#awinewith Dr. Michelle McQuaid
MEET Dr. Michelle McQuaid, Founder of The Good Girl Game Changers
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:00):
You are listening to Spark tv, where we bring you daily interviews with real women in business at all stages. I'm your host, Danielle Lewis, and I am so grateful to have you here. Amazing. Michelle, welcome to Spark tv. I'm so excited to have you here.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (00:16):
Danielle. Such a pleasure and a privilege to be with you and all your lovely listeners.
Danielle Lewis (00:21):
Oh, thank you so much. And I know you said that you had listened to some of our fabulous podcast episodes, so I'm so excited that you are on to share your story today.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (00:32):
Honored to do so.
Danielle Lewis (00:34):
Let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (00:38):
Yeah, so I'm Dr. Michelle McQuaid. I am the co-founder of The Good Girl Game Changer, and we are an organization that does research. We write books and create training tools to help women break free of their good girl beliefs, those ideas that we need to be performing perfectly pleasing everyone, protecting others so that we can embody our unique selves.
Danielle Lewis (01:02):
I love that. Now let's talk about good girls. What does that mean? What does the innate thing that we all the self-talk have? What's that definition look like?
Dr Michelle McQuaid (01:15):
Yeah, so I am a data nerd at heart, Danielle, full confession. And so love it. Love. That was exactly my question. I was starting to realize over the last sort of decade of my life, just how often I got stuck in these kind of expectations. I wasn't sure whose they were or where they come from or why I was still heating them, but this idea that I needed to be performing perfectly from the way I looked to the way I worked, to the way I loved, to the way I live, that it was my job to keep everybody happy no matter what the cost was to me a lot of the time, and that I should be protecting others by biting my tongue, not rocking the boat, not making people uncomfortable. And so for a long time I thought, oh, this is just a me thing.
(01:58):
Surely nobody else is kind of this messed up and tangled in knot. But the researcher in me was curious and so I was like, well, is this just a me thing or actually are other women struggling with this perhaps as well? And is there anything, again, my other part I love is where's the evidence-based practical tools and things we can do in our very busy lives if this is not working for us? And so we went out and we first gathered a group of about 150 women all different ages, and we asked them, well, what does being a good girl mean to you? Does this show up in your life? Where did it start? Does it help you? Does it not help you? And we definitely saw it wasn't just me in that. And then recently we've just validated those findings with a study of more than a thousand women across Australia. And what I think Danielle was so interesting in that research, again, I'm 51, 52, somewhere in there, and I thought maybe it was my generation. I'm a Gen Xer. We grew up still very nurtured on fairytales and certain beliefs and ideas. So only just before I was born that a woman could get her own bank account without the dad or husband signing for it. So it's like, maybe it's just our generation, but what we saw was actually 77% of women age 18 to 35 still believe that they need to conform to these good girl ideas.
Danielle Lewis (03:17):
Yeah, it's just wild. And I mean I see it showing up so much in the spark community from so many different facets, whether it be women who are working from home, but they still feel compelled to take on all of the home duties like the cooking and the cleaning and the raising of the children. But even how we show up on social media and market our businesses, there's this not wanting to offend anyone, not wanting to have too strong an opinion, which is just absolutely wild. And it just, it's interesting that you talked about the generational difference because I guess we look to others for examples, don't we? And if all we're seeing is the example of well, that's the benchmark of perfection and good girl, of course it gets ingrained in us that that's what we think that we're supposed to do.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (04:13):
Yeah, absolutely. And we saw this in our research when we talked to women who had felt like, yeah, I kind of grew up with some of that, but I threw that off. I broke free of that. Now I'm just, they used to say, I am uniquely me or you be uniquely you. I'll be uniquely me. So just whoever the heck we are and what that looks like for us, the women that had broken through those good girl, we talk about as good girl grooming because in many ways we are groomed to think that this is how we earn love and this is what keeps us safe without quite calculating the long-term cost for those behaviors that we found with many of the women. We can talk about that as well if it's useful, but what happened for the women who broke free? Exactly to your point, they had role modeling and mentors of other women who were going, you can all think that in fact, what we saw was this kind of set of societal expectations that many of us pick up between the ages of 11 and 14. And then we continue throughout our lives into our fifties as I did before we start going, hang on a second, on whose terms and for whose benefit here am I living my wild and precious life?
Danielle Lewis (05:18):
And it's really interesting because I think sometimes it is actually just us in our heads. I remember having this conversation with my husband when I was about burnt out from cooking the nightly dinner, and I just went, I feel like because I don't earn as much as you that I need to carry the weight of some of these extra jobs. And he's like, what the, he's like, when did we have that conversation? When was that ever an expectation? I was like, oh, I think I just thought it in my head. And so I
Dr Michelle McQuaid (05:51):
Just put this
Danielle Lewis (05:52):
Pressure on
Dr Michelle McQuaid (05:52):
Myself and in the meantime he's probably thinking, oh, you like doing that by letting you do
Danielle Lewis (05:59):
That's organized, fan of that. It's incredible. Yeah, it's just insane. I dunno why we do it. I dunno why we do it.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (06:07):
So what we found is why we do it. Just to that for a second, I think it's helpful for all of us to understand this isn't serving us well and you want to break free of it is that again, often we've learned from family, friends, people who had good intentions for us, that actually this was the way that you did stay safe and other people would appreciate you and you would be valued at work and get promoted and you would have clients that were happy with you. And to be fair, some of that is true when we are in these good girl behaviors, often other people do find us more agreeable and supportive and all those things. The cost though that we found was that the longer we stay in it and we see it for women, particularly around about the 30 to 35 age group, that the exhaustion as you touched on, starts to just become unsustainable, not surprisingly.
(06:54):
So we do this folding mass, we think, you know what, if I keep everyone happy, then I'll be safe and loved. But we don't calculate the long-term cost that says, well, not only am I likely to be exhausted, we found in the research with the women that I am, I feel like I've lost my sense of identity, who I am. And I know for me, starting my business was a big space after having two kids to go, I just need somewhere that I get to be me and not who everybody else thinks I am. But the other one is resentment too. A feeling perhaps like you were in that situation with your husband. That's the word, dinner every night, can nobody help me here? And then to hear, I'm happy to help if you just ask. And again, I think we get this, oh, I have to bite my tongue and not complain about it because it's part of this good girl grooming. We learned so early.
Danielle Lewis (07:38):
Yeah, I just love that. Now you mentioned the researcher in you. So what is your background? How did you get into this?
Dr Michelle McQuaid (07:46):
Yeah, so I actually started in marketing and communications. I did a bachelor in communication management and I worked in PR agencies as a starting place. At one point it was my job to explain to the Australian media what the worldwide web was and how anyone could make any money out of it. Not to date myself too much, but I knew when I could see the internet starting to become more accessible, I was like, this is going to change the way we communicate and market and brand. Because up to that point here in Australia, you had maybe five TV channels, six news stations, three newspapers. It was pretty limited in terms of how you got a message out. And so I went on, I did global roles with PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM all over the world in branding and marketing. And increasingly as I was working more in services based businesses where our people were the product, I got curious about behavior, human behavior, how did you bring out the best in people?
(08:44):
And what I realized was we really didn't understand a lot about that in business. So I went and did a master's in applied positive psychology, which looks at how do we thrive as human beings? And then started applying that in workplaces, eventually launched out into my own business. But in the last sort of 20 years of doing that work in all sorts of companies, all sorts of sizes, the thing we most often hear from people is, yeah, I love that stuff about caring for my wellbeing. I want to do it. I'm just too busy. And so we kept scratching the surface. Yeah, we know everybody's busy and we are busy with what we choose to prioritize to a large extent. And so why don't we prioritize looking after our wellbeing, particularly for women where we most often heard this, I'm just too busy and it was real.
(09:29):
You can add up all the lists of anything we each have on a given day and go, yes, you are too busy. And why do we keep saying yes to some of those things and no, to being able to look after ourselves. And so when we sort of got underneath the data as to well, what was stopping that we kept finding these good girl beliefs around, it's not okay for me to set boundaries. It's not okay for me to say no to other people. It may not feel safe. People may be really upset and disappointed they won't love me and value me. And so that's led us into this most recent research.
Danielle Lewis (10:02):
Yeah, it's just so interesting. Literally as you've been talking, I've just been thinking about, so literally the last couple of weeks has just been so hectic. I traveled for a week and then we've had the grant closing this week. It's hectic, hectic, hectic. I literally woke up this morning so tired, and I was like, you know what? Haven't gone for a walk. I try and walk every day, blah, blah, blah. You haven't done that. You haven't been drinking your green juicy thing. All of the things that you try and do to prioritize your energy have just totally fallen by the wayside. And it is interesting as I reflect on that and why would I actually, I have a spider web on me, don't mind me. Just as I reflect on that, it is I go back to, and I'm trying to diagnose where that would've come from. But again, it is that expectations of other people, I don't want to let anyone down. I don't want anyone to not love me. So why then? I don't want to go for a walk because I want to make sure that dinner's ready or I want to make sure that I spend time with my husband, or I want to make sure that I call my mom or I want to make sure that X, Y, z. And it is really interesting. You can't pour from an empty cup either.
(11:09):
And circling back to your points about that resentment and the loss of identity and all of those things, it's just we really do have to put ourselves first sometimes.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (11:21):
Absolutely. And I think your point around energy is so important. For me, that was the game changer. It was like, well, if I don't have the energy to be doing all those things for everybody else, then I am just going to end up in an exhausted mess. And that was definitely my experience of coming right to the edge of burnout and going, this is not sustainable. Life has to look different from this for me. So we found in the research with the women, besides having role models, there were three other skills that helped them break free of that cycle. If it's not serving you, well tell I'm all about we get out of this not serving you well. If being a good girl and doing all those things for you is working and that is filling your cup and you're feeling full of energy, absolutely no judgment to that.
(12:00):
If however, you're starting to feel a little worn down, a bit resentful, bit lost as to who I am in the midst of all of this, then the three things that the women taught us was showing self-compassion was a big one. So exactly as you are finding Danielle go this week, I haven't had my green juice and I haven't been for my walk. One of the things we find that's very high for women is that then to beat myself up and go, I'm such a terrible person. I'm never going to be, well, I'm not role modeling the things that I tell other women to do. All the stuff that we've all said at some time to ourselves, but would never say to anybody else. So instead of that trying to be the wise and kind friend to ourselves, we would to anybody else who might say, Danielle, you've been really busy traveling.
(12:40):
It's okay to have some periods where we might not get all that done. This is important to you. What can we do today? Or what could we start tomorrow that gets us back on that track? Let's try again. So self-compassion, probably the most underrated, but the most powerful skill for supporting our wellbeing and energy. We just leak so much of it in that self-criticism. The second one was secure attachment. And so our listen might've heard about secure attachment in terms of how you grew up. Did you feel safe with your mom and dad that when they go, they come back for you? Maybe our romantic partners, do we feel securely attached in our romance, spending lots on social media of that for the last few years. But the newest research looks at secure attachment to ourselves. So do we feel safe with ourselves? Do we feel confident that we will show up for ourselves, that we will advocate for ourselves, that we will not abandon ourselves when things get hard? So beautiful example again with your conversation about the dinner of going, well, could I have advocated for myself then and asked for what I needed before it got to the point where I'm throwing pans in the kitchen, losing you said that you did definitely happened in my house.
(13:48):
And so when we've got secure attachment, we're actually able to set those healthy boundaries with other people. We're able to say no, we're able to prioritize some of that that we all need. And then the third skill is around, and here we can think about self with a capital S, which is what comes out of the internal family systems research, which has also become quite popular in mainstream conversations the last few years. And internal family systems believes we all have this capital S self, again, a bit like the wisest, kindest version of us. So when we are confident and courageous and curious and creative and compassionate and clear, all those things you know are in your best moment, the good news is that is wired within all of us. It is always there. It exists from the moment we're born. And as we've grown up, often there's some other parts of ourselves that have tried to protect us when we didn't perhaps have the skills or knowledge support we needed.
(14:44):
And those protective parts often don't realize now we're grown ass capable adults who'd rather be that capitalist self more of the time, and they're still trying to keep us safe in the ways we did when we were kids. And so these are the parts of us that might again, bite our tongue because we don't want to upset anybody. It's our job to cook everything, or it's our job to over prepare because we don't want to be embarrassed in the meeting or to fear that we are letting people down and they'll be disappointed with us. So the self-leadership is about not getting rid of those parts, but understanding, Hey, where might I be holding either trauma with a capital T or lowercase from other lived experiences and almost like how do I go back kind of repair and put that to peace with my capital self so that instead of tripping myself up unnecessarily, but kind of like, it's okay, we've got this, we'll figure it out together.
Danielle Lewis (15:32):
I love it. And it's really, as you've been talking through the examples, it really strikes me that this permeates every element of our life. It doesn't matter if you are a professional, a business owner, homemaker, I don't know if we're allowed to call 'em that anymore. I don't know what the real right word is. Whatever it is living or you're just single living your best life, whatever it is. I feel like that the actions that we have and perhaps our attitudes really will affect each one of those.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (16:07):
Yeah, absolutely. It really does ripple through every domain of our lives. So the good news is it's kind of like do it once benefit in all different ways. It's not a perfect outcome, even for me. It's still a day by day thing. I have moments where I'm like, yep, completely should have spoken up there. And what was I doing? And sit myself down again. Say, okay, what got in the way there? What would I want to do differently next time? Is there anything I need to do now to address what I now have chosen? So again, it's not a one and done, this is a life's journey I find for most of us. But what I find helpful to guide me through the day is thinking about on whose terms, for whose benefit am I about to show up for this client, for this conversation on a podcast, whatever it might be. And knowing that the right answer is rarely ever, or just me, I'm just going to do your podcast my way, Danielle, you can take it all. Not that effective for our relationship. So it's normally an, and there's a bit of me and a bit of you in there because we're social creatures, but what it can't be is always at my cost. And for many of the women we find, certainly by their mid thirties, they're finding it is too often at their cost. And that's where the unsustainability of it comes.
Danielle Lewis (17:18):
Yeah, that is really interesting. I was going to ask, obviously you gave the three steps, but I was like, just practically, if someone's feeling so overwhelmed, so burnt out, so at the end of their tether, what would be one tiny thing that they could do in the moment? But I love that you just connect it to the asking yourself those questions. So on whose terms for what benefit? It is almost if you can take a minute of peace and silence and ask yourself.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (17:46):
Sometimes
Danielle Lewis (17:47):
I think that we don't think enough. We are so stuck in our to-do list. We just
Dr Michelle McQuaid (17:52):
Don't, we're very reactive to everything, right? Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (17:55):
We don't take that moment of silence to actually think about what we need in that moment.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (18:00):
And if it helps, I'm all for a bit of somatic practice here because a lot of this comes from our nervous system, our nervous system's trying to keep us safe every day. And so our nervous system has often learned that the way to keep ourselves safe as women is to do it perfectly, to please others, to protect others. So one of the ways I've learned to just calm my nervous system down before it jumps into those old patterns, and we can do this together and we'll try and describe it for your listeners, is if you cross one hand over the other, so you're sort of hooking your thumbs together, almost like making a little butterfly, bird fingers. And you can then place that your thumbs in the middle of your chest, right on that heart sort of moment. So you've got your hands, your fingers are touching your pecs, and the thumbs are sort of right there in the sternum, in the middle of your chest.
(18:41):
And you can just breathe here and then flap your butterfly wings. And you might want to do it together like a flat tap, tap, tap, tap a bit like your heartbeat. Or you might want to oscillate it. You might do one finger, one side and then the other as you're going, you're just breathing. This is just a little somatic practice to help calm our nervous system back down. I think it's a bit like being back in the womb where you could hear the heartbeat. It's like, let's just bring it back to basic. So whatever form of tapping feels comfortable for you, feels soothing for you, absolutely fine. But we're centered in the heart. We're sort of tapping across the chest. And so coming here and even just breathing slowly for seven seconds, and I slow deep breath in and a nice slow deep breath out.
(19:28):
And then we can think on whose terms the, whose benefit am I about to do this next thing? And so this can just be a really simple daily somatic practice. We can do it throughout our day, can do it while you're waiting for school pickup. I find I can do it while I'm waiting for the dinner to cook sometimes whatever it is that works for you. But again, just sort of coming back into our bodies, Dr. Carol Gilligan, who's a leading researcher on this stuff for women from the 1980s, she's still alive today doing amazing things. But she found that one of the things that happens for girls around 11 to 14 is we give up Our knowing is how she talks about it in our bodies. We knew as girls what was right for us and what didn't feel right for us, but in order to survive what the rest of the world was telling us was acceptable and wasn't acceptable. A lot of us gave up our knowing of what our bodies are telling us, what we know is true inside of us, what our gut is feeling. And so I like any somatic practice that works for you to just bring yourself back to your body and then decide what's the right next thing for you.
Danielle Lewis (20:35):
And I think that is such an interesting and important point because I find that women in business especially, they are so intuitive. They do know what's right for them, what's right for their business, what's right for their business and family life, but they often bury it and ignore it until it gets to that breaking point.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (20:56):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, again, the more we can get back to that place and start trusting that intuition and honoring what is it we want for these wild and precious lives, we each get the better the outcomes, right?
Danielle Lewis (21:09):
Oh, absolutely. And if anyone is listening to this, hopefully they can see the video version or jump onto YouTube because that was just so beautiful. I feel like I've had a little therapy session slash relax session, so I'm feeling a little bit of my hugg.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (21:25):
It's like, yay, I'm just going to flap my little butterfly wings here for a moment. It feels so delightful every time.
Danielle Lewis (21:31):
And I love it because I'm a yoga person. So breath work is often included in that, and that's something that you can do anyway at your desk, as you said at school, drop off, pick up, whatever it is. It's such a beautiful addition to reminding ourselves to stop and breathe
Dr Michelle McQuaid (21:51):
And to trust our knowing that it, you've got this, but just to come back to that sense of self with the capital S, that clear, kind, courageous, creative, curious, compassionate part of yourself and go, yeah, I want to come from that center, not from the person that's being pulled in all directions.
Danielle Lewis (22:10):
Absolutely. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Let's talk business for a second. So now you've worked for some really impressive companies, global companies, done the professional travel business life. What was it like going from that to starting your own business?
Dr Michelle McQuaid (22:29):
So I started in small boutique firms. Initially when I was doing the PR and that it was in smaller firms, then we got bought by bigger ad agencies. So we sort of stepped it up, and then I leapt up to 70,000 people companies. And my role there as a brand leader was often traveling in and out of 70 countries, 5,000, 10,000 people teams. I was often the youngest woman in the youngest person in the room and the only woman. So those days were kind of wild, I have to be honest. And then also, again, I was in my mid thirties when I was starting to burn out starting, I had a son who was four, no son who was four and a half new baby. I was coming back from mat leave and I was just like, I don't buy into this anymore. I was looking at my diary full of meetings and I'm like, why am I doing this?
(23:18):
And again, really for who? On whose terms, for whose benefit, other than bringing the paycheck home for my family. I'd seen enough big organizational change and ridiculousness at that point that I was like, this is kind of insane. I don't want this to be the sum total personally for me and the roles I was in of my life. And so I was very fortunate and I was supported by, I was with PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time. When I launched my own business, they agreed to be my first client. So I had a little off there and I was forever grateful for that. But yes, I went from having a big company with an assistant and an endless budget and all that to having nothing but me. And I was wearing all of the hats. And so despite having a lot of business experience at that time, I nearly bankrupted myself in the first six months because I spread myself too thin.
(24:04):
I was trying to do too much too soon and not just focusing on where was the core money coming in. So yeah, it was quite the adjustment. It really probably took me two to three years to really start to understand the difference of running a smaller ground up organization. Through to that, that company grew over time. Again, we've had an amazing list of clients all over the world doing the work that we did. And it was probably now about 18 months ago, where I went a success on whose terms here. Most people would say to me, how big your business? Great. You run your own company, how many people have you got working for you? And again, as a good girl performing, I was like, Ooh, I need more people to work for me. And so at one point we had about 25, 28 people working for us with facilitators all over the world doing this workshop and training staff. And so it was big and it was impressive, and it was earning millions of dollars. But again, I was exhausted. And although the work was more purposeful and wasn't so ridiculous as what the big companies were, I'm like, who am I doing this for? And so I came back from a retreat trip about 18 months ago and made an intentional choice to scale the business down significantly. And so now I think we're hugely successful. We only had three people working for us, and I'm still making as much money.
Danielle Lewis (25:24):
Oh my God.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (25:25):
For profit, not revenue but profit, right? Huge wage bill
Danielle Lewis (25:29):
People don't tell you about at the start.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (25:31):
Exactly. Exactly. But not only that, it allowed me to scale back that part of the business so I could do more of this good girl game changers research, which has been more of a passion project. And I don't know whether that'll grow into a business or not, or whether it's just been this stage. We've just released two new books around the perfectly imperfect little girl and the perfectly imperfect women's journal. And so that was what I knew I wanted space to do. So for me, that feels like more success than anything else I did because I feel like it is on my terms for my benefit, and I'm not trying to tick somebody else's markers of success.
Danielle Lewis (26:06):
Oh, I just love that you said that. It's so interesting when you look at business headlines, they are raised X millions of dollars, just launched a new office, hired a new employee, blah, blah, blah, blah. You never read a headline that she has a calm nervous system. She's actually making profit. She took a 30 minute nap this afternoon and she's not happy. She wakes up and loves what she does that's not making headlines.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (26:36):
She looks at the wage bill for the
Danielle Lewis (26:38):
Month and go, I got this way. I got this. Oh my God. I know. But isn't it wild? It goes back to exactly what you were saying, that we look at these markers of success and that you've got, it's on other people's terms. And we do get to this stage where we're like, oh my God, what trap did I build for myself in business?
Dr Michelle McQuaid (26:59):
And again, I'm grateful and I learned a ton through that period, and it's not the choice I want now. And in many ways I wish perhaps I'd figured that out a little bit sooner because yeah, some of those years were pretty challenging and exhausting in ways that didn't need to be. But a bit like you cooking the dinner somewhere along the line, I'd assume this was what success looked like for me, and hadn't paused long enough, hadn't done that butterfly hug to start asking actually, is this really what you want? Are you having fun here? Is this what success is for me? Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (27:31):
And I think that's why these conversations are so important because they're not being had. And so people need to know that there is another way.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (27:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
Danielle Lewis (27:42):
Oh my God, incredible. I could talk to you all day. I could have this therapy session all day. Always happy to come back to, nor I love it. I love it. I love to wrap these podcasts with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Dr Michelle McQuaid (28:03):
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Danielle Lewis (28:08):
Yes.
Dr Michelle McQuaid (28:09):
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And that for me was really the key of going, I could build a whole empire. That doesn't mean I should, if that's not actually what is joyfully lighting me up and where I best want to put my energy each day.
Danielle Lewis (28:23):
Oh my God, you are absolutely incredible. Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom with the Spark community. That was a joy
Dr Michelle McQuaid (28:33):
Right back at you. Thanks so much for having me.
Danielle Lewis (28:36):
That wraps another episode of Spark tv. Shout out to Spark TV sponsor IP Australia for their amazing support of the Spark Podcast and women in business. And if no one tells you today, you've got this.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
