This blog post is based on Episode 2/ Season 2 of the Culture Unfit Podcast. Listen Here:
Welcome back to Culture Unfit. This episode is a continuation of the conversation between Elise Kane and myself. And in this episode, we dive a little bit more deeply into this notion of fit. What someone feels on the inside versus something happening in an organization. We hope to leave you after this conversation with some tips and tricks to approaching situations in which you feel like you don't necessarily fit. So without further adeui...
Nikkia: Now I think the natural next question for me is around the notion of fit and in particular, when I hear the term culture unfit, I'm fascinated by it. I myself use it all the time, but when it's applied to me, it doesn't always feel good. So I've struggled with this notion of fit and whether or not I fit. I think a lot of us ask ourselves this, but I haven't talked about it in my entire professional life. I'm curious about what the word or term "culture fit", means to you or has meant to you when you have the responsibility of looking for people who fit.
Elyse: So I think there's a big difference between a company's culture and the idea of fitting, right? So let's talk about Colgate when we were there, right? Because I don't know what's happening now, but when we were there, Colgate did have a culture of they like to say caring, and maybe caring is the right word, but the culture was where people supported each other. It wasn't very competitive. People in general weren't backstabbing. I know a lot of companies where people won't help you because you're competing. At Colgate, If you ask somebody for help, they stopped what they were doing and they helped.
And I believe that while I absolutely know that relationships build in other companies as well, but I believe that more people at Colgate got married than other companies partly because Colgate allowed it, and people built very strong, deep friendships there because of that as well. And so they had this culture of being collaborative and supportive, which to me is different than fit.
And while in my professional life, I am guilty of saying that person doesn't fit, at some point I just realized that that is unhealthy... I feel that because, one, if you're looking for everybody who fits, then you have no diversity.Of course, I'm talking about age diversity, gender diversity, ethnic diversity, but in addition to that, it's just diversity of thinking.
So if somebody thinks differently and their manager perceives that as not fitting, and I say you need to look for a new job because you just don't fit, it's really negative when there are cultural differences, ethnic differences.You have a company that's primarily white men, right? Older white men and then you bring in somebody who might come from a different culture, are they going to fit the same? Unless they change how they come to work every day and wear a mask, they aren't going to fit into a mold. So you're going to be a little uncomfortable with them because people like spending time with people that are like the, and it's very easy to use this idea about fit. I've heard it used in organizations to not promote people or to let people go too many times to make me comfortable.
Nikkia: It sounds like it became weaponized, the word. Right? Like a shortcut. Instead of really facing the truth, it's like, oh, this person didn't fit. Behind the word or the term were alot of biases, a lot of closed mindedness, but you almost didn't have to go much further. It was a way to end up on that issue.
Elyse: Yes, you didn't.
Nikkia: So what about how you felt about yourself in the early days at Colgate? When you think of that term and you think of Elise King.
Elyse: All right, so just some background on me. I came from a lower middle class family from the day I was born. My father worked two jobs to support the family, we lived in an apartment. We never even owned a house. It was six of us in a two bedroom. My siblings and I all worked full time while going to school at night, undergraduate and graduate. I'm digressing a little bit just to tell the story, and then I'll get back to the thing. When I was at Weight Watchers, the President came to me one day and said to me, "why are you not going to as good a school as Julie is?". She was working on a different business, but she was the same level as me, she was a peer and I said what makes you say that? She's going to St.John's, which is not the greatest marketing school? And he said, well, her tuition is whatever it was, and your tuition is only whatever it was. So because I was going to a CUNY school. So that made me realize, and he was not from New York, he was not even from the US. So he didn't really know and if you're not from New York, I don't think you understand that that system and the idea about public colleges and so forth. But that was very jarring.
So just by submitting my tuition reimbursement form, I got asked why I'm not going to a good school.
So now I go to Colgate, and everybody around me seems to be at least blonde, Midwestern. Now, I'm sure that they weren't, but they were all from the best schools, because that's how we did the recruiting, the ten best schools. So you had people that were from these schools. I was very uncomfortable. I did not want people asking me where I graduated from. Now you might say, well, how did you get hired in there? I got hired in there because there were different criteria for market research people than marketing people. But I was surrounded by the marketing people, and for a good number of years, I was uncomfortable. Then when I realized that I was more strategic and smarter than some of these guys, I actually started to feel a little more comfortable. Plus, I had started to have a reputation and people weren't asking so much about school and stuff ,but I was uncomfortable for a very long time.
Nikkia: Now, how did you manage through the discomfort? I mean, nowadays the term imposter syndrome is the label that's used to describe this feeling of being an imposter, like you're somewhere that you're not supposed to be, and that place is often better, more senior when applied professionally. So how did you survive it? It could often feel crushing to have gone through for a number of years. How did you do it?
Elyse: Well, okay, again, I think there's a difference between imposter syndrome but it more has to do with wether or not you think you deserve this job. It wasn't about deserving the job, it was just about how the environment made me uncomfortable because of the fact that there were all these people from the best schools. If they could afford these schools, I mean some of them went on scholarship, but if they could afford it it meant that they were certainly more affluent than I was and I would just shake my head and I would feel like I was working in some other world. Most of my friends, my friends from high school, they call were in the socio economic level that I was on... So I just was not used to that environment and I think they still recruit that way or at least that's how they recruited when I was there.
I certainly have met many graduates that are as good as people coming in from top ten schools and again it's an unfair way to assess people. When you're recruiting people from the same schools year in and year out, again you're not getting diversity of thinking.
Nikkia: Totally. Now, theres in what you're describing, a feeling that you had because of the lived experiences that you had. Were you aware of any signals about how they organization was perceiving you? Any examples of signals, maybe how they treated you in meetings. Markers or incentives like incentives like promotions that said to you that you were different or came from a different experience because what I'm trying to reconcile is the internal feeling of fit, or lack thereof and then the external markers of fit or lack there of.
Elyse: So for me personally, I was so junior that that really wasn't relevant but as a I got more senior and I'd be going to succession planning meetings, there was discussion about where did this person go. As we were talking about people and promoting people and moving people, and it wasn't the organization criterion, but it was several managers, not many, but several marketing GMs that would say, "where did they graduate from?". So I do think for the marketing people versus market research I do think it impacted... they were all from the best schools so I don't know what they were looking for, is it that Yale's better than Harvard?
If they did decide to open it up... I think that that would've limited them depending on the manager at some point.
Nikkia: It's so true how much these decisions are local meaning made by a manager. So like an organization is really a collection of managerial decisions and if all those mangers make similar managerial decisions then it kind of becomes the norm and the culture. If you can humor me, I'm going to use this opportunity to ask a question because I have a particular case in mind but I don't want to ask it outright so I'll tap into it. So if you could tell me a bout a time where you brought someone in who's dress, way of getting ready for work and showing up in the office didn't jive with the expectations. For the purpose of this conversation, we're just going to make it a man who back that worked for Colgate when it was very corporate. There was an expectation that the men were wearing suits and I think for a long time you had to wear a tie. So tell me about someone who wasn't rocking the expected look that wasn't necessarily affecting performance. How do you navigate a situation where there is a "misfit-ness"? Especially when the person is unaware but the organization is making judgment calls, but you still need, as a manager, guide them in the right way
Elyse: Yes. Particularly later on in my career, that stuff just really annoyed me. So I had somebody working for me who was very bright, started off as an intern, and I told the organization they had to hire him, but he did not dress the dress code. Even when he wore a tie, it didn't necessarily look corporate I guess. So I started to get feedback that he needed to get with the program and I pushed back becauseI felt that it was not impacting the work. I did have a conversation with him about kind of looking around and thinking about especially when we had meetings with really high senior people, but he didn't care about clothes. It was the way he dressed. He didn't even understand what I was saying to some degree and in the end, to be very honest, he did not change the way he dressed. I do have to say that in this case, because this is not always the case, his competency did win people over, but it didn't stop them in all of these meetings when we're talking about personnel saying that he needs to dress differently.
I finally said to a senior male, well, you know what? Since you feel this way, then you talk to him because A, I don't feel that way and so it's hard for me to kind of express with the same kind of urgency and B, I think it's better for a male to talk to him about it and provide the advice that they need. It was something that senior male never did and that senior male was not shy, but when it came time to talk to this person, it didn't happen.
Nikkia: I continually wonder what it is that causes people to want to say something, especially in business settings where really in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make a difference. But I do think this is just based on my experience. It's a reflection of some discomfort that that person has with their own self, right when you see somebody who really is doing a great job, likable, but there's the need to provide a kind of critical feedback that sometimes is not going to help that person be better in their job, but more reflective on their own thing.
I remember getting feedback through the grapevine that I presented with too much like "Nikkia" and it's too much opinion, not enough fact. I'm in research, so you always have to be objective. But I do think that my personality, and this is something I didn't know then but I could say it now, was so different. I'm not extroverted, but I know that I could be charismatic when I need to. Sometimes you really need to sell in the insights. But it broke some molds in people's minds and it does take either having a really astute manager or high self awareness to take that feedback and know that really because of who is sending it, perhaps, and the tone of it, you should take it with a grain of salt. I mean, all feedback, you should be thankful for it and then reflect on it. However there is a lot that comes through that feels very much I don't know what the word is. It's not tone deaf, but it's just sort of like not really about the individual doing a better job - it's identity based.
Elyse: Well, the thing is I don't want it to sound like feedback is negative. It is not. I have gotten a lot of feedback that I thought to myself, oh my God, this is true and it needed to be addressed. So by no means do I mean all feedback, but certain feedback, like the way you present or the way this person dressed or that kind of feedback.You said this before, it's more about the person right and who's the person giving the feedback because they're uncomfortable with something now. If it was the 1990s, feedback would have to be given differently because getting promoted was partly based on how you looked, how together you looked and how professional you looked. I mean, think about all the women, not me, wearing their navy blue suits and their white shirts with their big bow tie things. And so I do think there was a time when how we dressed would have affected this person getting promoted, but not at the time when this feedback was being given.
Nikkia: I'm happy that you existed to advocate, first to pushback and then to advocate and to also have had the experience and the courage, which may not have felt like courage to you, because when you're in your own body, acting as yourself, somebody seeing your action as courage is just normal for you. I think there are a lot of people listening who will be like, what? How does one even begin to do that? How does one do that when you don't have a manager who's an advocate in that way? So you're just like a little newbie trying to exist in the world, getting this heat and unsure how to figure it out and you wonder, do I change myself? There really are a lot of people who are just fully conforming in an effort to survive. So that leads me to this next question, which is everything that you described about yourself. Did you mention that you were born in Queens? That you're from queens.
Elyse: Oh, no, I was born in Brooklyn...
Nikkia: ... I experienced Elise. I remember the first time meeting you. Elise's short stature. Sorry, I don't know. Is that rude? It's 2023.I don't know what you're supposed to say.
Elyse: I think that's okay. I think petite is accurate. It's better.
Nikkia: Red hair and just full of personality, able to command an audience and you have this, I guess, queen's accent. In my mind, it's just like elite.It's inextricably linked with you.But we would be in these rooms with men and some more men, but mostly men. I was always impressed at how you can kind of command the space. But when I first met you, you had been around the block, right? So you had sort of shaped your way of navigating these spaces.But what advice would you give? Might you give to somebody who, like you, maybe even like me, didn't come from the same spaces that we find ourselves in or our colleagues in and are trying to survive without the benefit of having a mentor or a manager who can sort of help coach us through what could feel like isolating experiences where you look around and you're like, nobody looks like me. Nobody talks like me. Nobody came from the same environment as me.I think I'm smart, but I'm shaken. So what advice might you offer that person?
Elyse: So when people ask for this kind of advice, I do have a caveat, and that's that you never know what the impact of your behavior is going to result in. So I worry about telling people to behave as I do and then find out that they got in trouble. However, I really believe that if you're doing what you believe is the best thing to do, then you have the right to speak up and provide a different perspective than the other people in the room. And I was told, because I was like a pitbull that would grab a hold or something and not let go.
The feedback I was given, which is good feedback, is you say it once if you're not listened to, you rephrase it. You say it a second time, maybe you say it a third time, and then you just have to let it go, right?Because at some point you have to let it go. Although I do believe you can try to influence after the meeting, right? You can revisit something after a meeting and you could go to the decision maker or the level that you're most comfortable and try again. However I do believe that they are hiring you for your thinking and that you not only have the right, but you have the responsibility to give your point of view. You need to do it in a way that is respectful, but I think that's the reason why people say to me, how do you get away with that? I look at them because I don't even know what they're talking about, to be honest. Because you said it before, like when it's your body, you don't feel it that way.
I think I got away with it because people knew I was always trying to do what was best for the business. I don't really know if this is part of my success or or not, but I've always assumed that it is, that I try educating people, including people who are above me, in terms of why I'm doing something the way I'm doing it, or why I'm recommending the way I'm doing it. If you don't do it in a condescending way, it's a learning experience for them as well. The other thing is that I do not believe that you can act out of fear. I think that once you start acting out of fear, it's like a dog.They can smell it on you. Right? I think you lose at that point .I think that you need to be able to wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror, know that you're doing the most you can do for what's right for the business, and that you can't be afraid.
Nikkia: No, that was phenomenal. Honestly.
It is huge to move through work without fear, but we have to acknowledge that sometimes for some people, for some groups, it is terrifying to not see yourself having made it. And so the brain does a thing where it's like, well, clearly maybe others tried and failed, and so I'm not even going to risk it.
So the last question I have for you today is around this idea of mentorship in the organization. So it wasn't like I saw another Caribbean immigrant person and said, great, that's what I'm going for. In fact, throughout my career, at least early days, I wasn't overly ambitious. I think I was ambitious to get a great job done, and I think I was excited to be promoted, but I didn't have a vision for where I could be. Some people are very clear. They're like, I want to run everything, and that wasn't me. However, I know I wouldn't have been able to get through a lot of it if I didn't have you as somebody who, even outside of our initial time together, I could come back to and be like, this is what's going on. Because sometimes your internal voice, because you already feel like I'm the only one in my body, is all that you hear, right? Sometimes you need somebody else to say, well, actually, it didn't look like that to me. So who was that person for you? And maybe if you don't have a person, or maybe several people you've talked about the woman who surrounded you both at Colgate and outside.
I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your experience of that support system, whatever it was, that sort of got you through and then what you might offer as advice to people who, again, starting off, they're hearing this podcast and they're like, great, this is really motivating me, but in my organization, I'm untethered. So what should their next step be to create a little bit more of that tethering? So, two part question.
Elyse: I actually feel like I was very fortunate at Colgate because my mentors were actually Joan Brady and Joan's Boss, who was ultimately my boss's boss, and Maureen and I do feel that I learned an incredible amount from them and that they were mentors. So I was really fortunate that my boss was also a mentor. That's not always the case.Your boss does not always take the time to mentor, they manage you, but they don't always mentor you. I think it's far and few between to have a manager that intentionally mentors the people that work for them.So I consider myself very fortunate about that. If I didn't have them, I don't think I would have had anybody in my early days, actually.
I mean, the organization wasn't really set up that way but then we did start a mentorship program, and so we assigned people. So, Kathy's the one who became my mentor, but people were assigned to people which I don't know that that really works.I mean, my experience for me and for my peers at Colgate was that it didn't work because it wasn't organic. You weren't talking to the person that you wanted to talk to necessarily.So if an organization is going to do a mentorship, I think they need to doit similar to a seven minute dating round table where you find somebody that you click with. I think you need to click with them.But I do think that if you see somebody that you respect and not that they're just successful because they're getting promoted, but that they have wisdom to offer, corporate wisdom to offer, then you approach them and see if you could set something up.
The other thing is that I think that I would personally choose or want to choose a woman for my mentor, but I think it's a mistake to think, like, if you're a female, you have to choose female, right? Because being mentored by a male might actually be better, because if your organization is primarily male, it gives you a really good perspective.And the reverse is true.If you are a male looking for mentoring, that the right mentor for you may be a female. So I don't think that it has to be gender specific or just based on ethnicity or anything, unless less it's appropriate. I had a lot of women come to me for mentoring after they had children and ask how did I become a VP and have twins and work and so they needed a female for that. Right.If you're black and you feel that you're the only black person in a room and that people may not be listening to you or seeing you, then maybe you need a black mentor. I think it depends on the situation, but I think it's like anything else- hard work. If you want a mentor , you have to work to get one
Nikkia: You've said in conversations, that a one time conversation with somebody does not represent a mentorship relationship. I think if somebody is making the time to give you advice then come to them every three months with a question or a suggestion. The same goes for the mentor; check in. With all relationships outside of work, it requires work.
I love this conversation and I want to have more of these conversations but to close this segment, I would love to get some parting words from you and really this is for those listening who feel like a beautiful misfit at work, knowing that they have something and feeling like they deserve to be there. They have unique thoughts and contributions but perhaps could use a bit of pep talk as they navigate a space that perhaps was not designed naturally for them to exist and thrive.
Elyse: So my parting words would actually be the words that I spoke about before which is about having confidence in yourself which i know is hard but its like muscle, so if you practice it [it improves]. To advocate for yourself and to speak up for yourself and to find that mentor and talk to people that you trust, i's gotta be people that you trust, with your feelings. The reality about what's going on in your head maybe completely opposite. I have heard many people who I knew they were doing well saying I'm going to get fired or I'm not doing a good job. So you have to be careful about that little voice in your head that you spoke about before, you really do. Speak to people, advocate for yourself, getting feedback is the way to do that.
The other thing that I think is important depending on your own organization, they just might not be the right fit for you. We've been talking about the organization saying you dont fit, and thats an easy excuse for getting rid of you and not giving you what you deserve but you can also say this organization does not fit me and go someplace where the organization fits better for you.
Nikkia: What a word!
