The power of women in midlife....with Kate Billing

Picture this: a corporate space where being human isn't just tolerated, it's celebrated. Where topics like menopause aren't whispered in hushed tones but discussed openly. Our guest, Kate Billing, the Executive Development Director of Blacksmith and the founder of the Menopause Awareness and Action Community on LinkedIn, is an advocate for this very shift towards a more human-centered approach in the world of leadership and culture.

As you will hear in this episode, Kate doesn't shy away from challenging conversations. From her journey into this space to her mission to erase the stigma around menopause, and her want to help women navigate it successfully.

Kate's here to challenge stereotypes and ageism. She believes in unlocking the leadership potential of women in midlife and beyond, highlighting the need for authenticity and the transformative power of this stage.

Join Lisa Mulligan and Kate in conversation on the untapped potential of women in midlife, and her new leadership development program Turning Point.  Kate designed this program to focus on the specific challenges and opportunities for women to embrace their midlife leadership power and potential.

More information here. Get in contact with Kate here. 

The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.

Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.

Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to a dog called Diversity Everyone, and I'm really excited about this week's guest. It's been a long time in the making and I met Kate Billing. Well, I heard of Kate Billing at a dinner when I was not long in Auckland and you know, someone at this dinner said to me oh, do you know Kate Billing? You should connect with her. And then, a little further down the path, someone else said to me oh, you connected with Kate Billing and I'm like I need to go and connect with this woman and see what's going on. And so I did that and I was persistent in getting her to come on the podcast because I really like what she has to say and I love what she's putting out into the world. So welcome to the podcast, kate.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Thank you for having me Diaries finally aligned.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Yay, I'm so pleased because I guess I've been following your work for about maybe 12 months, maybe a little bit longer, and I love what you're doing. But I wondered if you would start by giving everyone a bit of an introduction, so you know who are you, what's your background, where are you located, all of those kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Sure thing. So, background, if we start with present day, I am the executive development director for Blacksmith, which is a leadership, human-centered leadership practice that I started with my husband slash business partner coming up 15 years ago. So that's been a huge part of life for me over the last 15 years. I'm also the founder and a menopause advocate in the menopause awareness and action community on LinkedIn, which I know we'll talk a little bit about. And I think how did I get to be here 27 years and counting in the people culture, leadership space quite broadly, and I kind of stumbled into that space in lots of ways by accident. I came back from overseas and went to a recruitment company looking for a job in Tunel. I was in a practice management in the service industry in a range of roles for a number of years before that and they said we're not going to put you for the job because we want you to come and work for us. And that was one of those turning point things of taking a risk, taking a punt back to New Zealand after four years Not knowing how to do recruitment. And this was pre-internet, when you used to get run-on ads a little envelope of cut-up run-on ads given to you every morning that you had to cold call people and that was recruiting lawyers, because that was my sort of background and before that I guess it was I had fun. I know we talked about this when we had our warm-up chat.

Speaker 2: 3:15

One of the things I call myself is human obsessed, because I am Like it's not just I'm curious about it. I am obsessed and have been from a very young age and I had thought that that would lead me into medicine and that's what I think. You know, my life had been shaping up for that until I got to university. And then, because I was there at 17, living away from home for the first time and all of that, that focus became crushing in an environment where I didn't have social support etc. So I wanted to be a doctor, and when that didn't work out, I didn't know what I wanted to be and so I kind of stumbled into service whilst carrying this obsession and reading and continuing my education and all sorts of stuff around more the physical aspects of being human, our physiology, neurobiology, all of these sorts of things. And then, when I had to kind of find my way out of this massive identity crisis and breakdown partway through university, I began to be.

Speaker 2: 4:34

That human obsession moved from just the physical aspects of what it is to be human and how to be well and high performing etc. Into the mental and emotional. You know I'd studied psychology at university but I had, when I started to experience my own psychology and then into more you know, pondering some of the bigger questions about identity and life and being human and becoming interested in philosophy and reading a lot of different philosophers work. You know, it all kind of expanded out until I got into fell into this people stuff 27 years ago and that's continued to still be kind of parallel paths.

Speaker 2: 5:19

There's been all this personal interest and obsession and then there was this, the work stuff which felt very logical and had to be corporate and had to make sense and in lots of ways I didn't feel qualified and inverted commas for until the past probably six or seven years and definitely the past two where I've had the opportunity to bring these lifelong personal obsessions with humaneness together with my work in the leadership space. So I feel like I'm finally in the place where all of the threads are coming together. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Tell me a bit more about the leadership work you've been doing, because I I've worked in corporate spaces, as you have, and you know there is this Corpority thing where you're often put in situations that are incredibly difficult and challenging. You're working in often very conservative, risk averse Organisations where we're supposed to leave our humanness outside. We're not allowed to bring emotion into decision-making. You know money trumps everything. I know that you approach this working in quite a different way to all of what I've just said, though, so tell me a bit about that.

Speaker 2: 6:53

Yeah, I think the beginning of moving from, I mean, like in the beginning, you play the same game as everyone else because that's what the, that's what corporates, you know, want, they think they want to buy. And In the beginning, you know, we started blacksmiths. We always had this, this sense of purpose around a More fully human approach to development. You know, like you, people come to work. We have to work. We're not in a hunter, gatherer society anymore. We have to have a job to give us a sense of purpose, make some money, get connection all of these human needs that need to be met. And as part of that, an organisation is going to develop its people so they're more capable to perform in their jobs, and it's always had a very capability, skill and drill Kind of aspect to it and a performative, a performative nature to it. Like I was just going to enhance your performance.

Speaker 2: 7:47

But in a, I think a relatively limited view of that and and our position right from the get go was People have to come to work and you're going to develop them. So, instead of just developing them From a the skills they need in the job to do the job, how about we sort of pull back, widen out and take a more human approach, which is to say, if you're going to invest in developing them that way, why don't you develop them more broadly as a human? It doesn't actually take much more time, no more energy and effort. That will give you and then greater value, will help them and all of the other places they feel called to leadership at home and in their communities, not just in their workplaces. And also that leadership's not about a position in the org chart Right. This management is about time, task and resource, and it's it's a kind of, it's a very logical Way of doing things where, as leadership is much more of this beingness and the ability and our, from our perspective, to understand ourselves at a human level, like how the brain, how the brain works, how you work as a human being and how we work relationally, in particular, wherever human beings are in relationship with each other, because Everybody has a leadership opportunity to lead, firstly themselves and then to lead with and for others, no matter where that is.

Speaker 2: 9:19

So the development people experience, that work, if you, if you structure it in the right way, helps them grow as human beings, participate in much more profound and fulfilling ways at work that give you better outcomes and employment experiences, etc.

Speaker 2: 9:37

But also mean that you, there is a you know there's a pay it forward aspect to it and that the development is not limited to the, to the application in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 9:49

The stuff we're doing is about how do you go and participate more powerfully and profoundly as a parent, as a family member, as a friend, you know, as a, as a daughter, my son, and then out into community, because everyone is involved in some way in community, whether it's their neighborhood or their church group or the gym or a not-for-profit or something they like to volunteer for. You know, we all have these opportunities and as we get older, those, that's, those community aspects of leadership become more important, particularly as your kids Might leave home and things like that. You know you get a bit more time and space. So our approach to it is to say, not just capability build but actually have people grow in their level of consciousness, which means awareness of varying levels of context, including themselves, their internal context, and also grow their capacity at both a personal level, a relational level, and then a collective level. You know the how do we lead together, not just how do I manage my team.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Do you know, when I've run um leadership programs like that in the organizations I've worked in, um, okay, I have this little evil thread where, where you do, when you focus on the person and the human and you help them understand what's right for them, sometimes they leave the organization because they discover that, you know, like Almost, it's like taking the shackles off them and they can be free to think about Well, as a leader in my organization, my community, my community and my family, is this really what I want for all of that? And I get this Evil glint of satisfaction when that happens. But I actually think it's good for the organizations too that that they're helping people Understand where they want to be and what they want to do. And it's not just about helping them stay in the organization and make more money for it, it's it's it's bigger than that and it's giving them more opportunity.

Speaker 2: 12:08

So, yeah, I love what you spoke about we have a I for a number of years pre-covid, ran a Senior talent program for a client about where we have for years, run a program and they're about leading change as a human experience, not a project. So it's a, you know. This is why change fails because people don't understand the human, how human beings are and in that experience and therefore don't do the right things. They just treat it as this logical, deadline driven project based part of an again chart and it'll be sweet. Even the comms plan goes in again. So, rather than actually thinking about and leading from, you can manage change like that, but leading changes is is a different overlay. And and what would? What we, what the client found was happening through that was? They had people showing up because of the way that program is designed to help people leaders understand their own experience of change and why they're being the way they are through change and therefore how to handle that in order to lead others more authentically and cleanly and clearly through change. This personal evolution that people had was enormous and they said we've got all these people showing up through this program and Standing up and being visible in ways that we never thought Would happen, like there's all these beautiful, unintended Positive benefits that I know organizations are gonna get, but they don't until they do it. And off the back of that they said we need to do. We want to do something for these people who are, who are really shining, like it's like this the sun's been turned on inside them as leaders. So what can we do?

Speaker 2: 13:56

And created this program that was called the conscious leadership program and it was a six month Program, retreat based, et cetera, for 12 people at a time each year for senior talents. So people had made themselves visible through the other work and each year there were two people in that that were deliberately on the program. They were deliberately put on the program because they were senior leaders who were in this space in their lives and leadership where they were weighing up Whether staying with the organization was the right place for them, and they were overt about it. They had a fabulous culture inside this organization, very humanistic leadership, and they'd been clear like I don't know if my future is here, and the organization's Response was well, we want you to be clear, because we want you either to be all in or To be clear on, if it's not asked, what it is, so that you feel really you have a level of conviction and commitment one way or the other. And if you don't want to be here, well, at least you have Something. You've done the work to understand where you would like, the direction you want to go, as an alternative.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Now I just I have immense Respect for organizations who have their eyes open, engage their people and really open and transparent conversations and then support them. It's like we want. We want you to be all in and if you're not all in, well then we're not gonna say you have to go. We will, let's help you Work it out. And if you decide this is not the place for you, that's great, because, yeah, it's great, it's great for you and it creates the space the space for us to have someone either rise up into that role from inside the organization or find someone from outside For whom this is their dream job and it's not your dream job. We totally get it.

Speaker 2: 15:50

You know, and I think that it's you know. I think there's lots of weird stuff that gets put on to Development experiences in terms of ROI and people try and measure it with surveys and shit like that and no, at the end of the day, if people are better as human beings. They're better participants in your workplace culture. They perform in the moments that matter and enable that and others across the organisation, not just in their direct line, and the better participants in their families and society wouldn't? I mean, all of that shit's hard to measure, right, but much more valuable than did I like the facilitator? Yes, and because I will say that you're not necessarily, you're not going to like me all the time, because you know productive struggle is what's required if you're really going to grow. And things are going to get uncomfortable from time to time and you might not like me for some moments, and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 16:53

Yeah, I love all of that and I'm trying not to sneeze right at the moment I've got to watch the eye and sneezing. So clearly you're well respected for your leadership work because you know a number of people have talked to me about you. But you know, after connecting with you on LinkedIn, there were two things that really stood out to me that I really wanted to hear about more, and one was the work you do on menopause, and the second is the work you're wanting to do around gendered ageism. So I wanted to start with the menopause. You've got an incredible menopause group on LinkedIn. Tell us about that and how you came to start it. Yeah, Gosh.

Speaker 2: 17:42

I mean, like many people who are in this space, and there's a bit of accidentalism to it. It's a bit like the slide into perimenopause in most of us in our generation and I'm sure all of the ones before, many of the ones before us didn't know what the hell was going on, right. So I think perimenopause hit like it'd been creeping up in me and the quiet, the dark quiet of the night for a number of years. But it arrived in collusion with COVID in 2020, like a freight train and I must, as a say, in the beginning I didn't look beyond the contextual triggers and drivers of stress and some near and anxiety. I didn't look beyond the COVID reality.

Speaker 1: 18:41

I was also living in Singapore, so hot flushes, I don't know. Was that a hot flush or is it just a really hot day? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 18:48

Yeah, I mean, there's just a lot of it, as anyone will know who's looked at this in any way, shape or form. I mean, the list of potential symptoms grows day by day, but in Nikki Bazant's brilliant book, this Change Is Everything, which I strongly encourage everyone to get and read, which is about an honest guide to menopause and perimenopause. She lost, I think, 44, and I had 28 of them when I read the book, because estrogen's just involved in everything. It's like all hormones. They're signalling systems for the body. So that all happened in 2020 and I didn't really start going maybe it's this until I don't know about the September or something of that year. And then I started reading a little bit and we were running. I can't hear you.

Speaker 1: 19:37

Kate, oh, you're back. Yeah, you're back there.

Speaker 2: 19:43

So that was about September 2020 and I started asking a few clients. During COVID, we were running online catch ups for our HR clients just to say, hey, you guys are carrying a load at the moment. It's a really hard time. It's just regularly get online check in. How is everyone? What are you doing? What are you learning? What questions have you got?

Speaker 2: 20:02

And really, crowdsourcing is a community how best to support and lead as HR professionals through a very challenging time. And I asked one of the gatherings I said so I reckon this is happening, if anyone else having an ethics variant and we had a bit of a chat about it, but I had a message from. Part of my conversation was how many women in our you know because a lot of us were in the same age group in their 40s and early 50s what proportion of your workplace population might be having this as an experience? And people like Janneau haven't thought about it, and one of them messaged me afterwards and said, oh my goodness, after that call, I went and did a random report on our HRIS and we have like 42% of our female population who are in this age group and I've just had a landslide moment of recognising that they have a whole lot of needs that we're not needing. And it's still about a year after that.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I was still like in the closet about it, if you like with no disrespect to all of the other ways in which people might find themselves in closets, because I think at the same time and this links to the other thing we'll talk about in a bit gendered ageism I recognised a whole lot of ageist stigma attached to, I mean, who even knew Perry, menopause was a thing? I thought Menopause was something that happened to old people and inverted commons. So I had this internalised ageism that was coming up, along with a whole lack of information and understanding. So I had to work through a whole lot of that over the period of kind of 12 to 18 months before September, the next year, 2021,. I thought, screw this. I had just started to build up a real head of steam about this and that it was just not fair and not right and not proper, and so I put a post up on LinkedIn that said I reckon we need to talk about this more. Who's in, basically? Yeah, and over 200 people, all the women on.

Speaker 1: 22:23

LinkedIn piled on.

Speaker 2: 22:25

Yeah, so I started this group, menopause Awareness and Action Community nice broad title because I wasn't sure which direction it was going to go in, but ultimately for me it's about Menopause and the workplace and leadership. It's a. Menopause is a huge topic, right, and I know I'm not a medical professional, despite the fact that my seven year old self wanted to be a doctor. She did not become one, so she should stay out of the weeds on that, and so there are lots of aspects to this. But the piece that I thought again coming back to our underlying purpose at Blacksmith was if you're going to develop people, come to work and you're going to develop them, you might as well develop them as a whole person, because it's good for you, good for them, good for business, good for society. And so I thought let's just stick with the workplace, because that's the opportunity we have to create some awareness, understanding and educate people about this experience. They're going through themselves as well as everyone around them, because women experience it. Obviously there are some trans, non-binary and intersex people do as well, dependent on what kind of kit they were born with in a body, but everybody has one degree of separation.

Speaker 2: 23:41

So the community is focused on enriching, elevating and amplifying the workplace conversation about perimenopause, perimenopause, menopause, teruohinitanga in New Zealand, in New Zealand workplaces and we have, as at this morning, 1,998 members and it's a very active group. By LinkedIn that, to very standard, it's like we're just knocking it out of the park people with great contributors. They're really engaged and the important piece for me is they're taking action out in the workplace, out in the world, which is what it's there for. It's to really inspire and inform people who feel inspired to make some form of change in their own workplaces, even if it's just asking the question about what do we do about supporting menopause and starting a conversation in some small way about that.

Speaker 1: 24:40

I love that about the group, because there are certainly other communities that are all about menopause, but to have a group that's focused on the workplace, where it's so challenging at the moment. There's so many things going on and organisations are losing women in droves, particularly senior women. So to have a group that's full of resources that's not just for women who are in menopause but or perimenopause, it's for the people who are trying to support them and making workplaces better so the HR people, as an example, the diversity and inclusion people that are in there wanting to learn and wanting to support I think is so fantastic. And you run events from it as well, so I think you do monthly events.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Well, I went a bit, you know, like you do with these things Go gangbusters in the beginning and then realise how much work it takes, because I do all of this like all of this is done from a place of service and generosity for me. So the LinkedIn community is free, the pause for thought. Online events are free to attend, and so I did them more frequently and now it's one a quarter and they are a mixture of and they're live online so people can join. By and large, people from New Zealand, the majority, some from Australia, and we have people from further afield that register and then watch the recordings, and I try to mix them up so that there is kind of like a level of. There are people who are experts, who are offering a perspective and then, in some way about it, whether it's, you know, like Dr Linda Deer, who runs the Menno Doctor Clinic online service across New Zealand, and she also led the first even New Zealand menopause survey at the beginning of this year, which the results of which were presented to Parliament just last month.

Speaker 2: 26:47

So, whether it's people like her or it's people like I'm doing one today and that's with Grace Malloy, who's the CEO and founder of Menopause Friendly Accreditation Australia, which is an organisation that's joint venture with the UK outfit, who've been doing amazing work and supporting organisations to really do a better job, like to support them through the process of doing the right thing by the women and others, as well as having case studies.

Speaker 2: 27:16

So having people like I think the last one we had was we had the team from KPMG, so we had Evan Beta, who's the Chief People Officer, and Hester Kutts, who's the head of the People Consulting and Sophie Hart, who is the head of the Diversity, equity and Inclusion sort of team.

Speaker 2: 27:38

So it's important to mix it up, I think, with having some of these experts and people who support organisations to do a better job and then actually have organisations sharing their stories about how they've gone about doing it. The last one for this year will be a reboot on the first case study, when I did with Julie Stafford from the University of Canterbury, and that's going to be all about maintaining momentum, because they kicked off their internal menopause movement two years ago, come this World Menopause Day, 18th October, and so it's easy to get started. It's harder to keep going. So I'm looking forward to talking with her about it and, yeah, because it's learning together right? Linkedin's great for sharing stuff, but how can we learn from each other and learn together and celebrate people who are doing a great job?

Speaker 1: 28:35

Yeah, and I think what your group does is contributes to the wealth of knowledge that we're building out there. And when I look at where is great work being done around menopause in the workplace, it's the UK and it's New Zealand, and when I talk to other Diversity and Inclusion leaders around the world, they're looking to those two countries. So I think what you're doing is making a massive difference to that, and it relates to gendered ageism, which you talk about a lot on LinkedIn, and I love your point of view on gendered ageism, but of course, I'm always thinking in my head yes, but women have been discriminated through the whole of their career. You kind of can't win, but I think there's some specific things going on as women age. So tell me a bit about what you're doing there.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Yeah, my friend, Maz Farrelly, who is beautiful and mad and also middle aged, said to me in response to something about this was there's one day in the year you're 32, where you're the right age, but you have no idea when that day is. And I think this is the thing right. I put up a poll a couple of months ago, just going because there was a great article came out in the Harvard Business Review. Finally, it's like if it's in the Harvard HBR, people start paying attention and it was looking at gendered age, saying no age is the right age for women, and we're like well, duh.

Speaker 1: 30:14

Yeah, we know.

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yeah, we know, we know, and ageism has traditionally been thought as about for really old people. It's like the elderly when you become white-haired and doddery although I'm silver-haired now and by no means doddery but the idea that it was about the elderly and the very old aged versus I think previously the research had been women start to experience ageism, meaning against them, being too old, in their 40s, like about 40. But I put up a wee poll and just said when did you first experience ageism, basically being discrimination on the basis of your age rather than your capability or your right, fitness, et cetera, and a lot of people, a lot of women in particular, put in in their 20s Because you were either too young or you're too old. We're kind of too young, too young, too young, too young, and then, oops, too old and it's like when did that change?

Speaker 1: 31:21

Well, there is that bit in the middle where you're of childbearing age, which is another kind of thing of discrimination. So you're too young you might have a child, and now you're too old, it's just yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:36

It's actually bananas, and I think the thing we have to be mindful of with this is it's not a this is men doing this to women thing, because we do it to ourselves as well. And I'm all for I know there are a lot of people say women don't need fixing and blah, blah, blah. It's like we don't need fixing. But we need the right kind of development and support so we can handle our own minds and our own shit and biases and watch that we don't take ourselves out of the game. Because if we don't grow in ourselves and understand how we are part of the problem and then we don't come together collectively as a force for positive change, then we can't change the system.

Speaker 1: 32:26

No.

Speaker 2: 32:27

You know, and, to be honest, the system's been in place for thousands of years now, so a couple of thousand years, so it's some tricky. It's tricky, but this the I think, as I mentioned when we're talking about menopause, this ageism thing, like it really snuck up on me. I think I was 49 when I was in fact was 2018. It was about six months before my husband's 50. And I started noticing in my journaling Some a just self talk coming up. But it wasn't until I was.

Speaker 2: 33:11

I kept the journal because I talk about it in one of my workshops is April 20, 21. When I was writing all of this stuff out again. And the thing about journaling is that great. It shows the patterns and thought. It shows these thinking patterns that you have the neural networks that are in place and you turn up with yourself on paper. Enough you start to see it and then you get really bored with it and then you get really angry about it and then you change something and it was about that time when I wrote when, about that time when I wrote?

Speaker 2: 33:46

no wonder I was so fucked up about turning 50. Because I recognized a stereotype. We have all these stereotypes that are part of the mental brain's mental models for prioritising certainty and releasing energy for other functions in the brain. We wire stuff in as habits, including habits of thought and mental models, which make it easier for us to navigate the world, and stereotypes are a mental model. And I had discovered the middle-aged woman and I wrote out what my stereotype was. So if I said that to you which I'm saying it to you now middle-aged woman, what things? When you think about the stereotype of this character of the middle-aged woman and what she looks like and how she is in the world, what sort of things come to mind?

Speaker 1: 34:46

I immediately think of the Karen stereotype that's being proposed or, you know, displayed.

Speaker 2: 34:53

Which is really, really nasty and unhelpful.

Speaker 1: 34:56

Yeah, yeah, so slightly overweight. Angry unattractive has let herself go, just fed up with the world. Maybe has given up. Yeah, all of those kinds of things is what.

Speaker 2: 35:14

I think of.

Speaker 2: 35:15

So if you've got something like that and mine included, things like frumpy, invisible and all of those things that quiet so at an unconscious level I was in a stereotype threat situation where I have this part of these parts of my identity that were about being, you know, in a tuba, invisible and making a difference and stuff like that, and, at an unconscious level in my psyche, bumping up against that stereotype, and there was this whole lot of internal conflict that was being generated of by not wanting to live into that in an unconscious level but not having surfaced it so I could deal with it.

Speaker 2: 36:05

And so it's just so innovating, like it's just energy sapping at the same time when you've got energy being sucked out and all the other ways. So recognising that we have a just stereotype running in our own minds about ourselves is a really important piece of the work of untethering ourselves and our potential as midlife I prefer midlife over middle age. As midlife women and leaders, we are containing all that we could be in this internal, unidentified struggle against a lot of these stereotypes, let alone the ageism that we're experiencing out in the world, not just the workplace. So it's a huge, and dealing with ageism is going to become increasingly important because the world is getting older.

Speaker 1: 37:05

Yes.

Speaker 2: 37:06

And age comes to all of us Like it's, the one is off all of the things. When it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, it's the one thing that's coming for all of us.

Speaker 1: 37:20

Hopefully, hopefully With any luck With any luck. Yes, yeah, One of the things I've noticed, I guess, about people our age, because I've been out trying to make friends with people. I'm pretty new to Auckland and I've noticed some commonalities. So people feeling women feeling really lost, but also very negative with the world and angry with the world. And I know that you've been thinking about all of these things and you've got something really exciting coming out. I'm wondering if you would talk a bit about that.

Speaker 2: 38:05

Okay, this is the first time it's out in the world. So, like through this whole menopause thing, I think that's going through this personal evolution. Awakening is the way I would call it. That this kind of midlife transition offers like we can either struggle with it and end up isolated, sad, angry, all of these things, or we can see it as with the right support and I don't see it out there, which is why I've made something but with the right support and the right company, I know because I'm experiencing it myself this can be a real time of awakening. It's a there's no doubt about it.

Speaker 2: 39:00

This midlife is a crucible experience, right? I mean blacksmith. We're all about the metaphor of forging when it comes to development. You know, development it's not alchemy. You have to forge yourself. You have to go through this, go through the fire of this process, and I think midlife it's shaped like a event and the bottom of it I do think of as a crucible. It's like a container in which the metal that we are is kind of melted and we get to make ourselves new. We get to pour that liquid, that molten metal, into something else.

Speaker 2: 39:41

You know, there's this real time of of trans, proper transformation, but there's little to no. First of all, acknowledgement that it can be this and secondly, support for it and a lot of what's offered for senior women in the development space. When I looked around over the last couple of years, it's either I describe it as too sooty, like it's the real corporate kind of leadership, you know, strategy, power, suit, panty, hose kind of stuff which is totally a place for some people, and then or it's a bit ladies who lunch or soft and fluffy or yoga retreating. And when I looked around I've always had a bit of a thick factor about women only development, because I'm like I don't like either of those things. And then I thought one of the thoughts that occurred to me was well, if I don't see myself out there or anything that feels like it meets my needs and in my style, then maybe I should make, make something, yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:53

So feel the void.

Speaker 2: 40:55

Feel the void right. So the first thing that is coming out under a new brand which is part of the Blacksmith family, which is going to be under my name, kate Billing dot com, is the Turning Point program, because that's what this is. This part of life is a real turning point, and people think it's a turning point for the worst. They think the best of life's behind them. This is that's the past, the best past, the peak, and it's all downhill from here, when actually all of the evidence, all of the research, is that this is the hardest that's ever going to get and that things get much better. So I want to help people make that transition as smoothly as possible and become people who can lead and live the best half of their life in this second half. So Turning Point is about embracing the midlife power of female leadership, because I think there is an enormous amount of power in women generally, but in particular at this time and beyond.

Speaker 2: 42:02

And, like you said, you know people are exhausted. They're not. They're not finding the time and space to recover. They're struggling to juggle all of these different roles and responsibilities and demands Because you know we're in the biggest numbers in the workforce ever as a generation genics, in particular, with the millennials coming hot and behind us. We're not only the highest there was a workforce participation, but we're also in the largest numbers of representation in senior leadership, senior specialists, business ownership roles.

Speaker 2: 42:42

And we're living through this time in the midst of all of that and one of the most challenging times for anybody in living memory, apart from people, obviously, who have been through the war, the Second World War.

Speaker 2: 42:58

You know this is like the most challenging time in the past four years. So they're measuring themselves, we are measuring ourselves against impossible standards Yep, everywhere. And I think this. We need help, and so that help is on its way people in the form of a six month cohort based experience for 14 lucky women, hopefully. But in the new year we're going to be launching a midlife leadership community for women which is going to build on my experiences as the menopause group on LinkedIn and my experience in leadership communities and organizations and cohort based programs. So it feels like everything about who I've been and what I've been doing is kind of leading up to this work, and it's work like we've got a 25 year vision for it. I'm 54 and we've got a 25 year vision for this new work. So I'm in, I'm all in on helping women make the most of this midlife transition and to make the second half the best half.

Speaker 1: 44:23

I can't wait to see what you do, and I'm so excited to be at the start of this new future for you, kate.

Speaker 2: 44:34

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 44:35

Yeah, you're such a wise woman and I've learned so much from speaking to you. So what are you? One final question what are you optimistic about?

Speaker 2: 44:55

I am optimistic about a few things, but I think, if we think about the conversation we've just had, I am optimistic for the world, even though that is really challenging on the daily at the moment. I am optimistic for the world with stronger, more authentic, generous, connected senior women leaders. I think that the and also and when I say the world, I do mean the world. I think this is not just about women, right? I feel like women at this time in life, at this time in the world, have the opportunity in midlife to demonstrate what's possible when we become these authentic and integrated selves and lead from that place, show up in our lives and our leadership in all the places we've called to it, and that we can create and hold the space for men and others to do the same, from a place of compassion but also responsibility, putting responsibility onto people.

Speaker 2: 46:21

I think we can create and hold a space for others because we're going to be around a long time. I mean I plan on living to 100 plus, hopefully, and not being a doddery old lady. So I think the next 40, 50 years I have ahead of myself and the women of my cohort, self-included what we can do with the long-term vision, collective leadership and real belief in ourselves and others, I think can help us steer through, navigate what are going to be some really really testing times for human beings on the planet over the next 20 or 30 years and potentially beyond. I feel optimistic about the potential that we have to make a real difference through our leadership in our lives.

Speaker 1: 47:23

Thank you, I love that so much. And thank you for coming on. A Dog Called Diversity.

Speaker 2: 47:29

It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, Lisa.