Creating Impact: On Personal Branding, Engagement, And Adversity With Victoria Pelletier
Get ready for an enlightening conversation as Tom Dardick sits down with the “Turn Around Queen” and the “CEO Whisperer,” Victoria Pelletier. In this episode, Victoria shares her journey from becoming a COO at just 24 to her current role as a keynote speaker and author of Influence Unleashed. They delve into critical topics such as personal branding, where Victoria breaks down her four key components: expertise, storytelling, uniqueness, and legacy. The discussion also covers the future of work, emphasizing the balance between technology and human connection, and how leaders must adapt to remote work challenges while maintaining engagement and productivity. Victoria’s insights into purpose-driven leadership, the importance of authenticity, and the need for courage and vulnerability in both personal and professional realms are compelling. Tune in to learn how to foster a resilient, inclusive, and adaptable workplace that champions human connection and growth.
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Creating Impact: On Personal Branding, Engagement, And Adversity With Victoria Pelletier
It's my pleasure to welcome Victoria Pelletier to the show. Victoria is an accomplished executive. She was a COO at age 24. She has had a long career and has been called The Turnaround Queen and the CEO Whisperer. She's very accomplished in the area of leadership. She's a keynote speaker and an author. Her books are called Influence Unleashed and Whole Human Leadership. We'll talk about those topics, as well as personal branding and what things look like in the workplace as technology impacts us and things unfold. It's my pleasure to welcome Victoria Pelletier to the show.
Welcome, Victoria. I appreciate you appearing on the show with us.
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Personal Branding
You're very welcome. Let's start with what areas you have become experts in. You have a very celebrated career path. I think there's a lot people can learn from. One of the things that I think a lot about it is personal branding and what that means in terms of how we think about ourselves, how we communicate about ourselves, and maybe strategies we take as it relates to our career. I'd like to start maybe with a broad conversation around that and see where it goes.
I’m happy to. In personal branding, I've been heavily engaged in managing my brand for many even though I don't think I had the vernacular many years ago to call it that, but I made a shift from banking the B2C world of operations into B2B professional services. It was at that moment that I was accountable for our sales and our revenue, receiving RFPs, and the way we'd go to conferences. I started to think at that point like, “How do we differentiate the company?” but that's different. That's a corporate brand strategy, but the individuals, people do business with, people they like and they trust and therefore want to do business with. It became about, “How do my sales, client management team, and myself differentiate ourselves?”
People do business with people they like and trust, and therefore want to do business with.
That's where the journey started. I attribute a lot of career success that I've had to the fact that I have a very strong brand. I was recognized a number of years ago when I worked for IBM by LinkedIn as their number one social seller worldwide for IBM amongst its employees. That's a combination of not just brand but engagement on the platform, with my network, et cetera. IBM had me develop the training for other IBM executives in terms of how to build their strength around the brand. That's where I spend a lot more time now coaching not only peers but also outside of the community, and my work community, and added it to the list of keynotes that I deliver.
I had a book come out on the topic. The reason I decided to hand it all down is I'm in a career transition from my own C-Suite executive career. I spent a lot more time on LinkedIn. I'm seeing people post and there's gamification of the algorithm within LinkedIn and otherwise, people asking for likes and comments and engagement. I don't see a clear brand strategy. I asked the question to a few people like, “Why are you doing this? Do you want to go viral? Do you want to become a thought leader?” I'm like, “I'd like to put it out there in the world, but I think that there's a different way to be thinking about branding.” I see most people stall at the first of four key elements that I see. That is, you know what you do your subject matter expertise, what you went to school for, the job function you're in, the industry, you know the best, and that's foundational. There are many people who do what we do in our subsets.
It doesn't distinguish you very much just that.
You said a very important word distinguish. For me, you need to extend beyond what you do and subject matter expertise into a little bit of storytelling. Who are you as a whole human? What lived experiences do you have? What are your interests, passions, and values? Those need to come out. The next step is how are you different from others. To some extent, storytelling lived experience, and differentiation are completely intertwined. I would want people to approach it with strategic intentionality around the development of their brand. This is you curating the narrative and not letting other people do that for you. What do they say about you in the room? You want to help develop that. When you think about differentiation, it's then, “Who's your target audience?”
You shouldn't try and go peanut butter spread for everyone, figure out who the audience is and then who's like you in the space, who are your competitors, and then you start to lean into what makes you different. The last piece in this is legacy and impact. What do you want to be known for? I don't know about you, but for me, I think now that I'm a lot older, what I wanted in my 20s and as I was an executive is very different than where I am now in my late 40s.
Although I've been successful from a corporate perspective, I've got nicknames like The Turnaround Queen. That's not what I would want to go on my proverbial tombstone. I want it to be about the fact that I am an advocate for social equity, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion and that I was a whole human leader who operated very differently. I left the workplace community and world a better place when I left it than when I came into it. I also raised two good humans. It starts with the end in mind and builds into those four foundational areas.
You put a whole lot of clay on the table there.
I figured I would go all out.
To review and be clear. you start with the what and that has a way of focusing us in and then the storytelling with the interests, passions, and values gets us connected to more of our authenticity perhaps starting to open up the book as to why we do what we do. Am I getting that right?
It's a combination of a couple of things. It should get at your why. That comes through things like values and some lived experience. That's your why, but also it's the hook. People do business with people they like, trust and they want to do business with. Years ago, I was asked to take over a troubled client portfolio, and the most senior woman client contact who ran a majority of the portfolio, I couldn't get in front of her. My hook was hockey mom. Lots of time spent in hockey arenas with our kids, but it was that shared interest and connecting in a very different way that led to a business relationship that became incredibly fruitful.
Thinking about it that way, but when you're seeing through your social media feed stuff coming up, like if you see someone who's not just a like work content. They're not just sharing an article or marketing collateral from work, but they're talking about something that's much more personal. That's what goes, “It's a spark. That's the hook.” It's important for people to share that.
I was thinking about the phrase, “Set yourself on fire and people come to watch you burn.” The idea of being passionate and feeding that part of ourselves or whatever it might be.
One thing I didn't say also about these foundations, these are the four foundational elements, but I believe there are what I refer to as the three acts of engagement. If you're going to do this, you need to be courageous, vulnerable, and authentic. The authenticity part, you want to hook, you want eyeballs on you and you want attention, but it needs to be incredibly authentic and connected to who you are as a human being. As much as I talk about curating or developing the narrative around your brand, it needs to be incredibly authentic to who you are both IRL as my young would say in real life as well as your digital presence. When you meet me, there's no different version of Victoria. There's some stuff I'm going to post on my personal Instagram feed that I wouldn't post on LinkedIn.
There's situational awareness stuff there.
It's all the same version of Victoria, very authentic to me.
The word I use to describe that is congruence. Everything lines up and pushes in the same direction or pulls in the same direction and you're not surprising people by, “That seemed incongruent.” Part of the passion I think does that to some degree because we're putting energy towards something and it has that aligning effect to it, doesn't it? Isn't that one of the things that passion does for us? It helps us get clear and get us focused.
A caveat a bit to that is if you are myopically focused on a passion that you want to pursue, you could be showing up online exclusively representing that topic and without thinking about how you talk about the topic. There's this strategic intentionality, a phrase I love to think about. There's passion and that will should come out. If you're incredibly focused on what AI means right now, everything you post about that. You need to make it personal and more about who's the human that's deeply interested in AI, why, and how's that connected to other things.
I suppose there's a little bit of a spectrum. Some people are very focused on one thing and that has an advantage. I go further in that one direction, but if I have a little bit of a wider frame or I'm a little bit more versatile, I can bring different elements to that same thing or I can connect with a wider range of people, a wider audience or a wider range of situations. You probably go back to what's real and true inside for you, and let that live and have respect. That gets into that strategic intention about how you're different because a lot of times people, especially in our early days, are looking to belong, conform, not be ridiculed, not be bullied, not be judged, and not be excluded. We learn to see those things that are different about ourselves as liabilities as kids too often. That's something that we have to navigate past and embrace. Do you see it that way?
One hundred percent. It's important to recognize that our brand and the way we show up is going to evolve and change over time for some of the reasons you said, we're going to gain confidence in what we used to feel as a hindrance or being another to then as we mature, recognizing that it becomes a superpower and you're like prepared to share that. The things we want, whether it's on the personal or professional side, very much also evolve and change. Be incredibly comfortable that it will evolve.
Personal Branding: It's important to recognize that our brand and the way we show up is going to evolve and change over time.
I think of my own personal example, I had to make a very conscious pivot in that my early years and lived experience had me create walls to protect myself. As a young female executive plus my lived experience, I showed up never showing vulnerability, never showing emotion. I'm not going to give anyone a reason to question me and why I have my seat at the table. I found out I had a nickname The Iron Maiden. I’m highly effective in delivering business results, but I suspect my team feared me, not follow me. That's not innately who I am. I'm all marshmallow inside. I cry at fighting commercials.
I got a warm gooey interior.
My nickname is Turtle for that very reason. My best friend calls me that. Tough exterior, I can handle a lot but all soft and mushy on the inside. I was afraid I would never have told my lived experience of trauma. I had that informed the way I protected myself and the fact that as the only woman, I was many years younger than most of my peers, etc.
You were COO at 24. That's pretty young for that kind of responsibility.
As I matured and gained confidence, not only in my seat at the table as I literally matured and I was similar ages to others, and also as I gained confidence in who I was, I even arguably loved myself a little bit more. I was okay to bring the walls down. I had to show up in a way that made me uncomfortable. I’m walking into a meeting and making small talk. I am A type of personality. I jumped into the agenda all the time, “Slow that down. Let me build authentic relationships with people. Let me share more of myself and show up in person.”
We're talking about many years ago. Online was a little less of a factor then, but then much more. I had to make that change. Some of it was very deliberate through maturity, confidence, and recognizing that like the experiences I had, I didn't want to tell people because they're very different from others and are a big part of my why and a big part of what fuels me going forward. It's become powerful to share it.
It's a happier place without those walls, isn't it?
It is.
Future Of Work
This might be a good time to shift because you mentioned a different world now than it was many years ago. You're a forward looker. You're looking at what things are, where they're going and you have some thoughts to share about the workforce of the future and the direction of whole human leadership. I'd like to get into those topics and see where that takes us.
A big part of my career has been leading very large teams. I usually lead operations and commercial functions. That's where like 80% of the headcount often sits. I've had lots of hands-on experience. I've been through eighteen mergers and acquisitions The companies I worked for probably another twenty with clients I've supported. I've been often leading outsourcing-based organizations as well where year mess for less, you look at automation and different processes and things like that.
I shifted maybe not quite many years ago to running human capital businesses where I'm consulting and delivering services for other companies’ workforces. That's given me a lot of insight into the workforce and where companies are moving and how they need to be thinking differently. Everything from leading with purpose in that organizations need to be clear on their purpose and living it, not just a fancy vision-mission statement around that on the wall. As leaders, it's our role to bring that down to the individual level and let them understand how the work that they do, what purpose it has in contributing to the overarching organizational purpose or maybe societal depending on what it is.
Can we drill into that a little bit? I find when I go into organizations, it's all too common that we see the mission or the values on the wall. When I ask people what they are who work there, it's shocking how few people can say. The words that they see every day are not even top-of-mind aware. Where I'd like to drill down there is how a leader effectively goes from the saying to the living it and having that be the walk culturally.
That becomes another act of courage I believe in many instances. Sadly, incentives drive behavior. That's a reality. What I see is this misalignment between the stated organizational values and the metrics within the business and the incentives behind those. It drives a different behavior. The courageousness comes from people who are going to say, “I'm going to do the right thing.”
I often will remind leaders, “Doing the right thing doesn't mean you need to trade off for strong business performance and meeting the objectives of your stakeholders to do the right thing. In fact, if you do the right thing in terms of a very different leadership style in terms of focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and moving the needle forward in terms of being bold and saying no to worker activities that don't align back to values, that drives stronger engagement, both from customers, if you're sharing it ex some of the things externally, but from an employee perspective.”
Personal Branding: Doing the right thing doesn't mean you need to trade off for strong business performance and meeting the objectives of your stakeholders.
When employees are happy, productive, and engaged, their productivity goes up. You see top-line improvement and often bottom-line as well because there's less turnover. Not only does productivity stay higher, there is greater problem-solving and less risk associated with business. That's a mindset shift that has to change. I encourage companies to look at the incentive models as well and what they measure and look at some different facets of what they measure to get a more holistic view of culture and outcomes that aren't purely about sales, revenue, and profit.
One of the dynamics that is a challenge nowadays and accelerated path with the lockdowns from the pandemic is remote work and people communicating like you and I are communicating now, which works. We're having a conversation. We feel connected to some degree, but it's not the same thing as if we're physically proximate. We have lots of cultures that were born on that. We all work at this place and now we're transitioning to this, “I could work with anybody anywhere at any time. It doesn't matter.” That's putting some strains I think on some of the paradigms of culture that we've adopted for long. What's your view on those challenges and what leaders might do about them?
You're right, there's this incredible shift that's coming at the pendulum swung. It's trying to swing back, but the reality is I think employees want it to be somewhere in the middle. There's a need for a hybrid work environment for a number of reasons. One of the other ways we need to be looking at the future workforce is looking more finite at skills and where can we find that skill, in which case you do act and now you've got the globe, you don't need to be down.
That's the advantage.
I don't like the headlines that we all heard of, like The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, but that's the sentiment that was coming out. A big part of what we see is this backlash now from companies who are saying, “We have to be 100% back in the office.” A lot of that is putting the cost of real estate aside, there's a lack of trust. For many leaders still, it's like, “I need to see bums and seats.” That doesn't equate to deliverables and productivity and outcomes. We need to demonstrate that we can trust our teams and there are literally some jobs that don't need to be sitting in the office full-time. The hybrid environment I think is critically important because of the creativity and innovation that flow when you get together and it's proven like the pheromones. I'm not talking about like for sexual attraction here.
It's human connection.
Being with people and looking in the whites of one another's eyes, not through Zoom but literally sitting in person, also helps build that connection and trust with one another. We know that people don't leave companies, they leave leaders and their teams. If we're together in person, it's a lot harder to do that. I do think hybrid is the way of the future with leaders who are clear. I have had this phrase for a long time, well before COVID and it was, “There are no schedules, there are just deliverables.” You've never had to ask me for permission to work remotely or to leave early. There are some exceptions.
If we have a client deliverable or a client meeting at a certain time, that's non-negotiable, but otherwise giving them lots of flexibility around that. I think to be successful, we're going to need to create much more of a hybrid environment. When we're hiring people trying to, although the globe is accessible to us now, still trying to get people within a certain radius of an office, you can bring people together.
Not completely abandoning the fact that we have to be humanly connected. You see that as part of the workforce of the future. What are some other elements that you would describe when you talk about the workplace of the future?
I said purpose. We've talked about where the work gets done. A big one is the way in which we need to look at our skills. This somewhat connects also to diversity and inclusion as well. The role of HR should be the strategic business advisor to the business leaders, not the transactional activities. I mean that can be handled in an HR contact center, but truly strategic advisor where we do a look at our 3 and 5-year strategic plan married up with what new products, services, etc., we delivering and what's going to be required to deliver those, then break that down into the functional skills that are going to be required and doing an analysis of a tough look in the mirror to be honest around what skills do we have within the organization today and how are we going to bridge to where we're going in that three-year strategy.
Build the talent by developing it in-house. Are we going to go and buy it? Do we borrow it through contingent labor? Is it automated through bots? Looking at all of that, but also it means challenging the way we think about how to get those skills and where to get those skills. By that, we don't necessarily all need four-year degrees. You're seeing more and more companies moving away from that and maybe certifications on certain things. The other big one is around potential and it hits hard at like the whole diversity piece. A good example, at least from a gender perspective, women typically do not apply for a promotion or a new job unless they believe they meet 9 or 10 out of the 10 requisite skills listed. Men do it at 5 or 6.
I thought you were going to say 2, 3, or 4. I could do that. The funny thing is neither one is necessarily wrong. It's just a different framework of how you're approaching it.
I truly believe, and I've embraced this very much as a leader, that's incumbent upon me. I hire, whether it's to become a sponsor for someone or whatever, I'm looking at hiring or promoting someone with people who've had a solid performance in the roles that they've been in, but much more on potential. If someone only meets 7 out of 10, but I see incredible potential, great work ethic, good fit, and all these other things, then it's my job as the leader to bridge the gap to get them to 10. Whether that's identifying the training or maybe it's coaching for me, whatever it is, and what comes with that often is a very diverse and rich experience, whether it's lived experience in different geographies or it's all the other elements of diversity we think like the richest that comes together, but bringing that.
This is where you see incredible things happen. I'm saddened to see things like some of the affirmative action things that have been removed here in the US over the last couple of years because we're the needle's still far from where it needs to go, but this is where I'm encouraging leaders to think very differently around skills, how do you get it, how do you build it and how do you find it in talent you wouldn't have necessarily thought of to unseen potential talent.
Generally speaking, when I'm thinking of skills, there are various instruments that we can use in the workplace that have maybe a standard list of soft skills or whatever. Generally, people have a basket of them. The basket is in different proportions and what their potential is may be hard to measure in one way, but you can see it in another way. I'm a big fan of using multi-sciences when I'm using any psychometrics for that reason.
The bottom line as far as what a person views about themselves is we make errors of two kinds. 1) We way overestimate how good we are at something or how developed we are at something. Another is how way underdeveloped we are and something else. I like the idea earlier when you were saying that courage because to me it's honesty and courage. That's the foundation of all virtues because you have to be able to look in the mirror and see what you see. It's only those vulnerabilities and fears that keep us. We're looking in a fun house mirror rather than the actual mirror. What's your view as it relates to helping people see those things more clearly in themselves?
I adopt the title of Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor. I feel like I've always been operating that way, but once read her book, I'm like, “The vernaculars are right there. That's perfect.” That takes courage to do that. It's uncomfortable to have those conversations, but that's required. That's also a learned skill, how to deliver feedback with care and compassion so people accept and receive it from a place of understanding that it's helping them progress their careers forward.
I do think that's important. As an individual who might have the blinders on, I think it's important to seek out mentors and other people, trusted individuals that you know are going to give you that feedback because it might be in a very different mirror that you're looking through. Asking for feedback, which in itself by the way so another act of courage is asking for feedback or saying, “I don't know what I don't know. Can you share it with me?” I think it's a two-way street, both in terms of the employee but also the leader to be shared openly and candidly.
That look in the mirror that no matter how courageous we are, no matter how honest we are with ourselves, I think the best I can tell is we're still going to have blind spots. I don't think we can reach our full potential without other people. I think that's a beautiful thing because we do need each other. Do you see it that way?
I do. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I work out every morning and start with a news update podcast and then podcasts are audiobooks. I finished listening to Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk and listening to Jeff Bezos. They are all very similar leadership types and a hugely successful within their organizations. That leadership is not going to work for the future. I get startups and getting to a certain point, but then when I start to think about scale and growth, I know that they're not a great example because all three of them had huge success in very large organizations.
As disruptors.
I think about legacy going back to the brand. That's not how I want to be known as a leader. I want to be the person that people need and I want to reach out directly. More and more, that's what the workforce of the future wants as well. I jokingly say I've got Gen Zers who've got award awards for showing up. They want something very different.
There's a little work to do, but that's true with every generation.
It's not that AI is going to change the way in which we're working. What gets left behind, one is the complex stuff that requires complex problem-solving and engagement with customers and colleagues, the human skills. We are always going to do business with people we like and trust and want to do business with. Going back to the hybrid environment, we need one another.
To be really successful, we're going to need to create much more of the hybrid environment.
AI In The Workplace
I sure hope it's true because it's funny I've encountered a few businesses that are trying to lean heavily on AI and innovation such as an AI coaching company. I use ChatGPT as a sounding board and I get i. You can get some things there that you otherwise might not think of. There isn't zero value there, but to think of an AI as your coach or your intimate partner or something like that, where they're going to be able to play you, they're going to be able to psychologically manipulate. Is that going to reach the sole level at which we ultimately get meaning, connection, and at the end of the day value? I don't know about that part. What's your view there as far as the workplace of the future and how's where that's going?
I most definitely think that AI is going to play a much more significant role. With the rise of chat GPT and how we're now seeing it all and everyone building their own gen AI and GPT tools hasn't convinced people that it's going to change. I don't know what rock they're under, but it will for sure. There are a couple of movies that came out years ago before GPT. I can't remember the one with Phoenix even where like he falls in love with the robot.
I know what you're talking about. I think it's Her.
There was a technology leader who lost his mom suddenly and he took the last 30 texts he had from his mother, plugged it into ChatGPT and the prompt was that he didn't get to say goodbye. He asked if could he have GPT respond as his mother. He said it was scary and he was instantly crying because wow, it learned and it engaged in it with him using like her words from everything he'd fed it. There are going to be people who do that, but at some point, they will fail. That's a temporary measure. That's a nice bandaid for a moment to make you feel good. To sustain that thing, we're going to need to look at very different ways. People are going to try. We're going to see more of that, whether it's the dog robots or different human ones that will be in our household. People will look to that to create a little bit of that bond and connection, but ultimately it's not going to satisfy.
We've seen in stages how it goes. When I was a kid, there were such things as pet rocks. People can attach to things. When my kids were little, they had the little robotic things that were semi-interactive and nothing compared to what's available now I'm sure and that's only going to accelerate. As it relates to a customer service function of some kind, the bar is continually going up. What that means is going to put pressure on the productivity of human beings.
I've got to be able to provide something beyond this thing that's free. It doesn't get tired or need a paycheck. I've got to beat that by a certain amount to be employable and that bar is going to move. I had a show where it was based on things that people were saying that they expect a century's worth of change, societal change in the next four years to build on what you pointed out. I looked back, “Century, what does that mean?” I look back to what the 1920s were. We didn't have refrigerators. The first commercial refrigerator was in 1927.
We like all these things. If it's anywhere close to true that we're going to have that level of change over such a short period of time, talk about disruptive holy smokes. To me, I go back and I think we're singing the same song here where it comes back to the human equation. It comes back to being authentically connected to people in a shared enterprise that matters, gives value, and allows people to be seen as the individuals they are. That's the thing that's the place we all must turn to. Does that jive with what you talk about, like the whole human leadership idea?
Human Leadership
Exactly. Whole human leadership is recognized and we are whole humans who show up at work every day. Our ability to park at the door, what happened to us on the weekend, or the baggage from the lived experience we've had in the past shows up with us every day. 1) Recognizing that and creating a safe space where people feel like they can show up. There are some things you might not want to share in that context. Having a leader, and it comes from the top, who demonstrates a safe space by being vulnerable by talking openly about things so employees recognize, “I can do that too,” and creating that sense of belonging is critically important.
Other elements of human leadership include some of the things I talked about earlier in terms of authenticity. I already said vulnerability. For me and truth be told, I'm also a massive advocate from a DE&I perspective diversity, but that also means looking for the unseen employees, the ones that you know, are usually underrepresented minorities in the workplace, but the great potential that comes with them is another part of that transparency in our communication is a huge.
My guess is then probably one of your most satisfying experiences would be finding that hidden gem or that unpolished person that gets developed and blossoms that you're able to see either help get a chance or see them get a chance, whatever is, I'm guessing that's one of the peak things you like to see. Am I right there?
For sure. My definition of success early in my career was around hierarchy challenges and greater compensation. Now for me, it is, “What can I do for employees? Where can I recognize that? How can I help develop people and move to the next level?” In one of the books I've written, I tell the story of this unseen employee. He is a retired Canadian football player, and the CFL does not have the same salaries at all as NFL players. He coached me on it. He'd retired after winning two great cup rings. That's like winning the Super Bowl, but he had to provide for his family and he was working in a contact center. Here's this huge hulking man that everyone's afraid of, but his ability to connect and engage with people was wonderful.
I don't think I would've gotten to know him. Interestingly, my ex-wife worked in the call center. I worked in a different area. I was asked to come in and help fix some things. She was telling me all about him. I had the opportunity to connect with him on this human level. I'm like, “Donovan's amazing.” Years later, and I saw him continue to flourish in that environment. Years later at a different company, I had the opportunity to hire an account manager who had managed the contact center operations on behalf of other clients.
The thing he had on paper, none of those skills other than having worked in a contact center, but the stuff he couldn't teach, the way he problem-solved, and the way he engaged with people. I knew that there were a couple of difficult clients. I gave him that chance and he did exceptionally well and he's now ready for retirement in the second half of his career in the same field and industry in which I gave him this opportunity. I look back on that and it makes me warm and fuzzy.
To me, one of the uglier things we see in the world is, for lack of a better word to call it, an elitist attitude where you think because you are more educated, you have a higher IQ, you earn more money, your parents earned more money or whatever fill in the blank that somehow puts you above another human being and it's not true.
There are character differences. There are people that are more developed and more mature character-wise. If you want to compare that way, I guess we can, but every person is an actual human being. They have their basket of goodies and only they have that basket, and it all has utility, and whatever it is it deserves at the very minimum respect. That's what I don't like about elitist attitudes where it's disrespectful. Without respect, you've got no way to connect with another human being.
I'm the type who earns my trust and respect until it's lost. I come into each of those relationships that way, which I think is important. I mean, assume good intent.
It can because sometimes the stray dog will bite you, but if you give up the first time, then okay it's over. Sometimes the best relationships are, “I look past that.” You get that to happen. I'm reminded of an experience that I had where I was a big brother to a boy who only was 10 or 11 when we started a relationship and it lasted a few years. We had an experience where I brought him on vacation with my extended family. We were all at a lake house and all that. He ended up stealing some money, not a lot of money, but it was the money of one of my cousins. He wasn't much older than this boy was. That was a hard thing for me. I had to learn to look past that. I have to say I wish I had been better at looking past it now because he's an eleven-year-old kid. It can be hard. It can take a lot to do that. You need a lot of love in your heart to put your arm around a person that is perhaps you see him as a threat to you.
That's a big difference for me in business and life, but people aren't threats to me. I want to surround myself with people who are smarter than me and have experiences that I don't have. I don't ever view anyone as a threat. You've got this experience and it's clear you're smarter than me on this topic. It’s like great, “I'm going to tap you when we need to bring that in.” The same thing on the personal side as well. I'm not intimidated by anyone and maybe that's me. I've been told I'm intimidating and I'm a big believer in giving second chances. We all make mistakes. Much like even in business it's how do you recover?
I don't expect perfection at all. We are far from that. I'm more loyal. There are some companies I bought from who've messed up but recovered exceptionally well. That's created exceptional loyalty for me. Even the same thing at a human-to-human level. I'm not talking about even business consumers. If there's an acknowledgment for the error or the wrongdoing that someone's made and ideally an apology for it as well like, “Let's move on.” Clean slate to the extent that there can be like, “Clean slate, let's move forward.”
The word that comes to mind for that is grace. It's being a little graceful and a little bit understanding that “None of us is perfect and if anybody was perfect they wouldn't want to be around here. When you are perfect, I think your work's done here.” I think we've covered quite a lot of ground here. I very much appreciate talking with you. Thanks for your time. I wish you well. You said you're a little bit of a nexus there. You know the future's going to be bright but you don't know exactly what form it's going to take at the moment.
Influence Unleashed: Forging a Lasting Legacy Through Personal Branding
I'm not good at idols. I've kept myself super busy during this time, but who knows? Write two books, do speeches, and do some coaching. My husband jokes because he thinks I'm busier in my unemployment than when I was employed, but 2024 will be amazing. I do know that.
The book that you wrote that came out is, what title is it?
It's called Influence Unleashed: Forging A Lasting Legacy Through Personal Branding, and then the one that will come out in the summertime is Whole Human Leadership.
Thanks, Victoria. I appreciate it so much.
Thanks. It was a pleasure.
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Thanks, Victoria. I appreciate our time together. A couple of highlights for me to wrap up. I liked her ideas on the workplace of the future and what that looked like. We were singing the same song as it relates to technology advances, as we get more automation and AI's capacities start blurring the lines between what a human can do, what a machine can do, and what's acceptable as it relates to that. I think it's all going to point toward human connection, mutual respect, individual respect, and making sure people aren't left behind. Victoria is clearly passionate about those things.
I applaud that giving and loving attitude. The more we have that in the world, the better the world is going to be. In the beginning, we talked a little bit about our personal brand and she had four components of that looking at not just what we do. That's number one. Obviously, that gets us into the specifics, what kind of subject matter expert are we, what our resume, skills, capacities, and the insights that we can bring to the table.
2) The storytelling element. That's the communication. It starts getting into the why. We're now into interests, passions, and values. This is the human element of our own personal story. 3) How are you different? In other words, what's our unique element? because nobody's walked the walk that you have, I have and no person has. We all have a unique story in that way and developing that seems to me to be a pretty good strategy. I have to agree with her there. Finally, there was legacy and impact. We didn't talk as much about that, but what I take from that is that begins with the end in mind, and that might shift.
Victoria talked about how things have shifted for her over the few decades that she's been in the professional world. It can be a moving target, but to have a target, to have something you're shooting for. And then that allows us to be strategic in the other elements of putting together our personal brand. She also mentioned the idea of three acts of engagement, courageous, vulnerable, and authentic. We talk about that. We have four capacities. One of them is courage and the pain quadrant.
Authentic is very much related to what we call congruency in the perception quadrant. These things are very much related to what we talk about in the show, “Truth is truth.” It doesn't matter what model you use. We need to continually work to clarify our understanding and move in the direction that we know is going to allow us to be more of the author of our story and have more agency in the world, throw off those things that hold us back, and leaders who can help other people do that is very valuable. It's such a pleasure to have Victoria on the show and be one of those leaders that can help people, not just do the job they're hired for, but become more of the person that they're made to be and there's no higher calling. Thanks, Victoria. Thank you for being with us.
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About Victoria Pelletier
Victoria is a 20+ year Corporate Executive, Board Director, #1 selling author and Professional Public Speaker. Nicknamed the “Turn Around Queen” and the “CEO Whisperer” by former colleagues and employers, Victoria inspires and empowers her team and clients to change mindsets and drive growth in business, leadership and culture.
As someone who does not subscribe to the status quo, she is always ready for new challenges becoming one of the youngest Chief Operating Officers at the age of 24, president by 35 and a CEO at age 41.
Victoria was recognized as one of the 100 Global Outstanding LGBTQ Executive Role Models by Involve (sponsored by YouTube), a 2023 Women of Influence by South Florida Business Journal, a semi-finalist in the 2023 50/50 Women on Boards Women to Watch, 2022 Top 30 Most Influential Business Leaders in Tech by CIOLook, 2022 Most Influential Entrepreneur of the Year by World Magazine, 2021’s Top 50 Business Leader in Technology by Insight Magazine and a Mentor of the Year by Women in Communications & Technology in 2020. HSBC bank awarded her the Diversity & Inclusion in Innovation award in 2019 and she was IBM’s #1 Global Social Seller ranked by LinkedIn in 2019 and 2020.
As a prolific motivational and inspirational speaker, Victoria has delivered keynotes discussing the significance of Whole Human Leadership - being an empathetic and authentic leader, as well as the importance of personal branding and its impact on professional growth; the power of DEI on corporate cultures and building a life of resilience.