EP061 - Leadership principles for distributed managers with Archita Fritz at Ready Set Bold
About the episode
This episode focuses on leadership principles for distributed managers. How can you manage teams across different locations? How can you ensure teams are aligned and productive regardless of where and when they are working? To discuss, I have Archita Fritz, who has spent her career in the corporate world, leading globally distributed teams.
About the guest
With over 20 years of leadership experience, Archita Fritz is an award-winning global marketeer and a proven strategist. She has built successful marketing strategies for startups & Fortune 500 companies, operating in over 80 countries. Her leadership roles range from R&D to quality systems management and marketing, always emphasizing equitable workplaces. She brings these learnings as the Founder of Ready Set Bold, a workplace transformation practice.
As the former Vice President of a large Employee Resource Group within a Fortune 500 company, Archita advocated for inclusivity and psychological safety. Today, she amplifies these values as the Chief Marketing Officer for Speak Out Revolution, a UK-based non-profit committed to ending the silence on workplace bullying and harassment.
A proud Michigan Tech and Northwestern Kellogg alum, Archita also hosts and produces the "Embracing Only" podcast, championing those daring to be different. Her mission extends beyond her professional roles to transforming workplaces into bastions of respect, safety, and success.
Now based in Dusseldorf, Germany, where she is raising three third culture kids alongside her husband, Archita has a multifaceted professional and personal journey that informs her vision of the future: one where empathetic, diverse leaders transform workplaces into arenas of respect and innovation, driving meaningful, impactful change by being bold, being brave and being YOU. Archita seeks to not just be merely a leader—she is motivated to be a catalyst for meaningful, impactful change.
Connect with Archita on LinkedIn.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
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Welcome everyone. Welcome to the Leadership Anywhere podcast. Today we will meet with a leader who has two decades of experience managing people in the corporate world in multiple locations. I have Archita Fritz with me calling in from Dusseldorf Germany. Really appreciate that you took the time to talk to us and share some of the learnings that you learned during the journey. So tell me a little bit more about yourself. How did you end up working in a distributed environment and tell me if you can a short intro about that two decades of journey that you learned.
Yes. You're telling I love to talk, so I'm going to try to. So hello, everybody. Really excited to be on your podcast. So looking forward to having the conversation here. So when I think about a short version here, I've spent the last 19 plus years in corporate America. I started my journey as an electrical engineer. I left India at the age of 17 and I moved to the U. S. In a lovely little town called Houghton in Michigan. It's in the middle of nowhere, and so I moved from a city of 13 million people to a city of 13, 000 people when school is in session, so that was fabulous. And so you talk about distributed leadership, I was literally in the middle of nowhere, and I had to build connections, networks with people like from the age of 17 to ensure I felt connected with the rest of the world, but I actually Met my company age 18 is when I met the company I stayed with for 17 years.
Oh my God.
I know. I'm one of those people.
Oh my God.
I know. Not a lot of people do that anymore, but it was a fabulous experience. And and a lot of learning as well. So 17 years, I started my work in engineering, and I realized very quickly that I need people. I need to engage and solve problems, and I cannot be in the basement in the test lab working on a breadboard. I'm dating myself, like literally, if anybody knows, you used to build circuits on a breadboard. And so as I was deciding, what I wanted to do next to the company, they gave me a chance to go and job shadow a few different roles. And so I job shadowed, and quality engineering. And there's something about quality engineering that really appealed to me because I got a chance to work with all of the team that was on the manufacturing floor, like work with them. But as much as the sales team that was all around the U S. So I was responsible for the quality situation, quality systems across the product lines that I was responsible for across the U. S. And that was really great because I got to solve problems for them and that gave me that engineering kick that I needed and the people, because I got to solve it with people. So it was with engineers inside the business, manufacturers of manufacturing teams on the floor, like the assembly line workers on the floor, and in the sales team that was distributed all across the 50 states of the U. S. So while I was not.
That is a full circle of product management anyway.
Exactly. And I did not know that back then, right? I was like a 22 year old. And I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. I get to travel to Louisiana and I get to travel to California. And so while I was not leading them in that early part of my career, I was sowing the seeds for building the muscles and the skill sets needed to learn to communicate, build engagement and empower teams, especially through change and crisis, right? Because they would always come to me, my team, our department when there was a problem. And so that was the beginning. And this was across, yes, the US was one country, but good Lord, the cultures across Jesus. Yes, was like so different. And I was an Indian girl. Who they had never seen, so I was, I was the first, I was the only in every stage of that company. I was the first women engineer they'd ever hired in that particular division, which is crazy to me to even think about it. I was the first woman of color, forget this woman of color that ever hired et cetera. And so it was just like compounded, right? So I had to break through a lot of barriers as I engaged with all these individuals. So during this time I had a chance. There was an opportunity that came up, that's a whole other podcast. I will not get into how that opportunity came up, but an opportunity came up to move to Quebec, Canada for me to go and there was a manufacturing plant the company had there that they had purchased 20 years ago, didn't touch it. They were doing their own thing, but the FDA was coming and we needed to go make sure everything was in order. And so they were like, would you be interested? I was like, heck yes. I'm super young. I'm like, why not? I didn't speak the language. I needed to learn to speak French. And I had to prepare and work with individuals to overhaul the plant. We had three FDA visits. In six months, so we had to be really ready for that. And so that was like the next time where the seeds were sowed because I was responsible and managing teams across the US And across the world at that time, because we had launched a brand new product out of that manufacturing facility and we were pioneering this product. It was in medical devices There's lots of regulations across the world. And so how do we do the rollout? And since it was our first time engaging with this particular product globally there were some hiccups like there would be right. So how do you bring teams together to solve the problem? Our engineering team sat in the U. S. Some of our engineering team sat in Quebec, Canada and doing all of this with in another language, which was fabulous, so French. So then during this time, it actually was a fabulous experience while it was a tough one. But I had a chance to really engage with customers because, it's a brand new product. So I was the engineer. They always brought along to every customer decision. And I realized that I wanted to be a part of being proactive about solving their problems versus reactive in quality. And so on my way back from the US I was like, I know for a fact, I don't want to stay in quality. And that's where I fell in love with marketing. I had a chance, if you want the story, because I'm, as I'm going on telling my stories here, the story was, I had a VP of marketing who heard one of my presentations once. And it was like, if you ever need a job in marketing, just give me a call. I gave him a call and I'm like, Hey, Kevin, this is Archita. You remember me from a few months ago. You said, if I ever need a job in marketing, I should give you a call. This is my call. And he's Oh my God, perfect timing. This is crazy. Cause he's this is perfect timing. Cause the girl on my team who was responsible for international, which was the rest of the world outside of the U. S. Had just submitted her two weeks because in the us you give two weeks notice I just submitted her two weeks because she was leaving to become a teacher. So he was like give dan a call and you have the job. This would never happen today, right? So this was like in the early decade of 2000s, And of course I built social capital and things like that in the beginning, right? I've given at this point in time five to six years at the company, but still it was a lot of A big chance he took. So this was my entry into marketing and I have never looked back since. I was responsible for the globe. So I was in the U. S. and I was responsible for rest of world, which is fabulous for a division. And then so this was, I didn't have a choice. There were like 70 plus countries at that time where I was responsible for convincing them why they need to focus on this product. So multiple cultures, multiple individuals across the board. And then when the company decided to create a transatlantic operating model, I knew I wanted to grow and drive impact outside of the U S market. So I raised my hand and I moved to Europe as an expat to help build our Europe, Middle East and Africa business. And since 11 years. I was leading a team across Europe, Middle East and Africa. So even before all of this was more in vogue or whatever it might be, it was just a lot of different businesses used, a lot of different departments did that. And then, yes. And then now I find myself here in lovely Dusseldorf starting my own consulting practice helping other companies grow and scale their businesses.
Oh my God, this was a long and and amazing journey and amazing journey. Tell me a little bit more about the challenges, I think, because I think one of the key takeaways that I learned from this journey where a you collaborated in multiple totally different cultures. Most of the time remotely. So you haven't gathered the people together all the time to, fix some problems. So that's was, I think that was the first challenge, and the second challenge is that you were like a bridge between different silos or departments within this company as well. By the way, can you say the name of the company or?
Oh, yes, for sure. Stryker. S T R Y K E R. It's one of the top medical device companies in the world. If not the number one or number two.
Yeah, I know. I heard that. Cool. How did you handle that cultural differences. Also, by the way, you were like a new to the whole US and also European culture. As you said, you were the only and by the way, you have a podcast, which is discussing this only situation with others as well. So it's how did you handle that? And how do you like, overcome that? Because that's a really interesting story.
No, absolutely. Thank you for asking. So the podcast, by the way, it's called the embracing only podcast. It's a common red thread across all my experiences. And it's probably one of the reasons a lot of even clients choose to work with me because it does bring in that unique perspective when you're more comfortable with change, you're more comfortable with dancing through discomfort, as I say, and helping people around that to make that change. And so I'd say one of the biggest gifts I got in the early part of my career to be able to engage with multiple cultures was when I was a quality engineer, my manager, Jeff Tessier, love the guy, still in touch with him. He told me, Archita, a complaint is a gift. And as a quality engineer, I spent hours on end, like closing complaints, that was my job was like, close a complaint, identify the problem, work through it. But when you start looking at it as a complaint, it's a gift. You really look to unpack all aspects of the gifts, right? Who brought in the complaint? Why was this the problem? And so then you start recognizing that you've got to build those bridges. Between the sales rep who brought that to you and the customer that's actually dealing with it and the sales rep feels like he, she or they are in the middle of this, right? And so how do you create that bridge where you reduce friction for them through that entire process while dealing with a not so fun situation. But what is interesting is every single time that the team's notice and I noticed over time that I was able to use that as an opportunity to change the way the team's engaged with each other, right? So it was not just about solving this particular problem, but how can we become a better partner for you? By you giving us a chance to work with you to solve this problem, right? So that was the the way I worked through. So to me, that was the first one, which was very critical and it served me well. Cause even when I was leading international and marketing, it was complaints, in a different way where the old U. S. people did the outside of the U. S. people didn't feel like they were heard ever. And For a fact, yes, they are, because it's not one country. It's 70 plus countries that at one point with 120 plus countries that we were working with. But how do you again bridge that right? So again, recognizing the fact that okay, every point of this engagement is an opportunity to like, turn this in into something bigger than just the complaint was critical. The second one was another gift a leader gave me when I was in the thick of this like FDA investigation and all of this madness was listen learn and then lead. This was so critical because a lot of times we will enter a situation and you'll see someone say in my last company or in my last role I've always seen it being done this way. Sure, that experience informs you without a doubt. And it replicates all the time, right?
Or at least you think that it replicates all the time.
But you don't know yet unless first you see...
Every situation is different.
Yes, exactly. So no matter how much number of years you put in your CV of experience, you have take the time to first listen to your team. And it doesn't mean you take 10 months to do this. This can based on, the, we all have had X number of experience. We can do this really quickly in a month of 30 to 90 days even. In your first time entering into new teams. Yes. Even when you're in a team for a very long time, right? I recognize this like when I was managing my team that was here across Europe, Middle East and Africa. I was like I've done this remote thing already. So when the pandemic hit, I'm like why should it look very different? Was I wrong? Because for my team, their world shifted. For me, this was my world always, right? So I had to re engage, re listen. And this is the one other thing that really stuck with me was Mark Pritchard, who's the CMO of P& G, I think. I hope I'm not screwing this up right now in my Friday afternoon days, but he said this, that, he's been the CMO for 30 plus years. Okay. Every year he fires himself. Asks a set of questions and then rehires himself to really see does he recognize because things are constantly evolving, right? So during that pandemic, especially when there was a humongous change across every single member of the team and their sense of what they thought normal was, I had to consistently every week do my version of like fire myself and even engage with my team to be like, what's worked well, what has not worked well, what do we need to change to rehire myself to be a better leader for my team?
It's so interesting. It's so interesting because people don't, leaders, usually they are not really good at listening. They enter to the room immediately dominates everything. And immediately, showing the whole scenario, situations reacting to everything that they see, although as you said the best solution should be just like, step back a little, be silent. Listen for a while, gather the information, and then you can do something different.
Exactly. And I'm not your typical like quiet person, I'm not, I don't, not the quiet leaders. There are lots of quiet leaders. And for the long part of my career, I thought I'd emulate them to be a great leader. But the reality is in your own way, but you can make space for your teams. And that is what is really critical. And so for me, the way I would create space because I'm energy, I am the team understands this action around me and everything else, right? So I would give the reins of our weekly team meeting to a different member of the team once a month to help me create that space that I physically, I'm not just wired to do right. And so when, whenever these individuals would step in it would give me time to completely step back and listen to the unsaid things. Listen to the things that are not being said versus always being the one leading the meeting. And so I would highly, like highly encourage, cause this is how you truly empower your teams too. But also you truly want to become better.
Yeah. This is by the way, just to recap, this is like a really good management technique that everyone can learn is usually when you have a I guess regardless what team you are leading. Almost every team has a weekly strategy meeting or whatever it is, right? I don't care how they call it, but it's like weekly meeting and they gather together discuss stuff and it's always the leader. And instead of doing that, just, nominate someone else from the team to lead the meeting. It shows ownership and you can listen to the, you can actually examine like really new dynamics within the teams, which you previously wasn't aware because you talk too much.
Gives you a chance to split, like really try to back off, and so much through every one of these sessions, because the team is phenomenal. And this was not just to speak to the managers or leaders on my team. It was every single day, the people reporting to them, because, you have that one, it could be monthly, it could be like bi weekly, you bring the entire team together. And so to me, that's what really helped me during that time.
And what do you think for a leader, what should be the, or at least through your journey what should be the main focus point? Is it more managing and the rolling out of a certain project or giving the vision to your whole team so they can be able to roll out any kind of project?
So like everything in life, I will say it depends. Okay. Of course. Of course. I just hate to say cause it is no black and white answer like in life, really speaking. And if leaders go try to implement just one thing every time you're failing as a leader, like every single time. So the reality is if you're stepping into a new team. Or your team has just experienced or is going to be experiencing a significant change of some kind. And in some companies this change happens every three months, right? So that's also something to consider. So if you're doing any of the above, I think it becomes really critical that you make it very clear. I just posted about this on my personal post today, actually, about you're very clear of, do they know what role they play? As it lines up to the mission of the company, to the goals of the team that are really either reengineered or are brand new because you're stepping in as a leader, right? So does everyone on your team, are they really clear on what role they play? We just assume like a title defines the role and that's nonsense, and so that's what I would say is the titles are great to ensure your teams are being compensated appropriately and they get a chance to grow and develop in their roles. But outside of that everything else is on how you curate their experience to thrive as the best version of themselves in the teams that they sit in, right? So I would say in that situation, that's what I would do. You mentioned the other one, which is where you would empower your team. So once you've been in your team for a bit, right? You understand the strengths of your team, then absolutely like when you have these projects, one you should not be doing like, and it's hard for a lot of first time leaders not to feel like, they're contributing 'cause they feel like, oh my God, if I don't show my leaders that I'm doing something. Then what am I doing? But the best way you can do something is utilize your team strengths to empower them to drive that thing that needs to be done, right? So you've been in the team for a while. You understand the strengths of your team, then leverage your team to help drive and roll out the projects, right? So my team still has one on ones with me, right? I love that. I just love that. Even though I've been away from that company for two years now, I just love that they are we're still so much in touch. Cause I really love building teams. I really did and growing them and developing them.
And by the way you left the company two years ago. I guess where the question is why but I think the more important question is that what are you doing now then?
Yeah, I can also address why, because I'm very open about it, but what am I doing now is after I was with one company, which is a publicly held company that was doing phenomenally well 30 plus years of 20 percent increase in EPS, okay, which is earnings per share, like unbelievable. But I left the company and I joined private equity, which was fascinating. I was like, it's either going to be a train wreck or it's going to be amazing. It was a train wreck. And so through the train wreck, I decided that it was, the universe's way of finally saying, girl, rip the bandaid completely, lean into your strengths and go create magic and multiply this across multiple industries versus just the ones that you were focused on, right? So that's what I do right now. I'm the founder and I'm the principal of Ready, Set, Bold. It's a consulting company based out of Dusseldorf and I work with companies to focus from a product marketing perspective. On scaling their business to take them from single product universes to multi product universes, step into brand new markets with go to market strategy. But then also work on culture and workplace transformation, especially through times of change. So those are the kind of three key pillars I work with them on. And then I feel like I need to shift completely to talk about why I left. So I'm going to do that. Is you have any questions?
Let's discuss the why. But I think after that, it's also important to discuss the combination because it resonates and it rhymes what I do personally because I think there is no growth without culture or operations. I I approach culture from a little bit different perspective. So I think culture is more like an operational question at least to me. So how you work is pretty much defines what the culture is at the company. What are the values, what you prefer in terms of how you work together. But in essence is the same without proper operations and proper culture scaling is you cannot do that. It's not just a trick or a hack or a gimmick that you can hack your way into scaling if there is no foundational support in the scale, which is the operations or the culture in your sense. Yeah it's hard to do, but yeah, let's talk, if you think the why is important.
Yeah, we can get back to that in a bit because I really do think it's very important 'cause especially when you sure. Why the heck did you stay at a company for so long and then leave? Yes. And then, sometimes people stay at companies. Yeah. We'll get at that in a second. But you mentioned this part right? About what did you say, how I do it or with the companies and what is my way of capturing it? So again, here, it really depends on the appetite of the client I work with, right? So I really recognize like sometimes you've got to you've got to first make them recognize that there is a wound, right? Then you've got to tell them that, Hey, there's been a band aid over the wound. Then you've got to like slowly peel it off. So for me, sometimes what I come from, come at it is that, okay, you're bringing me in because, usually there's a very big problem, but they know that they need to disrupt something significantly in order to get over the hump. So I'll start with something. I will start with that. So it's okay, Hey, we have this only one product for the last X number of years. We need to enter new markets. And R& D keeps pushing our products, but we don't know how to bring this to our customers to turn it into a multi product universe. It's okay, great. Let's start with that more of a what would I say, tangible, operational, like kind of thing, where we can go, we can put a framework in place, we can implement it, we can see how it works, launch a product, take a product through launch completely, During that process, what I start infusing is these moments of like marginal gains is what I call right from formula one, you go through that pit stop, right? And so this pit stop moments happen, whether it be with the leader of sales, with the leader of operations, with the leader of even HR, we do like workforce planning with some of my clients, because people are a critical part of what you're trying to implement, right? You can't implement something in a vacuum.
They are the ones who are creating the product.
The value. Thank you. Exactly. So we create these marginal gains across the board and then we start working through if this is the route we go through is how do we make this value enduring? So how do we create enduring value for what we've just created and not something that, disappears after this product launch. So then we would work through okay, let's...
Sorry, this is what I call sustainable growth.
Exactly. Exactly. So sustainable endured value there. So that's a probable route. Another route is sometimes these are usually like larger companies. So not the ones that are probably like a 40 to a hundred million dollar company, but these are like larger say a billion dollar or more company, they would have just gone through like an MNA for instance. And then they've had five or six companies come together. They have had a McKinsey or a Bain do some, 100, 000 deck document, thrown it on the board. All the leaders have been trained. They have this fabulous acronym. They all feel great. But then the leader calls up to be like, yes, they've been trained, but I don't know how much they believe it. And that's a problem. Like the sustainability of these like million dollar investments that they do, how do you put it to action? And so then that's where I would, I come in to help drive it, but I call like empowered teams, empower people, empowered leaders, empower their teams. Apologies there. And they do it by creating speak up cultures. So that's where I introduce this whole concept of the fact that, okay, how do we create speak up cultures where we can debrief for failure? Because only then during a time of change, will a lead, will a team member come and say, Hey, I know we wanted to do it this way. And McKinsey told us to do it this way. And we're trying to do it this way, but it's not working. And this could be like six months down the lane, but they need to feel comfortable to break that thing that they spend millions and millions off because otherwise corporations are comfortable with little failures happening over time, and this, this is all the work you probably do. And so that's what. I try to go and disrupt for them, which is which takes a lot of brave leaders to do because who likes to go to their manager to say that, hey, this thing that we just got from McKinsey is not working. I need to get this girl from Dusseldorf to come in to help us to work through this. And But it's, I applaud them and they do because then they can see the transformation.
That's the main question, by the way, that that what is the drive behind the bravery? I think that's the biggest question here. Because as you said, and you are 100 percent right By the way, it is true, just FYI, it is true for growing companies as well. For scale ups, like 50 to 100 people or something that people are more comfortable with small little failures during a change period rather than going in full in and revamp everything and accommodate it to that big change and risk a little bit more to gain a little bit more. And I think that we question is that what drives these leaders? To risk a little bit more And not be comfortable with the small little failures along the line because at the end of the day, by the way, There are two sides of this game: One you risk a lot you gain a lot if you're lucky, of course, and if you're doing it, right within a shorter period of time, or you're comfortable with the warm water small little failures, small little gains sometimes by the way. So that's also happening and one or two years have passed and you're just not growing enough or stagnating. So these little things accumulate over time. So what's the drive behind? What do you think? What's the drive behind? Why? Why do they call you, for example?
Yeah. I really think that you familiar with the archetypes in branding, right? There are different kinds of archetypes, like the hero archetype, the ruler. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So this is a realization I've come to I would say very recently. Okay. So this is not like something I've been thinking for years, but again, because I've not have had to be in that situation, but I feel like leaders that are willing to work through discomfort are the ones who lead with the hero archetype, so they have had behaviors where they've been protagonists, they've been the leader that has come in, tried to change things. They're on a quest. They're in a journey that's bigger than themselves. It's bigger than just that particular problem. They've had significant trials and tribulations, but they believe in there's a will, there is a way, and they're going to go find that way. So they're the only ones, and there are like, eight other archetypes. And I've noticed that when there are leaders the ruler archetype, which there are a lot of that, this is the way to do it. These are the structures in which we're going to do it. These are the rules. They will never be the ones that I will get through, so I like forget about it. This is not someone that is going to take this. They're comfortable with like small little failures along the way, but a hero archetype usually is one who that's my hypothesis. I'm testing this out. I'll let you know in a few years, but these clients, but as I work with and I reflect back on all the moments in the last two decades of leaders I worked with, it was these kinds of leaders with this kind of like archetype that are these qualities that really were ready to raise their hand. It might take them some time because they have to go through the trial. They have to go through the tribulation, but then say, heck yes, we were wrong or not even wrong. Hey, we need a different way to do it. And I'm okay with asking for help to do it.
Being a ruler, by the way, is very comfortable. I'm just saying. Being a hero is immediately a discomfort. Because heroes can fail and become martyrs. It's interesting. That's a really interesting concept, archetypes.
Yeah, someone was helping me with my personal branding and that's when I was like, Oh my gosh, this is, these are my customers. I can put that my clients, I can put them into like different buckets and then I can identify and I can help companies, and organizations also like it helps them recognize what kind of leaders they have today and how to leverage their strengths as they are solving problems as well, right? So use this, you can find this anywhere.
I would highly recommend it. Totally. Actually, your, I think, I don't want to divert the conversation into this, but this is super interesting. Because You, I think your clientele are like a bigger corporations or bigger companies.
No, it's, I work with people from I see my minimum threshold is 20 million all the way up to, scale it. I don't care. But I've noticed that if I go anywhere below that is they can't afford me one, but then two, the value I'm going to drive is like not, it's rather through a workshop versus a long term engagement.
Of course. Same as here. Those companies who already raised a series A or hit a certain revenue goal. Those are my target groups as well. And what I've but I don't work with really large organizations, for example. But what I realized that if they are on the grow up or scaling up journey they have two very distinct correct characteristics. I think most of these companies are engineer led, by the way, this is super important, I think.
Yes, you're right.
So these people are amazingly great in solving problems in a very specific niche, with their engineering mindset, because they can break apart stuff, reassemble, like a classic engineering thinking. But they are amazingly bad with team management and people and the bigger picture as well, because they are so focused on the niche. So they either struggle with a leadership issue because they don't know how to lead the business, but they treat themselves as always the hero. Because. the whole company is gaining momentum. They raised money, they hit a certain revenue goal. So there is also like a they already see the proof that it's working. And that hero momentum for them is very much, something that acts as a drive. So they want to solve the problem. They want to do the right thing. They want to do the the best for their teams. They don't know how but the drive is there. And that's super important, I think. And that's inherently different, I think, from a bigger company with a leader who leads like multiple silos, like a group VP of CMO or whatever it is in the company with I don't know, a hundred people marketing team underneath that person and so on, because if you are ruling that big of a chair, shall we say it might get too comfortable for you. You can sit out for years in a chair like that. Pretty comfortable. Just, I wouldn't say pushing papers, but just like acting you are the leader and that's it. And and being a hero in that situation that takes courage. That's because you don't have the proof immediately. You're in your clientele, everything is like so slow compared to a startup for us, for example. So the proof shows only half a year later.
Yes. So even you're right. Cause I have two like ends of the spectrum clients, right? So I have a CDZ, a PE round funding client, and then I have even one actually, which is crazy, which I would not have normally done, but I took it on because there's very successful in the U. S. A whole new market outside of the U. S. But zero dollars outside of the U. S. But they're a hero because you know that person recognizes an opportunity. But on the other end, you're right in fortune 500. This is where I would say that it is one of the harder markets to get into without a doubt. 100%. But there are what is it called? There are these smaller groups within like a so that 17 billion company, that could be like a billion dollar division that billion dollar division represents maybe say less than whatever percentage of their entire business. And so there are four divisions, the smallest division, that person is a hero. Because we are willing to take chances. They're willing to go. And so I feel like so for me, what I'm recognizing to is that there are different heroes in there. Of course, this hero archetype exists across the board. But even if you're running a 17 billion organization. And if you have a hero archetype there and that's I do not like this guy and I'm sorry if people on your podcast love this guy, but I do not care for him. But that is like a Elon Musk or something like that, right? Like they are like willing to like, give their whatever they're willing to monitor the cost of humanity, which is a problem for me. But those are also like, the Wild end of all of it, right? But they're willing to risk it all. Of course, it's not a publicly held company, but you have folks like that could fall into those categories, but they're willing to risk it all and be mavericks maybe that's another architect. Probably. That's probably what it is more than a hero.
That's exactly what I want. The maverick word was on my tip of my mouth that it is totally different being a maverick and being a hero. It is. And sometimes yeah, it can work out, but most mavericks don't really care about others only care about themselves.
So exactly. And, we would, so we were talking about the part about the how and we talked about that speak up culture as leaders, right? I think let's talk about that too. That's important. Because especially in the remote world, this is significantly important when you're not remote. I like the word distributed better when you're leading distributed teams, right? This becomes extremely critical. And the reason for that is I'm the CMO for a not for profit called Speak Out Revolution. One of my third, things we do, cause I, this is really critical for me. And the reason I do this work is because no matter what size of organization you're in workplace bullying and harassment is the norm, whatever happens on the schoolyard transfers on into the workplace. And as leaders, we need to be aware that just because we have a zero tolerance bullying and harassment policy, it does not mean microaggressions are not happening over a zoom call, are not happening via a text message or a team's chat, things like that. And how, What are you email or an email?
Oh my God. Oh yeah. Sorry. Don't trigger me. I saw so many bad examples.
That's one of the reasons I chose to leave the company of 18 years, right? I was sitting as the vice president of all these committees. I was at the table, but I felt like I could, I have the wherewithal to speak up for myself. And I should, I'm talking to telling my team, they should speak up when they see stuff like this happen. Yet when I raised my concern, the first response was, and this is again, this is not just this company's issue, right? It's every single company has these challenges. The first response was, can you just deal with it? This person's going to move out of this role in a year and a half. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? No, and so then I had, no, and then I had the, I would say the courage to be like, I'm going to go talk to the person myself. And then my work at speak out, we don't recognize and we see this pattern that when you go and you address the issue, it is four times more likely for the issue to get worse. And we have global insights from 30 plus industries across 50 plus countries, right? So this is not just a singular data point. When you report your issue of bullying or harassment in the workplace, the likelihood that when you report it, the situation could get worse is up to four times, right? And the solution that's hard. It's hard, but there's even further data that supports this, right? So most of the time when so it's a survey that we do consistently. It's open, available, open source. Anyone can submit their information, all anonymous. But what we noticed is that 96 percent of bullying and harassment claims happen at the workplace at the workplace, of course, it makes sense. It could happen outside of the workplace 96 percent happen in the workplace. And out of those 96%, 64 percent of the people choose to report it. Okay. Cause they're like which is good, but the reality is that the leaders don't even recognize that there are probably 30 percent of their team or, whatever, 20 percent of the team that's probably dealing with crap that they're not even talking about because they, if you have not created an environment of psychological safety, right? Like you probably talk about this on your podcast as well. And people can look this up if they don't know what this is and you're living under a rock. If you are I don't mean this in a mean way. I just mean that you should know what this is if you are a leader in the world today. And so the thing is that there could be people on the team, but for the 64 who reported. This is the crazy statistic. Now you're going to hear only 4 percent of those 64 percent find a resolution 4%. And out of the 64, 23 percent are shut down with an NDA. 23%.
So was this is insane. Was it was a solution there?
So the solution so this is the solution is very nuanced, right? Because if we knew it should pardon me, shoot. Oh, we would find like amazing, we would have this like thriving cultures, right? So I think step one is recognizing as a leader this is going to happen. So don't come in being like, I'm never going to let this happen. This is going to happen because humans are involved. Humans are competent beings, right? You can't stop someone from being or showing up with their most natural self. Your job is to be attuned to this and make it safe for them to show up in their natural self, but then help them if it's when needed to recognize how that behavior could be showing up in a positive or a negative way when engaging with other people, but don't weaponize it because people then use it as a way to weaponize people to be like, Oh, I don't think their leadership material because they don't have gravitas on the zoom calls. That's garbage. Because who the heck defined gravitas? Who, be really careful. So number one, be aware that this is going to happen. Now, once you understand that this is going to happen, I would say train your team on the very basics of this is unconscious bias. Okay. Like just very basics of this. Like I, this is not the, a lot of companies do unconscious bias training and they're like, oops, we're done. Now everybody recognizes their biases. They're going to show up better. That's garbage. But at the very basic level, at least help them understand that this exists. So do some, you do some basic training, but then put it into practice. Put it into practice. And that's what I call like allyship in action. Because the other crazy statistic out of all of this is that 86 percent of the time there is someone present when someone is experiencing workplace bullying or harassment, but only 4 percent get resolved, right? That's freaking ridiculous because people do not know how to show up in these situations to speak up. And that kind of goes back to my speak up culture in distributed teams or in teams in general, that if you as a leader don't create a speak up culture. You will not, innovation is going to drag, growth is going to drag. Everything is going to drag.
And it's even worse, by the way just FYI this is even worse when you have distributed teams. I'm sure you're familiar with it and everyone else is familiar with it, who is working in a team, which is totally distributed. That in the office, you, I wouldn't say that you can immediately tell that if someone has a bad day. Because that's, by the way, that's normal. If you have a bad day, you have issues at home, whatever, you are, I don't know, stressed, whatever. Obviously you are a little bit more jumpy. I wouldn't say that you need to harass people around yourself but it's human nature that you might be a little bit more on the ruder side on those days. But you can immediately tell when you're walking into the office, but you cannot tell that when you are working in a distributed way. So what I realized and experienced actually distributed companies are a little bit more, so the small little microaggressions and small little, the small ones, not like the actual like plain and simple black and white harassment but like the small ones, the little itchy thing is those happen a little bit more often in a distributed team. Because people just either don't know how to treat each other, don't know how to communicate with each other, and they also sometimes they just misunderstand.
That one with harassment, it's very clear. It's black and white for me. If someone ever feels like they're harassed with bullying, the thing is that there's a thin line. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Because if any, if anytime someone feels if they feel that means they should not be communicated to that way, that is the thing. Now, of course, if someone is trying to play victim, that's a whole other situation. And that's something you as a leader have to manage, right? If someone feels consistently, because the reality is that as a leader. If you are using language and you are engaging in a way in which where you are calling out good, bad, and great behavior. And there's a thing we call, which is debriefing on failure. So when you start making it normal to talk about failure, that's a great way to start creating psychological safety in your team. When you, and you've got to lead that yourself, because my team kept asking me, I would be, I was like, I'm an open book. I talk about everything. They're like, girl we don't know how you do it. So I have three kids, right? So they would always be like, we don't know how you do it. Like you're dealing with a pandemic, you're dealing with a newborn, you have two other kids at home and you're doing all these 800 things. And it feels as if you just show up with energy all the time, because my natural state visually outside is high energy, right? And on a distributed team on a video chat, sure. I'll show up high energy, but what I probably, what I know I need with social energy is I just need time by myself. Like I need a break. Like I'm at the end of the day, just like on my couch gosh, I don't want to talk to humans for two hours. And I don't kid you. I said these words to my team finally because a team member came up to me and I'm like, I am not breaking through with the team right now because I could feel the energy shifting, and I'm like, yes, we're doing things, but I can feel the team is just not connected. So help me understand what's happening. And he was like you're not opening up about what you struggle with. So the team doesn't feel comfortable sharing what they are struggling with. And you just saying, Oh, we're open I create an open environment. It's not going to work. And the minute I actually said this, literally eyes on the zoom call, you could see people's eyes. They're like, no way you fall on the couch and you binge watch. Love is blind. I'm like, yes, I do that. And that became, and it was not, I was not being cause this is where you have to be careful. Narcissistic leaders will be dishonest in this situation. They will try to create points of empathy and that will then backfire into the entire team. So I am not telling you to make stuff up. Your true authentic self to the parts that you are willing to share. I'm not telling you to share all aspects of your trauma at home, but the parts that you're willing to share. Help your team recognize that you're more than just this quote unquote machine that comes up to be this positive rah, let's go leader. Because teams also don't want you to come up on a call and be like, Oh, I had the worst weekend ever. My three kids had snot coming out of their nose and blah, blah, blah, all that crap. Yes, it sucks. It's not fun. But how do curate it in a way in which it's palatable for them to consume, but they get the sense that, okay, there's more to her than just getting stuff done.
This was a blast and thank you for sharing all the stuff. It was so amazing. And yes, it shows that you have the high energy in all of these passionate topics, which I'm sure it's all of them are super important. So if people are resonating with that energy, how people can find you.
The best way to find me is I hang out on LinkedIn. Okay. So just go find me on LinkedIn. It's Archita Fritz. It's exactly as it said, and you'll see it in your show notes, right? Archita Fritz. Yeah. Want to learn more about me? You can go to my website. It is ready set bold dot com. There's lots of stuff that's free giveaways that you can take to start implementing in your team right away, but it's a ready set bold com or just on LinkedIn. I'm slide into my DMS. You don't need to connect and ask for permission. Just slide into my DMS. I'm a happy to jump on a call and get to know you.
Thank you very much. And thank you for your time. Seriously. It was a pleasure.
It was such a blast talking to you too. So thank you for having me.
