Join Sarah Noll Wilson and guest T. Maxine Woods-McMillan, Esq. for a conversation on the rapidly evolving expectations of workers and employers.
About Our Guest
Throughout her career, T. Maxine Woods-McMillan has been known as The Great Translator – finding ways to make parties with differing, and at times, competing interests understand the position of the other. And when that has not been successful, her talented advocacy skills make her equally effective at getting the fact finder in a dispute to see the position of her client. Maxine’s practice focuses on employment law, business dispute resolution, and workplace equity and equality. She represents employees when their rights have been violated and is also a trusted advisor and trainer for employers and their staff to help prevent the violation of those rights before it occurs. She is a compassionate yet formidable advocate in the areas of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, pregnancy, religion, national origin, and age, as well as sexual or racial harassment and wrongful/retaliatory termination. She also brings niche understanding to the distinct dynamic created when the workplace intersects with a family relationship or is a part of a faith community, and is particularly equipped to assist with legal advocacy in those areas.
Resources mentioned
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/maxview_esq
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/t-maxine-woods-mcmillan-esq-3147bb6
- Email: Maxine@AttorneyMaxine.com
Transcript
Sarah Noll Wilson
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Conversations on Conversations where each week we explore a topic to help us have more powerful conversations with ourselves and others. I’m your host, Sarah Noll Wilson. And joining me today, which technically, technically a five timer. This will be her fifth episode, but it’ll be her third time being on the show because two of our previous conversations were split into two, is our dear friend and colleague T. Maxine Woods-McMillan. So for those of you who haven’t listened to the previous shows, I always recommend you do, but let me give you a little bit of information about her before we dig into our topic about how the workplace is changing and how leaders might be struggling to keep up with those changes. So, throughout her career T. Maxine Woods-McMillan has been known as the Great Translator, finding ways to make parties with differing, and at times competing interest, understand the position of the other. And when that has not been successful, her talent advocacy skills make her equally effective at getting the fact finder in a dispute to see the position of her client. Maxine’s practice focuses on employment law, business dispute resolution and workplace equity and equality. She represents employees when their rights have been violated and is also a trusted advisor, and trainer for employers and their staff to prevent the violation of those rights before they occur. She is a compassionate, yet formidable advocate in the areas of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, pregnancy, religion, national origin, and age, as well as sexual and racial harassment and wrongful retaliation termination. She also brings a niche understanding to the distinct dynamic created when the workplace intersects with a family relationship or as part of the faith community and is particularly equipped to assist with legal advocacy in those areas. Maxine, welcome to the show.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Thank you. Thank you. I love it here.
Sarah Noll Wilson
And we just keep having you back. Nick was like, she’s, she’s part of the five timer. And I was like, Oh, I think this is only her third time. And he was like, well, technically, it’s her third time on the show. But we had four episodes for the previous two. So that’s, that’s, that’s an elite few right there.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Right. Because we have so much fun and it just keeps going and going.
Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s, yeah, we do. And we, you know, now and once, once we exchanged numbers, phone numbers, we knew that that was going to be trouble. So today, what we thought, well, in full transparency, we’ve been having a lot of conversations just about all the changes that are happening from, from the various strikes that are happening to the things we’re witnessing related to how people are changing their perspective on work. How there is a gap, it appears, in a lot of organizations with those who are in formal authority and power to understand those challenges. So I, I’m just gonna say like, where do you want to? Where do we begin? Cuz there’s so much but the other thing that I want to say is one of the things that’s so great, and I always learned so much from you, is just your deep knowledge of employment law and practices. So yeah, so where should we start today, Maxine?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
I mean, I think – so we’re having this conversation right in the smack dab middle, it was 2023, in the fall and everybody, someone said to me, is everybody on strike, like who’s left to not be on strike? Is everyone on strike? And I was like, not quite yet. But you know, the year is young? Let’s see what happens. So I think, I think, I think it’s interesting to really look at as a society, and I think you were the one who asked me, When are we going to get to the point where everyone just kind of says enough?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Right? I think if we’re not at that point, we’re nearing that point. The conditions are right, for people to make the decisions that come into play when you see strikes happening. That doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. And it’s usually not people just being like, you know, hey, I don’t want to go to work. I think people who, who say folk just don’t want to work do not have a really informed and intricate understanding of what it means to be on strike. They obviously don’t understand this is not a vacation, you are not, you know, sitting home chilling, just getting a check. So I think either they don’t understand those dynamics, or they are not sensitive to what they are indicators of.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, well, I mean, that’s something that we’ve been talking about a lot within our team and is that the whole people don’t want to work. You know, I was just, I don’t remember if I told this story already. And I apologize listeners if I have. But you know, I was literally just at our farmers market and I was buying some Dog treats from a local vendor and I was chatting, you know, with them and asking her how the business was going and all of this and, and, and, you know, she’s like, well, it would be great if people want it to work, but nobody wants to work. And there’s something and I don’t know, I haven’t been able to articulate it for myself. There’s something that it just feels so sharp and wrong when people say it, and I, you know, I said, Well, here’s my perspective is, people are really rethinking the role work has in their life and what they’re willing to tolerate, and what they’re willing to put up with. And, you know, a lot of that got accelerated during the pandemic, for people who may have experienced loss of life, who experienced loss of time with people, I know that that happened for me, and but like, I still haven’t been able to really articulate, just, I don’t know, there’s just something about it, I get real prickly when I hear that. And so, so from your perspective, what like, I want to go back to the language you use. Like, people aren’t paying attention to the indicators. So say more about that.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
So to respond to your, your, your first statement, right? I do want to respond to that. But when you talk about something like a, with a small business owner, a micro, what I call a micro business owner, you know, it might be them, their spouse, and you know, one other employee or you know, a cousin or something like that. It’s interesting to me at a time when we are so conversant in the languages of other cultures and classes. We have access to so much information. It’s interesting to me when we incorporate those ideologies and use that the lexicon of others, not realizing how different it is for us. So here’s a small business owner saying, Oh, well, you know, people just don’t want to work. Right? And I hear that so often mimicking, you know, the billionaire, you know, the billionaire class, right? The people were the millionaire earners who are making $29 million a year, and you’re comparing, you are putting yourself in the same bucket, so to speak, as the employer, you know, who’s making $60,000, maybe if you cleared $60,000, it’s a good year, and you’re saying, you know, we’re experiencing the same things. You are not, right. And so we have to really look at the larger market, when when small business owners are saying people don’t want to work, or they want, they want to create conditions, that it’s just impossible for me to be able to support as an employer, you have to really look at the larger marketplace in which you are really participating, and who creates that marketplace? When things such as you know, the fact that our federal minimum wage has not moved since like jellies were in style the first, right? Something is wrong with that, because you think about it. When when that was the case, when you could, you know, so my girlfriend and I were talking and we were talking about where I grew up in New York, when you could go to the corner store with $1. Right? And your purchase power as a kid with that dollar. You were dag on near a Rockefeller, right? You could get chips, juice, you know, you get a whole meal practically, as far as meals go for a middle schooler. (laughter) You know, hopped up on sugar, but you could actually, there was redemptive purchasing power in that dollar bill.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Try that now. Right, you’re gonna pick an item, right? And it’s probably not going to be name brand, it’s probably going to be off brand. Because you’re not getting a Snapple, you’re not getting a whole drink. You might not even be able to get a canned soda, depending on where you live for $1. So our purchasing power has diminished greatly. And so when you’re a small business owner, you have to really think to yourself, who is creating the conditions, how is, what is, what is the macrocosm of the working environment in which I am thrust and I am forced to participate that does not allow that that forces me to perpetuate the conditions of a class that doesn’t include me, right? That doesn’t honor the work that I do, and won’t invest in me either. Right? But, you know, we keep seeing ourselves kind of repeating the same behaviors where one class is kind of forced, or series of classes is forced to support the endeavors and the decisions of another that has absolutely no investment in them either or the workers they’re trying to support. So when you say, no one wants to work, it really doesn’t need to be a period, it needs to be an ellipsis. Right? No one wants to work dot dot, dot, dot, dot. Because I can’t afford to pay them a competitive wage because a competitive wage is not even what I’m making. I think that’s important to the conversation, I think it’s important understanding, kind of, I don’t want to use the term victimhood but but how we’re all kind of forced into collective complicity in this system that is designed to kind of, you know, keep us all in a system where we’re not getting the best of it from from – we’re not getting the best redemptive value from it.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. This is, this is why I love talking to you, because your experience, your education, how you think about it is, is what do I want to say? I feel like I’m always learning from you how to think about these things differently. And I, I particularly appreciate the the bigger push to go one. Yeah, it is interesting, the the phrases that get repeated, but don’t necessarily mean the same thing, depending on the like, right, the groups that are saying it. That’s that’s an interesting thing that I’m chewing on. And I don’t even know that I necessarily have a thought to respond to that other than, oh, right. That’s really interesting, right? We’re hearing the same things. But it doesn’t mean that not everyone’s playing the same game, so to speak. But then that point of that bigger system that you’re a part of, and so instead of looking at it as a failure of the another person not wanting to, not reflecting on the bigger system that has created this chasm of complicity, to use your to use your language. That’s really fascinating to think about it in that way.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
There’s this thing that I tell my my kids when I’m saying, you know, and sometimes you know, my students, when I used to teach, I would say, it’s important to interrogate not just about what you think, but why you think that way. When did you start thinking that way? What informs your thinking? And here’s the, for me, this is the big question. When you’re reading a story, whether it’s a news story, or you know, someone’s account of something that happened. I like to ask, okay, who’s telling the story? So whose voice, who’s the passive voice in the story. And who is served by the story being told this way? Who cui bono who benefits by me reading this story, and it being perceived this way. For me walking away with this perspective, right? Because you have your active voice, the person that’s saying, hey, you know, I am speaking. And this is my perspective. But then there’s that passive voice, right, we see it happening again, some, you know, if you’re listening to this at a different time, it may hit differently. But you know, we just got in the last week, we found out that at a particular network, kind of the patriarch of that network is leaving, and there were, there’s all this conversation about that person’s influence, not just on the news, not just in that channel, or on the news, but kind of our collective media. And so you have to constantly ask, Who benefits? Who benefits from, from me holding the perspective that no one wants to work, right, that the worker is, quote, unquote, the bad guy, the collective worker class, are the ones who are not actively participating in the employment relationship, in a vested and honest way. Who benefits from that? Is there anyone that could possibly be speaking in this space that has an interest in me feeling this way? So I think that’s important. And usually between that and the person who speaks really rapidly at the end of drug commercials, I have gotten so many calls from people just like you’ve ruined me, you have ruined me. (laughter)
Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s so well, that’s such a that’s such a it’s, it’s such a great practice, and a reminder of that practice of, of really reflecting on, interrogating it, and that idea of you know, the thing of not just what’s actively being said, but what’s passively being said. Who and – I really love that question of who’s benefiting from it because I’ve certainly felt that and again, you know, for people who are coming back to listen to this episode. It’s end of September 2023. So there’s still a lot of companies figuring out return to office and right, what does that look like?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
A whole different conversation that we need to, we need to touch on –
Sarah Noll Wilson
Explore at some point.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
That is not reflective. I mean, if that is not reflective of people just totally being disengaged with their workforce and what they’re screaming, bellowing pleading for. I don’t know what it is. I can’t I can’t think of a clear marker.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, it well. And and it’s been such a collective, right. And it’s not just – this is something that I was sharing with a client recently, I said, you know, part of it is similar, similar to all the strikes that it isn’t just this one company, big, small medium, where people are saying, I want more flexibility, I want more control over my, my schedule, I want to have more autonomy in my life period. I want, I like, or I benefit from being able to have more options than I did before. And I’m gonna like it is this collective movement. So it isn’t just like, not only are our leaders not necessarily listening to, or they’re listening, but they’re not wanting to hear or consider new ways of working. But you can always tell when an article comes out, like, oh, this was written by and for to support senior executive leaders, right? Like, it’s always like, Oh, they’re gonna they’re gonna call on the the one study, or the you know, or not even a study, it’ll just be like, well, looks like all the big tech people are coming back into the office. So that must mean it was a failure. And it’s like, no, not necessarily, you know, or failure for who?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Right? How’s that working for you?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Right.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
So to further to that question of, you know, who benefits then you have to ask yourself, like, when you hear things like such and such a study. Man, when I realized how quote, unquote, studies get funded, –
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
It was a game changer for me, in how I interpreted information, right? Because if you think about – when you ask yourself, you know, okay, is this a reputable study? Yes. But someone has to ask the research question, someone has to fund the process for that, there has to be an audience for that information. And an audience is really ratified by virtue of a check, money. And so if someone is doing a study about, you know, returning to work, and how important it is for us to be together, and we need this, you know, for workplace cohesion and all of that. I am the person that’s sitting there, and that’s going, okay, so we’ve done that for the past year, where’s the study that shows our levels of productivity? Or our workplace cohesion based on people or how much time people are spending outside of the office? Where’s that study? And if there is none, why not? And if you know, because nine times out of 10, you know, you and I have talked about this offline. Those studies show repeatedly over and over and over again, that people thrive, for the most part, at least in some semblance of a hybrid environment. People thrive.
Sarah Noll Wilson
And my my friend, Stephanie and I were, we were talking about this very topic recently, and I really loved her perspective of, she said, I feel like we keep asking the wrong question. You know, the question isn’t, should we return to work or shouldn’t we? It’s, well, how do we do our best work? And you know, and I had said, right, like, the pandemic opened up new possibilities, and she’s always good to offer me like different language, she said it lifted restrictions on like, how work could happen, you know, because we weren’t confined to Monday through Friday, eight to five or 50-60 hours a week. And, and people again, you know, and I certainly have shared this before. But, you know, I had a leader once, who was like, you know, people weren’t questioning this before the pandemic, and I was like, is it that they weren’t questioning it? Or they didn’t know that they could?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Right.
Sarah Noll Wilson
You know, now we know, we’ve had the opportunity, and we can question it. And, and we have, we’ve experienced things where it’s like, oh, well, shoot, I kind of like this. So why are we why are we doing this? And so I’m curious to hear, you know, related to all of this. What are you observing, not only from, you know, like your industry, but clients, in the news, what are you noticing as some of those biggest gaps, right from the people who are in power versus where the workers are?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
So one of the first things is, you know, to kind of leverage what you just said about, you know, people experiencing something different in the workplace and then really saying, Hey, I kind of like this. So some of it definitely is that, people experienced a different way of, you know, life, work life integration, and realize there was a different way.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
But I also think we have to be cognizant, and leaders have to be cognizant of how much our society shifted during the pandemic, and how many more demands were placed on everyone, but certain groups, what am I talking about? So here we are, we go through a pandemic, at the same time, listen to all of the factors that are the confluence of factors, right, that are kind of integrating to make this perfect storm. So we’re going through a global pandemic, at the same time, as we are also experiencing what’s been kind of coined the silver tsunami, where so many of our so much of our population in the US and the UK, really is looking at aging, and not necessarily aging out of the workplace. Not aging out that, you know, they’re not passing on. But they require some semblance of assistance. And so you have a lot of people, the silver tsunami is coming at the same time, you have a lot of people in that sandwich generation. And I’m intentionally saying people, because if you were to look at it in a vacuum, it’s people right. But let’s be honest, it’s women.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
It’s, we know that the pandemic had a different impact or additional impacts on women than it did on a men. We know that the pandemic, had people experience it differently if you were a high income earner versus a lower income earner. So we have people looking at their, I don’t want to say post pandemic, because if we’re realistic, we are not post pandemic. We are you know, we’re navigating pandemic, we’re, we’re still very much in the pandemic, we’re just handling it very differently. But you have people kind of looking at their life saying the demands on me are very different than they were, say, four or five years ago. You know, you mentioned that we are at the end of September, on Saturday, September 30, unless something major changes, which I don’t see how that’s going to happen. But on September 30, we are looking at falling off of the childcare cliff. And for those who are not familiar with what that looks like, you know, we got an infant, we already were struggling with childcare costs in this country, where people were paying literally the same amount they were paying in their mortgage, they were paying that for childcare. Now, if you are in a two parent or you know, multiple parents, multiple caregiver household, that may be feasible depending on your income. But if think imagine being a single person, and you’re paying I don’t know, with the spike in rents that we also saw in the last couple of years, you’re paying 17, 18, $2,500 for mortgage or rent. Now imagine doubling that, because you also have to pay for childcare?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
That’s if you only have one child. At the same time, as we’re looking at on Sunday, student loan restarts and those coming back. (laughs) So you have these three expenses, but your pay is staying exactly the same.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
And that’s hitting a lot of people, a lot of women, a lot of sandwich generation caregivers in a very different way. At the same time as, because we all were having different conversations about what our personhood really means. What it entails to really live this life, where your work is, is not a defining factor of who you are not the totality of your personhood. Having people interrogate how much they really want to give to their job, and how much redemptive value they’re getting back. You mix that all up in a pot, and then tell someone, hey, we want things to remain exactly the same or go back to what it was before. But we want to add in an extra couple hours of traffic, while your gas costs costs infinitely more than before.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) Yeah, yeah
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
And you wonder why people might be a tad upset with you. So to answer your question succinctly, what I’m seeing is leaders really trying to resume how things were. And not really either not taking into account, or not evaluating how much things have changed in the daily lives of the people that are doing the work. And so more is required of them as employers, as leaders. You and I’ve talked about this before about, we are no longer willing to accept managers, you can manage processes, you need to lead people. And to do so you must be a person yourself, you must be in touch with your humanity in order to lead humans effectively, because that is demanded of you now. I think, at the tail end of industrial revolution, and even during the tech boom, when the focus really has been on the machines, the machinery, and the technology, people are really looking at the humanity that gives energy to these machines and this technology, and they’re no longer willing to be secondary or tertiary to those to those, those those bots, to those those machines. They’re saying, you know what? There needs to be a focus on the primacy, the primary focus needs to be on me as an employee, and I need you to, to address me, to construct a workplace that values my entire personhood, not just, you know, making me a functionary of what you want to get out of me. You know, measuring me by my output.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, there (exhales) this is why I love talking to you. That idea and reality of one, not everyone experienced the pandemic differently. Two, not everyone is navigating the same challenges. And, and I’ve seen it firsthand, right? That it can be really easy for someone who is in a very different financial situation or support situation, to project that same stability on everyone else. And, and even if it is the identity, if I look at my identity as the executive, if I look at my identity as really tied to work, it can be really difficult as you and I were talking offline to go well, but I did this, or I, this is what’s important to me. And I’ve suffered through this, so you should suffer through it too.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Can I just interupt and say, if that is –
Yeah, please!
If that is you perspective about anything, if your perspective is I suffered this, therefore, you should suffer this, too. Let me just categorically say, and don’t bother emailing me about it, don’t bother adding me, I’m not going to change. Your humaning wrong. Like you’re doing the whole human, like go back to the box and directions that you obviously threw in the trash when you took the whole life out of the box. Just go back, open the trash can and turn your head upside down and read the instructions on the back of the box. (claps) You’re humaning wrong. Like if that is the way you see life, you are doing the whole human thing wrong. That is not, we are supposed to want others to not experience – like I went through this, this is kind of – isn’t that the instinctual way – don’t go that way! Fire that way! There’s there’s a bad thing happening, you know. Run! There’s a bear coming! What is this idea of the bear bit me in the butt. You know, you should stand there and get bit too. How do we, how do we advance? How do we advance as a collective identity of humans? How do we maintain the species, right? If we don’t say fire bad, we don’t put up signs that say stop, here, fire. If we don’t do that, if we don’t say I experienced this, therefore, my contribution is to make sure like you’re gonna you might suffer some other things. That’s what I tell my kid like, Okay, you might suffer some really crappy stuff in life. You’re gonna make mistakes, you’re not really trying if you’re not making mistakes, don’t make the same mistakes I did. My job is to educate you about the ones that I went through. I just don’t understand the entire, I don’t understand the ethos. I don’t understand the thinking of I went through this horrible experience. Therefore, we need to keep the stagnant scenario the exact same way so that you can plunge into the same horrible experience I had. You’re doing the human thing wrong.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right. You know, okay, like, I’m gonna try to organize my three different thoughts that are hitting me at the same time. (laughter) So, yes, 100% agree. My colleague, Dr. Cris Wildermuth and I were talking like we need human intelligence to be key to to leadership development now. You know, there’s a lot of right like in, you know, the IQ and EQ and all of that is, is really valid. I mean, emotional intelligence is very human, but like really understanding humans and really understanding where we are as a collective society, where people are in their individual circumstances, what does that look like? So that’s, that’s one thought that that we’ve been chewing on a lot of just how do we really shift and get people first? And what does that look like? I will tell you from our vantage point of getting to observe lots of companies, the companies that are really thriving are the ones who are figuring that out. The ones that are experimenting and trying to figure out how do we, how do we human differently? But the other thing that was that was coming up for me, and this whole idea of like, I suffered, therefore, you have to suffer? You know, I wonder, I wonder if some of it is well, I didn’t know that I could push against it or ask for something different. And, and so I’m, maybe I feel bad about that, or I’m embarrassed by it, or I’m just sad or angry, or whatever the case is, if that’s driving it? And, and to the point that you’re making about where we are in the burdens that are upon us, it is different. It, that, like you said, the money is, the dollar is different, the cost of college is different. The cost of childcare, and health care, and mortgages is different. And something my colleague Teresa and I, we were talking about on a video that we recorded is, you know, in response to people saying things like, well, you know, this younger generation, they’re just so entitled, and they’re asking for promotions and expecting, like, is it as is it that they’re entitled? Or is that there’s some level of maybe being desperate for making more money so that they can have the life that you had? I mean, shit, I think just about in my lifetime. When I graduated college, I feel like this is like when I was your age, but but but even how much it’s changed in our lifetime. Right? When I graduated college, I was able to get some remarkable loan that was like one and a half percent. And which I know, I know. I know. I don’t know how it happened. But I did. But that that shit doesn’t exist anymore. (laughs) But like,
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
That’s a different planet.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, it was I literally probably squeezed in in this like, and, and that that set me up on a different trajectory than my little brother who literally was like 8%. And, you know, and even in a very short amount of time, his world was very different. And it’s even more different now. And I think that that’s one of the things I see is, well, I had to go through this. Well, we were able to, well, your conditions were very different, for a lot of folks, not everyone. I’m not going to say that or paint that. But yeah, those were the three different thoughts. Take a take a hit on which one you want to pull out, or what do you want to add to this? (laughs)
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna respond to all of that with something you said earlier about, you know, the indications of, you know, what we talked about what indications do I see? It’s particularly as it pertains to leaders. And here’s what I really see. I see leaders missing this gargantuan, profound opportunity to be heroes in a pivotal time in history. And I’m just I’m speaking specifically to the idea that, as you said, you talked about, you know, maybe people are just feeling like, you know, I didn’t know I could have asked for something different or it never even occurred to me. But here you are in a position of leadership, in a position of, you know, impactful directional guidance for a workforce for a business. You know, you are making decisions, you can make decisions, you are empowered. You are, depending on your perspective, you are blessed enough. You are fortunate enough, you are privileged enough to be in a position that you can make impactful change on a number of people. And you don’t take that? You don’t take that opportunity to say I could do this, I could make this this what might seem minor change, right? And change the course of a number of families’ lives and you are changing lives, you are changing lives when someone can say, I don’t have to leave my kid home alone and figure, have them figure it out and deal with all of the, shall we say, possibilities, negative and otherwise, of that child being unsupervised, one. But also unmitigated to the dangers of the world. Also not knowing what it is to be in constant, affirming and loving interaction. Seeing someone engaged in work that is a reprisal of their personhood and, and affirming, and seeing them be a star in their own show, seeing them operate in their zone of genius. Which we know from the studies, right, we know that has an impact on how children see themselves. When they see them, when they see their parents taking the leap, they see their parents doing the wise and the bright thing. And also, you know, not everyone has a job where their child can observe them. I mean, if you’re, if you’re in a lab, you can’t have your kid, you know, you can’t work from home and have your kids seeing you, you know, with the test tubes. You’re, you’re a medical examiner, you can’t bring the kid home, bring the corpses home, you gotta go to work. But if you spend all your time at work, no matter how fabulous your work is, that’s time that you are not developing both yourself, you are not able to bring your best self to the rest of your family. And you are not able to interact with your family in such a way that you are empowering them to be their best selves.
And finally, we got to stop looking at people in the context of others. Meaning, you know, I remember when I started in HR, and you know, who talks about this? Oprah, when she was asking for more money. And she was looking at what she was doing, versus her counterpart who was doing the exact same job. And when she said, Well, I should be making the same thing they should, that person is, it was a, it was a man, and that man was married and had children, and she did not. And the response she got back was, Well, why do you need so much money? This person has a family to support you don’t. We really have to stop looking at people in the context of their relationship to someone else, whether or not they have kids or whether or not they’re married, or, and just look at them for the value of their personhood in the context of the workplace relationship. I should not be paid because I’m someone’s mom, or someone’s wife, or the fact that we still have this ridiculously antiquated system that still connects our access to health care to our employer. And so other people are dependent on me for health care. I should be paid what I should be paid, because the market respects the value that I bring to the workplace. You respect my value to the organization, and I am a part of how the success, the success of the organization is perpetuated. Point blank period.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
This foolishness where you know, well people have families. Well, this person doesn’t have a family so they should be able to work overtime. No, they should be able to have time to themselves, to think, to evolve, to pursue passions, to have an identity that is not wholly and solely defined by their work. And I bet if you gave people an opportunity to do that, they’re more likely to want to be in that kind of a workplace. Because those kinds of places are, and you and I’ve talked about this before, they are, they might be replenishing, they might be draining to the body, in that, you know, they really can take a lot out of you when you’re working, working, working. But they are redemptive and replenishing to the soul. And we have a tendency, it’s part of the human condition to go back to places that replenish our soul, that replenish our psyche, that are not taxing and totaling on the soul. We, in an era where we are looking at so much of and we got to talk about, you know, AI and its impact in all of this. But when we’re talking about artificial intelligence and technology, and the machines essentially taking over that conversation again, we have to be really careful that we are not quantifying people in the same terms that we are looking at the machines.
Yeah, yeah.
Because then we’re never going to beat the machines at being machines, right?
Sarah Noll Wilson
No.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
We look at machines as just as machines, as productivity, as you know, do they sort of, what function do they serve? And how effectively do they serve that function? We cannot look at people in the totality of their personhood in that way and expect it to continue. We are always, part of our human condition is always going to push back against that. Why create an environment where you have people pushing back against that in a collective? Because it’s going to happen.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, for sure. Before we we wind down, one big question I’m curious to hear your thoughts. What are the questions that you want leaders to be reflecting on, thinking about, interrogating, as we look at this opportunity to think about not just work differently, but our world differently? What are some of the things that you wished people were thinking more about? Or interrogating more than they are right now?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
So one of them I already told you, which is, am I losing an opportunity? And it’s a bit, it’s a bit cynical, but let’s be honest, we all want to kind of see what we get out of it. Right? Are you as a leader missing an opportunity to be a hero in this story? We are near a societal climax, in this particular chapter of our, this volume of our story. As a country, as a collective society, we are in a shift. Are you missing an opportunity to be a hero? Will you be a villain? Or will you be one that just goes with the flow? And if you just go with the flow, understand the people that just go with the flow become background actors, and no one really knows their name. And is that really where you want to be, you have an opportunity to be one of those people that we are either going to remember incredibly positively, because they are doing something which if you think about the course of most movements in our country, you know, you are looking at someone who who did something that we look back on it in retrospect and say they went against the grain, they did something completely different. Now, you know, we’re talking about the 40 hour work week. But if you remember, and I, one of the things I was thinking was to bring a copy of The Jungle, and just kind of read to you, for the audience, for those of you who haven’t read it or not, haven’t read it in a while, some of the passages from the jungle and think about at the time, you know, people were reading that and they were just repulsed by it. But the conditions weren’t so far, a far a foot of what was normalized at the time. And it was the people who kind of looked back and said, looked at the situation and said, No, we’re going to do something different. Things that we have become so accustomed to as be normative, at the time, when they were proposed, they were seen as the end of everything. If you look back in the historical record, when the 40 hour work week was proposed, it was supposed to be the end of industrial advancements in the United States, right? Oh, my gosh, you cannot restrict businesses that way. We’re heading, we’re running headlong into a socialist society. What will people do with all this extra time, you know, etc, etc, etc. If you look at the introduction, all kinds of things, introduction of Social Security, integration in the workplace, these were all things that were by the naysayer seen, as you know, going to be the end of the world, going to be end of society as we knew it. And we now see those as as basic norms. And so are you missing an opportunity to be a hero in this in this shift? So that’s one question I would hope Leaders ask.
Another one is kind of a golden rule. So one of the things we heard workers talking about when they were speaking about what they want to experience differently, is, you know, when they talked about people, leader saying it’s time to return to work. And I remember one person calling me for a consultation with a situation she was having. And she said, What is my boss mean about return to work? When was he ever here?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Ah. Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
And when she was talking about the fact that she was working in a way where she had to physically go to work, and a lot of the people that were saying it’s time to go back to work had drivers to drive them through traffic. They came to work when they got to work, they left when they wanted to leave. They were not governed by a clock. The demands on their life granted were substantial. But the reward was also substantial. And your talk, you’re saying this to people who are still being governed very much by a very static o’clock that are contending with higher prices to commute and less redemptive value in that time of commuting. And the conditions when they get there are just soul sucking. And so ask yourself as a leader, could I live the life that I am asking my workforce to live? If I woke up tomorrow in upside down world and I was on the line, I was the nurse, I was the classroom teacher, I was the shift lead at the Arby’s, whatever it is, right? I was the the programmer working for Google, whatever. If I was that person, could I live that life in a sustained way? I think that, you know, do unto others kind of question. And you don’t have to answer it for anyone else. But you got to at least be honest with yourself. Something I say often is, if you can’t be honest, at least be honorable. And lastly, how long can we persist with the way things are now? How much longer can we? How much longer will, you know, the rope hold? Obviously, you know, there’s a strain on the rope. So part of your calculus as a business owner is how long can current conditions persist the way they are now? Are you going to react to the rope breaking? Or are you going to be proactive to prevent the breakage of the rope or create a new rope? So those that’s what, that’s what I’m hoping business owners are thinking, leaders are thinking.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I – thank you for all of those. I think those are such gifts for people to reflect on. And I know that so many of our audience are in formal leadership positions or in informal leadership positions influence those who do. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s really, it’s a really interesting push. Maxine, you and I know you and I can talk all day. And we also know that, you know, we’re, we’re working on cooking up more conversations between, between the two of us and others.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
I can’t wait.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Thank you so much for bringing your just wisdom, your insight, your knowledge.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Oh, I love it, I love it. I love it here. I love it here.
Sarah Noll Wilson
We love you. Okay, so for people who want to connect with you, who might be curious about consulting with you, hiring you to pick your brain or to just follow you, where’s the best place for people to connect with you?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Okay, so people think I’m crazy. But I give out my email address. And I will say email me send me an email. Or follow me on social media. So I’m maxview_esq on IG, and I’m on there on Facebook. I’m not on the other thing anymore. So don’t bother. I’m also T. Maxine Woods-McMillan on LinkedIn. Or you can just email me Maxine @ attorneymaxine.com
Sarah Noll Wilson
Awesome. And we’ll be sure to put those in the show notes. You’re, you’re absolutely brilliant. And I always learn something new from you. And it always –
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Back atcha babe, back atcha.
Sarah Noll Wilson
You know, that question of like, Am I losing an opportunity to be a hero in the story? And if somebody’s like, I don’t actually care about the story. Well, then be honest about that.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
If you can’t be honest, at least be honorable. Oh, um, you know, I’m saying the whole quote wrong. If you can’t be honorable, at least be honest. I’m saying my own quote wrong. If you can’t be honorable, be honest.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Be honest. Oh, flip it around. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Yes. Right. If you can’t be honorable, at least be honest. The honorable thing would be to do to be like, you know, what I am going to be for others what I didn’t have, right. I am going to do for others what I didn’t have. You know, when I was coming up, I was struggling with all these kids, and nobody helps me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or, you know, I had to do the grunt work. And there was, you know, all of that. So, I think it makes sense. My goal in my career is to give others what I didn’t have. Great. But if you look at it, and you say, You know what, I don’t give a flip about that, Maxine. Like, you know, you and I’ve had this conversation about the American brand of capitalism.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
And how it doesn’t take into account human value, the human asset, value structure. Some people are just going to look at it and be like, I don’t care. I don’t care. Well, you know what, at least be honest about that. What you cannot do, what you should not do and what is just from a business perspective, unwise to do at a time where everything is recorded, is spout this stuff, put on LinkedIn, you know, do interviews, do the podcast, you know, put videos out there that espouses this value, that you are not willing to live on a regular basis. Because I’m gonna tell you as an attorney, we go look at that kind of stuff.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs)
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
That’s the first thing we’re gonna say, Well, you know, it says right here on your website. It says right here in your mission statement.
Sarah Noll Wilson
And also, as humans we have real good bullshit meters, you know.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Right, and everything’s recorded. Everything is documented. This is not 1985, where you do an interview over here. And you know, someone might mention it, but it’s not recorded word for word. You do an interview, it’s recorded, someone has an iPhone, you know, someone’s recording it, it’s being uploaded, whether you chose for that to happen or not.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah, doing the townhall, right?
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Right. You have to make sure there is congruence between your actions, and and your professed values, your professed values have to be replicated, they have to be demonstrated in the decisions you make. Stop saying that, you know, you value every team member. I can’t tell you how many times I talk to employees who call me for you know, consults and they’ll say, you know, they’re always blathering on about they value every team member. But you know, I got sick as a dog. And they basically told me, you know, clean up your own vomit and get back to work. You know, I don’t feel very valued as an employee, like they will throw your words back at you. So make sure when you put them out there that you’re willing to live them. In every facet of your of your business.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yep. Maxine. All right, my love. Thanks for coming on the show. I look forward to conversation six. (laughter) That’ll be forthcoming at some point.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
I’m already looking forward to the chats. Let’s get ready. Let’s get going!
Sarah Noll Wilson
Thank you so much my love. I appreciate you.
T. Maxine Woods-McMillan
Alright. Thanks much.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Our guest this week has been T. Maxine Woods-McMillan who is quickly become one of my favorite humans in the whole world. And she just brings the insight and the thing that I’m, oh, that question. Could I live the life I’m asking my workers to live? Just, just that, that’s just I think such a powerful question. And as always, we want to hear from you. What resonates, what new connections do you make, what questions come up for you? You can always send me an email at podcast at Sarah Noll Wilson.com. Or you can send me a message on social media where my DMs are always open, but I’m mostly on LinkedIn these days. Also, if you haven’t, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast platform. And if you’re interested in supporting the show financially, consider becoming a patron. You can go to patreon.com/conversations on conversations where your financial contribution supports the team that makes this show possible and you’ll get some pretty great swag along the way.
A big shout out to the team that makes this show possible. To our producer Nick Wilson, to our sound editor Drew Noll, to our transcriptionist Becky Reinert, our marketing consultant Jessica Burdg and the rest of the SNoWCo crew. Thank you so much. And a big final thank you to our guest T. Maxine Woods-McMillan. She is one of my favorite people. And I always learn something new from her and I hope that you did as well. This has been Conversations on Conversations. When we can change the conversations we have with ourselves and others, we can change the world. So please be sure to rest, rehydrate and I’ll see you again soon.
Sarah Noll Wilson is on a mission to help leaders build and rebuild teams. She aims to empower leaders to understand and honor the beautiful complexity of the humans they serve. Through her work as an Executive Coach, an in-demand Keynote Speaker, Researcher, Contributor to Harvard Business Review, and Bestselling Author of “Don’t Feed the Elephants”, Sarah helps leaders close the gap between what they intend to do and the actual impact they make. She hosts the podcast “Conversations on Conversations”, is certified in Co-Active Coaching and Conversational Intelligence, and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities. In addition to her work with organizations, Sarah is a passionate advocate for mental health.