to accomplish, but she also did it, I think, without a college degree. And she did it. And this is important. She did it fearlessly. And what I would love to go back in time and have a conversation with her about where did she tap into that fearlessness? And you will start to see.

Frazer Rice (24:48.665)
Mm-hmm.

Julia (25:06.77)
On my own social media, am trying to tap into that whole mindset of women need to lose fear. I’ve already talked about it, but here’s what’s important to know, right? By 2030 in the US alone, women will control $34 trillion of investable assets. I believe that that is when you start seeing the game change.

Look at how Mackenzie Scott is giving without glory. I posted that in a remark that’s gone semi-viral on LinkedIn. Like she is giving without glory. She wants to give, she wants to be anonymous almost about it, and she’s giving without handcuffs. And what is she giving to? She’s giving to communities, she’s giving to schools, she’s giving to healthcare. I mean, it gives me goosebumps every single time. And so I feel like women

When we start to control more, we’ll start giving in, Alice Walton is the same way, giving in a different way to change society in a more meaningful way at scale.

And Muriel was a pioneer in that regard. And she is someone I think we need the next generation to know about. because she was so fearless and it’s an inspiration. But you and i both know that all kinds of things that women have accomplished are never spoken about in the same way that they are about man and about men.

I do think that that’s one of the great things about some of we can go into social media some of the social media change that we see happening with alpha female and all of these great accounts that are just starting to say, know what ladies, we don’t have to buy into the patriarchy.

We can do it our own way. And so I think we will finally see change, but I wanna be very clear, Frazer, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Frazer Rice (27:12.195)
Got it. So for people who are in a corporate structure, corporate environment, aren’t ready to make the leap to starting their own business, which is obviously a difficult decision, but when you’re in there, what are the things tactically that one can do to prepare, not only prepare themselves, but protect themselves against these forces that are out there?

One of the thoughts I had is making sure that in the job description that you’re able to point to numerical or formulaic successes so that if a narrative is being built against you, you can point to dollars created or jobs saved or metrics that in the boardroom.

Not only just qualitative successes, but also quantitative ones that makes it difficult for people to ignore you from a pure dollar perspective. Things like that, what pops up in your mind? That you would tell people to think about in terms of art directing their career.

Julia (28:15.023)
Yeah, well, the number one thing that I always say, and I’m kind of, it’s kind of a legend for it. So it’s ABE and it stands for Always Be Executing. And when I look back and see how successful I was in a corporate setting, of course, in my case, it was that I had a great boss and a great mentor and sponsor in him.

But actually, I was always focused on executing and doing it in a way that is collaborative so that you don’t have the knives coming for you from every direction. think a lot of people who the more successful that you get in your career, you think, I’m fabulous because I’m fabulous. No.

You need a mindset of I’m fabulous because I am creating a team around me, no matter who I am, even if I’m not the boss, to protect each other and help each other and lift each other up. if you are always executing and you hit on it, right, as a woman, you should always be keeping track of your metrics in a way that is tangible and defensible. But you also should

never take for granted the fact that no matter how senior you are, you need to be getting something done. And I do think that it is a big mistake for people to get high on their own supply and forget that. And then, and then the sharks will come for you. So always do something. And this is just a final thing, cause I have lots of people that I mentor. They’re like, just name one thing. I’m going to give you one thing. Send meeting notes.

If you go to a meeting, and everybody’s on a call, 15 people are on a call. If you’re the one who sends meeting notes and this is a hot button, right? For women, they’re like, well, I’m not the secretary. I don’t wanna take me. You know what? Put your ego, park it in a parking lot and send meeting notes. You would be shocked how much goodwill and how effective you’re perceived when those notes, like say a project is going downhill and somebody goes, but.

Julia (30:30.157)
Such and so committed to this and you’re like, those meeting notes were written by Julia Carrion. Nobody has to do that. But corporations get unwieldy. lot of churn happens. A lot of stuff doesn’t get done in a day. If you can demonstrate that you are someone who is acting in good faith and doing small things to keep the needle moving, somebody in senior management is going to notice that, I promise.

Frazer Rice (30:53.763)
The other thing I sort of, and this doesn’t just go for women, this is for people generally, is the ownership mentality and the move toward equity, and by equity I mean stock equity, where the mindset to me shifts when you move from sort of salary and bonus to equity in the firm.

And that subtle shift suddenly puts you in a different position in terms of sitting at the same table as someone who is, let’s call it quote unquote, making the decisions. When you’re there and your ownership of the firm, however small it is, is rendered unimportant.

First of all, that tells you to go. Second of all, I just feel like the people who exist on that plane bring up different things and then are thought of differently. Does that track with your experience?

Julia (31:48.819)
It does, but I think that this goes to kind of how is the corporate world changing and then how does that impact employees? So, and where I’m going with this is when I was at Wells, my compensation was a third, a third, a third. So it was a third cash, a third cash bonus and a third in stock. Do you want to know what’s going on?

And I don’t know if you know what’s happened on Wall Street.

Every single major bank is moving to you only get a quarter in equity and the rest of it is cash. So I think that the onus to here is on corporations to be thinking about how they’re treating employees. And to your point, what, what does that mean when you show up and how vested are you in the option? Just real quick, I want to give a shout out to Maureen Clough.

I don’t know if you follow her, she just yesterday did an amazing six minute post on why companies are losing loyalty from employees. so like, again, this goes back to is everybody backsliding right now because these corporations have to realize that in order to keep good talent, you want them to have a stake in the game, but that’s winnowing, I think.

Frazer Rice (33:11.819)
I know. I agree. Frankly you know to me at the larger institutions that aren’t willing to sort of play ball as far as involving people in the ownership that’s a signal and when it’s a signal then you know if you’re good at your job and you bring things to bear you know there are other there are other places out there.

I think those places that value you want you around and they want you to be able to participate and how the broader governance of the company works. It’s a lot like how Goldman Sachs was back when it was in the partnership days.

Everyone who was a partner there understood how everything else was working and ultimately that meant that, I don’t know, I feel like Goldman still does well now, but it’s a different climate, different firm where you’re completely involved in everything else and therefore the information is out there and… it’s something that you’re not blindsided as much by what’s happening in other divisions within your firm.

Julia (34:15.472)
Yeah, totally agree.

Frazer Rice (34:16.911)
One other thought that as we were sort of squiring through this was the idea that it’s important to have information sources or networks both within your company that are outside of your reporting line, but also information networks and support outside your company.

I call it sort of the kitchen cabinet of people who are similarly situated or in different spots so that you have context into which to sort of find out what your what you’re up against both inside the company and outside of it. Is that something that makes sense to you or is it something that was lacking in your current situation? How did you think about that?

Julia (34:57.906)
Hmm. I love that because in 2017, I took stock of the fact that I had become too comfortable in my lane and I was seeing that my influence at Wells was waning for whatever reason.

And so I started blogging on LinkedIn in 2017. Because of a conversation with a Harvard sociologist that I write a lot about. Fscinating guy who predicted the current turmoil 10 years, almost 10 years ago. And so I started networking outside and I could not agree with you more that you need to be building your networks, not just inside. That goes without saying, right? Like I had a great career partly because I was a boss at gaining political capital at Wells all the time, right?

Giving goodwill and getting it back but outside is critical. during our book, what we found out is, that women are more likely to put that aside. Because we feel like we’ve got too many other things going on, work, know, kids, all of the pressures, trying not to, you know, have a nervous breakdown on any given day, trying to stay fit, dealing with menopause. Which of course is a whole other thing that is a whole other bag of tricks.

And so we don’t do it as much and it hurts us. So I absolutely think being deliberate about an external network is essential. When women ask me how to do that, I say to commit to a certain number of hours, half an hour to two hour, whatever you can give a week to doing it deliberately. I wish I had done that earlier in my career for sure. So it’s great advice.

Frazer Rice (36:49.865)
Along that line, I’m a big believer in being aware of your surroundings. In a sense aware of yourself and what your skills. Things that you’re annoyed are at are and what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. Did you take any tests or anything to understand what your aptitudes were or what you were interested in or more importantly not interested in or how you interact with other people personality wise and

Is that something that resonates with you? sort of am a big sports fan. Dan Quinn, who’s the Washington commander coach. He got fired from the Falcons. He did a real deep soul searching and went in and got tested on a whole bunch of different things and where he came up short, where he was really good. And that allowed him to get hired again and to have at least some initial success with the team and hopefully going forward from my rooting perspective.

But where does that fit into your analysis for people?

Julia (37:50.351)
Did somebody set that question up? That’s what I want to know. I am a huge believer in strength finders. Some people take discs, some do Myers-Briggs. The reason I asked if it was a setup is because strength finders saved my life. I was deemed top talent when I was like 34 years old at Wells and they gave me a career coach who by the way was Sarah Grady is her name. and she was Dick Kvasevich’s legend on Wall Street.

She was his leadership coach and she gave me strength finders and I very quickly was very clear my top five strengths and then my bottom five strengths are not a surprise. Like I am zero. I’m like negative zero at woo. I was like, it won’t even shock you for a minute.

Yes i do think that those kinds of valuations are critical and in fact i’m gonna talk to my twenty year old son about taking one i think you’ll end up taking disk but. One thousand percent if you if you do not know what you’re good at and why then try to find out because it can save your life i mean the awareness and the learnings that i got about myself.

From taking one test have stayed with me for 25 years. And I’m gonna be really blunt here. I forgot those lessons when I stepped into a new culture and it was painful. So I think you have to also be disciplined about…

Take it again, remind yourself, reread whatever book helps you stay grounded in who you are and how you’re showing up. And get some friends to give you feedback.

Frazer Rice (39:44.111)
Well, mean, people get better or change or worse at certain things. And so you’re not the same person you were 20 years ago. And, you know, it merits revisiting every once in a while. As we wind down here, unfortunately, we probably could go on for about three hours, which I wish we could do.

But one of the things that I think is interesting, too, you talked about political capital and building it up, is that I think one piece of advice that I tend to give to people who are starting out and might be useful in the situation that we’re describing here is that when you have political capital, you’ve got to be willing to spend it occasionally.

Careers, in my experience, take quantum leaps in that you’ll be going around for a while and then something good will happen and then you’ve got to kind of take advantage of the advantage while you have the advantage of having the advantage and moving up and then reestablishing the plane.

And it’s a little bit like a ratchet where when the wrench turns, it doesn’t turn backward. You can kind of continue to elevate on that point. Is that something that you saw where, you know, as you were making the moves up the ladder that didn’t happen at the last situation that maybe might’ve been something that could’ve turned out differently?

Julia (41:01.791)
Yes, and I think that being more aware of my surroundings would have helped. I don’t think it would have changed the outcome in the other example. But the political capital that I was able to gain is that I got promoted every single time Wells did a major merger when people were panicking about their jobs.

Frazer Rice (41:08.623)
Mm-hmm.

Julia (41:31.061)
And one of the things that I did that you and I could probably discuss for two days is I gave up control of trying to manage the outcome. In other words, I went to senior management with two major mergers and I said, you know what? I don’t care what I do for the time that the companies are trying to come together. You give me something hard to do and ugly and I will get it done the right way.

And then you decide whether I get rewarded or not. And when I crushed both of those tasks, I got major promotions. So I think it, I think a lot of people think, I’m going, I had a, had an employee who told me I should just get promoted because I’m sitting here and I’ve been sitting here for two years. mean, it really, life just really doesn’t work that way.

In my experience, you got to work your ass off for it. And, and you have to put your ego aside and you have to hope that the universe is gonna pay you back. And I believe that because the universe always has. I believe that even now with my current situation, like everything that has brought me here has made me a spokesperson for like a better way because of what happened to me, right? I had 20 years of goodness and then I had something really hard happen.

And I’m trying to make lemonade out of a very difficult situation because it is the only way, the only way out is through. So I just have to keep going through and I love the idea of yes, you’ve got to spend your political capital. can’t, know, George Bush said that you can’t just collect it. What are you collecting it for? If you’re not going to spend it.

Frazer Rice (43:17.817)
Exactly. Okay, we have to disembark here, unfortunately. How should people keep track of your situation? How do they find the book? And how do people get in touch?

Julia (43:31.846)
Yep. I have, um, I’m on LinkedIn. I have a website, juliacarrion.com. If you are looking for, I’m doing some consulting on a digital transformation always and org design or whatever. So you can find me there. And then, um, you know, today’s a big day. We are filing today or tomorrow, a response to my lawsuit.

So it would probably make the news. Thank you to you for being a great ally to women and having me on. The book is walking on broken glass.com. It’s such a great name. So you can order the book on the website from any of your favorite book resellers.

Frazer Rice (44:14.639)
Super, well good luck with the legal proceedings. All of your information will have that in the show notes so people can find it easily. I think you’re coming off of a difficult situation. I think you’re gonna turn it into something far more transformative. Even you’re envisioning it right now. So I’m hoping for the best here.

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Keywords:

Gaslighting, Corporate Culture, Women in Leadership, Workplace Equity, Julia Carreon, Wells Fargo, Citi, Legal Battle, Glass Ceiling, Political Capital, StrengthsFinder, Work-Life Balance, Systemic Change, Weaponized HR

business career Culture economics human resources Politics women