0:06

For Sloanies particularly, I

0:06

mean, I don't know how they do it,

0:10

but they do manage to put groups of people

0:10

together that can be so like-minded.

0:15

I would always say soak up

0:15

all the learning that you can,

0:19

but also really soak up all those

0:19

friendships and relationships that will

0:24

also stay with you your whole life. Welcome to Sloanies Talking with Sloanies,

0:30

a candid conversation with alumni and

0:30

faculty about the MIT Sloan experience and

0:35

how it influences what

0:35

they're doing today.

0:38

So what does it mean to be a Sloanie?

0:38

Over the course of this podcast,

0:43

you'll hear from guests who are making

0:43

a difference in their community,

0:45

including our own very

0:45

important one here at Sloan.

0:51

Hi, I'm your host Christopher Reichert, and welcome to Sloanies

0:53

Talking with Sloanies.

0:55

My guest today is Yda

0:55

Bouvier a 1998, MIT Sloan,

1:00

MBA graduate. Welcome. Hi. Yda joins us from London and

1:02

before we begin our conversation,

1:06

I just want to give our listeners some background. So Ida's an executive coach

1:09

now for 15 years and an author.

1:13

She works with both individuals

1:13

and companies looking to

1:17

the greatest potential and she just

1:17

released her first book Leading With the

1:22

Right Brain. So congratulations. Thank You.

1:25

Before being an executive

1:25

coach and an author.

1:28

She was a senior manager at the Boston

1:28

Consulting Group, also known as B C G,

1:33

where her experience included

1:33

international corporate

1:37

integration projects across

1:37

industries. In addition to her M B A,

1:42

she holds a master of science

1:42

in applied physics. So wow,

1:46

I'd love to know more about

1:46

that and how you use that today.

1:50

She's a sailor. Oh yes. And she met

1:50

her husband at Sloan. So welcome Ida.

1:55

Tell us about what motivated

1:55

you to write it and

2:00

what's the message you

2:00

want people to get from it.

2:02

Recently a couple of people have

2:02

been, or from different sides,

2:05

I get that question. What prompted you

2:05

to write the book? At first I thought,

2:10

well, I sort of started writing,

2:13

but I realized there was a little bit

2:13

more behind it when I started working as a

2:17

coach. I think a lot of people who

2:18

come from sort of analytical and

2:23

consulting and using your

2:23

left brain a lot kind of

2:27

job and education, I found myself always tempted

2:29

to solve everybody's problem.

2:34

Somebody would ask me a

2:34

question and I would think, oh,

2:37

do I have the right answer?

2:37

And when I trained as a coach,

2:41

I realized that that actually

2:41

doesn't work so well.

2:45

And I stumbled more or

2:45

less by coincidence,

2:49

sort of a more creative way of working

2:49

with where I could kind of let go of all

2:53

that problem solving focus. Now as I started working

2:55

in different ways,

2:59

I realized how powerful that

2:59

was. I started working it

3:03

it was sort of the way I

3:03

distinguished myself professionally.

3:06

I then started teaching other coaches

3:06

what this way of working was and by then I

3:11

had spent some time studying neuroscience

3:11

and neurobiology and I realized that

3:16

what I was doing was

3:16

using the right brain.

3:19

And so I thought was teaching coaches

3:19

how to use the right brain and to work

3:23

with their clients. And as I've

3:23

now been doing this for a while,

3:27

I'm realizing I'm sitting on this sort

3:27

of gigantic secret that it feels a

3:31

little bit awkward to just keep us, keep it to myself and the small world

3:34

of coaching. On the cover of my book,

3:38

I put a genie lamp with the idea of smoke

3:44

and shape of a brain coming out of it. And I did it because the

3:45

right brain is really this

3:49

enormous power that we all have,

3:52

like this your personal genie and you

3:52

just have to figure out how to get it out

3:56

of the bottle. And it's such a wonderful

3:57

thing that I thought I have to

4:02

make this available to a much wider

4:02

group of people than I can reach by

4:07

myself simply by doing my work. So

4:07

that prompted me to write a book.

4:12

One of the professors I

4:12

studied under years ago was Ron

4:17

Heifetz who teaches about

4:17

adaptive leadership.

4:20

And I kind of took it as

4:20

soft power versus hard power

4:25

in some ways guiding people

4:25

towards their own solutions versus

4:30

pressing them to the solution

4:30

that you may have come up with.

4:34

Is that an element to your

4:34

executive coaching for people?

4:38

I think there are a lot of

4:38

different words that come close

4:43

to this context of left and

4:43

right and hard and soft can be

4:47

one of them. I think the real important thing

4:48

is that you see what your left

4:53

brain always tries to do is it

4:53

tries to describe the world as

4:58

concretely as possible and then make

4:58

it tangible. And by making it tangible,

5:02

you can actually manipulate

5:02

and utilize it. Now,

5:06

that is of course an extremely

5:06

useful thing and we try with our

5:11

mutual, with our left brains, we try to making it concrete

5:12

in relatively similar ways.

5:15

And then it becomes in a way this notion

5:15

of, okay, it's concrete, it's hard,

5:19

and we can exchange between us. What your right brain does is

5:21

it actually experiences the

5:26

world in its entirety.

5:28

And that also means that the way I

5:28

experience the world might actually be

5:31

slightly different from the way you're

5:31

experienced the world and we even

5:34

influence each other in how

5:34

we experience the world.

5:37

I don't know if soft is

5:37

the right word for it.

5:40

I think the left brain tries to categorize

5:40

left is hard and therefore right is

5:44

soft. But for me, the right

5:44

brain's not soft at all.

5:48

I don't even have one word for

5:48

it other than it's very powerful.

5:52

So when you said hard, in other words the left brain tries to

5:53

make the world as concrete as possible

5:58

to then be able to hold it,

6:01

I guess is how I'm visualizing it as

6:01

something that can then be exchanged

6:05

or changed or observed.

6:08

Exactly. Exactly. Does that also imply that it becomes

6:14

rigid in the sense that once

6:14

you make it into an object,

6:18

then it's hard to change it again? And

6:23

it becomes rigid and what you see is

6:23

that the left brain can get stuck in

6:28

its own simplification of the world.

6:32

And where we often need our right

6:32

brain is to find something new,

6:36

anything new first materializes

6:36

in your right hemisphere and then

6:41

hey, it gets translated and your left brain

6:41

tries to a little bit later on grasp it

6:46

and interpret it again. But

6:46

the left brain really gets,

6:50

can get stuck just as the word

6:50

that you use in its own rigidity.

6:55

So I read a definition of right brain

6:55

people and I'll just read it out because

6:59

in some ways I agree with it in other

6:59

ways I'm outraged as a left-handed person,

7:05

alright? Right. Brainers can

7:05

be disorganized, unpredictable,

7:09

and more often than not very good with

7:09

people. So I agree with part of that.

7:13

They're spontaneous, creative and

7:13

more emotional than left brainers,

7:16

which outrages me, but I'm

7:16

joking. There are also intuitive,

7:21

good at problem solving and more

7:21

comfortable with the unknown,

7:26

I suppose once you kind of define

7:26

it. So the mere fact of defining it,

7:30

I think is a left brain activity. Yeah, you totally got that.

7:34

So I take these with a grain of salt I guess. But I mean there is

7:36

also some truth in that.

7:39

And so when I think about

7:44

corporate, and this is going to be a gross

7:45

exaggeration when I think about corporate

7:50

expectations for decision-making,

7:54

for leadership styles for

7:58

the people that I think

7:58

succeed in that environment,

8:01

my observation is is that when I look

8:01

at this image that's in front of me,

8:04

it shows on the left

8:04

the logic, the language,

8:08

the sense of time and science and

8:08

on the right creative intuition,

8:12

imagination. I guess this is a long-winded way

8:14

of asking a question about how do

8:18

people who I think their career has pushed

8:18

them to be as left brain as possible

8:23

because at the end of the day you have

8:23

to show results and explain them and then

8:27

show them how do they bring in

8:27

the right brain side and not

8:32

be scoffed at as squishy

8:32

and loosey goosey.

8:35

I think it's absolutely true

8:35

that through our education and

8:40

when we first land in the workplace

8:40

and we learn to basically be

8:45

effective in the existing system,

8:45

the left brain is a huge asset to us.

8:50

I find that by the time a

8:50

leader comes to me for coaching,

8:54

it's because they're experiencing

8:54

some of those limitations.

8:57

And I often right at

8:57

the start I say, look,

9:00

what we will do is we will work with

9:00

all your resources and you're probably

9:05

pretty good with using

9:05

your left side resources.

9:07

So we are going to quite regularly tap

9:07

into your right side resources and nobody

9:12

really understands what that means in the beginning. And one of the key things about your

9:14

right brain is that it doesn't process in

9:18

words, but it really processes in images.

9:20

We don't say for nothing a picture

9:20

says more than a thousand words,

9:24

because it really does. And so I,

9:28

often as one of the first things we do, is we work with pictures to describe

9:30

a situation and somebody always

9:34

immediately experiences that gives a

9:34

richness that they weren't before able

9:39

to articulate. And just by having an image

9:41

often provides new insights.

9:46

And that's when people start

9:46

getting it and they're like, okay,

9:48

there is this ability that I have that

9:48

I don't tap in very often that can

9:53

really lift me as a person and

9:53

as a leader to a new level.

9:57

And that sort of points

9:57

to the power of metaphors.

10:01

Absolutely. And you often have,

10:04

I'm sure you've experienced that yourself. Maybe an example even pops to mind where

10:06

somebody is trying to convince you of

10:10

something in a very articulate,

10:10

logical way and then they say, well,

10:14

what I'm really trying

10:14

to achieve here is this,

10:19

I just want to create a new garden.

10:19

And you're like, ah, now, I get it.

10:25

Tell me more about that revelation. I am just using that as an example

10:27

because I'm looking at my own garden,

10:31

literally, literally looking at my garden.

10:35

But what I mean is that when

10:35

we communicate in metaphors,

10:38

we also can feel aligned

10:38

and connected in a way

10:43

that we by purely exchanging

10:43

logic sometimes don't arrive

10:48

at. And so because if we are connected

10:48

with our right brains as much as with our

10:52

left brains, then we to convince somebody else

10:53

to influence and inspire others,

10:58

that's really important. And I was thinking about

11:00

effective speakers, communicators.

11:07

Do you find in your work with

11:07

your clients or organizations

11:12

that there are patterns there that you can

11:14

see that are successful and unsuccessful?

11:19

So I think in the past, people who want to become very

11:21

good speakers and influencers,

11:25

what they have often focused

11:25

on is on the one hand side,

11:30

have a really good argument and on the

11:30

other hand side have a lot of charisma.

11:34

When you're standing in

11:34

front of a group of people,

11:37

you exude a lot of confidence

11:37

and hand and it's often

11:42

very important that what you

11:42

show physically is the same.

11:46

It can be in contrast with

11:46

the words that you use. Now,

11:50

I think what we've noticed very vividly

11:50

the past two years is that when we

11:55

had to work with each other virtually

11:55

all of a sudden and we had to start

12:00

influencing people almost

12:00

exclusively, virtually,

12:03

we started realizing that all of a sudden

12:03

you can't rely on your body anymore

12:07

because it's only this

12:07

piece is on the camera.

12:11

And even though we're

12:11

on the camera like this,

12:14

we are not even biologically able to

12:14

pick up the same signals from each other

12:17

over the camera that we can do when we

12:17

were speaking in person. All of a sudden

12:22

as a leader, if you are influencing people not

12:23

only by at a combination of your

12:27

words in your presence,

12:27

but only by your words,

12:30

you are realizing that it's

12:30

not flying in the same way.

12:35

And that is because if we're

12:35

only using structure and logic,

12:39

it's only a left brain activation

12:39

and not the right brain activation.

12:43

If you activate your

12:43

right brain, for example,

12:46

by using metaphors to stimulate

12:46

your audience right brain,

12:50

then all of a sudden you can actually

12:50

be a lot more engaging and inspiring

12:55

also over zoom and using the virtual

13:00

platforms, which in today's world

13:00

I think is absolutely essential.

13:04

If you look at sustainability, we can't be all be flying around the

13:06

world to show everybody our physical

13:10

presence at every odd moment

13:10

where we need to influence,

13:13

we need to do it in other ways. And so the ability to

13:15

provoke a good right brain

13:20

connection virtually seems to me

13:20

that that's a leadership skill that's

13:25

really important for the coming

13:25

decade. And interestingly,

13:30

the dean of MIT, David Schmittlein

13:30

of Sloan, he said exactly that,

13:35

what is it, about two years

13:35

ago. And so I was like,

13:38

we're on the same

13:38

wavelength here, visioning.

13:41

I know that Sloan has been

13:41

pushing leadership studies as part

13:46

of a well-rounded graduate. And I think that those are, in my mind,

13:54

I think it's positive, but to my mind it's a counterpoint

13:56

to the accounting class

14:01

where accounting is a hard skill in the

14:01

sense that the numbers have to add up or

14:06

not type of thing. Leadership,

14:09

in my opinion is more, it builds,

14:12

I guess on the raw materials of each

14:12

individual and try to bridge that

14:17

personality with then the hard skills

14:17

that you still have to have, right?

14:21

Yes. For me, it's absolutely not a

14:21

question of either or. It's both.

14:25

And I don't know if this

14:25

was the same for you,

14:29

but for me it was by

14:29

the time I was at Sloan,

14:32

I was definitely still a little bit in

14:32

my left brain development phase first at

14:36

B C G and then at Sloan I

14:36

joined. So when I joined BCG,

14:41

I really knew nothing about business.

14:43

I just came straight out of

14:43

the physics cellars doing my

14:48

research. And so I was

14:48

like, oh, balance sheet.

14:53

So I sort of survived for two years,

14:55

and then thankfully they helped me to

14:55

do an M B A. And so for me at Sloan,

15:00

I was soaking up the accounting and

15:00

the economics and the strategy and

15:05

all those more hardcore business

15:05

skills because I still really needed,

15:09

I needed that solid ground on my feet.

15:15

And some of the leadership topics or

15:15

organizational behavior classes as

15:20

we also had, I was actually in my

15:20

late 20s, not even that interested in

15:26

it. That came a couple of years later when

15:31

I felt I've covered this field now,

15:33

but there seems to be a lot more

15:33

other interesting things out there.

15:37

So tell us about your applied

15:37

physics background and

15:43

I guess how do you use that now

15:43

and why the transition from,

15:48

how does that fit in? Let's put it that way. After school, I remember you go,

15:54

who knows what they want to do

15:54

when there are 17, 18 right?.

15:59

So I was definitely of the variety of

15:59

let's keep as many options open as I

16:03

possibly can. A good family friend said,

16:08

oh, if you study physics, that means that's essentially no choice

16:10

because then you can still do everything

16:14

you want afterwards. And I

16:14

thought, that sounds great.

16:18

It's also the kind of

16:18

thing that it looks good,

16:22

it's considered a hard thing to do.

16:22

And so I was like, you know what?

16:25

That makes a lot of sense. So

16:25

off I went studying physics.

16:29

It was so difficult.

16:33

I have to say the first two years I really

16:37

scraped myself over the finish line

16:41

kind of learning how to work and study. I think it's not uncommon if you've had

16:43

it relatively easy at school that if you

16:48

all of a sudden are at a top

16:48

university and a difficult degree,

16:51

then you really have to shape up.

16:55

It is a muscle, right? Yeah, it's exactly that. It's a muscle.

16:58

So I had to very quickly train mine.

17:03

But then as I was nearing the end of

17:06

my degree, which at my

17:06

university was like a two,

17:09

two and a half year research project,

17:13

a lot of that really a lot of

17:13

more hardcore research work,

17:19

which in my case was the

17:19

orientation dependency of silicon.

17:23

So that would then ultimately

17:23

be interesting for the

17:28

Interesting. So I worked in clean rooms and things

17:30

like that, but it was all very detailed,

17:35

far away from immediate application.

17:38

And I thought after

17:38

doing that for some time,

17:44

I need to be a little bit

17:44

more in the real world,

17:48

and then I thought, okay,

17:51

how do I transition from

17:51

that kind of academics

17:56

into the business world? And

17:56

BCG, like other consultancies,

18:00

seems to welcome people

18:00

who've done technical degrees

18:05

and then things that they can just

18:05

teach them about business along the way.

18:09

And so that was my saving grace,

18:11

and that kind of brought

18:11

me to BCG after my studies.

18:16

Well, it certainly shows

18:16

that you can apply yourself.

18:19

Yeah, I mean,

18:23

you are asking me what the value, what's the value of that education now.

18:30

some of the value of that education is

18:30

that you don't need to prove to anybody

18:33

that you're smart. And

18:33

that sounds really stupid,

18:37

but it's relevant.

18:39

Right? To me, it's the equivalent

18:39

of in the business world,

18:43

wearing a suit and tie, there's a certain assumption

18:44

about what the person is so that

18:49

you don't have to fight that

18:49

battle. That's been, we agree.

18:51

That's boxes ticked. The other real value that it has for

18:54

me is that when I started coaching,

19:00

which is a totally different field,

19:02

I was definitely looking for

19:02

some angle to really satisfy my

19:07

more intellectual curiosity. The findings from

19:09

neuroscience and neurobiology

19:14

were streaming in by it was impossible to

19:19

keep up with everything that was

19:19

surfacing in the past 20 years

19:24

question of how do you take those insights

19:24

into really practical applications so

19:28

that a leader in a business

19:28

can use some of that?

19:33

That was really kept me interested and so

19:37

that my scientific appetite

19:37

was fed and proved out

19:42

to be also very useful for understanding

19:42

this dynamic between the left and the

19:47

right brain. When I think about the right brain and

19:47

even the definition that I read before,

19:52

which was that there's

19:52

disorganization and unpredictableness

19:56

and emotional, how do you tap?

20:00

So even going to your image on the

20:00

cover of your book, the Aladdin's lamp,

20:06

with this coming out, how do you sort of control that

20:07

in a way and allow people or teach

20:12

executives or organizations to

20:16

listen to those intuitions or that

20:16

information coming from the right brain

20:21

and trust it? That requires a little

20:23

bit of trial and error.

20:28

So you take something like

20:28

working with an image.

20:32

In my early in the book, I use an example of a client who was

20:33

describing a really complicated challenge

20:38

in his relatively new leadership role.

20:42

And after we were really getting

20:42

lost in details, I said to him,

20:47

paint me a picture of what

20:47

the situation looks like.

20:51

And he then said, well, it feels like I'm hanging off

20:52

a rock cliff without a safety

20:57

cord. And I thought, hhh,

20:57

like, it feels a little scary.

21:01

And we sort of talked a bit about

21:01

the image and he said, well,

21:04

I really like rock climbing, actually.

21:04

This is a source of enjoyment for me,

21:09

but what worries me is that I don't

21:09

have a safety net. And so I said,

21:14

so we then said, well, what's that safety rope actually at work?

21:20

What he ended up saying was that

21:20

the safety rope felt really like a

21:25

support network of colleagues and peers.

21:25

And

21:30

so we then talked about

21:30

how we could build that.

21:33

But by the time we then met a month

21:33

later for our next coaching session,

21:36

he had started taking some

21:36

actions and seeing the

21:41

results because you then experience

21:41

something that's valuable,

21:45

you then get more curious saying,

21:47

How do I experience more of those

21:47

insights because they seem to be

21:53

bringing me something relevant? Now,

21:56

what's always very important is

21:56

that you, on the one hand side,

21:59

you want to benefit from the intuition

21:59

and the wisdom of your right brain,

22:03

but you then do need to translate it

22:03

into something that's really concrete and

22:07

tangible where you also

22:07

need your left brain.

22:11

So it's almost about you want

22:11

to establish the collaboration.

22:16

And here is something really

22:16

interesting, really interesting,

22:20

which is that your right hemisphere

22:20

is really fine to collaborate with the

22:25

left, but the left doesn't want

22:25

to collaborate with the right.

22:29

And that must be manifested in

22:29

leadership power struggles or

22:33

boardroom challenges, strategy sessions.

22:37

All those and it is also why

22:37

it's often so tricky to bring

22:42

this kind of right brain intuition

22:42

into the boardroom, for example,

22:46

because somebody might say in a boardroom,

22:53

I just don't really

22:53

like the smell of this.

22:56

And another person, that's

22:56

a right brain comment,

23:00

that's a right brain intuition that says,

23:03

I'm feeling uncomfortable about something. The left brain responses

23:05

is often, immediately,

23:09

I'm not quite sure what you

23:09

mean. Everything's fine here.

23:13

Facts and figures. Yeah, look, it looks like a fantastic

23:14

opportunity. Here are the numbers.

23:18

And so unless you are on the

23:18

lookout for those kind of

23:24

intuitions, it's very easy for our very powerful

23:25

and competent left brains to

23:29

sort of go. So you did your applied physics and then,

23:33

which was very theoretical and

23:33

education research conceptual,

23:38

and then you dove into corporate

23:38

consulting management consulting.

23:44

And correct me if I'm wrong, were you

23:44

at BCG throughout your time at Sloan?

23:49

Yeah, so I was at BCG before and then

23:49

I also went back to BCG afterwards.

23:54

So how did Sloan change you? And you

23:54

better mention your husband here.

23:59

Yes. How did Sloan change me?

24:03

So the first thing it did was that it

24:03

did really give me this solid ground

24:08

in terms of business education on all the

24:11

dimensions that we talked about before.

24:14

So I went back to BCG, and

24:14

my confidence was like I felt

24:19

in a completely different

24:19

place, and that was very nice.

24:22

I enjoyed the work also a lot more

24:22

because of that on all fields, very, very,

24:27

I just felt like I was,

24:30

what I did was solid and

24:30

not just grasping at straws.

24:36

You had created and sharpened some tools, right? Yeah, of course.

24:40

The other thing which I hope

24:40

many people get from not only

24:44

Sloan but attending their business school

24:44

is these network of lifelong friends.

24:49

That's just phenomenal. Some of them we've been in contact

24:51

for on a very regular basis having

24:56

holidays together. But even if

24:56

you don't see somebody for five,

24:59

10 years and they pass through

24:59

London and you sit down for dinner,

25:02

you're right back. And I think it's unique in life those

25:03

times where you build those kind of

25:08

that intensity of relationships

25:08

afterwards, you get busy

25:13

And I think those friendships

25:13

are, we treasure them a lot.

25:17

And since Laurent and I are

25:17

also from different countries,

25:20

we have those sets of friendships in our

25:20

respective countries. But from Sloan,

25:24

they're mutual friends. And so that's also what makes

25:26

a double special in our life.

25:30

And he's a banker, right? Yeah.

25:32

He's a banker. So he is very left brained.

25:35

You think. But maybe not.

25:38

Left and right brain. No. And what else?

25:41

So the one thing that I

25:41

really learned at school,

25:45

which only over time and certainly

25:45

is also I think underlies what

25:50

I write about in the book, is that one of the courses that really

25:51

made a huge impact on me was system

25:55

dynamics. And this notion of if something

25:56

is happening in a system

26:01

which doesn't produce the

26:01

outcomes that you expect,

26:04

there are forces that you're

26:04

missing or need to be uncovered.

26:09

And that idea that it

26:09

has informed, of course,

26:14

a lot of what I do, not only as

26:14

a consultant, but as a coach,

26:18

that is one of these foundation

26:18

principles that informs a lot of

26:23

my work because somebody comes to

26:23

coaching and sometimes they say they

26:28

want something, but they don't do

26:28

the things that would get them there.

26:31

And then just this idea of there are

26:31

forces in this system that we're trying to

26:36

uncover is a very useful way of thinking.

26:40

And so system dynamics I think has

26:40

informed a lot my career in ways that

26:44

I totally didn't expect when

26:44

I was sitting in a class.

26:49

And that presumes a certain

26:49

rationalness to it all. Right?

26:52

Yes, I suppose so. Or at

26:52

least again, something to,

26:56

it's another way to make things

26:56

tangible. But I like the idea of,

27:02

I like the language of force

27:02

because forces are kind of a kind of

27:07

energy, and even though yes,

27:07

you can describe a force,

27:10

but you can never really fully describe

27:10

it, it has that sort of energy.

27:15

It has something magical and ungraspable

27:15

to it. I suppose even as a physicist.

27:20

I mean, when you're coaching

27:20

someone and they make a tweak,

27:25

so this is one of those things where

27:25

you're introducing some dynamism into the

27:29

system, right? Tweaking

27:29

the knob, pushing a lever.

27:32

Is part of your coaching to have people

27:32

think two or three steps ahead as to

27:36

what the consequences or the

27:36

various consequences could be.

27:39

So thinking in a system dynamics way.

27:42

Yes, we very often, and you can do that.

27:44

You can imagine we have this amazing

27:44

ability to be able to imagine ourselves in

27:49

the future. I think one of the unique

27:51

human capabilities.

27:55

Sometimes you can use it to uncover forces, but also to check whether you really

27:57

are taking everything into consideration

28:02

that you should. What is your definition of success

28:04

in the success of writing a book?

28:08

I can see that would be satisfying, but

28:08

working with clients or just generally.

28:13

My definition of success. So there's

28:13

a couple of different angles to that.

28:18

I would say I definitely

28:18

am somebody who likes to

28:23

experience lots of

28:23

different things in life.

28:28

So I like a life where I am a parent and

28:32

I have time to do my sailing and

28:32

I can travel and I can enjoy my

28:37

work and I can cook. And that richness is, for me,

28:43

very important.

28:46

So I would say part of has

28:46

success is just to be able to

28:51

experience a lot of richness

28:51

that life has to offer us,

28:56

including spending a lot of time

28:56

in beautiful natural environments.

29:01

In terms for myself, what has been my personal definition of

29:03

success for a really long time is that

29:10

it's always been very important

29:10

to me to show our daughters

29:15

that as a parent, and

29:15

certainly as a woman,

29:22

which for whom, that tends to be

29:22

still more of a question than for

29:28

men, I'm usually generalizing

29:28

here, but as a parent,

29:32

to not have to make the

29:32

trade-off between being an active

29:37

and engaged parent and having

29:37

a really rich and interesting

29:42

professional life. So that is not either or that

29:44

you can really have both.

29:48

And that informed a lot of my

29:48

choices for the past 20 years and

29:52

still does because I wanted to show

29:52

that to my daughters. And so that, yeah,

29:58

if I'm able to first achieve that myself,

30:02

but also at least role

30:02

model it for some people,

30:06

then that would be a big chunk

30:06

of my definition of success.

30:10

That's excellent. And so as a

30:10

professional woman who's a parent

30:15

and a partner, have you seen

30:15

over the course of, say,

30:20

your 25 years since Sloan, what sort of evolution have you seen

30:22

in that challenge of integrating

30:27

those different sides,

30:27

even in your own career?

30:30

And do you find that the challenges

30:30

for women who are just leaving

30:35

Sloan or graduating college is easier or

30:39

harder or different? So it's funny,

30:44

I don't have a perfect answer

30:44

to this question partly because

30:49

it's just coming up in some

30:49

of the work that we're doing,

30:51

and I'm wondering about what's

30:51

has been really changing.

30:55

On the one hand side, a lot of challenges do

30:56

still feel very similar.

31:01

It is still very complex

31:01

to figure out how you

31:05

combine a parent life

31:05

and a professional life,

31:08

what kind of parent you want to be,

31:08

what kind of professional, what,

31:11

none of those questions are easy.

31:11

And I still see by and large,

31:16

again, forgive me for the generalization,

31:20

is that it is much more often for women a

31:24

difficult choice to combine those two. No,

31:27

they're constantly worrying if

31:27

they're doing the right thing.

31:30

And I see a lot of my

31:30

male coachees not asking

31:35

themselves if they should even

31:35

combine the two things. Yes,

31:38

they should combine them, maybe

31:38

not happy with the combination,

31:40

but it's not like they were stopped

31:40

working or do I not have kids? And that

31:44

question doesn't appear

31:44

that for women that it's

31:48

still a more difficult and

31:48

more complex question so

31:53

that you might on the one hand

31:53

side say, oh, nothing has changed.

31:57

But that is not true. I do think things are changed and

31:58

there are things that have changed.

32:02

I do see a lot of my male coachees

32:02

much more concerned about making the

32:07

right choices. I see a lot more women wanting

32:08

to make the combination work and

32:13

not stepping out of work fully or

32:13

not accepting that they have to

32:19

make a choice, really

32:19

wanting to combine the two.

32:22

Whereas I think my generation still, there are still a lot of very talented

32:24

women that more or less stop working

32:27

completely. And so I do think

32:27

there's a shift, but it's slow.

32:32

So any parting advice

32:32

for perspective Sloanies?

32:37

I think the idea of spending

32:37

a couple of years in the

32:42

workplace and then stepping out

32:42

again and going back to school,

32:47

I think that I wish everybody

32:47

was able to do that.

32:51

I think that experience of learning when

32:51

you're a little bit older as opposed to

32:56

teenagers, I think that is

32:56

really rich and valuable.

32:59

And I don't know about you,

33:02

but I still remember the first time

33:02

I was putting my backpack on again

33:06

and walking to class after having worked

33:06

for several years, I was like, wow,

33:11

I appreciated that freedom in a way that I

33:16

didn't do before. I think that so that I wish for as many,

33:22

I already wished it on

33:22

everybody to enjoy learning

33:27

at several, maybe even with

33:27

several stages in your life.

33:33

For Sloanies particularly, I mean,

33:33

we're diehard. I'm a diehard fan.

33:38

I'm sure you are too. I think

33:38

Sloan, I don't know how they do it,

33:42

but they do manage to put groups

33:42

of people together that can be so

33:48

like-minded and so, I would always say soak

33:49

up all the learning that

33:54

you can, but also really soak up all those

33:55

friendships and relationships

34:00

that will also stay with

34:00

you your whole life.

34:04

Well, thank you to Yda Bouvier, class of 1998 for joining us on this

34:06

episode of Sloanies Talking with

34:11

Sloanies. You can learn more about Yda

34:11

and connect with her on her website,

34:15

which is www.bouvierltd.com,

34:22

if you wanted to reach out and

34:22

thank you very much for joining us.

34:26

Thank you. Christopher. Sloanies Talking with Sloanies is produced

34:31

by the Office of External Relations

34:34

at MIT Sloan School of Management.

34:37

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