S5 E1: Featuring Dr. Katrina Hutchins

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Hello everyone and welcome to Traceability Podcast. I am your host, Tracie Edward. Today my guest is Dr. Katrina Hutchins, or who I like to call Dr. K. Dr. K is the founder and president of Re-Source Solutions, which is a company focused on organizational excellence through professional and personal growth and transformation. She is a certified personal and executive coach, a consultant, inspirational speaker, author, professor and philanthropist with decades of experience in corporate, governmental, higher ed, philanthropic, nonprofit, and faith-based sectors. Dr. K's research is also focused on the power of women's voices and she's written several books, one of which we'll dive into a bit today, The Voice Positioning System: 7 Ways to Harness Your Power and Master Your Influence. Dr. K, thank you so much for being with me today. I greatly appreciate it.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Thank you, Tracie. This is such an honor to spend this time with you and to have this conversation. I'm excited.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Me too. So for those who are not aware, I have spent the last few years studying for an advanced degree at Southeastern University, and that is where Dr. K and I crossed paths as she has been my professor for a couple of those courses. So love that we've been able to connect that way and have you here with us today.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

I love to be on this side of your work. Your work at Southeastern of course is phenomenal. You're just a stellar student, but I love to see this side of your work and just how this work is opening the way for organizational excellence and leadership, all of those things that I know you're passionate about.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Yes. For sure. So my listenership mostly comes from folks in the technical space and how we usually get started as we talk about our career journeys. How did we get our start and what was going on for us at the time. So wondering how you got your start and what experiences led you from ... I know you were in social work for a time and then moved into organizational leadership.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Well, so what's so interesting about that question is it made me remember one of the things that a mentor would say all of the time is that who we are, we've always been. And so I traced that all the way back to the time I was a little girl and I always wanted to be talking to people. I always wanted to be in their business, always curious, wanting to know what was going on. And interestingly enough, my very first career choice was an x-ray tech. I had some idea about thinking that I wanted to be an x-ray tech. Well, what I quickly found out Tracie, was that I was not too good at cranking out those x-rays because I was spending so much time talking to my patients about all of the things. And so fast-forward to recognizing, okay, this is probably not the career for me. And I really started to get clear about what is a people-person career that I can satisfy or even better understand this thing that's on the inside of me. And so that's where social work came in. And so as you said, my undergrad, my graduate degrees are in social work, so I spent a number of years working in an organization from a macro standpoint working with nonprofit organizations across the state, helping them to build their organizational capacity, but with the people-first approach and on the people element of organizations. And so I did that for a number of years and then that passion grew into me wanting to start my own company in 2015 to be able to have a broader opportunity and to move across sectors and industries and agencies to do this work. And so Re-Source Solutions, I call it an organizational excellence organization with a people-first approach. And so I just am so excited and grateful that I get to wake up every day and do the work that I love and that I feel that I'm called to do.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Well, I appreciate that. I think the longer we're in business and careers, sometimes we lose sight of the people aspect of who we're working with every day and the problems that other people may be dealing with that we're unaware of. And so I love that focus on people and making everyone understand that we're humans first and then we're workers after that.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Absolutely. I always say that every human has three distinct needs and they are to be seen, to be heard, and to be valued. So no matter where we are in organization life, in our careers, in our families, in our friendships, wherever we find ourselves, that human element is still there. That desire to be seen, heard and valued. And here's the interesting piece, when people feel seen, heard and valued, there is an elevation in their trust, respect, and commitment. So they feel others seeing, hearing and valuing them, the elevation of trust for that person, respect for that person, and commitment to that person will be substantial. And so those things go hand in hand.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

That makes total sense to me. And I know that that's how I feel. Back to one of our leadership topics. How I feel motivated is when I feel that degree of trust and commitment. So mostly your research now focuses on the power of women's voices. Were there things that you were bumping up against in particular, either as a female or your awareness of other females that led you in this direction?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

The answer to that is both, out of my own experiences and recognizing the experiences of others. And so working in various sectors, I started to recognize what I have now called voice deficits. As it related to speaking up in organizations specifically for women. And not talking but speaking up in ways that matter. And then I discovered that there was a theme for that, and it's called organizational silence. Organization silence is a real phenomenon with lots of literature around it, many studies around it. But organizational silence is that phenomenon that can get embedded in an organization's culture where the people in that organization stop speaking up in ways that matter. They talk to each other. And what that looks like in a lived experience might be the meeting before the meeting or the meeting after the meeting, or the text messages during the meeting. Speaking up in ways that matter. So they're either silent or silenced. I love a quote by Arundhati Roy I think it is. But she says there's no such thing as the voiceless, only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard. To recognize that within organizational life there were women sitting in organizations who had been deliberately silenced or preferably unheard. And one of those women. I want to study this, I want to study this further. So I focused my doctoral work on organizational silence and understanding that from a woman's perspective. And trace, I was so overwhelmed by what I found in interviewing the women I had the honor of interviewing that shared their stories with me. And these were stories of trauma, almost voice trauma and organizations. They didn't come to some of these organizations already silent. Many were silenced after they arrived. There were women that I found in the study that came to organization silent and that was perpetuated in the organization. But the passion for me grew out of seeing that, hearing that, and wanting to do something with that. So much of the work that I get to do with women leaders, it really is focused around helping them to harness the power of their voice so they can master their influence. So it's them recognizing just how powerful their voices are and then how to position their voices in ways that matter, not just in their organizations, but in their life. Oftentimes they are silent in organizations, they're also silent in other areas of their lives as well.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

That's a very good point. And I think back just maybe it's a generational or a cultural thing, but it seems like as women, we've often been taught not to say too much, not to share too much. To be humble, that kind of thing. And I think some of those behaviors translate into a reticence, maybe to lift our voices when they need to be lifted or become embarrassed if other people don't like it when we do that. So.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

For sure. For sure. In some of the studies I've found that many of us ... And you mentioned culturally. Many of us grew up hearing things like children should be seen and not heard. Speak only when you're spoken to. Just those kinds of childhood lessons that we were taught and those are actually lessons that we then internalized about our voices. And then in our grown-up selves, we brought that with us. I should be seen and not heard. I should speak only when I'm spoken to. And so those things started to be perpetuated in our day to day, but they left us with great deficits. And so sometimes we made things like humility, we made that synonymous with silence, which is not the case at all. Be extremely humble but quiet. And so just really taking perspective around some of these things that we have believed, that we have been taught about our voices and really examining those for truth. Examining those things for truth.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

I like that. So then you've now written this book on the Voice Positioning System. Any key insights or maybe even some background on what voice positioning means and what that system is?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Sure. So one of the foundational premises for the Voice Positioning System is looking at communication as a whole. And what we know about communication is that only 7% of our communication happens in words. The other 93% is not what we're saying verbally, but even our presence, how we show up. It's the living, being, moving part of ourselves that continues to speak even when there are no words. And so one of the things that I really focus on in the Voice Positioning System is this notion of whole voice, not just our words, but also our attitudes, our demeanor, our disposition, our energy. Just how we come in the room, how the room feels when we leave it. So just this energy that we bring with us. And so when I think about voice positioning, I moved us from simply using our voices ... We all have, for the most part, the ability to use our voices. We do that without even thinking about it. This voice positioning is a call for elevation around critical thought, around strategy, around practicing a pause, doing things before we speak, not responding to it just because we've not given that thought to it. So this sense of positioning is being mindful of the power of our voices and how we choose to use that power in a given situation. I'll give you an example. Always talk about triggers, and we all have triggers. It's not a matter of if we're going to be triggered, it's when we're going to be triggered. And sometimes the trigger is the thing that causes us to react quickly. Would you agree?

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Yeah.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

So voice positioning in those instances would be the trigger has happened, but wait, let me pause to determine not what my reaction is going to be, but what I want my response to be. So we take the power in that instance to just determine how do I want this to end? How do I feel in the moment? But how do I want this to end? What do I want the outcome to be? And let me take a stance in that power to make that determination. Have you ever been in a situation where you were triggered and perhaps something came flying out of your mouth before you could stop it and you thought, oh my gosh, I wish I could [inaudible 00:15:44]. So this sense of voice positioning is catching yourself before it comes flying out. So you could determine how do I want to position my voice? So there are these questions that start to flood your mind. Is what I'm about to say worth the relationship? Am I going to feel bad after I've said what I'm about to say? You give yourself that pause. So what it is in essence is this major slowdown to position your voice with power. So I'll pause there because it's so much embedded in the book itself, but that's an overview of the practice of voice positioning.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

So the idea that it's giving to me is it's not so much about the audio, it's not so much about the nonverbal, it's more about the energy that you bring and the attitude that you bring with it, and then the thought that goes into the energy and the attitude.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Absolutely. You nailed it. You nailed it. Because we are always speaking, we're always speaking. Whether we're using the words or not, as I said earlier. If I'm in a meeting and things are being said, and I am not verbally speaking up, if I'm deep sighing or if I'm sitting there with my arms folded, if my eyes are rolling, I have spoken volumes. And so even our resting face, volumes. And so voice positioning is this heightened awareness, if you will, of what I'm speaking. Even when there are no words, we are walking billboards. And so our question is what do we want our message to be at all times? What do we want people to hear when they see us? How about that? What do we want them to hear when they see us? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

I like that. Thank you. I've recently been through some trainings at my workplace that were on communication and how much of it is non-verbal. But I like the whole concept of what do they see when they hear me because I'm being aware of my non-verbal and the positioning of myself in the situation.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

For sure. When I'm doing these workshops and trainings, I'll often ask, have you ever been sitting in a room and someone walked in and they didn't say any words, but in the back of your mind you heard wah, wah. And it's not because they said anything, it's because of how they came in the room, that energy, that downer energy that they could have brought in with them and they never said a word. And then on the flip side of that, you could have been sitting in a room and someone came in and it felt like a ray of sunshine came in. Did not say a word. And so it's that 93% that I'm describing that we all embody that it is speaking at all times. And so the voice positioning is us getting to choose what others hear.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

So then what does that look like as you go into different organizations. Because you have now worked in many different domains, do you find that there are similarities or differences based on the domain that you're going into? And are you tailoring your voice positioning solution based on that?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

I thought ... And this was my thought going in when I was new to this work and taking the voice positioning message to organizations. I thought I would need to customize. I thought I would need to tailor it to that particular organization. But what I've found is it's not an organizational challenge, it's a people challenge. And so there is no tailoring where voices are concerned. It is really helping the people in those organizations to understand ... One of the most unique areas that ... And you may really resonate with this because of your role in technology. But working with scientists. One of my most exciting opportunities was at Syracuse University working with women who work in science and these women in male dominated fields and having this sense of wanting to amplify their voices, wanting to tap into this notion of voice positioning. And so whether they were computer scientists, physicists, just an array of scientists in one room and not tailoring the message because it was all about voice. Whether I've worked in nonprofit organizations or faith-based organizations, it's all been the same as it relates to what it looks like for us to position our voices.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

So as you do go into organizations, what does that look like trying to get them maybe to buy in to the message? Do they recognize that there's something they need to do differently or are you coming to them and saying, "I think you need to do something different here."? How do they react to that sometime?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

That's a great question. Oftentimes, they are bringing me in for one reason, and then we'll drill down to the fact that it is a communications issue. Does that make sense? Sometimes they discover it as they are bringing me in for other things. For an example, because they've been having conflict, they may bring me in because there are interpersonal awareness challenges. They may bring me in because there are things that they perceive to be embedded in a culture. When we drill down without fail, it is a communications piece. And so I would venture to say that seated at the core of organizational deficits or dysfunction, oftentimes it is that element of communication where people are not communicating well or there is that organizational silence. People are not speaking up, people are working in silos or people have developed almost just this sense of groupthink around communication. They've taken sides. There is so many dynamics happening, but seated at the core is this communication piece. And that's what I meant earlier about, I don't necessarily have to customize it around the people element, it's just identifying that that is the thing that is seeded at the core of so many of these challenges.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Interesting. My personal feeling is that communication is the hardest thing we do as humans.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

And getting it right can be a challenge. And there's times when we need help getting it right. And so I appreciate that. Generally things can be boiled down to communication.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

So I am also certified in DiSC and through a number of assessments, and I do some other assessments around character and character strengths, those things. But there are these things that come alongside to help see themselves. So for the sake of discussion, if we do a DiSC assessment and a person sees that, okay, I'm a D, then I can help them around their voice positioning as a D. Does that make sense? And so some of these assessments help them to develop a voice identity, if you will. They recognize, okay, these are the things that I now know about my voice, and these are also the things that I have to be aware of where the voices of others are concerned. So I've literally watched people as a result of that deeper understanding as opposed to blaming, developed compassion. As opposed to not understanding, inviting a deeper understanding. And so that's the other piece around voice positioning. As opposed to always wanting grace, learning how to now give grace. Because they understand.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

As you were speaking about this ... And I think eventually all of us go through a DiSC assessment at some point in our careers. It probably never occurred to me at the time that really the type that you are brings a certain energy in a certain position to how you approach your work. And so I find that interesting, especially over the years as I've grown in my career and have hopefully gotten a little better at communication what that then looks like from a DiSC perspective.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

For sure. And it's that heightened awareness that we talked about when you asked earlier. So what is the difference? What is the positioning piece? It is that heightened awareness. We know we can position our voices differently. So for example, I know ... And most people would not guess this about me because of the nature of work that I do, I am an introvert. And people wouldn't think that because I am outgoing, I'm people oriented. However, I get energy, I refuel from stepping back from that to re-energize and I know that about myself. Because of that awareness I position my voice differently. I'll know when is enough so I can manage my yes and my no. That's the other piece about voice positioning. We know we can then navigate those waters of being able to say no when we need to say no, as opposed to everything in a screaming no and we're still saying yes. I'm sure many of us have been there. Your listeners can probably attest to those times when someone's asking them to do something and I mean everything in them might be saying no, but at the same time, our heads are nodding, yes. Yep, we'll do it. And we are violating everything on the inside that is telling us no. So voice positioning when we are clear, when we have this heightened awareness of where our power is, it allows us to say, "No. I'm not going to be able to do that." And we say that unapologetically. Number one, I say it because I know Tracie, that I may not be at my best. I need to say no to that. It takes that sense of feeling the tyranny of the moment to say, "But what will Tracie think if I say no? How will Tracie feel if I say no? What will Tracie do if I say no? What will she think?" It takes me out of that because I recognize, I know that if I say yes to Tracie right now, I will not be at my best. So my answer has to be no. Does that make sense? Just a quick example.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

That's a great example. Especially as women, I think we tend to take things on because we feel like we have to take things on. So knowing ourselves enough and understanding what we're bringing and when that makes total sense, that we would then be able to approach things from a different angle and give a different response.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

One of the things that I talk about in the book is very simple N-O if we want to examine or give ourselves a question as we are trying to position our voices effectively with power is looking at N-O as not obligated.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

I like that.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Then asking ourselves, am I obligated? And if you determined you're not, then there's your answer. If I said Tracie, this Saturday, I want you to come over and help me wash the car, help me mow the lawn, help me do laundry, help me meal prep for all next week and I'll expect you at 2:00. Okay. Can I see you then? Your first question can be, wait, I might really like her a lot, but am I obligated? And if your answer is I'm not, then that helps you govern your response. That's voice positioning. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: Tracie:

It does. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Not obligated.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Not obligated. I'm going to remember that one. So you go into these organizations and you're talking to people who probably learned their voice positioning unbeknownst to them from the time they were young until the time that they're an adult. And so you developed a program to actually talk to kids about this. Am I understanding right? With the Voice Leadership Camp.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Yes. Absolutely. The Voice Leadership Camp for girls is phenomenal. It's the heartbeat for me for voice because in my research I recognize the number of women who were so impacted by those lessons that I talked about earlier, children should be seen and not heard. Speak only when you're spoken to. So starting with these young people ... And we start as early as first grade. Helping young people understand the power of their voices and how to position their voices with power. And so the program, we started it in the middle of the pandemic. Our first camp was virtual because we looked at studies that demonstrated that now students having to be at home in virtual environments, that there was a heightened number of students who were suffering in silence. They were being bullied online still. They were really in this grieving process of not having the social interaction and all of the things, but they were starting to be diminished in their sense of well-being. And the studies pointed to a heightened number of students who were considering self-harm. A number of students who went as far as self-harming. And so we saw those numbers and we wanted to develop something. And I thought, well, let's do this thing while students are experiencing these deficits while they're at home during this pandemic. Well, what grew out of that, then we had such tremendous success and outcomes. What grew out of that was this ongoing Voice Leadership Camp. And so now we are at the point of actually having the camp in schools. So schools are asking us, how can we take this Voice Leadership Camp philosophy and embed it in our school? And so that's what we're working on now, and it's super exciting. And I'm looking forward to this next iteration of us having this opportunity to empower, and I call them the next generation of world changers. But to empower their voices at this level.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

So that definitely speaks to me. I've got 20, soon to be 25 nieces and nephews, and I want them to believe that they are capable and they can be who and what they need to be. Have you had a chance yet ... Maybe it's still early stages. But is there any research that talks about if you teach them when they're younger, the impact on corporate culture or organizational leadership or anything?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

So I have not seen that. We are following our participants. So our cohort keep following them. Some of them are in their senior year now in high school. Some of them are in that high school range, so we've not gotten them to organizational life yet. But what we're recognizing is how they are implementing this notion of voice power just in their day to day. So for example, we had one of our participants, one of our graduates, our alums ... And so her mom reached out to say, "You'll never guess what happened today." So she had a doctor's appointment and she was eight years old. She had a doctor's appointment. Her mom goes to the doctor's appointment, they're in the room waiting for the doctor. The doctor comes in and says to mom, "So how are we doing today?" And the mom said, "We're doing well." So he says to the mom, "So what's going on with our little one?" And so our alum, our shining star says, "Excuse me. Would you please refer your questions to me? We are about to talk about my body and I'd like for you to direct your questions to me."

Speaker 1: Tracie:

That's incredible.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

That is absolutely phenomenal. And that is just one example. Several of our participants deescalate bullying in their schools to take on leadership positions in their schools to serve in school government as decision makers in these schools and groups that they are a part of to be voices in those organizations. And so it's been phenomenal to watch.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

That's really incredible. And what a milestone for that child. So you're both a consultant and a professor, and sometimes they think as scholars, we may intimidate people a little bit when we're sharing our knowledge with them. How do you balance the professor in you with the consultant in you?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Yeah. Tracie, that's a great question. But I think for me at this point is so integrated. And that's why I love that we get to be ... And I'll say this to you as well. That we get to be scholar practitioners. There is that integration. There is that harmony. I don't even feel that there is a need to balance it as much as it is this harmonious existence. I am imparting knowledge as a practitioner, and sometimes I'm bringing practice to the classroom. And so it shows up in different ways. I was talking to someone today about an interview that they have coming up. So coaching them around that interview. But also saying to them ... They shared one of the interview questions and I said, "Well, listen, all you have to do is pull in Mary Parker Follett, whose philosophy was that you believe in a shared leadership model. She talked about not leadership over, but leadership with. And that is your approach. You're a servant leader. So it's leadership with." So that was a scholarly pull from a theorist, Mary Parker Follett, into practice. And that's what I mean by this integration where I feel like I'm not having to strike a balance, but it's pulling from both. You're pulling from that academic, the scholar side to integrate and be in harmony with the practice side.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Love it. Bringing your whole self to the situation.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Yes. I love that, Tracie. I love bringing your whole self to the situation. And one of the things that I say to people that I get to coach is my overarching goal is for you to show up whole no matter where you are. Contrary to popular belief, we cannot leave parts of ourselves at doors. And when we try, we're fragmenting. And when we're fragmenting, that means we're leaving parts of ourselves in places that then cause us not to be able to show up whole. So we need all of our pieces. We need all of our pieces to be able to show up whole. So I love that you made that observation about bringing your whole self. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

So I have so much fun, but we do need to wrap up. I could talk about this forever with you. But as we wrap up, is it voice or what else do you see as some of the most critical challenges coming up for organizations? And what are some things we as leaders need to do to prepare for those?

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

I believe that the most critical thing for leaders to do, especially now, is to have great intention to see their people, to hear their people, and to value their people. To take a people first approach to how they lead, I think that's critically important. People are coming to organizational life with life happening. Leaders can just feel that I want you to just come in here and get this work done and that's all I'm concerned about. If that we are overlooking that need that people have to be seen, heard, and valued. And we are expecting productivity and outputs and outcomes in unrealistic ways. So think first things first. And I believe the first thing is to make sure that leaders are taking a people first approach. That's critical. And then the voice piece, I believe comes into play under that. But if we are in the practice of silencing we are doing people a disservice.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Yeah. I would agree. And especially what we've seen in the last five years, there's so much more need for some of that awareness.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that is what I believe, it's first and foremost and critical in organizational life.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Well, on that note, I think that is a great exclamation point to leave us with as we end today. So thank you so much for your time. It means so much to me, especially from our Southeastern connection. And so really appreciate your time today.

Speaker 2: Dr. K:

Thank you so much. And thank you for all you're doing and for this platform to create these conversations. And so I'm so honored to have had this opportunity to spend time with you today.

Speaker 1: Tracie:

Thank you so much. And for our listeners, we hope you enjoyed our thoughts with Dr. K today and learning about voice and leadership and communication. If you're enjoying the podcast, please go to Spotify or Apple and let us know how we're doing. And if you'd like to connect with me or with Dr. K, we're both on LinkedIn. Thank you.