0:00:00 - Alex Shevelenko
Welcome to a lovely episode of Experience-focused Leaders! I'm delighted to introduce you to Victoria Pelletier. She's a C-suite transformational leader, speaker and author of one book and two upcoming. But more interestingly, by the time Victoria was 24 years old, she was already COO of a multinational corporation. So I'd love to hear that story. And now, 20-plus years later, she is a leader at companies like Accenture, IBM, American Express. Victoria is sharing some of her hard-learned lessons about how to build a personal brand and how to be a wholly aligned leader. Welcome to the pod, Victoria!
0:00:45 - Victoria Pelletier
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here!
0:00:47 - Alex Shevelenko
I love one quote from the Unstoppable book that you've written. “You don't have to possess a golden pedigree to be unstoppable. In my opinion, the key to being unstoppable is to leverage the lessons and calluses we acquire in the craziness and use them to fuel our desire to learn, earn, lead and make our mark on the world.” So, basically, a very stoic approach where the obstacle is the way.
And I'm personally, as an entrepreneur, learning that is the muscle – that I need to keep coming back on a regular basis. So tell us a little bit about how you bring that to corporate America, where that's not necessarily unless you're in sales, the mindset that everybody brings in. I'd love to hear what inspired that quote and how you are applying it in your career.
0:01:51 - Victoria Pelletier
My lived experience, the adversity and the obstacles that I faced are a big part of what I refer to as my “Why”. I overcame a lot in my youth, and that's what fueled me. I remember my mom. I'm adopted. My adopted mother said to me at probably 11 or 12, “You know, Tori, you need to do better than us.” And she meant socioeconomically and vocationally. She was a secretary, and my dad was a janitor. I don't think she said those things to me because of the trauma that I had experienced in my youth, prior to her adopting me. And in the circumstances, that's a big part of my “Why”.
And so the lines you read from the book are very much around. How do you leverage whether it is an obstacle, adversity, failure or leaning toward an opportunity? I think if we're not leaning into things that make us uncomfortable, growth and development are not going to come. That's how I've chosen to apply it in the corporate world that I lived in for the last 30 years to fuel my success and my team's success. I try to get them to lean much more into themselves, showing up at work every day.
0:03:17 - Alex Shevelenko
This is fascinating, and I'm really intrigued that you brought up this age of 11 and 12 years old. On the podcast, we do try to dig into deeper human issues. How do we bring our whole selves into our work environments and our communications? This age is fundamental and I could relate personally. That was around the age when I experienced the Chornobyl disaster. We had to evacuate from Soviet Kyiv into another city and then later become refugees in the United States. That period was way tougher than anything you encounter in the startup journey or corporate misadventures, which may seem important at the time, but you look at them in retrospect.
There is not that much danger going on, so I hear a lot of people going back to that formative experience when they overcame the challenge. It sounds like that's part of your journey.
How are you helping people identify that? Because a lot of people try to forget their childhood or are living unconsciously. What's your take on that?
0:04:42 - Victoria Pelletier
I spend a lot of time talking about resilience, and people will often ask, “Is it just DNA? Like nature-nurture?” I personally think it's both. I know that innately for me there's something in my DNA. I am a fighter, so that's the part that can't change – the muscle that I've developed and the nurture component of it. This is where I spend time talking to people to work through a healthy way of being resilient.
I don't think I actually always had the healthiest way. I had an extreme ability to compartmentalize, which still helps sometimes, even to this day. But I never really processed the feelings or emotions that I had or whatever the experience was. So for me, this journey towards a healthy level of being resilient is, first of all, to be really clear on what your goal or objective is, personally and professionally, or from a health perspective. Just get very clear on what the goal or objective is for yourself.
The next is to start to model the thinking, the acts, the behavior or the learning that takes you towards that goal or objective. And being very self-reflective and self-aware through that, knowing what's going to get you there.
For me, I know I will often be triggered. I'm very fast to emotion, and I'm very good professionally at masking that. Personally not so much. My poor husband and children sometimes need to see a little bit more of that as that comes up. And then being able to go with that, through modeling the thoughts, actions and behavior to take me to a more positive place, where I want to go.
The next would actually be giving myself permission to fail and being okay with that. Progress is one foot in front of the other: taking one step at a time sometimes means taking a step back. And that's okay. Then anchoring and going through that process all over again.
0:06:49 - Alex Shevelenko
This is really interesting. So, if you extrapolate this, I'm a fighter phenomenon, which is great if there is a situation that requires that. But sometimes the other person just needs to be heard, to be understood. If it's a child, they're not aware of what's going on with them. So fighting with a child is obviously not something that is as easy.
I'm dealing with some of these things in my own personal growth. What I'm finding is that there is definitely a parallel between a reaction and the way you react to certain things at work. You may mask it a little bit more. Because I think sometimes we are tougher on people who are near to us than the ones who are in more hierarchical or more formal social structures. I think there are different norms perhaps.
But there's a step of creating a pause between a stimulus of what you're getting and then processing it, ideally processing it the way it helps to understand the other person's perspective. I find that working at home improves my ability to connect with people at work and vice versa. I think sometimes work challenges put things in perspective when you see challenges at home.
I think everybody is struggling with this. The more successful you are in one sphere, probably the more you start to overuse certain things that work in that sphere and then bring that over. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You've written books on this topic. You've worked with other high performers. What are you seeing? Do people carry over the positives from work into home and vice versa?
0:09:03 - Victoria Pelletier
I think we need to recognize we are whole humans. That's actually why I titled this leadership book which is going to come out “Whole Human Leadership”, to recognize the ability to create that division and separate is difficult. I did mention the ability to compartmentalize, and I do think we need the ability to do that to some extent. But recognizing we're whole people who show up every day at work. Or when it's at home, and we're supposedly off the clock. Although I don't know who's ever actually off the clock and COVID showed us that.
As we all work remotely from our homes, the ability to turn that switch off is very difficult. So instead I say, “Embrace it.” That's also why I hate the question “How do you do it all?” As though, again, there's a separation in my life between being a wife, mother, athlete, executive speaker, board member, etc. I fit it all in, and we need to think a lot more in that regard.
The other thing is, you said, you feel a greater connectedness to people that you've been able to establish while working remotely. I think it's important to recognize that people are different, so some have found great benefits in remote work. Whereas others, who are super social animals, still want the in person work.
And for many of us, like myself, I'm very good with hybrid work. I want face-to-face, but sometimes when I just want that silence, I sit and be on back-to-back Zoom calls. I'd rather do that from the comfort of my home office than a physical office somewhere and still not engaging with people. So I think it's just wrecking. I go back to self-awareness and reflection, coupled with the integration and recognizing that it's okay that we are whole humans. We should be comfortable and safe showing authentically our whole selves, the lived experience we bring to the workplace and vice versa.
0:11:02 - Alex Shevelenko
So let's dive into the topic of the balance that you brought up. Is it balancing out? Does it even work? There's an expectation that we've got to do it all. There are times when we have to de-prioritize some things and prioritize other things. So the whole concept of balance gets you in trouble. A lot of people ideally feel that they're dropping one of the balls. There are five of them, and you name yours.
There are probably days when you get it all perfect, and then there are days when something has to drop. And maybe you drop it intentionally, just a little bit through. What do you say people do in this? How do they process it in a way that's healthy, so you don't feel, “Oh, I'm a bad parent today”, and start punishing yourself and get in a negative spiral? Because the trade-offs are probably the core part of life for anybody trying to do something meaningful and significant.
0:12:21 - Victoria Pelletier
Yeah, I use the word trade-off and I think that that's really important, and so I do think that we need to. For me, I think you can have it all not always at the same time and I do think it's important to give yourself permission to recognize that you're going to make decisions and trade-offs. And that doesn't mean I haven't felt guilty as a mother. I think of when my younger one was only two years old. I remember that year, more for tax purposes that the recording of it. I spent 220 days on the road and then I would come home and I'd realize what I'd missed in that week and my younger Jordan would be speaking in full sentences.
I have my own mom guilt. That's the other thing. Don't let other people make you feel guilty for that. My career has always been very important to me and being a mother is important to me, and so, yes, I've occasionally felt guilty, probably on more than an occasion. But I do give myself permission and recognize that there's trade-offs and compromise that need to be made, and I hope that you make the decision that's right for you in the moment. I think of years ago when my ex passed away and I became a although we were divorced, but a single parent to parent children.
That was a time I made a decision career-wise in leaving a role I loved but had me on the road 80, 90% of the time, to find one that had me home-based, much more minimal, 10% travel.
I didn't love the job much, but that was the right decision at that point, and so we will make those decisions that are right for a combination of family and career, personal health and growth, and make these compromises. What I will say, though, Alex, is for me, where there's conviction, there's capacity, and so I live a life of no excuses. It's one of the hashtags I sign off a lot, so there's, you know, for those who want to whether it's get healthy or they want to start their passion project there's the nine to five, and then there's the five to nine. If you're going to spend the night Netflixing, then that's a choice, and that's where I will like challenge and push people back.
0:14:38 - Alex Shevelenko
Interesting. And, speaking of high performance, one of the quotes that you brought up is that of Bruce Lee in one of your articles, and it really resonated with me. It says absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own, and it sounds like I just heard you do that. You know you're saying, hey, I'm going to make the right trade-offs, but certain things like Netflix, right, I'm going to like, get it out because this is just not, this is not a priority in my life, right, and you know, allocate, and then and then you're writing a book. I think it's about to go out on a personal bringing, which is actually maybe a communication step of figuring out what it is that you stand for. So I'm really curious you know what? What have you learned from from both writing the book and then, obviously, applying that in your own life as a speaker?
And you know, mixing that was a, you know, successful corporate career, and I'm really Finding that, even in the context of this podcast, when we're discussing, right, like we have a you know, two or three very, you know to me very adjacent topics, but like people meeting people would say, well, entrepreneurial marketing techie Combo is not necessarily like the way everybody thinks and what everybody cares about some. We're trying to the podcast in fact create A place for an audience that share some of the same passions, but it's it's hard, it's not a clear cut. You know, niche identify like highly identifiable, and so I'm really curious can what At some point, when you communicate to others who you are, what you stand for, you just kind of take out the whole thing, or do you have to go and do do some cleanup to make it easier for people to digest?
0:16:41 - Victoria Pelletier
Well that there's a lot there in terms of where I would I would go. So first of all, I'll tell you I've been working on my personal brand for well over 20 years. I don't even know that I had the vernacular back then to call it that, but when I made the shift from like Banking, which is where I, where I worked when I was in university, to the world of business, to business professional services, where You're competing through things like RP and how much relationships matter, that was when I started to shift. How do I create differentiation, not only for the organization I'm working for and my team that are what we call the go to market commercially, you know, client focused and myself so one. That's where it began, and so there's no like quick fix, if you will. It's a journey from a brand perspective. Into your question do you change it? I actually will tell you I've had to pivot and change over time what I wanted 20 something years ago and my definition of Success, which then, in my twenties as a young executive, was more around hierarchy, greater scope of responsibility, greater compensation. That's Sure that those are so measures that you know people use, but that's not how I measure my success now. So my brand and my story has evolved One to.
I did have to do a course correction because I was a young female executive. I showed up in a very particular way. I was not going to show you that I'm vulnerable or emotional, and I had a nickname is the iron maiden. Well, that's actually not at all who I am. So I had to course correct both in how I showed up every day in person, but certainly much, much more broadly than that. So Your brand is like four pieces.
What do you do? What are you known for? What are you? In what are you a subject matter expert? And what did you go to school for?
Then it's storytelling. Who are you as a person? Passions, interests, values, those things. Next, how are you different from other people who do what you do? And the last is connecting to legacy and impact.
What do you want to be known for? And so for me, you know the sales and revenue and profitability and the mergers and acquisitions I've done. That's not how I want to be known. When I die, it'll be one slice of it around. The impact is around one. Did I raise two really good humans? Did I leave the workplaces, the community in the world, a better place than you know when I left them, when I came into it? Things like that. And the last thing to do. One of your questions is know your audience. So how, like, what's your objective for connecting with that audience? And therefore, that's when you choose what parts of you it's always the authentic you but like, what are you going to share on this platform? How do you show up in a different platform for maybe a slightly different audience? It's way more complicated, and you need to plan strategically intentionally around how you're going to build that brand and how you're going to show up.
0:19:43 - Alex Shevelenko
Look, I really like that you brought this up because I think some people have a stigma associated with the word personal branding and because it feels brand branding right though you know it's like some sort of a stamp somewhere, right, like it's a you know it is a marketing term, but you brought up something that's fundamental and and that is either you know another rephrasing of a book by David Brooks, which kind of kept capped from which captures the difference between a resume, resume values and eulogy values, right, like what are people Say about your resume, which is sort of, let's say, not full personal branding, but you know, some might be perceived like a personal branding type of thing and then like, fundamentally, what are you about? What's your purpose in life? What are you know? How do you? What do you want to accomplish? So let's dive into that a little bit.
I think the very few people, I think, when they come up with their personal brand, go all the way back into their eulogy and try to craft out what are people gonna say about that?
And I think maybe there's a fear, right, because if you do that, it will take you away from hardcore driving, breaking through the walls in some sort of professional context that you may not particularly be as passionate about, as you need to prove or go up the ladder or kind of keep improving, and I think it must make people very uncomfortable. What happens when you bring this up and share your own journey with other folks around that? Because achievers just need to achieve. They don't have the luxury almost to slow down and reflect what's at the end of that achievement journey. And then the one hand we wanna leverage that person's inherent energy. But are they gonna be happy? Are they really achieving their full potential in that mode, or is actually a restricted potential because they haven't really unlocked the underlying meaning underneath that? It would be really curious to get your take on this.
0:22:17 - Victoria Pelletier
I think that effective personal branding requires courage, vulnerability and authenticity. And that scares the hell out of many people. So there is an act of courageousness in doing it and doing it well and own your story. I mean you can be a rags to riches, overcoming extreme adversity, and that's how I fueled it to become successful. You could be born with an incredible pedigree and not have any of those. But you've had some other really unique lived experiences that make you different and show up very wise and unique to the audience you're choosing. So embrace it, whatever that story is. But you do have to get comfortable with a self reflection. I go back to that again around looking inward, around what's making you unique and different and embrace it fully.
At the end of the day, people do business with people they like and trust and want to do business with. And trust comes from the authenticity. It comes from the courageous act of sharing oneself, one's experience, one's emotions with others. And I mean I ran away from that for a long time. I write the book and I speak so openly about it now because I realized just like it's truly transformed my life, my career and both personally and professionally, quite honestly, in doing that. And so if I can share my story and what I've overcome, and if that helps someone, a nugget of courageousness to them because they saw me do it, then I'll do it time and time again.
0:24:08 - Alex Shevelenko
So let's be more specific about what that means.
I think you brought up a few examples at the very beginning, because, for example, in which, let's say, we're getting to know each other in this sort of context, but there's a high stakes future relationship that we could be building, where we need to get to know each other for real, what would you, let's say, strategically or just generally in the spirit of being open, what would you share to elevate the relationship to that level of consciousness? Because a lot of relationships and I would say even the way before the call I was very much down to business like, hey, we have 30 minutes, do we have an hour? How much? It was that mindset I think we all have, that we all need to operate in this sort of deadline-driven, facts, statistics type of world where sometimes there is not that afternoon in Roman Piazza where you could have an espresso and really get to the soul of the other person and so guide us a little bit of how you're able to bring that authenticity whether it's yourself or other people that you've seen do this incredibly well so that our audience could be more human. Which is kind of key part of this podcast is how do we bring our humanity and shared experience with each other. Let's say three tips that you would leave with us.
0:25:45 - Victoria Pelletier
Well, it's so funny you talked about this sort of down the business because my Iron Maiden came with me being all business all the time, and one of the pieces being really intentional and starting to horse correct was I took the first five minutes out of every meeting when I would walk in to just chat with people, which wasn't natural for me. Now, like I talk to strangers and elevators, it's now totally innate, but back then it wasn't, and so I needed to be intentional around creating that space, and so that would be tip number one, like being really intentional about how you're going to do that. The next is around finding connections. You ask, like what would I choose to share? I try to quickly identify what that could be. So a really easy one, quite honestly, is, as parents, to start to connect with people. Like I think of years ago I was asked to take over this kind of troubled client portfolio and then one of the most critical executives was not responding back to me at all and by chance we were in a hockey arena. We were hockey mums. That became this moment of connection and dramatically changed from there on out. Again, we didn't connect in a work setting, but that we built that connection, this commonality as hockey mums, which then built a relationship, and it was transformative to that troubled client portfolio.
But it can be something else it can be. You know, I'm a member of the LGBT community. I came out as bisexual at 14, although at some point I think I said I was a lesbian because I was married to a woman for 11 years and I'm just. I'm very comfortable being on the spectrum now and I choose the word. Queer Just means I'm not straight and that can be. It Like if I get a sense from someone that I've got an acute sense of gaydar, as they call it, and I'm very, very feminine looking for the most part, and so people make assumptions around what that means. And so my ability to recognize if someone that I think might be queer themselves that I can share openly about that, well that's an open door. So figure out what that is.
Again, I go back to storytelling in your brand passions, interests, values, and so find that. And then the last, the third tip. I guess that you said you wanted three would be the little bit of the vulnerability piece.
So for me earlier in building relationships with people, once I've established some kind of commonality or connection with them, is to show, is to build the trust, and that's by oftentimes sharing an element or something of myself. That's a little bit more vulnerable, because then it invites them to do the same and they know that they can trust me. But also, connected to that, I operate with radical candor. This is the other way I build trust with people, and it can be depending on the meeting I'm in. So, again, I could be vulnerable if I'm much more of a casual setting with them or if I'm sitting in a meeting on the type of person. I'm not going to tell someone what they want to hear. I'm going to tell them what they need to hear. And that too is bold, because I'll tell you, in the management consulting professional services world there are far too many consultants who always tell clients what they want to hear. I am an outlier in being really bold and challenging them from a place of wanting them to hear what they need to.
0:29:17 - Alex Shevelenko
So you're highlighting the benefits of this are obvious. What are the risks of going out and bringing out the fact that you're queer Like? Does this make one person very comfortable? Somebody else doesn't know how to react. Let's say not uncomfortable, but certainly is not, depending on which geography you may be in, that may be a very new experience and it could work wonders and it could also raise questions for people.
And so, similarly, being, like you said, in consulting environment, let's say you're doing consulting in UK, which I had to do at some point, and there it's like, on top of being coded language, of just being talking to folks in London where you need to have understated messages, then there is a consulting and then there is a humor that you need to bring into this to avoid the horror of social embarrassment, which is what holds Britain together in some ways. So that has its risk being very direct and American, which I've probably stepped in a few piles of my own making of trouble, and so I'm really curious. There's a lot of skill and this involved to doing it right and practice. Is it just go do it and learn over time? What would be your advice on applying that, especially if you're new, if you're taking the first steps.
I remember first time bringing up that my background was Jewish and at some point I had a very difficult anti-Semitic incident. I remember when I described it in a public setting I felt like there was a weight that I was carrying for years, of some sort of need to be approval from being 12 years old type of area, and it was shocking how heavy it was. So not everybody is probably ready to take some of these leaps. And how do you make careful steps so that it's the right direction but it doesn't end up in a disaster?
0:31:51 - Victoria Pelletier
There's a learning curve. So I go back to who and what do you want to be known as? So for me, a big part of my brand is connected to social justice and advocacy, and so I'm very open, like when I worked for IBM, I was listed on their website as one of 30 out executives globally. That's it, and. But it's key to who I am as a human and the kind of workplaces and how I want to be seen as a leader and how I can help others. So figure that out. So it would be one, and start with baby steps. So, although I was openly out 20-something years ago when I was with my wife, I was cautious with clients and I played the pronoun game back then. Oh, my other half, my better half, and or just use their name.
0:32:51 - Alex Shevelenko
You weren't explicit.
0:32:52 - Victoria Pelletier
You weren't explicit, no, and for those who work most closely with me. Everyone would know. But because I wasn't sure of my audience from a business, corporate client perspective, I was cautious and so I just started to inch a little bit more into that until I was comfortable. So I would tell your listeners to again connect to your brand and what do you want to be known for? And then start to figure out those stories that are really innate into who you are as a human now and how you would want to be known.
And start small. I mean I, when I told the story of my childhood abuse I'm born to a drug addicted teenage mother like I would tell that in like, in small settings. And it wasn't until, like one put it in a book and two started standing on public stages that I gained so much more confidence doing it and the regs to riches story, if you want to call it that or you want to call it you know, the resilience to success, whatever, like that is part of who I am now and so I. But I did it on a small scale. So just lean in, lean into it, try it out, see what feels comfortable and it gets a heck of a lot easier over time.
0:34:06 - Alex Shevelenko
And do you see, as you get, as you vocalize this and share it, you know more in public. That's sort of you know, you would argue that escalates the commitment to the, to the story, right. But yet some point you mentioned that your story also had to change, right, the way you position yourself. So, so, as you are out there publicly, let's say, part of your identity, part of your vision for yourself changes through life. That's just normal.
How easy is it to go back on something you've been public on, right Like to own? Hey, like that was me two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. I'm a different person now, right, is that a? Because there's a risk to this? Right Like, once you commit and you're out there, you're writing, everything is recorded. This is going to be forever in the archives of YouTube and Spotify to Apple and and so there's. There's some stigma in human nature of being inconsistent. Right Like, we're built for congruent, congruent consistency in terms of you know what we say and do. So how do you as people commit, how do you do risk the ability to change in the future? Can you risk that? Is that just part of the life's journey?
0:35:31 - Victoria Pelletier
I think it's part of like how we evolve as humans. And so I think of I've told my, my older son, who's 23, coming out of college I'm like, buddy, you need to get on LinkedIn. He jokes. He's like, oh, mom, that's only for old people. I'm like well, dude, that's where old people like me are hiring people like you. So you need to get out there and start to be building your, your brand.
He can probably only articulate that first of the four parts I talked about, what did he go to school to do? And like what? What is the functional job he's, he's you know good at? And so actually, I think you evolve and that's where you start. And then again, what you, your career pivots happen all the time and I.
So what I would tell people is acknowledge, you know at 20, I, like I don't know what I don't know. Right To then, I've learned something new and different and my positions on it on it has changed, or what I thought I wanted has evolved as I've grown it as a person, as I've had these lived experiences. So be strategic and intentional about how you show up, but, at the same time, acknowledge when you mess up. Sometimes we might be misinformed and so we come out publicly and say something and I'd rather just say you know what? I made a mistake. I've learned from it. Here's how we're moving forward, or here's what I used to want 15 years ago, and this is where I'm going based upon this. You know new? What brings me joy now is something different.
0:36:55 - Alex Shevelenko
Perfect. Well, this has been fascinating. Thank you for being so open. I have learned a lot of life relevant tips that could be applied in career at home, and I think this is this is a beautiful part of this podcast is to actually help our audience and through them myself, you know, somewhat selfishly to figure out how we can be more human at work. So thank you so much, Victoria, for sharing that. If people wanted to learn more about your work, your books, you know how can they find you?
0:37:34 - Victoria Pelletier
I have a website which is https://victoria-pelletier.com/. I'm sure you'll have it in the show notes. I won't spell that out From there. They can link out with me and whatever other social media platform of their choice.
0:37:46 - Alex Shevelenko
Amazing. Thank you so much, Victoria, for sharing your full self with us.
0:37:51 - Victoria Pelletier
Thank you.