Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is Constructive Voices. Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.
This is Jackie de Burcher here for Constructive Voices.
And I am delighted to say that today I have another female podcaster with me who's produced a huge amount of podcast episodes. She's really, really good at podcasting. Gretchen, you're very welco.
Would you like to introduce yourself?
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you, Jackie. I'm thrilled to be here. It is fun having a podcast. I love talking to different people in different parts of the world that are brilliant like yourself. I've been in the construction industry for most of my 40 year career. I just published a book on women leading in construction Building Women a blueprint for Women Thriving in construction.
And in this kind of sunsetting of my career, I'm also starting a global institute to advance women in construction. So just a few things to keep me out of trouble as I head off into retirement in a few years.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Brilliant. Okay, so I'm with Gretchen Gagle and she has, as you've just heard, an amazing background. So I'm really excited to explore that in a bit more detail, particularly because when we go back into your early life, Gretchen, you began your career in mechanical engineering despite an early pushback from your own dad, who apparently said to you, girls, don't study engineering, yet you persevered. Do you want to talk about that turning point and how you believe it shaped your own path?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, you know, I think he just thought it would be a really a challenging pathway for me. And this is back in the early 80s. And in fact, when I turned down my Harvard acceptance to go to engineering school, he disowned me. He was really frustrated, thought I was turning down this huge opportunity to go to Harvard, which didn't have an engineering school or not a well known engineering school at the time.
I'm not sure what gave me the courage, taught me is to trust, to back myself, which is advice I give to people in the world. Like, I really felt strongly that was the right decision for me and I really enjoyed engineering school. And we made up later so it all turned out fine.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Brilliant, Fantastic. Now, I listened to one of your own recent episodes earlier today and I liked a lot of things about it. But one of the things that's so true, I think, for all of our lives is the two ladies you were interviewing there talked about the turning points, which is obviously what you've just discussed, maybe one of your most important early life turning points.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, and then coming out of engineering school, I had co opt for Lone Star Gas.
And I really started to understand that locking me away in a room doing pipeline design or something wasn't going to be the best career choice for me. And I interviewed for a plant engineer position with Ralston Purina, now Nestle Purina. And they came back to me.
James, the HR manager, I'll never forget him, he came back to me and said, have you considered operations management? I'm like, what is that? I don't even know what that is. And he's like, well that's where you run the plant. And we're trying to get more women into operations management.
I said, well, how many do you have? And out of 62, they had zero in 1986. And I thought, well, somebody's got to be number one. And so off I went to Oklahoma to run a dog food plant. My sorority sisters thought I'd completely lost my marbles at that point, leaving Dallas and moving to Oklahoma to make dog food. But once again, it's not like I set out to be an operations manager and sometimes you just have to be open to different opportunities and that your life is going to take a little bit of a turn.
And it turned out to be a fabulous opportunity for me.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: That's it. I think that's what it's all about, you know, is being open. Because generally the things that we think we should be doing, quite often they don't always go exactly according to plan. And then something even better happens when we're open.
After over 40 years. Gretchen in construction leadership roles, industry board work what motivated you to focus your current work on grounded self leadership?
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting and how I've kind of shifted into building the leaders of the future.
When I moved to Australia in 2018, my partner was Australian. We were living in America. I've always wanted to live in a foreign country.
I had told the company I was president of five years, that's it, 120 flights a year. And I was doing my PhD at the same time, which I really don't recommend that either. But when I got to Australia, I actually had no idea how I was going to earn a living. I knew one person in the industry because Qanta Services was a client of mine in America. And they introduced me to Mark Bumstead who ran Qantas Services Australia and the five companies they own over there.
I really fell into this initial opportunity to run a women's leadership program in the pipeline industry. Mark suggested I join the Australian Pipelines and Gas association and I was delivering a paper at My first conference two weeks after I arrived in Australia and the CEO, Steve Davies had a panel of senior executives and he was so proud of himself. He'd gotten all these. We were in Darwin, which is in the middle of nowhere, right? And he had a CEO of an energy company and the CEO of a construction company and an engineering company.
And he looked at the audience and he said, I'm really embarrassed. There's not a woman here.
And I thought that took a lot of courage to say that in front of hundreds of people.
And so I took him out for coffee and said, you know, the American Gas association has this women's leadership program. I've spoken there just as a woman leader in engineering. This is before I'd completed my PhD in leadership and wasn't running the course, had just been a speaker. But what if we replicated it over here and we're actually about to kick off the 10th course cohort of that leadership program and then we started a first time leaders program with men and women and we're kicking off our third cohort of that. And then Wiley asked me to write a book about leadership. And then all of a sudden you're like, the universe is telling me I do advise several senior leaders around the world, but the universe kind of just started to tell me that my path was headed towards helping develop the next leaders in energy, mining, construction and engineering. So yeah, I started listening to it.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: How does grounded self leadership differ from like traditional leadership approaches?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Well, it's funny because I went back 50 years in leadership theory in my PhD and that's really why with an engineering degree, an MBA where I focused on finance, I've never had the opportunity to study human behavior before.
So I went back 50 years in leadership theory, organization culture theory. Got to meet Edgar Schein. He was my coach for a year before his passing, went back 50 years and change leadership over the years. It's a very complicated concept to think about and I really appreciate that. Social scientists put together frameworks, servant leadership, transformational leadership. There's lots of different frameworks of leadership out there.
I call mine grounded self leadership because a lot of these frameworks correctly focus on how leaders interact with other people. Because that is leadership. It's influencing others really. It's not about a title, it's not about how many people report to you. It's really about your ability to influence the behavior, positively influence the behavior of others.
But I called grounded self leadership because it's grounded. I think it starts very much with you and who you are as a person.
And it's the figure of a person standing on a rock that is your personal values and your personal purpose in life. How you show up as a leader is really grounded in those values that you care about deeply, in the impact that you want to make on the world.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: That makes a lot of sense. Well, that makes a lot of sense because you're bringing your own core, your own truths into how you will have a leadership power. Not, not power in a bad way, but you'll be inspiring people that way much easily.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: I first read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and I developed a personal mission statement to leave the world a better place than I found it. And so when Wiley asked me to write a book, will it leave the world a better place than I found it? I think this will have a positive impact. But the other thing that really shaped me and my thinking about leadership, when I completed my MBA at the University of Denver in the early 90s, we were the first class that had to take a full semester in ethics. Now, that doesn't sound as unusual today, but 35 years ago, whenever that was, it was very unusual. And Bui Sewell was my ethics professor. I'm still in touch with him. I turned around and taught ethics for five years at the University of Denver in their MBA program.
Really thinking about that class and everything caused me to think about where I come from as a leader and how I show up. If you think of great leaders that you admire, you know what they stand for, you know that they stand for fairness or collaboration or integrity or whatever. So I think it's really important that we ground our leadership in those values and purpose.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes so much sense to me, Gretchen. Now moving on to your book. First of all, very, very impressive. The book is entitled Building Women Leaders A Blueprint for Women Thriving in Construction.
And the approach is synthesizing stories and strategies from more than 120 global leaders.
What are some of the core practices or traits, Gretchen, that you highlight in the book that women can adopt to thrive in male dominated industries?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Yeah, and one important thing, this is a book for men too.
It is about male allies. Because women cannot thrive in construction, energy, mining, engineering without the support of their male allies. Because men make up the majority of the industry. Right. So the reason, both Hugh Rice, chairman emeritus of fmi, and Jan Tuckman, who's former retired editor in chief of ENR magazine, wrote the two forwards, very deliberate, a man and a woman. I really hope that men read this book as well and they'll get a lot out of it as well, about not just allyship, but about leadership. And somebody told me, an author told me in your first book, you throw everything in there but the kitchen sink. It's a book that I hope will be a reference book for people. There's 22 chapters, I think, but starts with a chapter about dominant culture and unconscious bias. And I would be remiss if I wrote this book and didn't touch upon the unconscious bias that different people experience in different situations.
The book then goes into this grounded self leadership and what it takes to have courage and humility and balance, what it takes to have critical thinking skills, how you take your personal brand out into the world and then moves on into how you build strong relationships with people, how you build high performing teams, how you build an organization's culture the way you'd like, and really wraps up with how to lead in the industry.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Okay, I mean, that sounds incredibly valuable. And also the fact that you've obviously spoken to over 120, which is, as somebody who's authored a book, I know that that's absolutely massive.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I did cheat a little bit. Some of the 129, I think we ended up with 129 people are excerpts from podcasts, because I have done a podcast with, for example, Anna Mears. Anna Mears is the most.
I don't know, somebody might surpass her at some point, but she was the most decorated summer Olympian in Australia. She's a short track cyclist and she's competed in four Olympics. One of them, she broken her neck in a fall and seven months later competed in an Olympics. Her resilience is amazing and she has a lot of great things to say about leadership.
I interviewed 40 to 50 male and female leaders in the construction industry for the book as well. But yes, it was a big undertaking. I didn't want this book just to be about my voice about this. I really wanted to bring in the voices of brilliant people. And if I had the time and the words, I would have put a thousand people in this book. At some point I had to cut it off. But I think that those stories from those people make it a more rich experience for the reader.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Definitely. And you're not cheating when you delve into podcast work you've done, because I know as well as you know, Gretchen, a lot of work goes into recording and researching podcasts and getting them produced and out there. So that's not cheating in my world.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: No, no, no. And in fact, it was a little challenging because I have 150 podcasts and to really Pick and choose which people, which stories were included in the book was a curation in and of itself, but. But, yeah, a lot of fun to write the book at 120,000 words.
It was definitely a labor of love, and I'm really excited to see people reading it and commenting on it.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: How long did it take you to write it?
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Seven months. My contract was a year. I knew I wouldn't have time to start it for six months due to work commitments, et cetera, and I did extend by a month at the end. I took a lot of road trips in Australia. That's the one wonderful thing about Australia, is we have 10,000 beaches.
And so I would go on the road for two weeks and stay in different little beach towns and walk on the beach and think and write and think and write.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Sounds idyllic.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting. I'm a big believer in rewarding yourself. And so, for example, I went to a little town called Exmouth, which is a couple of our flight north of Perth, and wrote for nine hours one day, and then the next day I swam with whale sharks.
Fantastic.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: So going back to what you said a little earlier, Gretchen, you mentioned dominant culture, the unconscious bias and authenticity, as well as critical elements that we need to navigate. What are the common blind spots that you have seen in organizations today? And how can women and their male allies address them?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, one. One thing I stress in the book, this is not a slam of white males. In both Australia and America, they make up the majority of the population of construction, and that creates a dominant culture. What's interesting is that sometimes when we're in the dominant culture, I explained that you're kind of in the bubble. Like, you don't know you're in a dominant culture.
You're just living life as a person who's the majority of that population.
And you don't realize how challenging it can be for people that are outside that dominant culture. I was writing this chapter last year, and it was May, and I was flying to Washington, D.C. for an associated General Contractors Diversity and Inclusion Committee meeting. And I got in a shared ride car, and the driver, young, I would say he was in his 30s, male.
And he said, oh, is it a busy week for you? And I said, yeah, yeah, you know, pretty busy. Kansas City, Chicago, D.C. new York. And he said, oh, are you a flight attendant?
And I said, no, I'm a business executive.
And what I try and do is graciously lift up unconscious bias to people now.
And I said, if I had been a man and I was In a suit. I thought, gosh, does a suit look like a flight attendant? But I said, do you think you would have asked a male that. That question? And he thoughtfully responded, no. And I probably would have asked him if he was a pilot. And that's just a very simplistic example. Over.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: That's a brilliant one, though.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Well, in over 40 years, I. If I go out to dinner with a male colleague and I hand them my credit card, there's probably about a 90% chance they're going to hand it back to the man.
But once again, that. That he hasn't experienced that over and over and over. So he might think, oh, that's not a big deal. But when it's happened to you repeatedly for 30 years, it. It's just another. It's just another thing.
Sure.
So I think organizations.
I heard a term when I spoke at AGC with Tom Riley, who's the president of Turner bmes, Bias motivated events.
And it's something that organizations are starting to measure, which is great, because what we measure, then we start to understand it.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's a complicated concept to think about. Unconscious bias. And we all have bias and we need bias. That's how we sort information quickly.
But to stop and be present to. Am I experiencing bias right now? How could I think a little differently about this?
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I think just recognizing that in itself could potentially turn around how somebody is leading within their field and their organization.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah. I spoke a few weeks ago at groundbreaking Women in Construction in San Diego and a young man walked out. If I finished my book signings and everything, and it was just the two of us, and he said, how can I demonstrate allyship?
And I said, here's three really easy things. When you see a woman being spoken over in a meeting, which is the number one microaggression against women, if you could turn and say, could we go back to that idea Gretchen had that was. I'm really interested in that idea.
And then maybe the person that spoke over her in private, you could go up to that person and say, hey, John, I love how. Or it could be Sally. It could be a woman speaking over a woman. I love how enthusiastic you are. But next time, you might want to let Gretchen finish her idea before you jump in and say that in a gracious way. And those are little examples of allyship, where we lift up other people's voices. Voices. And help them feel empowered and that they belong.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Okay. I mean, it's. Yeah. Another brilliant example, Gretchen. Let's just explore, because I want to go into allyship a little bit more deeply in a while. But let's explore something else that I noticed your PhD research identified for agile routines.
How can leaders apply agile leadership under the intense stakes that we experience, obviously in the construction industry or the likes of energy projects?
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Worley, Williams and Lawlor, Christopher Worley wrote a book about these routines and they actually identified them. I use their research as the founding research for my dissertation, so I want to give them full credit. And there's a book called the Agility Factor if people want to read about it. And actually Linda Holbesh has written another great book about agility. I don't have them both sitting in front of me, so I'm hoping but Linda Holbesh and Christopher Worley, two noted experts, Linda in England and Christopher in California.
I wanted to understand through my research how leaders create nimble organizations.
And so I measured in 126 business units the behaviors of the leaders as reported by people who work for them and these the presence of these four routines.
And it's interesting what I found out. And some of the most agile companies in my study, there were 47 corporations, 126 business units were construction companies.
And I think because we're constantly reforming to do different projects and we deal with a lot of the cyclical nature of construction boom and bust. It's a little bit of a boom and bust industry that we're fairly adept at it. But as the world continues to get more complicated, our ability to perceive not just what's going on in our industry, but what's going on in the world that's going to drive change in our industry.
How we Agile strategizing is about ensuring that everybody and every position understands our strategy so that daily actions are aligned with the most critical priorities of the organization.
The lowest scoring of the four routines is actually agile testing and that's having rigor around how we try things. So not just saying, hey, let's go try this. Oh, I don't think that worked.
Not just giving busy people something to try too, because then if it failed, we don't know if it failed because it was a bad idea or because we just gave it to really busy people who had other jobs, but how we. And I think this comes into the lack of R and D in construction because nobody wants to try anything on their project and how we are really pushing the boundaries of technology, adoption, sustainability, etc. So yeah, I loved studying agility and there's a lot of great thinkers out there on the topic of agility and how to build those routines into your team's and organizations.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, as you've already touched on, Gretchen, this is a particularly challenging time where agility is really necessary for people working in construction.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, Eric Topol, which I just heard, he's written a new book on aging. It's on order, it should be showing up today. But he wrote another book called the Patient will see you now. And it's about disruption in the healthcare industry. Everybody should read it because things are not going to get less complicated over the next few decades. Our ability to be nimble in responding to those changes ensures the longevity of our organizations. I had a lot of fun studying it in my PhD.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say it sounds like a very interesting book. And I would say from what you've said about it, Gretchen, that it's not only remaining nimble for your organization, but actually for your personal feeling about how you're getting along in the world. Because it is this very challenging time in history.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And there is a chapter on agility in my book. I couldn't study agility in my PhD and not include it in my book as well. There's actually people who've researched agility at the individual level because you look at me, I've gone from running manufacturing plants into management consulting, working for the largest investment banking strategy firm in construction. Then I took a break when my kids were 7 and 8, I ran a nonprofit foundation. For 5, I was assistant dean of a business school. How are those skills transferable from position to position? Then I came back in as president of another consulting firm in the construction industry, management consulting. So thinking about how we remain agile, how we remain curious, that's another thing about me. People joke about having four degrees, which I am a first generation college graduate. I'm just curious about things. I think neuroscience might be the next thing that I go study. Just so interested in all the things we're learning about our brains.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Okay, well, I'm going to throw something in there for you there because we're going to do a little miniseries in September featuring a chap who is in Cambridge in the UK at the moment.
And his theory is about neurosustainability, which is basically very simple version how the neuroplasticity plasticity of the brain is affected by the built environment.
Both the.
Yeah, exactly. Both the natural part of it and the built in part of it.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago that the word neuroplasticity was going to come out of my mouth on a regular basis, I would have said, really? But yes, no, it does. I talk about neuroplasticity a lot, but that's a fascinating concept.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. It is indeed. But listen, enough about. The chap's name is Mohammed. Enough about talking about that. We'll definitely be in contact about that. But let's go back to your own experience, Gretchen. And what about systemic barriers that have held women back in the sectors that, you know, you've been involved in, construction, energy, mining and so on. How might leadership and cultural interventions dismantle those?
[00:25:23] Speaker B: You have to start with bias.
You really. And understanding. And people say we shouldn't be focused on quotas or we shouldn't be focused on data, but you really need to understand.
And I asked someone, a very senior leader the other day, what is your turnover rate for men versus women? And they didn't know the answer to that. And they really want to focus on getting more women into their organization, their construction company.
So we have to start with the data. If your turnover for women is three times what it is for men, why then you dig into that. What is the reason? Why are women leaving your organization?
Or to look at it by age or look at it by background, but it's about starting with data and really understanding who is thriving in our organization, who is not thriving in our organization. I, I sat in a meeting with a young man who's an architect, who went to work for a construction company. I was convinced that he would feel as though he belonged. He's not Caucasian.
And he said, after a year, I'm, I'm ready to leave. I don't appreciate the culture, I don't see people that look like me.
And so, yeah, and it's interesting because I keep having this phrase pop in and this has to do with the institute I'm studying starting women. Thrivinginconstruction.org is the website and it's intended to be a global institute to advance women. But I keep thinking of this phrase, we want women.
And if we went after that as aggressively as we went after physical safety 30 years ago when the owners started saying, hey, if you don't have a safety record of this, you're not going to be able to bid our jobs.
And that drove a lot of change when the CERT and cii, some of the big associations, the Construction Industry Institute, got serious about safety, physical safety. And now we see that same focus now on mental well being. You have to say, if we want women, if we want people with different backgrounds, you have to lean into that. And you have to be brutally honest when you look at your senior leadership team and what that looks like.
Yeah, that's a starting point. Just be brutally honest and start with data and start with your intentions. You know, I visited a mind site in. I won't even name the country to protect the innocent. Right. Every single woman I saw was blonde, under the age of 40 and blonde. And oh, my gosh, do they not have brunettes in this part of this country?
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Oh, dear.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: And they do. But. But, you know, is there some kind of bias going on in who we hire? And we hire people that look like us, and that makes us feel comfortable. And so anyway, it's just. It's really complicated. But you have to start with that true intent. We want women, or we want people with diverse backgrounds, or we want young people or whatever that intent is of more. Because there is massive amounts of research that teams made up of different people and teams that include women are smarter collectively. It doesn't matter what the collective IQ is of the team. It's really about bringing that different thinking.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, here's a little example. I have an antique lamp that was my grandfather's. It's. It's. It's a bull. He was a. He. He raised Black Angus cattle as a hobby. And it's from Scotland. And it's got this shade that isn't. Doesn't have the prongs on the top anymore. And. And I really want to have it restored. This just happened yesterday. And I went into this lighting place that I talked to on the phone. They said, we might be able to help you. And the first person was like, no, I don't think we can do anything with that. And I said, well, I talked to this woman on the phone. Well, she's about to come back from lunch. And then a man wandered over. So pretty soon there's four of us. And we came up with a solution of buying a lampshade that is the same size and slipping the original one over it. I'm an engineer, right. I can figure out how to attach this shade to the other one. But it took four of us to figure out how to restore this lamp.
And after the first person said, no, we can't help you.
And that's just a very micro example of bringing diverse thinking. None of us, we all came up with the idea together because we just kept throwing things out there and, oh, what if we tried this? And what if we tried that? So I think that's just something that happened Yesterday. That I think exemplifies the power of diverse teams thinking about problems.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Definitely, definitely. And it leads very nicely into allyship, which is obviously one of your very, you know, important and central topics. You emphasize, Gretchen, that male allies are essential for industry transformation.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: The Australian Constructors association, aca, had almost as many women on the board as men. And I thought, and this is the. The 19 largest contractors in Australia. Australia is 27 million people, so it's a much smaller market than America.
And I thought, wow, I wonder why they have so many women. Well, the reason they have so many women is that three. They had an almost entirely male board, and three of the men sat there one day and said, this is ridiculous. We need diverse thinking. And required every company to name a female co director.
And I think there's one or two that didn't, but it's almost 50% women, 50% men. And I've gotten to know several of the people on the board now, and they said the first year it was a little uncomfortable. The men just, oh, gosh, now there's all these women in the room. And then now it's just normal. It's just they've normalized the fact that they have lots of women in the room. But those were male allies. A woman would have never been able to make that change.
And that's where men that have the courage to stand up and say, like the Steve Davies of the Australian Pipeline and Gas association that I spoke of earlier, these are men that say, we need to do something different. I don't know what the answer is, but let's think about it in a different way.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Sure. Do you have any examples, Gretchen, apart from Australia, of a particular company or scenario where male allyship really changed the workplace culture and opened doors for others?
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I actually interviewed him for the book because I said, lou, I'm going to write about this. I want to make sure these stories are true.
When I joined FMI in 94, so that was the investment banking, management consulting firm. I was woman number two. So woman number one at Raulston, woman number two at fmi, I was doing strategy work for contractors. And we had contractors that said, gosh, Gretchen, you're going to send Gretchen up. I think I need, like, a John or a David or somebody to do my strategic plan. And Lou's response was, you're going to need to go find another company because Gretchen's an important member of our team.
And that. And I understood the importance then, but I certainly really understand the importance now.
And sure enough, A year later, when I found myself pregnant with my first child, and I'd been, you know, I was flying 140,000 miles a year, four days a week.
I sat down to tell him, and he said, just another data point. We'll work this out. And we did.
Now I had two kids 13 months apart. That made flying for two years really interesting. And then I became managing director there, and I started my own business unit. And then I hired more women into fmi, and I mentored them, and I sponsored them to be successful. But it took Lou ensuring that I felt like I belonged, that he was going to stand up for me, he was going to back me.
And then that caused me to stay, and that caused me to become one of six managing directors there and really, I think, opened the door for a lot more women to be successful at fmi.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: It's an amazing story and obviously a huge inspiration just listening to how quickly the shift can happen if there's somebody like the person you were dealing with there and how quickly that can actually happen and what that means for everybody involved.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, go back to Ralston Purina. I worked at a plant in Oklahoma for two years, worked my way through the training program. At one point told the plant manager, I'm out of here. I'm going to law school. I'm tired of smelling like dog food every day. He said, no, no, no. We're going to give you your own plant.
Mark Burns gave me a cereal plant in Davenport, Iowa, to run. It was one of four plants there.
So within two years, I had my own plant all to myself, and we made cereal. And then the oat bran craze hit, and I had to figure out how to make it go from one shift to three shifts and make oat bran, which we weren't designed to make. And I did that successfully. And so then Ron Erps, who was head of all four of those plants, we bought Beechnut baby food.
I went in his office. I said, take me with you to New York. And he said, I don't have a job for you. And I said, I don't care. I think it's going to be a great learning experience. We'll figure something out. Within six months, I was running that plant and 800 employees. Employees. And I was 26, 27 years old. I can only imagine the conversations he had to have with people who thought it was absolutely bonkers to put me in charge of this manufacturing plant that we were trying to turn around and break even, but. And it turned out to be a great Experience. And then I ran the distribution side for a year. So, yeah, male allies have played a huge role. I would love to say female allies did, but there weren't any women above me. There weren't any women to sponsor me or mentor me. I didn't have any woman to look up to for the first 20 years of my career. I had zero.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think I'm not going to get into what age you are and what age I am, but we're not too far removed, I don't think, in ages. So I've had, you know, similar experiences to yourself without being in the same career path as yourself. Gretchen, going back to inclusive teams and I suppose tying them into, you know, construction engineering, that type of thing. Why do you feel inclusion is so tied to innovation in those type of industries?
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Oh, well, I mean, it's just back to the research. If people go to my podcast, greatness, there's a gentleman named Robert Marshall, Bob Marshall. And I met him when I started teaching at the Australian National University when I moved to Australia.
And he's been studying teams and technical teams. He studied like, I don't know, 800 teams or something crazy.
And his data on team performance is just extraordinary. And the ability to collaborate, the ability to innovate, and how that is linked to the diversity of the team. So it's critical because the facts back to.
You can't argue with the facts. Right. About team performance. And there's just so much research out there. And to me, if you're not taking advantage of that, your competitor is taking advantage of that. Right. So this is about remaining competitive. And in fact, Sam Clark, who Clark Construction and Lansing, who came and spoke with me also at agc, after implementing significant efforts to identify unconscious bias and things in their company, they have women beating down the door to go to work for them. They've grown exponentially and they're ten times more profitable.
So if people listening think, well, this is just about being nice to different types of people or whatever, it's really a business decision. And he says, I'm focused upon it because I know my competitors aren't. And it's giving me the competitive advantage.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it just seems to me like it's a business model that should be replicate it time and time again because you're breaking down barriers, you know, you're giving opportunities to all sorts of people and you're creating a culture of inclusivity.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And for very smart reasons for doing that. And it's fun. I really enjoy.
I really Enjoy seeing different types of people be successful. As I said, I'm 60, so I'll just put it out there. I turned 60 last year and that was the impetus for me starting this institute too, because I thought this is my Legacy. When only 2.4% of electricians are female in the US and 1.9% of plumbers, we're not doing well enough as an industry.
And people that just throw their hands up and say, well, we can't find them or whatever, it's not a good enough excuse.
And it's just really fun.
I think it's really fun to enable the success of different types of people and to see them thrive and feel they belong and love our industry.
I love the construction industry and it's an important. I spend a lot of time with people outside of construction talking about this.
The ability to charge our cell phones, to have refrigeration for our food, food to be able to transport ourselves.
We build and maintain the assets of civilization.
And so a sustainable construction industry is a societal concern.
Right. If we don't have the people to repair things, if we don't have the people to build things, data centers and all those critical assets, mission critical construction. Right.
It is not good for society when we have 750,000 person shortage in America and 290,000 construction worker shortage in Australia.
It's a global challenge that we need to be focused upon solving.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: It really is. It really is. Now you've come out with your age. I'm 57, so I'm only three years younger. I've got that landmark birthday ahead of me. And I guess, yes, I would have a lot of empathy and similar feelings about legacy and, you know, what sort of difference one person can make with their lives and bringing your own life experience. And what are you going to do in your particular case? You've got the book, of course, and you've got, you know, so many amazing things. But let's talk about what's, you know, really important right now as well as what we've mentioned so far. And I believe that that's the Women Thriving in Construction Institute.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Yep. Women in Construction, a global institute.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Okay, so what's your bold vision for that?
[00:40:41] Speaker B: My bold vision is that we have parity in the construction industry.
And the reason it's not meant to replicate anything that anybody else is doing. So you have nawic, pronounced nawic in Australia, the National association of Women in Construction, lots of different organizations and I, and I see us at a bit of a tipping point with women in Construction because of the shortages. But what I see, and I think because I divide my time between Australia and America, so I sit on the Construction Industry Culture Task Force for Australia, the AGC's diversity and inclusion. I see a lot of little flames of things, but nobody's turning it into a bonfire. And that's really what we're trying to do at the Institute. We just published our second study. So just starting out with once again, good data, here's the 20 largest, the first one. 20 countries with the largest construction spend. What percentage are women? China is in the lead with 16%. I think Australia was at 13. The United States maybe at 11. A lot of the South American countries are at 4.
Then we did a study that we just released on what's one critical initiative in each of these countries that is advancing women.
And now we're doing a study with FMI as our research partner. Big, big shout out to fmi. And we're partnering with the national center for Construction Education and Research, NCCER on the first study of every trade in America. What percentage is female? So we have good baselines. That's why I know that 2.4% of electricians are female.
We are hope to be this global source of data on the status of women and the convener of the boldest thinkers to identify either strategies that are already working that need to be scaled and hopefully down the road we'll be raising money to scale things or once again, things we haven't even thought of. But if we get these really bold thinkers in a room together at a state, national or global level that were coming up with some new ideas and we had this. And scaling is our third pillar. And then our fourth pillar is really to band together with lift up people that are doing the inspiring work through global storytelling and really shining a light on the positive things that are happening in these different countries so that people sit up and take notice and go, oh, gosh, they have 30% women on their construction project. Maya Rosenquist with Mortensen just ran into her. She's a good friend. They have a project with 30% women. How did they get to 30% women? The iron workers in Boston have 20% women in their local. How did they do that? How do we replicate that? And how do we celebrate the positive things that are happening that are bringing diverse people into our industry? So, yeah, it's a big undertaking to start a global institute for from scratch. But we have a website, as I said, Women Thriving in Construction website.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I have it open here because your vision is coming through the website very clearly. So it's an excellent website.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: Thank you. It's a start. We just got our 501C3 status in the United States three weeks ago.
And so now the fundraising starts to fund the efforts. We're just starting to populate our advisory board as we speak. There's 17 individuals that have agreed that are very prominent leaders in the industry and I'm incredibly grateful to them because them joining former CEOs of very large construction, global construction companies, that sends the message that this is important work and we are embracing and collaborating with all different types of people to advance this work. So yeah, it's really exciting. Scary, but you know, back to the age question. One of my girlfriends who started a non profit years ago around women in film, when I told her about this idea, she looked at me and she said, how old are you? At the time I was 59. And I said 59. And she said to me, you have dragon slaying years left in you.
And I went out and bought a dragon.
Okay, I have this dragon. I'm looking at it right now. It's like a meter away from me. But what gives me the courage to do it is all the people that I've asked for help. My board, our programs committee, we're building out our research committee and building out our short and long term research agenda. So I'm not coming to it saying I have the answers. I have the passion to make a difference and I'm going to find the smartest, boldest people to help me figure out what the answers are.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a wonderful concept and the intentions and the plans that you have there are.
I believe that we'll have a conversation maybe in two to three years time and you'll have fulfilled quite a few of those already.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: I thought about it for four years and I finally got to the point where I'm like, gosh I darn it, you're really going to regret this if you don't do it. And I can't make things worse. It's not like I can make the situation worse. Right. So I finally said whatever impact I can make over the next 10 years, the next decade, and the Institute live long after that. That's why I started as a nonprofit. And yeah. So exciting.
Exciting.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: It's really. I have to say, Gretchen, I'd love to have another conversation, you know, when, when the time feels right to you so we can do a, an update epis episode.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: You know, I would love that. Absolutely love that. Really have enjoyed being here, speaking with you today.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: Likewise. Likewise. Now, what is one leadership myth that you'd like to bust right now, Gretchen?
[00:46:40] Speaker B: That introverts can't be leaders.
And I hear that all the time. Well, I'm an introvert, and I know lots of introverts that are incredible leaders.
Introverts, just when they spend a lot of energy with people, need to go charge their batteries by being alone.
And so we have this. These paradigms about. And unfortunately, we have reinforced this in the construction industry, because you look at me, I was sitting at a table, had to be that type to be successful in construction 40 years ago.
But back to making space for different types of people, different people with softer voices, people that think in different ways. And yes, absolutely, introverts can be great leaders. We think that as we progress as leaders, it means we're supposed to have more answers. I think we actually have less answers. We have more questions.
Great leaders ask great questions. When I stepped down as president of Continuum Advisory Group and handed the baton to a woman 20 years younger than me, I said to her, don't forget, it's not about having the answers, it's about having the questions.
And so not feeling that pressure that it's about building relationships and trust and enabling the success of the people that you work with. So, yeah, those would be the two I'd go to first.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: A lot of people wouldn't label me as an introvert, but I would definitely need a lot of time to myself to recuperate after any kind of sort of like meeting in a large group or even a small group. So, yeah, I definitely get that one a lot. And then the second one, I think that, you know, at the end of the day, if you're a leader who knows or wishes to know everything, surely you're coming across like more of a dictator than anything else.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah, nobody likes to be with the person who thinks they're the smartest person in the room.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: And it's fun to go, gosh, here's this challenge we're facing. What does everybody think? And that great leaders speak last, because once you put your opinion on the table, that's it. You're going to shut down thinking about things. So that ability to really walk into a room and say, hey, something's happening. Let's talk about, what do you all think about this? And just being able to sit and listen. I have a friend who's a great leader, a significant CEO of different companies, and who sits on her hands during meetings to remind herself to listen to different people's voices. Such a critical skill.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Now, Gretchen, what final message would you like to leave with women who are striving to lead, but also, of course, for men who are choosing to ally effectively in these industries that we've been discussing?
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah, these industries are not broken, but they can be better.
And I. I hope my love for these industries. I spend every day with people in these industries how much I deeply care for the industry. And so I don't want to come across as being critical.
But we have a significant talent shortage and we've been talking about this for a long time.
The listeners out there really taking this to heart and being able to think, think strategically, to take the time to think strategically about how we build a more inclusive industry so that different types of people, lots and lots of different types of people are being successful in this industry. That would be my ask of your listeners.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Is there anything else that you feel you'd like to add before we wrap it up?
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I think you've picked my brain clean, Jackie. Those are all my good thoughts for the day. So been a pleasure to be here speaking with you. The opportunity to talk about the book and the institute and yeah, just thinking on leadership, it always. And neuroplasticity, one of my favorite words. But it's really been a joy to speak with you.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: So I've been with Gretchen Gagle, and all the information that is very pertinent to our conversation today will be on the program pages that you can see on your favorite podcast directory, also on the Constructive Voices website. So you'll be looking for the Women Thriving in Construction website and also a link to where you can buy Gretchen's book. It's been a real pleasure, Gretchen. Thank you so much.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: Thanks, Jackie. Really enjoyed it.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: This is Constructive Voices.
