By Sheri Fella, Founder and CEO
The second question that usually follows is then, what is it and how does it work? And that answer requires more context. That answer started back in 1990 because I rolled into the valley of the sun on June 26, 1990. I remember that day distinctly, not because it was the hottest day recorded in the valley at 122 degrees, but because I sat my plastic Myle’s pizza cup on the roof of my Ford Escort — and it melted. ‘Hold On’ by Wilson Phillips was blaring on my cassette player because I listened to that cassette over and over again on the drive west across the country. Hold on I thought…here I was a poor college student from the Midwest who could easily deal with humidity, but surface of the sun hot was something quite unsettling.
And it is the unsettledness that I remember.
The next week when I started my first real job immediately after graduation from Bowling Green State University — and put the brutal north Ohio winters behind me, I walked across the paved parking lot in my very professional heels, gold rimmed glasses, and navy blue skirt suit and was wobbling by the time I hit the front lobby. The wobbles came from the plastic tips of my heels melting from the who knows how hot pavement. Amazing how much comfort those little plastic tips provided — my feet remember that day well too.
And unbeknownst to me on that first day, inside the building was a different kind of heat. The kind of heat I still crave. The kind of heat that was in the form of a team of highly talented, open minded, newly minted college graduates from all over the country. Guys and girls. Varying races, religions, etc. Wide swaths of geography and all functional areas of expertise — Engineering, Finance, Operations, HR, Marketing, etc. I got the benefit of a 6-month capstone experience with this team of diverse brilliance before I even started my actual role. It was hard, exciting, overwhelming, full of conflict and progress, and it was my first model of transformative learning and my first experience in high performance teams and cultures. And it was also the last time in my corporate career that I had an experience or team like it.
No other time did I ever experience high performance diversity and inclusion like that for such a sustained time — I got only glimpses of it here and there. That experience ended and my official role began in January 1991. And now, 30 years later in January 2021, it remains the most diverse, inclusive experience of my career. And that is why Bloombase, and my commitment to the values we hold, fuels me every day. I have craved that experience for myself and every other leader I have touched since that first hot year in Phoenix, and no matter how many good intentioned companies and truly excellent leaders I gratefully experienced — I couldn’t find it. And I looked for it. And when I can’t find something I crave, I don’t stop looking for it — I eventually create it.
Craving inclusion, craving diversity of thought, experience, and learning is a common yearning I consistently hear from every leader I coach, develop, and consult with. My craving wasn’t unique, but my passion to create it was. I didn’t know that kind of experience was possible — until I experienced it, and I wanted that for myself and my clients. That is how and why Bloombase was birthed nine years ago. And it is also why the Bloombase’s Signature Experience for Advancing Women Leaders (AWL) was created and then launched in 2013.
To create experiences that are safe, inclusive, and transformative you need experience. I have had the gift of 30 years of experience and over 20 of them creating learning experiences that satisfy that craving from the desert, and that experience and my insatiable desire to learn, is how AWL — and all Bloombase experiences were borne.
Immersive learning that truly shifts behaviors also requires a team of talented, diverse partners. And I have had lots of them over the years. I feel lit up by the most talented net of leaders ever in my life — that net of leaders is my Bloombase team. They share my craving. Learning, real learning, needs mirrors and a long runway. Behavior change rarely, if ever, happens at an event, but rather over the course of a series of touchstones. Learning communities provide that runway and those touchstones. I am grateful that this net of talented leaders continues to be such an impactful learning community, and that is why we establish leader communities for all of our client base, especially AWL.
Community is what brought Alison, my business partner and chosen sister, to me in fall of 2014. A group of incredible leaders — aka the Breakfast Club — was gathering to explore how to build more inclusion in their workplaces, and I was lucky enough to be invited by another AWL alum — Meagan Rater. This community gathering was where I met Alison — and several other leaders who also became AWL alums and speakers.
I value this community so much that I gathered them often — and still do — to get feedback, to learn, to be challenged. The AWL community is a diverse net of high performing leaders who champion change in their families, companies, communities, and each other. Alison, who was a senior leader at PwC and who had experienced AWL in cohort 5 in the spring of 2016, hosted one of those gatherings. In front of a small group of alums in a PwC conference room in downtown Indy, she asked me a question that I will never forget . . . she asked, “So Sheri, what happens when you are done doing this work? If you don’t scale this experience for more women or grow more facilitators to give them this experience, then what? All the women leaders out there who need this are just left hanging? We are just going to leave them there? And cutoff our community growth?”
That was a gut punch. The kind you are not ready for, that really hurts you to your bones, and that you are forever grateful for. That question blew up my whole world. At the time, I was doing meaningful work with committed, highly talented executive leaders, and because I had built a solid reputation, I had more than enough clients to partner with . . . and then bam! Alison throws down the gauntlet and implores me to think bigger . . . to reach for more impact, for more leaders — because she is right. We need all leaders to move to a different level of leadership, into a different sphere of leading. And so, here we are because of the power of that community.
What I continue to learn from the AWL community and our entire client community, who are predominantly white male leader executives, is that leading is too critically important to dumb it down to catch phrases or training events. Each year there is a new book or framework or “week long transformation” on leadership and don’t get me wrong . . . if it sparks some energy in folks, I am all for positive energy and change for a more positive workplace. But those “new” things — no matter how well intentioned — don’t stick for most of us. I believe, for me, and the leaders I have partnered with for decades, that leading is really damn hard and really damn simple because we have known what works for decades.
Exploring the answers to “the why” has helped my team understand the greater purpose for our Signature Experience that is AWL. While we are indeed excited about reaching our 20th cohort in 2021, the reason AWL is important and crucial means we still have a long way to go. We must strive to better prepare women for larger leadership roles and this experience, though wide reaching, is only the beginning.
Originally published at https://thisisbloombase.com on January 26, 2021.
