“Be nice, be kind, share, smile, try to be as pretty as possible and don’t possibly age... This is how we’ve been trained.” – Michelle Minnikin, Psychologist & Author

"When did ‘nice’ ever get us a pay rise?" – Jo Phillips, The Woman Behind The Women

In this episode of The Chat Womb, Jo Phillips is joined by Michelle Minnikin, psychologist, coach, and author of Good Girl Deprogramming, to dismantle the covert rules and expectations that keep women small.

From childhood, women are conditioned to be agreeable, seek approval, and play by the rules, but where does that leave us? Michelle breaks down how society’s invisible coercive control keeps women in line, why so many women feel stuck in their careers, and—most importantly—how to break free from the ‘Good Girl’ mould and reclaim your power.

If you’ve ever felt pressured to play nice, stay quiet, or make yourself smaller, this episode is for you.

Episode Highlights

(02:10) – Introducing Michelle Minnikin: Psychologist, coach & author of Good Girl Deprogramming

(05:00) – The cult of ‘Good Girl Conditioning’—how women are programmed to comply

(07:15) – What society really teaches women: Approval = Worth

(12:30) – The workplace was built for men—how women lose confidence when they enter it (20:10) – The self-worth crisis: Why women lose belief in their own success

(25:00) – How to find your tribe and build a support system that lifts you up

(30:45) – The #1 thing every woman needs to unlearn: Being ‘nice’

(35:20) – Michelle’s advice to her younger self: Be less nice. You don’t need to be liked to succeed.

About Our Guest: Michelle Minnikin

Michelle Minnikin is a psychologist, coach, and author of Good Girl Deprogramming. With a background in organisational psychology, Michelle helps women unlearn the societal expectations that hold them back and rebuild their confidence, boundaries, and self-worth.

Her work shines a light on how women are conditioned to comply from childhood, why so many feel stuck in their careers, and how to break free from the ‘Good Girl’ narrative to claim the success and freedom they deserve.

🔗 Follow Michelle on Instagram: @michelleminnikin / Visit her website: https://www.michelleminnikin.com/ 

About your host: Jo Phillips

Jo coaches ambitious women like you to break through career barriers, own their worth, and finally get the career and salary they deserve. Through 1:1 coaching, Jo helps you identify what’s holding you back, to build an unapologetic strategy for success, cheerleading you every step of the way—because you already have what it takes. It’s time to stop waiting and start moving with audacity…

Connect with Jo:

Website: The Woman Behind The Women

Socials: Linkedin / Instagram: @thewomanbehindthewomen 

'The Chat Womb' is hosted by Jo Phillips and proudly produced by Decibelle Creative: @decibelle_creative / www.decibellecreative.com 

>> Michelle Minnikin: Be nice, be kind, share, smile,

try to be as pretty as possible and don't possibly

age, maintain the femininity. I

was like, yes, this is how I've been

trained.

>> Jo Phillips: Hi, thanks for stopping by. We've been waiting

for you. Welcome to the chat

room, the space for becoming

who you were always supposed to be.

This is not another fluffy empowerment

podcast. This is where we get real

about the barriers that hold women like you

back. The pay rises. We don't ask for

the promotions we're already qualified for,

the roles we've been conditioned to shrink ourselves

into. I'm Jo

Phillips, founder, of the Woman behind the Women, and

I'm here to help you see the system for what

it is. So you stop internalising the

bullshit and start moving with

audacity. You'll

find all the information you need to connect or work with

in the show notes. For now, though, come and take a seat in the

chat room because it's time to introduce you to

today's guest.

>> Jo Phillips: Hello, it's my absolute pleasure

to introduce Michelle Minikin. Welcome

everybody. Who is listening today on the show, I have

Michelle Minikin, who is a

psychologist, a coach, a speaker and, the

author of Good Girl Deprogramming. And I'm so honoured

to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. Him, Michelle.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Absolutely. My pleasure. I'm very excited to having this

chat.

>> Jo Phillips: Thank you. So good to see you. So good

to see you. And for those who don't

necessarily know your background and exactly,

ah, what it is you do and all of the work you do,

I guess I wanted to share that as part of,

the, as part of the work that you do. I took

a quiz that belongs to Good Girl Deprogramming. That's

all about unleashing your inner rebel. And you're in a rebel

woman. and I'm very proud, Michelle, to tell you I am

a rebel woman. My feedback came back with

Rebel Woman and I was very proud of that.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Congratulations.

>> Jo Phillips: Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, very proud of that. But

I guess, I guess for those listening, they might want to know

what is Jo on about in terms of being a rebel woman?

They might also want to know a lot more about Good

Girl Deprogramming and I wondered if you'd share with

us.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yes. So I.

To cut a very long story short, I could literally have you

listening to me for three hours, so.

>> Jo Phillips: Oh, no, we'll have that. That's fine. Don't get anything too short.

>> Michelle Minnikin: so I'm a psychologist.

My, literally my job. So it's organisational

psychology, so it's how people are in work.

And my, my, literally my job is to understand

human beings. So,

hilariously muddling through my life to the age

of grand total of 42, where I had

a,

a meeting with a wonderful

lady called Anna Price at

the House of Lords in London.

And, she was telling everybody about her ADHD diagnosis.

And she was. When she was describing it, I was

like, oh, this all makes sense.

This explains my entire life.

So I went off and got myself an ADHD

diagnosis. And with that

diagnosis came some relief. But

mostly it was absolute

rage. Because 42 years

old, my. My life has been

a series of adventures, shall we just

say? And this information would

have been really useful for me earlier to understand me. So it's

absolutely no surprise I went down the whole, like, I'm going to be a

psychologist when I grow up.

And so with that rage,

what women do when they have lots of rage, because rage is

not a socially acceptable emotion for women to have,

shook myself off for counselling and

coaching. And

after about a year I'd calm down a little

bit, enough to understand the

difference between what's me,

what's my adhd. But then

there was this other big,

dark blob of people

pleasing and conflict avoidance

and deferring to authority and

just like squishy, mushy, horrible

stuff. And I was like, what is this?

>> Jo Phillips: What?

>> Michelle Minnikin: What is this? Because this is, this is the problem, the

adhd. You know, once I understood sort of what that

means in terms of managing energy and managing cycles, all

that stuff, that was manageable, but it was

this blob of what. So

I was training with a. Another coach

and she just happened to mention, just

offhand, good girl conditioning. And I

was like, hm, what is this good

girl conditioning? So, like a good psychologist, I went

off and researched it. And it's all about all of the

different ways that we are expected

to behave. So be nice, be

kind, share smile, try to

be as pretty as possible and don't possibly age.

Of course, all of the, you know, the.

Maintain the femininity and all of that,

stuff. And I was like,

oh,

yes, this is how I've been trained. And

then it's like. And, because I'm a psychologist and I'm

really curious, and I was like, well, how does this

happen? And I went down the hall like,

well, obviously this is a cult. We're all brainwashed

into a cult of good girlness. And,

so I found a chap

in America who, was asked

in the 1950s to find out

why so many American prisoners of war were

defecting to China. This is during the Korean

War, but it was also during that time in America where everybody was

like going a little bit

unhinged when it came to sort of communism and

socialism. So it's the McCarthy

era. And so

the, the US military thought that the

Chinese had some magical mystery brainwashing machine.

And of course the American military would not do

anything bad with that. They just wanted to know what it was.

and so Biden and his team of social

scientists did some research, said, no, they don't

have this magical mystery brainwashing machine. They have

a series of tools of coercive control

in order to brainwash

the Americans into wanting to become

Chinese communists. And so I found this and

I was like, oh, this is interesting. You know, you get that kind of, oh, this

is excited curiosity printed off

this, this, all of these different tools,

a four sheet of paper. And

I was like, I'm good to figure out if this is how we are brainwashed

too. And within half an hour I went from, oh, this is

exciting, to, oh.

>> Michelle Minnikin: This is it.

>> Jo Phillips: So half an hour, Half an hour.

>> Michelle Minnikin: We are trained, oh my God, to

behave. And it's generational, so

it's. And we're also trained to

like, coerce ourselves into behaving as well.

So yeah, the patriarchy has a lot to

answer for.

>> Jo Phillips: It took you half an hour, To get to the point

whereby you could almost categorise

and list the coercive control that

society puts on women and

their behaviour and their expectations.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yep, I am nodding. Yes.

>> Jo Phillips: Wow. Yep, wow.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Like, surely somebody had thought of this before.

And I couldn't find anybody saying this. It's been used

in Amnesty International to use

it in descriptions of torture.

Obviously it's used in the domestic

violence and the coercion legislation

we have nowadays. but no,

nobody put that M together and come

up with, this is how we're trained to behave. And

we're all conditioned, we're all trained, you know, men

and women and.

But it's, it's particularly

insidious, I think,

that we are then

blaming ourselves for being rubbish

when it's not us, it's our conditioning.

So we need to deprogram from

that. So you didn't even need to read the book,

you're already deprogrammed. You're like the shining

star that we all need to follow.

>> Jo Phillips: Well, I think. I

don't know. Had I answered the series of

questions because of Course, there's a number of questions that ask

you whether you strongly agree, agree,

disagree. I think had

I answered those questions

20 years ago,

I don't think I would have been a rebel

woman. If anything, I think I would have been

working harder to

conform on the basis that

my

understanding and my entire

education and lens was the more I

conform, the better I am as

a person, as a human, as a

woman. Therefore,

the higher my value.

So as. And as I was reflecting on those questions and you

try hard not to reflect for too long.

>> Michelle Minnikin: No. Yeah.

>> Jo Phillips: You kind of have to go with your gut and your instincts and how you feel in

that moment. But certainly there were some of those

questions where I definitely reflected and thought, now I've been

on my own journey here.

things like the self care question,

where do you place self care? And I was able to answer really high

because if I'm not okay, nobody else is. Things

like, are you comfortable enough to

use your own voice? Are you comfortable enough to speak out if

you don't necessarily disagree? I was able to say

I strongly agree. But I don't

know, Michelle, if that would have been the same

in my late 20s.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Oh, yeah. No. And we

learn this stuff, don't we?

>> Jo Phillips: Yeah.

>> Michelle Minnikin: And I think as we age, we give ourselves more permission

and we've seen, we've seen how being a good girl

doesn't get us anywhere. So

we have to look at different, different

paths and and do the work

on ourselves to untangle all of this

stuff without even knowing it's a thing.

>> Jo Phillips: And what if you had to pinpoint

it? What was I learning

up until the age that I started any type of evolution?

What, what was I being coded with

up until I.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Gender expectations. And so

it happened. Starts, starts in school.

So you even have programmes

that automatically assign seats in

classrooms. Boy, girl, boy, girl.

Because girls tend to be better

behaved in the classroom because we are held to higher

standards and we

supervise, we're acting

as teachers, assistants from the

age of five. So

there's that and school. Actually we do

better in school because all of the good girl traits,

the planning, preparing, hard work,

perfectionism, all of that, as well as the

adapting to all the different authority

figures, we get really good at that.

So we are getting better GCSE

A level results, we're getting more degrees,

higher masters, there's more doctors that

are graduating that are, that are women.

So all of that

we learn puts us in really good

stead. But the second that

we get into the workplace,

which was designed for men. By men.

>> Jo Phillips: That's.

>> Michelle Minnikin: That's when it's all goes to

shit.

>> Jo Phillips: And it really does go to shit. You're quite right. Every

single client I see it has gone to. It's not that

they're not very capable, not that they're not very

resilient, not that they're not very senior. Nonetheless, at

some point it has tipped into.

There's something about their journey

M that has been hugely affected by the

system and the system has been built by men. For men.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yep.

>> Jo Phillips: And it actually has had such

knock on effect to their confidence, to their ability to

use their voice to the point where sometimes I

can hear my clients. I mean there's usually

tears in session.

Sometimes I can tell that from the body language of my

clients that actually they're really struggling just to vocalise even what

they think.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Because they spent their entire life with

a socially acceptable professional

mask. And it's,

it'll be knocked by lots of

experiences. So when I'm in organisations delivering

workshops on good girl conditioning, the

stories I hear are absolutely

heartbreaking. M. All the

different ways we're told. We are too much, we are

too loud, too chatty, too bubbly,

not loud enough. Not chatty enough. Too

bitchy, too boss. It's like it's

relentless and it's, it's

torture. It really is torture. So

what, what happens between doing really well at

school and then on day one

in the workplace? All of those skills that we

learned do not serve us.

>> Jo Phillips: I wonder. That conditioning piece.

I wonder. something that I've had to learn

to stop myself from do it

even with tiny girls,

pre preschool age, maybe

nursery age, maybe toddler age

is. There's something for me that I. So I

might see, view, observe an

absolutely beautiful child.

I've had to learn that when I talk

to that child who's a young girl.

>> Jo Phillips: Not to use any

descriptive language around her beauty,

her face, cut eyes, her

smile, her manners. Her

manners I've had to code

myself and this really

is something that I only learned as I had

nieces.

>> Jo Phillips: And I started to notice

how I spoke to my nieces

and actually what that truly meant. And I very

quickly

realise that. Hang on a minute. There's, you know, the value on her dress.

Is it? What's that got to do with anything? Tell her she's intelligent.

Tell her that she's just come up with a really

thoughtful comment. Tell her that she's

really observing colours and scenery

and she's very descriptive

and I wonder. I wonder Even

as a rebel woman who is, who has

been through a journey herself and as you know, I

have no issues pulling people up on it whatsoever

and helping others to

really I guess go through their own

journey. But what should we be

doing and when should we be starting

this deprogrammet?

>> Michelle Minnikin: Oh, it's all about doing it first to ourselves, isn't

it? because if you think about

it, ah, our parents put

our grandparents values into us

and it's a very different world from

our grandparents because I know

for mine both my grandmothers were stay

at home housewives.

My, my mum's dad was a farm

labourer. My dad's

dad was a minor.

So you know those

in those days that was enough money to have a house

and you know, food and stuff we didn't

have nowadays where it's very

rare that only one member of the family

works and we had to

go into, you know, my mum had to go

into the workplace

and.

>> Jo Phillips: As.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Well as be the full time mum for four children as

well as looking after her sick parents. As

well as. As well as, as well as.

And yeah, so I'm

looking at my mum and all of the sacrifices she

made and all of the judgments that I

placed on her. Why, why wasn't she

was better than her bosses? Why did she not get

promoted? It's like when could she

have when she had all of these caring

responsibilities and my parents got

divorced when I was 14 and so had to do them on her own.

I look at my mum sometimes like, Jesus Christ, you are

literally Wonder Woman. It

took a lot out of her.

>> Jo Phillips: And probably caused some mental health issues and probably

meant that she, she didn't necessarily get to put

herself first in any way, shape or form during those

years.

>> Michelle Minnikin: No, she, she didn't get,

she obviously didn't get promoted like she

should have done because she just did not have that extra energy to

even put in the application.

So she had a really stressful job and she had

really stressful children, she had really

stressful parents and

she the oldest daughter and

I'm the oldest granddaughter. So I look at her and I was like, what

did my mum do? Like how can I do the opposite?

>> Jo Phillips: Right? Yeah.

And when you, when you talk about how can you do the

opposite, what should,

what should a female in a

corporate who feels stuck, who feels

undervalued, who feels underwhelmed, who isn't getting where she wants

to be, what would be your

guidance to her? What does she need to do to get to

where she wants to be.

>> Michelle Minnikin: So traditionally there was the route and I

would do not recommend this route is look

around you, look at what the boys are doing and do

that, don't do that.

>> Jo Phillips: Because we've all, we've all worked for.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Those women and, and as much

as I understand them and I forgive them

for pulling up the, pulling up the ladder

behind them because it was only one space for one

woman, it was not the right way to go. And

I think number

one, all of this work is

you need to find a tribe. You need to find the women that

are going to have your back who you can be

honest with. and

admit that you're scared,

failing, messing things up.

And that's, that is, that is our power, our

ability to connect

and collaborate and

just build each other up,

have that safe space with safe

women who are not all going to give you an

easy ride. But we can challenge each

other in a loving way. That's

my number one tip for everybody. Just find

your tribe and

get rid of the tribe people that shouldn't be there as well.

There's always one, isn't it?

>> Jo Phillips: Absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes more than. Yeah,

absolutely. So it's about finding the tribe.

So finding that support network, finding your people

being in a position whereby you can share your challenges,

maybe you can ideate together, maybe you can

solutionize together. Yep,

that's, that can be done. That's kind of, that's the external work. right,

let's go and find some people. Let's, let's make sure that we're

hanging about in the right places.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yeah.

>> Jo Phillips: What's the internal work

in your opinion that

a typical client of mine should be doing?

What's her first go to

on a practical level for the internal work

that she needs to do to help her

find her self belief again. So many of my clients have

lost belief that they will ever get to where they want to get

to. Ever be paid what they should be paid, ever

be listened to? Even Naru.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yep. It's that self, self worth, isn't

it? And self compassion and

what really helped me. I still am amazed that people

haven't heard of Brenny Brown.

>> Jo Phillips: I love Brene Brown.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Like how is this, how is this a thing?

So look at what Brene is

saying. Read some of her books, listen to her

podcast. or

the other one, Glennon Doyle. I have got like a

massive girl crush on Glennon Doyle and all the way she does

and it's, it's not

profound stuff but it's like we have Been taught our

entire lives to hate ourselves. What can we

do to turn that

hate away? And what are we

awesome at? What. What do we like about ourselves?

And then take that little step further.

What do we love about ourselves? Could you imagine all

women loving ourselves? What that would mean the beauty industry would

just go under, wouldn't it? Let's face it.

because that's what it is. It's that

just exists to make us feel

not being ugly.

>> Jo Phillips: So true. So true. Well, that really

just hit home that we've been

taught to hate

ourselves. Sorry, that really just hit

me then. And you're absolutely

right. We've been taught

dislike who we are. But that's not

just the physical. Right. That's the mental piece. That's the

emotional piece. Too much. Oh, you're too much.

Oh, you're being too much. You're taking up too much

space. Oh no, you're too needy. Yeah. Stop

asking for reassurance. Stop being who you are.

Stop, stop having the conversations that are

emotionally driven. Because that's actually who we are.

Because of our hormone cycles, that is.

Don't be bossy, don't be outspoken.

>> Jo Phillips: Don't be you. yeah.

>> Michelle Minnikin: And we just bury ourselves. And

inside of us, this is. There's a sad five

year old that was told that they were too

bossy or too loud or too

boisterous or too

nosing a book. You know, you literally can't win.

It's like, you literally can't win. We've got a wounded

5 year old inside us all. And until we

can sort of reach in and

love that 5 year old and

say that she wasn't too loud or

noisy or studious or,

you know, embarrassing or, or what,

that we just need to love ourselves.

And literally that was like one of the biggest,

criticisms is like, oh, she loves herself, she's up herself. You

know, arrogance.

It's like bollocks off.

>> Jo Phillips: Quite. We should absolutely be able to

love ourselves. We should absolutely be able to be assertive. We should

absolutely be able to hold boundaries.

>> Michelle Minnikin: So I worked this out when I was writing my book.

27 generations of my family had to

survive past the bubonic plague for me

to exist.

>> Jo Phillips: Oh my God. 27 generations.

Stop it. Yeah.

>> Michelle Minnikin: So the fact that I'm even here is an

absolute miracle. You're

here. How did that even happen?

That's magic.

>> Jo Phillips: Yeah. Yeah. And

do you think that there is something that when

we, when we learn how to love

that inner child, do you think that that

is the key to deprogramming. Do

you think that is one of the core

turnaround points?

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yeah. Because we have to, we have to value ourselves before

we can say no, bugger off to other people.

>> Jo Phillips: Yeah, yeah. Ah, yeah.

I'm just absorbing that because I think when I think back to my

journey, I had to learn to love

her. And I do, wholeheartedly. And

that has a big impact in terms of how I hold

boundaries, how I show up, how I show up

for my clients, how I show up both personally and,

professionally. But there isn't a person

in the world that I wouldn't give my time to. But

equally, there isn't a person in the world that I would allow to waste

my time.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Exactly.

>> Jo Phillips: But I had to learn that. Nobody taught me that. No,

nobody, nobody.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Boundaries. Nobody wants you to have boundaries because.

>> Jo Phillips: Exactly.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Women having boundaries would be a big problem because

the world only runs on the. There's the

smashed boundaries of women. Pretty much.

>> Jo Phillips: Yeah.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Imagine it's like, no, make your own bloody

tea.

>> Jo Phillips: Yeah. Something that I

regularly say.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Quite right. Yeah, yeah.

>> Jo Phillips: It's just, you know, that's blowing my mind about the

the inner child piece. It's amazing, isn't it? These

conversations where they take you.

>> Jo Phillips: You already know you're capable of more. You don't

need permission, you need strategy.

Let's make it happen. Drop me an email at,

Joe, ah, the woman behind the

woman.com or

find me online. You'll find everything you need to

get in touch with me in the show notes.

>> Jo Phillips: One of the questions that, I ask all of my guests or I

ask all of my guests three questions and I guess now is the time

to, to ask you some of these. So of course as a

psychologist you went to university and I asked all of my guests

whether or not they went to university and if they did or if they

didn't, what impact did that have on their

lives? And I'm really keen to know what your

experience was.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Well, I think having A levels at, ah,

the exact same time as you're allowed to go out partying is a

terrible idea, first of all.

>> Jo Phillips: Oh, quite. Yeah, it's true.

>> Michelle Minnikin: I didn't do very well in my A levels after all. But I

managed to scrape through to get to university because I knew I

wanted to be a psychologist. I did want to be

a criminal psychologist.

Like remember Cracker with Robbie

Coltrane? I wanted to be him. I wanted to

catch the bad guys. I was actually in my second year at

university when I found out that police Catch bad guys.

They don't work with psychologists. So I was like, ah.

>> Michelle Minnikin: So I had to look around and find. And I almost joined the

army at that point and then I was like,

yeah, my dad was in the army, so it was kind of look around, what are your

parents doing? Let's, let's. Let's do the same.

came to my senses because ironing is

my Achilles heel. I just hate it and I'll refuse to do

it. so the ironing. I would have either

been awesome in the army or terrible. One

of the two would have been in the middle train. Yeah.

So I did my masters instead in organisational

psychology because it was the psychologist that earned the most

money.

>> Jo Phillips: I love that. So the commercial lens was there. We'll be

doing the job we enjoy, but we'll also be earning. I love this.

Yes. So that's.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yes. So I couldn't have done what I've done

without going to university twice, because

I was a very good student,

even though I pretty much

was hammered most of the time. But I was able to pass

anyway, which is a bit wonky.

>> Jo Phillips: Do you think there's. Was there anything to do with ADHD there

and hyper focus and having a real

superpower in that?

>> Michelle Minnikin: Oh, thousand percent. I am the

cramming queen. but also

psychology is really interesting because I've got this natural curiosity

and nosiness, so I didn't find it

that difficult. But bearing in mind A levels, I

did French, German and chemistry. So after those

A levels, I think a psychology degree with

dottle.

>> Jo Phillips: Walk in the park.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yes, I could do it. Half cut was fine.

>> Jo Phillips: It's fascinating. Wow.

And. And during your journey,

what do you. Because, I find it. I find it

really interesting that we all have

so much to give, but we don't necessarily get to share as often

as we want to. And, I wondered

what you wish people

asked you more often about your

journey. I wonder what was the question you wished you were

asked more often?

>> Michelle Minnikin: So I was the quintessential

actress. I was able to

be dying on the inside,

whether it was that time of the month. I've always had terrible

periods, but I was able to put on a face and go to

work during it. or,

you know, having multiple marriage

breakdowns and all of that sort of stuff.

I was able to plaster the smile on my

face and carry on through.

And it wouldn't have taken. I wasn't that good

an actress. It wouldn't have taken that

much interest in me to ask

me how was. How I was but

not take that, oh, yes, I'm fine, everything's fine.

take that face value and actually ask how

I was really. So Karen, my

book wing woman and the lady I went to for coaching

and counselling when I found out I had adhd,

she asked that at the beginning of her podcast and it really makes me

go, oh yeah, I'm fine. And then the second time, it's like,

you do almost do a body scan. I was like, how

am I really? So I, I find that really

a grounding question and a

connecting question as, well. But very few

people asked me that during those

times.

>> Jo Phillips: And I wonder if, I wonder if there's

a real

opportunity there that's being missed for

women who are in corporates and for their

leadership to actually just

pause a moment and ask, how are you

recognise m the actress in her,

no matter how good she is or what level she's at,

and then to be able to ask about how are you really?

>> Michelle Minnikin: And get the tissues ready.

>> Jo Phillips: And again, it doesn't have to be a counselling session, but maybe she needs

to say, actually there's a number of

frustrations that are happening and I wanted an opportunity to walk

those through. Actually. I really

at the moment need to balance some priorities here,

actually. I've got a number of things happening and, if I

don't need to be here right now for this 45 minutes, it'd be wonderful if

I could exit. Yes.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Can I just go?

>> Jo Phillips: Why? Because, you know, I just think it's

really interesting that people don't take the time to truly

connect. And what if you did truly connect and what if

that true connection helped with your retention? What if she didn't walk

out of the pipeline?

>> Michelle Minnikin: Because that's what happens. We just get fed up and set our own

business. I

can do this outside.

>> Jo Phillips: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we've seen a number of

the larger organisations now, insist that people

come back to work five days a week. We've now got aws. You

know, Amazon Web Services have said, great, they're going to bring everybody back in

five days a week and we're going to see a mass

exit of women.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Brain drain. It's a bugger list for a bunch of bananas.

Why do you want to sit on a train or in traffic?

We, we travelled, what,

13 miles yesterday to go to a

conference and it took us an hour and a half together.

Thirteen months.

>> Jo Phillips: It's nuts.

>> Jo Phillips: It's just a waste of time, it's a waste of energy, it's A

drain.

>> Michelle Minnikin: People should have the autonomy to choose where they

work best.

>> Jo Phillips: Right. And this is what I always say to my clients.

You, you get to choose your work schedule because you know when you need to

be there. So if you've got global teams, you might decide in

that first three months worth of heavy lifting that you need to be in emea. And that's

fine. You'll decide it. You'll decide when you need to be in

Asia, you'll decide when you need to be in the uk. But it shouldn't

be dictated. There isn't a schedule that you require at this

level. at this level, you decide priorities.

Absolutely.

>> Michelle Minnikin: And, and we know,

and the cynics, the cynics in us know this

is not anything to do with research. This is to do with

rich landowners, rich landlords

having empty offices and not being able to sell

their space. This is, it's

like, this is, this is brainwashing.

And their buddies to say, oh crap, we've got

this whole building that we built and we're still owe like millions of

pounds and we've got no tenants, so we just need to make,

make everybody who works at home like lazy,

louty liar bugs that just sit watch Netflix all

day. No, we don't.

>> Jo Phillips: No. exactly. Exactly.

And I wondered, you and I can

sit quite confidently talk

about this in detail.

Because of both of our own experiences and our own journeys

and I guess this piece around arriving

through breadth of experience

to get to where we are today. And

I oftentimes think, what would I tell

my younger self? What would I sit her, down and say, not my five

year old, but what would I, what would I sit down my

early years

career person and say what would, what would I tell her?

And I wondered what your advice would be

if you was to look back on you in your earlier

years. I wonder what you would say.

>> Michelle Minnikin: So it wouldn't tell me to not get married a

couple of times because I wouldn't have the life that I have

now that I love. So you know, we just have to let, we

have to let her go through all of that fun and games,

but get a bloody diagnosis earlier, first of

all. And

if I could, if I would walk into a room and I could see

somebody like not liking me, I would

make it my life's purpose to

wear them down, make them like me. It's

like, why.

So the amount of energy and effort. So

my, my advice would be be less nice.

>> Michelle Minnikin: M. Just be less nice. Because the

amount of worrying about what people Thought

of me. Wow.

>> Jo Phillips: And you think, is there a difference between being nice and being

good, do you think?

>> Michelle Minnikin: It depends. M. So it's,

it's almost the motivation for both is the, is the

question. So if you have to be good and

nice, because that's how you've been raised,

not that you're choosing to. Whereas you can

choose, you know, I think

99.9% of the population are

good people and.

Yeah. So I think we just need to

be a bit more ourselves. And

I was a, I had a very bad period

this weekend and people in my house are pissed me off

and so I just said, said to my partner,

who is adorable and lovely

and you know, there's lots of equality in this

household. I turned around him and said, you do

realise that if I stabbed you when I'm on my period, I could probably

get away with it.

I would have never said that 20 years ago.

He knew I was mostly joking,

but it's just like we

were taught just to keep those thoughts to ourselves

and just take it.

>> Jo Phillips: I often wonder to myself, you know, I often wonder to

myself, our behaviour is our choice,

nobody else's choice. And I often, I often

think going back to the being good and the being

nice, it is a choice. You can choose to be a good

person every single day,

but there's no rule that says that you have to be nice

if you're not in a situation whereby that energy

is being returned or the level of expectation isn't

being returned. And I think, I think

I would, you know, going back years ago, I think I would have said to

her, all you have to do is be a good person.

Nice is. Nice is just the icing on the

cake if you decide that that's where you want to be. Yeah, but

nice, you know, might not get you as far as you want

to get.

>> Michelle Minnikin: No. And it's that good girl double bind as well. It's

that credibility versus likability

that we have to navigate in

order to, to be socially acceptable in

organisations. And I was always.

That likability factor was like. My number

one was like I had to be liked. I had to be liked because, you know,

and I didn't get as far as I could have

done because I was so busy

trying to be liked. And that just made

me significantly less credible.

>> Jo Phillips: Right. Quite. Absolutely.

And I can really. Yeah, I really see that. I see

that. Oftentimes I see that play out.

And it is, it's not, it's not just a piece of

research. It's an actual phenomenon. It actually

happens. Really does.

>> Michelle Minnikin: It's really interesting. So I was delivering a workshop

in a tech company, and, there was a couple of. A couple of guys

in the room. And one of the questions I ask is like,

you know, describe what a powerful woman

is and describe a complete.

And one. One of the guys said,

in the complete aisle,

tricky. And I was like, oh, that's an

interesting. That's an interesting

word. And maybe about a week later,

my brain clicked in, was like, why he said

that. And he said

that because we have to

be, like, manipulative, but we have to be

strategic in getting what we want because we are told

we're not allowed to ask for them. So, you

know, like Donna in suits. It's almost

that. It's that level of, like, behind the scenes, we're

being. We're being like, moving things around

because we're not allowed to just go up and say, this

is a spade. Can I have it, please? we have

to. We have to sort of be. Be

tricky in the

background. And it's just like, how much

more work do we have to do to get what we want

in workplace?

>> Jo Phillips: M. Isn't it interesting that, his

interpretation was. She was tricky. And my

interpretation of that individual's

comment is hard to control,

Hard to coerce, hard to control. She's not listening to

me. No, that's right. She's not. She's not tricky. She's just holding her

boundaries. Absolutely. Do you know

what, Michelle? I could talk to you for hours and I

just cannot thank you enough. It just,

just fascinating. Your insights are fascinating. I would

recommend everybody buys your book, quite frankly. And I

think we should start reading it from a very young age. We should be

reading it to our daughters, quite frankly.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Yes, people are, which is really hilarious because there's a lot of

F words in. But yes.

>> Jo Phillips: Mute those on the way through. It's flags.

>> Michelle Minnikin: Explicit title. Yes.

>> Jo Phillips: Well, thank you so much. It's been wonderful. Thank you so

much for coming on as a guest. It's super appreciated.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

>> Michelle Minnikin: M. It's been wonderful.

>> Jo Phillips: As you were.