In this podcast we cover:
- Megan’s Services.
- How men and women communicate differently.
- How we can connect.
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Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:
· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg
· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt
· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured
· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw
Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1176. Today's podcast is going to be amazing. We have an awesome guest Megan Shapiro with us and I'm convinced that it's going to be super impactful. We're going to be talking about communication and stereotypes and I'm going to be asking her about her business and the things that she does to help trade partners and general contractors alike. So stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction podcast delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders and companies and construction wanting to take their next step. Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better. Live a remarkable life and expect more. Let's go! Welcome everyone. I hope you're doing well. Megan, how are you doing today? My sister. I'm doing great today. I don't know when this is going to come out but the hurricane is smashing into the east coast as we speak and I'm supposed to get on a flight tomorrow morning so I'm keeping an eye on that but other than that I'm good. Yeah so the podcast should be out tomorrow morning. So yeah so we'll be giving you well wishes and hoping for the best. How many podcasts have you done by the way? Oh my gosh I wasn't ready for that question Jason. I'm going to estimate probably somewhere around a dozen. I always ask because if somebody is like no I don't do it very often then I don't feel subconscious but if it's over a dozen or over I'm like oh I really have to perform as an interviewer. I really started to appreciate interviewers when Adam Hootz interviewed me on a podcast. He is such a good interviewer. Like he just really gets deep. Yeah because Adam's style is and I'm sure you know this is very like genuinely inquisitive. So when he asks the questions he's not like not not listening to you so that he can formulate the next question right? Like he's like genuinely there listening and so his follow-ups are always great too. Yeah 100 percent he and he can make you cry. He's so good. He's such a good interviewer. For the audience will you please introduce yourself, background, things you're passionate about just what you feel would be most meaningful to communicate about you so we can connect. Absolutely so I'm Megan Shapiro. I am a full-time practicing construction attorney in California and gosh about a year ago now I decided to sort of branch out and add a side business where I help primarily subcontractors with their contracts and I help them maximize profits, eliminate claims, win more projects through true ownership of those contracts. I also am pretty passionate about proactive risk management strategies when it comes to construction companies because that is that's been my background as an attorney. So that's really where I spend most of my time. I people often make fun of me because my side business is almost identical to my main business and they're like you're doing it wrong. That's not you're supposed to like your side business is supposed to be something that lights you up that you're not getting filled from your main job and I'm like but I love my main job like I want to be able to offer it to more companies outside of just California and I finally figured out a way to do that. Well you're doing great for everybody listening Megan has a condescended or agreed to work with us at Elevate and with Lean Belt with our construction company and it's been so invigorating and energizing. We're connected with really great insurance brokers and construction lawyers and all the the whole nine we're totally set up so Megan's been fantastic. So I want you to send everybody listening please send lots of work her way anything that she wants or needs. By the way would you allow me to respond to the you're doing it wrong comment? I know it is. So when you go to Tony Robbins he says don't be a business operator be a business owner but when I have asked different business owners it can take anywhere from three to 15 years to make that transition right and some people don't want to they like to operate their business. So for me and you already know this because you're consulting us but just as a second set of eyes like it took me three and a half years minimum to get off of planes and start to have the right who's on the bus to take care of things and like now Kate and I can relax have sacred family time go on vacation so I don't think you're doing it wrong but I'm sure that person was well meaning and lovely so I'm not being mean there. Yes I'm sure they were I'm sure they were well intentioned. Well so you have lots of good energy I want to talk about two key topics. One I asked what was the thing that you're the most passionate about and you had mentioned a presentation you've written given and I was telling everyone who's listening on the podcast I was telling Megan the research and the conditions of women in the workplace and have been like floored at the data that I'm finding out. So I've been like really passionate and also trying to communicate it without trying to light the world on fire and make everybody mad. So I here we have an opportunity with Megan to share something as she always does in an amazing way and then I also want to talk a little bit about what you do in your business and send people there if we can do that. So can you kick it off what was your presentation about what is the concept here? Yeah so the Sacramento Regional Builders Exchange and the Construction Education Industry Foundation partnered back in 2020 to do a women in construction conference here in Sacramento I know there are many of them all over the country but there's is here in Sacramento and I was involved in the very first year and of course it was COVID and so it ended up transitioning at the last minute to zoom and it was you know much smaller and not super effective over zoom and so I have been absolutely blown away and super privileged to have had a front row seat for how that conference has just ballooned over the last four years and this year they actually sold out the Sacramento Convention Center. I think the final yeah it was amazing. I think the final attendee count was north of 1300 people it was amazing and so I was very very fortunate to be asked to give a workshop at the conference and so I put my head down and I kind of thought like gosh what would be the most valuable thing that I could bring to the table this year? I've done things on negotiation strategies in past years and other things so this year I decided to talk about strategic communication in female leadership within construction okay and I kind of um I don't know if this is the right way to do it but it's the way I did it I started with a general topic first and then kind of backfilled into it and as I was sort of building out the workshop I was sort of natural you kind of can't talk about communication in a male dominated industry or two male dominated industries if you're talking about a construction attorney with construction right um without being confronted with the gender stereotypes that surround the way men and women are perceived when they communicate yeah and so I was really intrigued by that pathway as part of the overall bigger discussion about strategic communication for women leaders in construction and so that was kind of the workshop that I built and it it led to a lot of really great discussions I somewhat controversially and I was a little bit nervous to do it but fortunately it landed and I haven't gotten any negative feedback yet but I opened my workshop by yelling the word bitch and then putting the word bitch on the huge screen right and people were kind of like that's awesome I know yeah I know I was like okay well now that I have your attention yeah you know I led with you know raise your hand if you've been called a bitch and keep your hand up if the reason you've been called a bitch was because you were just doing your job yeah and I think I had something like 90 people that attended my workshop and I cannot tell you I I expected a few hands to stay up almost every single hand in that room stayed up and there were men and women more women than men but it was it really did drive the point home that when women communicate in an assertive and direct manner yeah we're called a bitch yeah but when men do it it's like oh my gosh he's such a good leader he's so authoritative he's so confident yeah right so it was an interesting conversation for sure well so would you mind if I share some thoughts there yeah so it's interesting so I had a recent and it was I super love this person the person I was arguing about but I I've been like watching different influencers around the world you know like well there's really nice influencers like the author of invisible women you know you have people like Brene Brown you have you have really nice influencers and then you have the like the Andrew Tate's of the world and Joe Rogan who isn't that bad and then Jordan Peterson who I hadn't really want like evaluated or settled on how I felt about him and then and then after reading invisible women I'm like nope nope we're not using the right data set I am anti this rhetoric any so I there's a friend of mine and he and I were like screaming at each other having an argument over Jordan Peterson and so I'm not going to weigh in on that or get dramatic but the the the the gist of it is that when you hear him talk to what he would call a feminist interviewer he's always saying don't punish men for being masculine and getting all the promotions a woman can do that too but but if you do that that's simple yeah it's just that simple you know it's it's interesting so I I probably offend a lot of my listeners for my perspectives but you just have to tell the truth but like if you do that if a woman does that it's not authentic and you get called a bitch right and I also learned so there there when it comes to hiring equal pay the data is just overwhelmingly in support of the fact that women just do not get treated equally and there's another oh and the meritocracy concept is not a not a thing you know people say well hey don't hire for diversity don't hire for women just hire based on merit and that's always the argument right against women and I don't know if you saw that study where there's an orchestra that had five percent women and then after I think like a 10 15 year period they had up to above 50 and the differentiator was they started having blind auditions yes and so the meritocracy thing is a farce when when you actually look at performance irrespective of gender or ethnicity you start to get more diversity because they are more qualified last thing I want to say is in the in the book of the key characteristics that I'm talking too much I'm sorry Megan but no this is fascinating I love it the key characteristics of leadership a lot of them are ability to coordinate amacability the ability to empathize right and there's five of them I don't remember all of them but women score highest on it on four out of the five and they don't need to be like men and I think that this message of be more like a man is is probably hurting more than it helps and so I just want you to know that like I connect with that um that problem there it's really just that you don't look like I do and you don't sound like I do and I want you to be just like me but you're not right and you have unique as a woman just you wonderful perspectives and the diversity is something that we need oh and we all know that the more diverse the team the better that team does so here's my question knowing that I'm a safe place at least because in this instance I don't know if I'm a safe place everywhere but for this I'm a safe place what was like the gist what was the response to people like scream at you did you know what it what what was the theme like yeah after you did your presentation yeah it was really really well received okay good good yeah yeah the way I mean the women um and again there was majority women were in the audience there were some men but of course as I'm you know up there doing the presentation and I'm sort of scanning the crowd obviously I'm getting more information from women than men and so the women they I mean they loved it they were I mean laughing and clapping and cheer I mean they were just like yeah because I I tried to give them real examples that took it that depersonalized it but made it in a way that was like you can't ignore it so I took the example of the character of Miranda Presley from The Double Wear's Prada she's the one that's based off of animal work right yes yes yes and I go I love that movie I know it's a great movie yeah I literally googled adjectives to describe Miranda Presley okay and I thought like six or seven and it was I mean they were great like of it's what you would expect but then they got like ego maniacal mega lomania I mean they got crazy then I did the same thing with the character of Harvey Spector from the legal show Suits that everybody loves right okay yep and I did the exact same thing I googled adjectives to describe Harvey Spector and exactly what you would probably expect although maybe not you you're a little more enlightened but what most people expect which was a confident supportive knowledgeable expert and the really crazy thing about that is those two characters were written with identical communication styles they were literally written to communicate in the exact same ways and to the to your point about the study about the orchestra which I had read previously if you actually flip the list of adjectives to describe the opposite you're those are true too if you actually remove the filter of like but everybody loves Harvey Spector and everybody hates Miranda Presley if you just so if you flip the list yeah they equally describe both characters because they're written in the exact same way yeah 100 percent yeah um so here's what I want to so I love your story do you mind sharing what would be the big when if you do please don't we can change subject but like what is the overarching advice that you would give people when it comes to communicating understanding the stereotypes and our differences so that was sort of the point of the that was the point of the workshop and I actually have decided that I am going to start marketing that workshop because it was so well received and I take this conversation that's important enough to have on a grander scale okay so I'm trying to sort of zoom out a little bit and take and remove it from the niche of construction because it's not limited to construction right and so I talk a lot about tools to get through that and I truly took it very seriously by making it a workshop and so one of the tools that I introduced and I do it through this framework you may have seen me post about this on LinkedIn my sort of like do it like a lawyer sub-brand which is you know this idea that people assume that lawyers are extra good at you know lawyery skills like negotiating and communicating and persuading and things like that right we're not we're not any better than than anybody else at it but we do have a specific set of frameworks that we approach those types of activities through and so um so I'm going to be rolling out hopefully Q4 of this year but if not Q1 of next year I'm going to be rolling out these sort of workshops that go through some of these things wonderful one of the one of the tools that I used in this workshop for approaching get overcoming the gender stereotypes within strategic communication we were talking specifically about difficult conversations because of course a difficult conversation is what's going to be the most emotionally inflammatory for both parties and that's going to be the thing that's going to be most likely we're going to retreat to our stereotypes when we feel threatened of course yes yes and so you may be familiar because I know we're both we're both big Jennifer Lacey fans I learned this from her and then I adapted it the six thinking hats exercise by Edward Debono which is not strictly or really at all a communication exercise it's really designed to help teams approach problems in different ways through different lenses okay and Jennifer introduced that that exercise to me and I looked at it and I thought boy I could do some tweaking here and this could be a really powerful way to help people role play out these difficult conversations in a way where they can really truly practice on somebody who is embodying the natural thinking style or communication style of the person with whom they have to have that difficult conversation so so in other words it starts with here are the here are the six types first identify your own type your own natural type what's your default position in a difficult conversation as the one happy to have it now do your best to approximate what the natural thinking style is of the person with whom you must have the difficult conversation yeah and now we're gonna role play it out so that way one other person in your group can play that role in that natural thinking style so that it will closely mirror what you're likely to receive when you go into that conversation and then through the role play you can really tweak and test and adapt and come out with what I what they come out with is a strategic communication blueprint that is you know a worksheet that we walk through so that they now have a blueprint a plan to go into this difficult conversation feeling more empowered feeling more confident in a way that they can we can't get rid of gender stereotypes when you're when there's only one person of the two in the conversation yeah we can't control the other person but what we can do is go in with our eyes wide open and plan for that so that we can hopefully neuter the impact of the gender stereotypes in our difficult conversations I love that for a couple reasons if you don't mind me commenting on that yeah um so I don't have any of this figured out we have we have 50 percent women in our company and we're at you know we always hear hey we don't have a lot of data on companies with either half or majority women right and we also don't have data on the performance and so like my attitude is like we're going to get it and figure this out um you know one thing that happened to me was there was a woman manager I should just be able to say manager but for the purpose of this story I'm gonna say that so that that cried in front of a client and somebody gave her advice you can't do that and I and I'm not saying that I'm enlightened and I'm not saying that I'm right I'm just saying like I was like why why not I've gotten mad before it's super okay for men to get mad yep why is it why is it not okay for us to cry so like that I don't even know the right answer but like for me I still don't have an answer like why is it why is that wrong why would I tell a woman don't be a man don't be emotional right so I think one one aspect is like understanding like through your exercise you would understand the other gender better right and then through digging in we'll find better ways to interact with each other yep and so I really think that's that's pretty fantastic I I really really just from I really think what I'm getting from this and I am listening by the way I took that challenge from the Adam challenge that's what I'm getting is that like if we have because obviously we don't want to share too much about the exercise because we want people to go to your training but but digging in like that will help you to understand and know how you can show up I love that I think that's fantastic what would be so for all so let me do one last thing and I think we have like three minutes left one last thing so here's here's my problem here's my problem oh here's an example oh I'm gonna ask you a question and then we're gonna close it out and then I'm gonna see we're going all right so I got this I want to talk about this let me give you an example like if I I feel like if I told all the men in construction this analogy they would probably get it if you have equality and this ties into communication between genders but if you have four stalls for men and four stalls for women I could ask anyone which line is going to be longer everyone would say the woman's bathroom why and I'm not trying to be inappropriate on the podcast but you have to sit down you have periods you have changed tampons at different times child care the different clothing over and over and over all of these things right so equal does not end up being fair and if we and I I'm not talking to you I'm talking to everybody in the podcast verse but um but fair meaning we have eight bathrooms on for the women and four for the men then we'll have equal line sizes so fair will now end up being equal so I think that's an analogy people can understand but if I start talking about hey the meritocracy thing isn't the thing we do need to intentionally uh recruit and hire women we need to be more accepting of the feminine energy we need to get rid of misogyny we need to get rid of sexual harassment like I feel like people's political and religious like ire gets up and it's like hey I super love everybody I think everyone can keep their religion everyone can keep their political views let's just put that over here for just a second and let's just do the right thing and have a real conversation here and so my question to you as we close is what advice would you give because part of what you talked about is perspective like just even having putting on a different hat how do you get a different perspective how what would be your advice on how we can increase the awareness like even even the word like if I say awareness people think oh you're woke or whatever and like and that has such a negative connotation how can we increase people's awareness because I'm certain if people knew the reality of what women have to go through and what they have to go through when communicating we would have much different perspectives what advice would you give to increase scale that awareness I think this is going to sound counterintuitive but bear with me I think you have to do it through examples that remove the equipment the gender part of the equation okay by that what I mean is when you were talking about your bathroom example I was thinking about this this old meme that I've seen floating around the internet it rises periodically who knows how long it's been around it's three kids they happen to be males and one is like a little kid one's a medium height kid and one's a tall kid and they're standing on one side of a fence and they're trying to see something on the other side a firewish out whatever it is right and the tall kid can see over the fence the medium kid is like right at fence line and the the short kid is of course way down here and the the illustration goes what is equal is to give all of them the same size box to stand on so they give them the same size box now the tall kid is like could basically step over the fence the medium size kid can now see over the fence but the short kid still can't see the fence then the next panel is sort of like what's you know what's equal is not always what's fair and then it shows the fairness which is the tall kid gets nothing because he can already see the medium kid gets you know a short little step because he was close anyway and the short kid gets a huge tall box so that he can actually see over and then the end result is their heads are all equal equally above the fence line and so that was a long winded explanation but I think that type of example where it has nothing to do with women so you're not inflaming to your point that this you know our feeling especially currently in our in our current climate both political religious and otherwise this feeling that we need to dig in right we're get we immediately get defensive about our our deeply held beliefs yeah feel like we immediately need to like hunker down and dig in and give no inches at all but if you remove women or gender at all from the equation and you make it something as simple as like different heights and you as boys man they're boys because one's a kid um I think that really can kind of drive home the point and once you get the buy-in with that framework then it's equally applicable to every other example that we can both come up with yeah right I like that we could actually use production rates like um like for the bathroom example you could look okay this this set of bathrooms has a throughput of whatever like five people per you know ten minutes or whatever this one has a throughput of two people per ten minutes we need right look at it from a data driven standpoint I like that so real quick so by the way I think I think we we'll need more time in the future to talk about all the other cool stuff but you do such an amazing job you have such great energy you're such a blessing will you please close us out here by saying what what do you offer what do you want people to interact with where can people find you uh so the easiest place to find me is on linkedin uh it's Megan Shapiro but all of my handles are at construction contract coach so that's linkedin uh youtube facebook instagram tick-tock it's all the same um but I post daily on linkedin I have a weekly newsletter that goes out on linkedin and on my email list so that's the easiest way to connect with me I also have a website it's easy also Megan Shapiro dot com um so that's where you can find me um I offer for California-based companies obviously you can hire me to be your attorney I still practice law full-time I'm in my law firm office right now um if you're outside of California though I offer one-on-one coaching I offer consulting services like what I'm doing with elevate and um I I'm now in the process of rolling out these workshops and trainings where I'm going to come in where you can bring me in house and we can sort of work through some of these issues on negotiation styles for contracts um redlining and reviewing contracts like a lawyer negotiating like a lawyer persuading like a lawyer and communicating like a lawyer that's awesome and so I think that covers all of them what do you do what do you offer can we get our perfect this has been fun I always love talking to you I have such good energy and I love your post I love your post about family too I feel like I know you're you and your husband both you know what I appreciate that because sometimes people get annoyed that my post doesn't doesn't say anything about the picture they're like but what's happening in the picture like what were you guys doing where were you I'm like yeah what's really the point well I here's what I know about your husband he's a sweet guy super handsome takes care of the family uh probably really empathetic and probably has is really competent but is also like a sweet teddy bear that's what I get from the picture so yes I would say that's all 100 accurate he's also I don't know if I've ever told you this Jason but we have a construction love story he's actually an HVAC superintendent from a mechanical division and he used to work for one of my clients that's how we met well that's awesome yeah so we have construction in common so I'm not competing but Kate and I met in a construction job too so yeah I love that that's awesome so all right well everybody Megan is awesome she has lots of connections please reach out we are using multiple services from her and Megan I appreciate the the discussion you've helped me with a good perspective that I can use to really talk about some of the things that I want to talk about I think your presentation was fantastic and you should be applauded for it and I hope your workshops in the future go super super well so everybody I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and on we go please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers leaders and companies coast to coast if you're enjoying the show please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating subscribing and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform we really appreciate it we'll catch you next time on the elevate construction podcast
