Cowgirl Power

by Gay Gaddis

  This is a deep vein for cowgirls to mine to find their personal power. This is where you build long-lasting alliances. This is where you build and earn loyalty. This is where you fill your buckets with goodwill.

  Why We Need Women Leadership

  My mother-in-law was a protégé of J. Frank Dobie, a famous Texas folklorist in the 1950s and 1960s. Dobie wrote tales of South Texas that he had heard from old cowboys. When asked if the stories were true or not, he would always answer, “Well, if it isn’t true, it should be,” with a twinkle in his eye.

  That statement has stayed with me throughout my career and sums up my view on how women should think about leadership roles. It means we should always reach for our dreams, and just because it is not true today, doesn’t mean that with hard work, determination, boldness, and connections you cannot achieve what would seem like the impossible. But in the context of leadership it means more to me; it means that when you step into a leadership role, you take on the responsibility for making dreams come through for everyone in your organization. You take on the responsibility to make things better and, as a woman, you get to define what “better” means. I did not realize it at the time, but that is exactly what I did when I started T3 & Under.

  One of the great projects we have worked on with UPS is their “Wishes Delivered” campaign. This is where there is a well-deserving person or organization in need, and UPS surprises them and fulfills their wishes. It has been heartwarming to see schoolteachers get a delivery of needed supplies for their classrooms that were otherwise unfunded. Our role is to make sure all of this is captured on video, and we help them tell the story. Here is the definition exemplified where UPS says, “Well, if it isn’t true, it should be.” And they make dreams and wishes come true.

  From my perspective, shifting into leadership roles is one of the most powerful things you can do. Leadership means enabling people to be the best they can be—to encourage people, challenge them, and kick them in the butt if they slack off. As leaders, women have high standards for achieving results. But they can lead with compassion, building a nurturing and supportive environment that is a better place to be for both men and women. That environment will undoubtedly yield remarkable results.

  To me, leadership is the power to do good for everyone. That is why I spend my time encouraging women to step up and lead in the workplace.

  Cowgirls Make Better Leaders

  Corinne Post, associate professor of management at Lehigh University, decided to see if it could be proven that women make better leaders. She looked at team leadership and women who served on boards. What were the things that make women better leaders? Her hypothesis was a familiar one: that more work in large organizations was being done by teams and that women are more relationship oriented than men. So, would women make better leaders because of their heightened sensitivity to foster collaboration and trust?

  She looked at eighty-two teams with more than eight hundred people at twenty-nine leading research and development companies. The study was supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant. Here is what she learned:

  Women excelled in bringing large teams together, especially teams who come from different departments and specialties and who are spread out geographically.

  Women excelled at fostering cross-departmental collaboration, like bridging between technical and creative teams and avoiding turf wars.

  Women were better at letting everyone be heard, even over long distances.19

  My experience is very much in line with the findings of this study. Women have an innate ability to build high-quality relationships across big, complex groups, often in multiple locations. In my experience, women are more sensitive to other people’s nonverbal reactions than most men. Women can see around emotional corners and see things men often miss. They will explore and understand the problem and then set out to fix it, down to the last detail.

  I have seen this play out over many years at T3. Our people work on big, complex teams. It is not unusual for there to be fifty people or more working on a project when you add up agency people, clients, and third-party players, and they are usually in many different locations. I have watched our women leaders be the glue that holds these teams together, helps them grow and achieve success over and over again. They are incredibly powerful cowgirls.

  Find Change and Hug It Like a Long-Lost Love

  Some people do not like change. I love it! If I can get my arms around it, I’ll give it a big old hug. Why? Because I have learned that with almost all significant change, opportunities emerge if you look for them. Of course, this is not always true, but for me it has been true more often than not. Sometimes when things change I can almost smell opportunity.

  Deal with change head-on. Do what needs to be done. But when you can catch your breath, look under the rocks for the underlying opportunities, because they are usually there.

  Some change comes at you like a hurricane. I remember in the very early days of the Internet we had a management meeting and were talking about where the business was going. Someone got up and started drawing on a whiteboard. He drew a big circle and labeled it “Internet.” He drew lots of other little circles around the big one and connected them with lines to the big one. The little circles were named TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, direct mail, etc. That scribble on a whiteboard changed our business forever. Be open to both incremental change and to tectonic change.

  Do Things You Have Never Done Before

  Throughout my career I have had clients ask me if I could do something, and I would answer, almost without exception, yes. Some of those requests were for things I had done many times before. But sometimes, it would be for something we had never done before. This is where the idea of embracing ambiguity is so powerful. This is where the skies open, the sun comes out, and you see forever.

  There is always a first time. Some people would say, “No, I cannot do that because I don’t have any experience.” I spent all of my career saying yes, often knowing full well that we had never done it before. How did we pull it off? Because at T3 we built a culture based on constant learning. We are a learning organization. We have the skills to learn new solutions fast. It motivates our people. Many of them are quick studies and can become experts on something almost overnight, making them invaluable.

  When my husband brought the first Apple computer into our office, the creative staff threw up their hands and said the world was about to end. Computers in those days did not kern type well, and there were those annoying spinning stars and happy faces hopping around the screen. Later, he brought the Internet into our business, and again the Luddites screamed to high heaven that it would be the end of us. Then, when he installed a video production studio designed for creating low-cost videos for the Internet, they thought the end of the world was at hand. Actually, each of those changes represented massive opportunity for our company, and the fact that we were an early adopter in each area served us well. I had the ability to calm the masses and hold their hands when Lee wheeled in the change agents.

  Speaking of Luddites, I once had a client who ran a rehabilitation hospital in Central Texas. We did all of our work on either telephone calls or personal visits. The CEO absolutely refused to allow a fax machine on the premises. He said it would ruin everything because he would be forced to make decisions too fast, that he needed time to mull things over. One day he asked us to take on a major opening of another hospital, and the work volume and deadlines intensified. We got it done in record time because I snuck a fax machine into his executive assistant’s office and did business with her all day, every day. He never knew. Every smart cowgirl knows that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Now some of you say, “What’s a fax machine?”!

  When opportunity rises up in front of you, grab it and ride right at it. Be open to doing things you have never done before. Do not allow yourself to live in a rut. Develop the skill to figure out new stuff. Do not be constrained by what you know today.

 
; One more tamale story: It was called the “Great Tamale Incident” when President Gerald Ford did something he had never done before. When he visited the Alamo in 1976, he started to bite into a tamale that was still wrapped in its corn husk. San Antonio Mayor Lila Cockrell said, “The president didn’t know any better. It was obvious he didn’t get a briefing on the eating of tamales.”20 Veteran CBS news reporter Bob Schieffer recalled that the president “nearly choked.” Apparently, one of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas got to the president quickly and removed the corn wrapper before returning the plate to him. Mike Huckabee said, “Every newscast in Texas all weekend long, all they did was show Gerald Ford not knowing how to eat a tamale. To this day I am convinced that it was that gaffe with the tamale that cost him the state of Texas. Carter won Texas and Carter won the presidency, and it may have been a tamale that did it.”21

  Lesson learned; if you are going to try something new, get briefed first, carefully unwrap it, and then take a big bite.

  Cowgirls Build Powerful Networks

  When I was a little girl, I was at a dance with my parents. A tall, lanky Texan named Buck Echols came over and asked me to dance. I was surprised and flattered. I stepped on top of his boots and, as we danced, he told me, “Always remember, Gay, that your first dance was with a Texas Ranger.” And yes, he was wearing his hat, his badge, and his gun. In those days, no one was more respected than a Texas Ranger. I remember it like it was yesterday.

  When I went to the University of Texas in Austin, I drove back and forth to Liberty often. These were the days of CB radios and my handle was “Sunshine Girl.” I was notorious for having a heavy foot on the gas because I thought my CB buddies would protect me from the Texas Highway Patrol. But they didn’t. I got a lot of speeding tickets. When I did, I would call Buck Echols and tell him what county it was in and the name of the presiding judge and ask his opinion if the fine was fair. At the time, ticket costs were arbitrarily set by each judge. I would rant and rave about how unfair it was that the fines fluctuated so much. Buck would laugh, remind me of our dance, and somehow the charges against me just vanished. That was my first lesson in the power of networks.

  When I think about networking, I am reminded of what my mother’s teacher told her after she lost her arm to cancer as a young girl, “You can put yourself out there and be all you can be.” That, to me, is the perfect definition of networking.

  It means that you are willing to make a major investment in becoming a player in your field. That takes time and effort. It means that you get your numbers up, that you are talking to enough people to make your chances of success go up dramatically—to make your own luck. If your market is local, the chamber of commerce might be a good start. If your market is national, then it means attending national conferences, trade shows, and conventions. Focus only on opportunities that can scale, do not waste your time on things that do not have lots of potential to grow if you do a good job.

  Be strategic about where you spend your time. I never was very active in advertising organizations because there was no one there who could ever hire me. Instead, I’ve always gone to conferences where there is a broad cross section of potential clients. I focus on diversity events like Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and media events like TED, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, and other thought leadership conferences. I also like smaller events, where you really have an opportunity to get to know people. C200 has lots of these and they are always great. Over the years, I have earned the right to attend these high-powered events. Earlier in my career I started small and worked my way up.

  When an opportunity presents itself, act fast. I heard the senior vice president of e-business at Allstate speak at an Allstate Supplier Diversity Exchange about the kind of partners they were looking for. As soon as he finished, I walked up to him and introduced myself. I quickly explained why I thought T3 would be a good fit for Allstate. His team vetted us, asked for a meeting, and they are now one of our largest clients.

  Networking is not about asking for favors and advice. It is about building solid relationships with helpfulness and reciprocity. If I can help you, I’ll do it without any expectation of getting anything in return. But, if at some time in the future, you find a way to help me, make an introduction or just call up and ask how I’m doing, then we both win and the bonds get stronger.

  What do you want to accomplish with your network? The answer to this question will change over time. Early in my career I focused my network on finding job opportunities. Later, the focus changed to finding clients. Then it shifted again to learning from successful, powerful women. And now, it is focused on finding powerful ways to help others.

  I have several buckets of networks. Some are business relationships. Some are governmental and political connections. Some are volunteer groups. Others are experts in fields in my own industry, and the surprising thing is how many times they overlap.

  Cowgirls Network to Be All That They Can Be

  I love the words “be all you can be” because that is the “why” behind networking. “Be all you can be” is a decision you make about how to live your life.

  My cowgirls loved to perform in front of huge crowds. Cheers and applause just egged them on to take bigger risks and be more outrageous. They made the choice to play on a big stage, and many of them became the superstars of their day.

  The reason to build a network is to help people see who you are, understand what you do, and look for ways to make connections and be helpful. The question becomes, how big is it “to be all you can be”? Is it in a small East Texas town? Is it in a big city? Your state? Nationally? Globally? Each one is a decision. The question becomes, how do you want to distinguish yourself and to whom? There are many ways to do this.

  I blog regularly for both Forbes and Fortune magazines about the entrepreneurial spirit. In the process of writing those posts, I interview all kinds of entrepreneurs. One was a fourteen-year-old boy who was promoting his lawn-mowing business. Another was a fascinating woman who uses horses to teach teams how to better relate to each other. We post many of these articles on LinkedIn. I tweet about business events and use Facebook and Instagram just for fun. I speak nationally and globally. I lecture at quite a few universities. I have built a pretty big platform. It has been a conscious choice because I love being center stage, just like my cowgirls—and, it has been a great way to build my business.

  Let me be clear. This is not about bragging and inflating your ego. This is where you build your own brand. This is where you make your mark about who you are. If you don’t do it, who will? Think about how big a field you want to play on and go do it. You are in control, and you can make that field bigger or smaller at the right times in your life.

  If you want to distinguish yourself, put yourself out there. The bread crumbs you leave along the way can and will appear years later.

  Oh. Here is my pet peeve on networking: Do not send me a request to connect on LinkedIn without explaining why you want to connect. I get these stupid requests such as someone in Norway wanting to join my network without any explanation of who they are and why they are interested in me. That is just plain lazy.

  Be a Rainmaker

  Sitting around the kitchen table when I was growing up, the conversation was most likely to include whether or not it was going to rain. My father’s surveying business ebbed and flowed based on the number of days they could be in the field. My godfather’s rice farm and cattle ranch literally could be made or broken by getting rain at the right time of year. Perhaps this understanding of how essential rain was to business made me want to be a rainmaker. If I could make it rain, then everyone would be happy, prosperous, and celebratory. What a great thing to do!

  Early on in my career I looked for ways to help grow business in every company I worked for. Sometimes it was easier when the economy was good and business was flowing freely everywhere. But what separates the girls from the cowgirls is being able to make it rain when there is a
drought and business is hard to come by.

  These are the times you must be resourceful. Not only do you draw on your network but you must also be persistent, not a pest. I have found that most people don’t bring in new business because they simply fail to follow up. And I don’t mean just sending cookie-cutter e-mails. I mean, real, meaningful follow-up. Do something that will help your potential customer in his or her career. What insights can you offer that no one else has taken the time to think about?

  Another fortunate thing I have been able to do through the years is draw on other happy clients to refer us business. This is all about the buckets of goodwill because of honest, hard work I have earned. It means I am willing to do the same for them when they need help. Remember, it is all about reciprocity.

  Rainmaking is about literally showing up. In person. At their doorstep. Of course, not a surprise drop-in, but taking the time to go where your potential clients are, and inviting them to review and critique something new and cool you are working on. No pressure, just looking for their opinion. I cannot think of anything I have ever done that has won me more respect and power among my team than to bring home the bacon! Or, of course, to make it rain.

  Not long after Lee and I got married, we took a trip to Puerto Rico and attended a seminar for advertising agency people to help them learn how to attract new business. The speaker taught us one important lesson: “If I call your five top prospects and ask them which agency really, really wants their business and they don’t name you in the top two or three, you don’t even have a new business program.”