PODCAST: How This Boss Learned A Big Lesson And Is Making Noise

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Liz Dolan is the host of the new podcast I Hate My Boss. She is known as one of the most creative marketers in the world—CMO at global brands like NIKE, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network and National Geographic Channels. And while she had those big jobs, she had a side hustle, an award winning media brand called Satellite Sisters—five real sister (Dolan is one of them) host podcasts, write books and believe that the sense of connection is the most important sense we all share.

Liz Dolan

Courtesy Liz Dolan

Dolan has taken a very public stand on gender bias in the workplace—it happened after she was left out of a board meeting during her time with Quiksilver, the action sports and apparel company. Dolan tells the “how could this happen?” story in our podcast. Below are three lessons she learned before, during and after (in Dolan’s words condensed and edited):


Restauri’s note: In 2015 Dolan resigned as the sole female board member of Quiksilver. In our podcast, Dolan says the board deliberately left her out of discussions that led to the firing of the CEO, who was also her friend. Why was she left out? Unconscious gender bias—they assumed that if she knew, she would get emotional and spill the secret. Here’s an excerpt from Dolan’s story:

You think you're through the hard stuff, then stuff happens and you're like, “Wait a minute. I’m still working on this? This is not right!”

I had to make a big decision: “Am I going to stay or am I going to resign from the board? If I resign from the board, am I going to go quietly or am I going to stage what they call in the business a ‘noisy resignation?’”

It went on for two months. I called a lot of women I know that serve on boards. I gave them the scenario and I said, “I don't even know what to do. What should I do?” Half of the women said, “Do not resign. It will just prove to them that what they feared about you was true—that they couldn't trust you and that you couldn't take it.”

The other half said, “Are you kidding me? These people have shown you such a lack of respect. Why would you spend any of your precious time working with them?”

I was tossing and turning at night. I felt like I had gotten to the point in my career where I didn't have to prove anything anymore. But I did. That was one of the big lessons.

After about two months, I had a real aha moment. I kept asking myself, “How can I earn their trust? Clearly they didn't trust me. What would it take for me to earn their trust?”

Then I had this light-bulb moment where I thought, “Wait a minute! They're the ones that need to earn my trust! They're the ones that just treated me in like an unbelievably, unprofessional way. Why am I thinking, “How do I win them over?”

That’s when I decided that the real question was, “Can they earn back my trust?” I decided the answer was no. You can call them “unconscious assumptions,” but they were assumptions—whether they're conscious or unconscious—that I couldn't keep a secret, that I was going to be too emotional. It was gender bias.

Not only did I resign from the board, but I went for the noisy resignation. Part of our problem as women is that too often we go away quietly. People assume that we’ll just go away, that our feelings will be hurt and we’ll go sit in a corner and lick our wounds. I decided I wasn't going to do that.

I tell this story because I want women to understand it’s not over, this idea that you've earned your slot at the big boys’ table. The real lesson for me here is that you can be at the table, but they can still put you in a soundproof booth. I didn't think that was possible, but they did it. That was a real revelation for me, even in my mid-fifties. The fact that that could still happen to me—with men that I considered to be my peers—was a real shocker. It was a turning point.

End False Urgency

I am so done with false urgency. This extends to a lot of things in my life and to business in general. I think partly it’s the idea that we all have to be electronically tethered to the rest of the universe all the time. I am so done with that. I am trying to train myself to make this radical idea a reality: leave the house without my phone.

It’s not like I'm going far. If I'm going for a walk, why am I bringing my phone? To look at Twitter when I stop at a light? That is wrong! There’s also a false urgency of feeling like every time someone emails or texts you that you need to respond immediately. That is not true.

If I was an emergency room doctor that could be true, but I am not. There is nothing anyone is emailing me about or texting me about that can't wait an hour or a day. I think we've all been trained to feel like everything requires this instant response. It means we’re not giving ourselves time to think about things or just enjoy not thinking about work. It’s not healthy.

When you walk out of the house without your phone, at first you feel like you've left your arm behind, but it has been helpful to me in terms of just being able to think about work, life, creativity and not have all the constant interruptions.

Get A Side Gig

I've always believed in having at least one outside fun project that was totally my own, even when I had a corporate job. A lot of people feel like they're not getting enough satisfaction out of their big JOB. You can expect some satisfaction and fulfillment from your paying job, but you really can't expect a job to give you all the joy you want in your life. It’s just not fair to expect a job or a company to do that.

If you're not getting enough creative exercise in your paid job, then create something on the outside. I know we’re all super busy. It’s not like we have loads of time to go off and do other things, but I think it’s super healthy to have something that you have total control over that nobody’s telling you when to do it or how to do it.

To hear the stories behind these quotes, take a listen to our podcast:

Women need volume representation. One seat at the table is not enough.

We end up with this insane calendar of things we have committed to because we don't want to let our friends or communities down.

Say “no” in the beginning if that’s what you’re feeling. If you say “yes,” you're going to resent every minute of it.

Whether it’s your personal life or your work life, having that strong sense of connection to other people—that’s actually what gives our lives meaning. I'm not sure that there’s anything else more important than that.

Put on a pair of red shoes and a pink dress!

