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Episode Description:

On today’s episode, Beth is joined by Kaela Blanks, M.S., SHRM-SCP, a DEI & HR consultant and Type A+ person who specializes in empowering organizations to build strong, supportive, equitable workplace cultures. Kaela discusses the ways that being an overachiever, and her experiences with anxiety and ADHD, led her to career success and, eventually, burnout—and the ways that HR and leadership teams can encourage individuals to bring their full selves to the workplace.

Plus: Kaela’s tried-and-true tips for negotiating your compensation package—whether there’s wiggle room in the salary or not.

Kaela’s Bio:

Kaela (she/they pronouns) is currently the Associate Director of Advisory at Seramount, focused on the Employee Resource Group (ERG) advisory offerings, providing advice and resources to organizations executing ERG strategies aligned to an organization’s DE&I mission, values, and strategy.

Before Seramount, Kaela drove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) practices at various organizations like Assured Partners, Wawa, and Aramark, which included ERG strategy-building, ERG leadership upskilling, aligning DE&I objectives to the business, community partnership-building, inclusive marketplace solutions, and executive leadership engagement. Before specializing in DE&I, Kaela’s background centers on critical HR functions, like talent management, organizational development/change, HR systems/analytics, communications, and employee engagement. They also served as an ERG leader during their time in HR roles.

Kaela has a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership with a focus in Human Resources from Northeastern University and is an alum of Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. They hold a Senior Certified Professional (SCP) certification from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). Kaela is also an active member of the local Philadelphia community and holds board and leadership roles with Philly SHRM, Independence Business Alliance (IBA), Making Worlds Cooperative Bookstore and Social Center, and cinéSPEAK. Kaela is also an active thought leader and frequently contributes their insights to articles, podcasts, panel discussions, workshops, and conferences. 

They were nominated as an HR Rising Star in 2020 by the Delaware Valley HR Person of the Year Awards and named Philadelphia’s Top 40 Connectors and Keepers by Leadership Philadelphia in 2021. True to their passion, Kaela loves to travel to new cities and explore new foodie dishes to learn more about the cultures of others. They also geek out on sci-fi and space travel and can easily get lost in a good book, movie, or TV show.

Links mentioned in the episode:

HOST:

Beth Lawrence LinkedIn

Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram

The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram

Beth and other Type A+ Guests will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips on how to optimize your work and life.

GUEST:

Kaela Blanks LinkedIn

Kaela Blanks Instagram

Episode Transcript can be found below:

Beth Lawrence: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the type A plus podcast. Today, we have a good friend on the pod. Kaela and I have been in the same ecosystem for a long time. And it's. Kaela's one of those people that I just always will wind up running into at the best of times and we Co work together.

We've been you know within the same organizations. I'm really excited to introduce you Kaela Please tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do 

Kaela Blanks: Hi, Beth. Gotta be super candid for a quick second and say how excited I am because when you asked me to join, I was like, yes, 120%.

Beth Lawrence: You were so prompt. We love a prompt guest. 

Kaela Blanks: All right. A little bit about myself. I'm a diversity, equity, inclusion practitioner specialist. I like to call myself a jedi knight at times.

So justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. I'm also star wars nerd. So all of it plays together for a fantabulous pun, which is one of my favorite things. But basically what that means is that I get to consult and advise with partners and clients all across the U. S. For a talent and D. E. I.

Professional services firm called Seramount one of my favorite organizations. I got to partner with them before now. I work with them internally, which has been fantastic.

You'll see the leverage within you. organizations, but I run the gamut of diversity, equity, inclusion when it comes to strategy building to talent strategies. My background's really rooted in human resources and talent strategies. So I take this holistic approach of like, how are we ensuring we're creating these amazing workplaces for folks, inclusive cultures?

Are we developing our people to a space where they want to stay within an organization and truly supporting them? I do some other things. I'm on board with some organizations. I do some work with Philly SHRM, if you're local to Philly, an HR Org. I sit on the board of Independence Business Alliance, which is the IBA for short, which is the LGBTQ plus chamber of commerce.

So, I really try to get myself involved and engaged in all these various activities that are happening in the city. 

Beth Lawrence: That sounds like a type A person 

Kaela Blanks: Honestly, I'm not going to lie. I left a couple things off on that one too. 

Beth Lawrence: We're starting out from a place of honesty here. It's, it's fantastic.

And you've worked in and with and for both small, medium, large organizations, right? The cool thing about developing inclusive cultures, aside from the benefit that it has to all of working humanity is The different dynamics in different organizations.

Kaela Blanks: Yeah, 100%. I think one thing that we talk a lot about is the separation between DEI and HR. I'm a firm believer that, that, that, that divide needs to go away, right?

Beth Lawrence: Yeah. I mean, they need to at least be working in tandem together. 

Kaela Blanks: Exactly. So I have done everything from small mom and pop shops, where you have 500, 1000 employees. I've worked for the big organizations, especially based out of here, Philadelphia, like Aramark's, I was doing DEI at a global scale there at that organization. And honestly... you know, if you look at my background, you look at my LinkedIn profile, you'd be like, Oh, she's done a lot of different things, which probably has fueled by the type a try to accomplish all of the things, get all the experience I can be to be the best person I can be, which honestly has just set me up for success with this job, because now that I'm consulting with nonprofits, fortune 500, private, public, government sector, like everything and anything. So it's been really great. 

Beth Lawrence: That's incredible. I love that you got to marry all of your expertise together and do something that you're really passionate about. And I also love the Jedi. I am getting the Jedi Knight K now. I absolutely love it. I'm not a Star Wars nerd, but I obviously know about Star Wars and I hope you have a talk titled that someday.

Kaela Blanks: It's funny 'cause when I was trying to figure out who I am, what I do, even my Instagram handle now is, is @jediknightkae And at first I was like, "oh, maybe I should be Jedi master." no. I'm still learning. I'm still growing. And I think that's even a little bit of my type A coming out saying I'm not perfect. So I'm not a master. I'm still learning. So I'm a knight. 

Beth Lawrence: Yes. Oh my goodness. That type A touches everything, doesn't it? And something that you and I both have in common is anxiety fueling, at least part of our being type A. There's a lot of people that deal with either neuro divergencies, or disabilities like anxiety that actually lead us to be type a and whether the outcome is good or not, it's not necessarily always peaches and cream on the back end. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about that?

Kaela Blanks: Oh, for sure. A hundred percent. in the past, like six months to a year or so, I've been formally diagnosed with anxiety and ADD. Come to find out anxiety runs in my family. I'm a big believer that yes, sometimes we have the genes, but it's our environment that brings it out in us.

So I just always thought everybody worried about everything all the time, and my rereading of emails 100 times is what everybody does. Right. But I realized that It's fueled by anxiety. Honestly I'm not going to lie.

It was Instagram that made me start to question whether or not I have ADD because all these reels started coming out and a family member of mine, recent also got diagnosed with it as well. I don't know if you know historically, but especially ADD has been mostly a male dominated research, studied.

Diagnosis. So For it to show up in women or women identifying folks, it's not researched, it's not studied, and it shows up differently in us because we are set up and pressured by society to perform at a certain level already and mask it 110%. So these quirks and these things that I've been dealing with since childhood, I have been overcompensating for to show up in this world to support other people.

I'm the oldest of my siblings, I've been parentalized since I was a child. All of these layers made me realize how much I've been covering and masking and dealing with my ADHD and my anxiety by now becoming type A, if that makes sense. Right? You see those layers. 

Beth Lawrence: Oh my goodness. Absolutely.

It's a way to, at least for the anxiety, for me, it's a way to try to control things. Even the worry or the reading the emails a million times, it's your brain's way of protecting yourself and trying to, Set yourself up in a situation where you're going to do the right thing. You're going to have the right response.

And I'm using quotations when I say that. I have a big group of girlfriends from high school. We're all overachievers. We were all national honor society, the very kind of like top of the class, and now we're all coming to grips with so much of it having to do with either anxiety.

And a lot of us are getting diagnosed with ADHD later in life as well. And I was going to ask you about that because. I do always remember it being, well, boys are hyper ADHD, ADHD is always associated with boys. And even now you see it in children, I think more boys are more associated with it, but that really leaves out a huge chunk of the population that.

That maybe have developed these learned behaviors as like a way to cope with really feeling like we're going crazy sometimes. 

Kaela Blanks: No, literally. And honestly I think that hyper piece too is what also throws us off because not everybody shows up as hyper. I had to learn and cause Fun fact, I also have depression.

So they talk about the trifecta, which I hear a lot of people actually are diagnosed typically with all three and they get fed into each other, but because of depression, I don't necessarily showcase the signs of being hyperactive, necessarily. 

Beth Lawrence: Do you think maybe it manifests in people like us, the hyperactivity, hyper scheduling ourselves and scheduling ourselves to the brink?

Because... 

Kaela Blanks: are you looking at my calendar?

Beth Lawrence: Is it color coded? I'm sure that it is.

Kaela Blanks: Um, honestly, I just, it's so funny you say that because I used to judge some folks. But now, I don't time block in the sense of trying to get work done.

I color code what meetings I have so I can look at my calendar to your point and know, okay, am I going to have to switch into over advisory stuff? Do I have to switch over into Philly SHRM stuff? Like, how is my brain going to manage? Because, to your point of over scheduling, I used to look at my calendar like "What am I doing?"

And then I had to color code and realize, Oh, this is just a team meeting. Oh, this is just a personal front. Cause I like a lot of coffee chats, as you know, Beth. 

Beth Lawrence: We love a coffee chat anytime. 

Kaela Blanks: So that color coding was super helpful, but I didn't realize how much all of that is just fueled by these layers of things I'm managing. 

Beth Lawrence: I wonder having ADHD, do you think that? Having a color coded calendar kind of helps your brain see where it needs to bounce to that day.

Kaela Blanks: I think so. 

Beth Lawrence: I feel like it does that with me a little bit. I don't necessarily know that I have ADHD, but I have to look at it and say, okay, here are the types of people I have to be today.

Here's the situations I have to be in, and anything where I need to get dressed or put makeup on is in red. So then I know that I need to be out of my, my house wear. 

Kaela Blanks: My red ones are the presentations. I've somehow color coded things, not even Purposely thinking, things that are maybe lower energy or more fun in my head.

So anything personal, the coffee shots are all green cause green's my favorite color. And that sparks for me. Yeah. 

Beth Lawrence: They're pink for me. Cause pink is my favorite color. And the other thing is we tend to blame ourselves. In terms of being a type a person, I think we tend to internalize and blame ourselves for things.

What ways do you think that The culture or the collective feelings and thoughts around work contribute to this cycle of perfectionism. 

Kaela Blanks: I think that is such a loaded question on so many different fronts, just because, we in and of ourselves bring whatever we grew up in, the spaces, our world, all into the workplace. So folks on the listening end can't tell, but I am woman presenting, female presenting,

I do identify as a cis woman, but I'm also a black woman on that layer on to there, right? And then as a child, I grew up having to take care of everybody and leading naturally by design. So when you add in all of those layers, I feel like I almost had no choice but to be type A and perfectionist because I was told as a child from my parents, you need to be at 110 percent because folks out here are going to be looking at you and waiting for any moment for you to fail.

And that's my dad, my dad is on my black side, I'm biracial black woman, and my grandmother on my dad's side. So she was also very much, "Oh, nobody can take your education away from you. So you better go at 110 percent so you can be educated and then nobody can take that brain from you.

Right. That's the one thing they can't do. And so for me, I almost had no choice, but to be, and it was weird because I never was the person in school where they were studying all the time or for me college was honestly more about like the social and the connections.

Beth Lawrence: Love people. I definitely know that about you. 

Kaela Blanks: I want to succeed and be perfect at the things that I really enjoy and I think people know me for, if that makes sense as well. 

Beth Lawrence: Yes. Absolutely. I'm hearing a lot of the things that you were taught growing up and told growing up.

It's like the ways that you can protect yourself. These things might happen to you. People may assume these things about you, the ways that you could protect yourself and build up this... arsenal against these things is to go the extra mile, to make sure that you achieve all A's in school or you do really well in school or you get a scholarship or whatever it is.

 I'm so sorry that you had to experience those additional layers of it because I know that it must have been complicated in ways that other kids may not have understood. And certainly educators may not have understood as well. And that goes throughout college and throughout your career.

Kaela Blanks: It's definitely challenging. It's weird because I never thought of it as necessarily a bad thing, and then I get into the workplace, and then I'm praised for that behavior. I remember my first early internships where they were like, okay, Kaela, here's a task, and I get that task done within the first hour, and they're like, you're done with that so quickly?

Oh my god. And the work is Perfection, right? In my early stages of my career, I never thought I could make a mistake. If my manager is asking something of me, they want it to be done and perfect. And I got to present them the best in class result. I can't come with the questions.

I can't come with something that is only maybe 75 percent. And then I was praised for it. So just imagine as a kid. I am learning these behaviors and I'm praised for taking lead and taking care of my siblings and all of this stuff. And again, let me also clarify in high school, I was in all of the social clubs as well as in marching band. I was not artistic, but I was an art club. I was in a volunteer club called Miss Vickie's club. I was in all of these things, just always active and 110%. So then going into my internships again, they now then being praised for that anxiety driven behavior that's now showing up as a type A... even an email has to be grammatically correct and it honestly wasn't until I start hitting burnout.

I think that was honestly such a hard learning moment for me when I realized I am, I'm giving 120, 50, 200%, but then my peers around me who have been in the workplace are only showing up and giving 10, 20, 50%. And I'm like, what am I doing over here? Why? 

Beth Lawrence: Yeah, absolutely. And you're not only giving 110 percent of your effort.

You're giving 110 percent of your time because if I know you, I know that if you were done with a task in 60 minutes, you didn't just sit there and wait for another task to be given to you. You said, I have eight hours or four hours or whatever it was to fill. Please give me as many tasks as you possibly can because that is how I am going to prove my value.

And I can't imagine what it felt like to get into a position where finally you're the only one that's doing it, but you're not necessarily getting rewarded. When we start out in our careers, we want more of that verbal validation. You're doing great. Thank you so much. Wow. You're awesome at this.

Wow. It didn't take you that much time, but then you get to a point where you start to reach burnout and you're like, I just want more time back. And a lot of us millennials, our reward for getting those things done early was being given more responsibilities and more and more responsibilities.

And heaven forbid we ask for compensation, I really think that is also a detriment to type a people because we were like, well, I can get this done in X amount of time. So if you're pricing yourself, if you're a freelancer or if you're negotiating for a salary, you also think, well, it's not necessarily worth that much because, you know, it won't take me that long, blah, blah, blah.

I remember one of my first interviews that I was super excited about. I did not negotiate at all. And the person interviewing me said, he was a man and I still respect him to this day for it. He said, I could have given you more money, but you didn't ask for it. So now I'm not going to. And he's like, I want you to remember this for the future. And I did remember it, but I think the type a thing also, ultimately, we want to please people, you know, and I think that also we don't count ourselves as people. We want to please everybody else. 

Tell me about the experience of realizing that you were the person who was overachieving and everyone else was having a balanced relationship with work. I don't want to use the word normal, but a balanced relationship of work. 

Kaela Blanks: And I wouldn't even say a balanced relationship with work because what I realized is that everybody has their own perceptions and expectations of what does it mean to show up to workplace. Me as a millennial coming in, we're told, okay, work should be also passionate. So give 120 percent because you're passionate about it. And so that was my goal. I need to find the place that I love. I need to find a place that I'm supported and valued. And then also to add another layer, I work in HR. I can see the underbelly of an organization. And I think for me, that's really where I started having those rose colored glasses lifted off.

I'm disillusioned now from the workplace because I'm over here having folks looking at me as HR trying to figure out how are we managing poor performance? And then I see other people who are superstars and we're all getting rated the same.

Because the performance management system puts us in these boxes, and it's all money driven on top of all of that. So that made me start to really assess. Well, what am I doing this for? 

But also, something you said earlier made me think maybe the reasons why I took certain jobs, I always felt like I needed to take a job that was giving me a challenge.

So I don't know if it's similar to you, Beth, I always took these roles where they had to fix something or, was a problematic role or " Oh, your entire HR team just turned over in the past year." you know, those were not red flags until a little bit later in my career, but before I was like, Oh, this is a great opportunity.

It's going to build up my resume. It's going to be a beautiful thing, but to what extent, to what costs? 

Beth Lawrence: Yes. The resume builder. And it's almost as it's almost like if we took our own advice, when it came to how we are with relationships interpersonally, we may do better in the workplace. Like I can be the one to change them if I can control it. It will be better. And you don't even consider all the other factors because for type A people, especially if you're a perfectionist, especially if all these multi layers of our identities, we don't challenge these things.

Kaela Blanks: Yeah. I had to disconnect myself. I have honestly had to sit back and start to realize, Hey, this is above me. Or my pay grade takes me to associate or specialist or manager. I'm not making VP decisions out here. I'm not controlling these items. And honestly, this is not my company. I'm going to do the best of my ability and show up in these spaces.

But I also am limited by what I have access and opportunity to do, so if I'm not empowered to make change. You're going to burn yourself even harder trying to butt up against those walls. 

Beth Lawrence: You just said a few words that I want to spotlight. You said access and you said opportunity and expanding access.

And I would love to talk a little bit about all the pursuits you do in the community, all of the board positions that you're on because you work so hard to expand access for folks and expand people's beliefs around work and what work can be and what truly equitable, inclusive work can look like in the future.

So tell me about, the IBA, tell me about SHRM, tell me about all the things that you do outside of work.

Kaela Blanks: Philly SHRM is like my longstanding relationship. I've been involved with them since, Oh, maybe 2017 as a volunteer on a committee, but I think I've formally been on the board since 2018 or 2019.

Beth Lawrence: And SHRM is the Society of Human Resources Management? 

Kaela Blanks: Correct. Yep. Society for Human Resource Management. Supposedly, we no longer say the full acronym anymore. We're just SHRM these days. And Philly SHRM is the Philadelphia Local Chapter. I like to call it the premier HR organization in the greater Philadelphia region. we host a lot of HR related activities and events and I'm the Executive Vice President of Programming.

So I oversee all of our programming when it comes to the content you see coming from the organization. I really love that work because it keeps me tied into the HR community. And honestly, I feel so dedicated to it. As much as I specialize in diversity, equity, and inclusion, I'm always an HR person at heart. HR for me is a space where we can truly make change internally within organizations if we say we have this power to do so.

What I like to do with Philly SHRM and just as an HR person in general is to empower others. How can I make sure you know what your rights are as an employee?

Do you understand about the keywords when it comes to your resume? Because these systems out here are just looking and data scrubbing for keywords, right? How can I empower you to, to your earlier point, negotiate your salary? Do you know, most of these companies have a budget for sign on bonuses that nine times out of 10, most of my folks who are at my level, let's say mid entry level are those folks who are pushing for director level roles.

Don't even know about,

Beth Lawrence: I only know because you told me truth. 

Kaela Blanks: And I'm not sitting here saying that it's every single company, but just because they're not giving you your base salary doesn't mean you can't negotiate for something different or something more.

So that's the HR part that I love. That's how I empower people through that organization. With the IBA, the Independence Business Alliance, again, that's the LGBTQ plus Chamber of Commerce serving the greater Philadelphia region. joining the IBA was, and also giving at the same time because I knew I needed a space. Where I can immerse myself into a community that I wanted to be a part of more. I wanted to learn more about it. And it has also helped not only just me as a professional and helping to be an advocate in LGBTQ plus or queer spaces.

But also it's even helped me identify my own identity and understand the gender spectrum and the, sexuality spectrum and the fluidity of the world that we live in. And gave me so many more tools and words to not just understand, again, as a professional, but like how I'm navigating and how am I showing up to be in my authentic self as well.

Beth Lawrence: I love that you are expanding access for people in the LGBTQ community, but they're also expanding access for you in different ways. I definitely wanted you to highlight both of those things because I think It's part of who you are. It's part of what you bring to the workplace.

And it's also part of what fuels your work. All of the things you do outside of work fuel your work. And that's something that I really admire and love about you. One of the things that I really wanted to ask you as far as a concluding question is how can people make work better for type a plus people knowing that sometimes there can be some kind of anxiety behind it. What are some tools that you think that workplaces can give their team members? 

Kaela Blanks: Yeah, I think the first and foremost bottom line is psychological safety. So how are we creating these environments where folks feel comfortable enough to mess up, to ask the tough questions, to say, I may not know everything, but I can at least figure it out.

And then how do we add then another layer of understanding and awareness to say, well, what identities are people bringing into the situation?

That might even add another layer of anxiety or perfectionism or stress for the tasks that we're doing within the workplace. 

Beth Lawrence: Trying to make sure that people feel and know that they don't have to compensate or overcompensate for anything that everyone starts out on the same playing field.

And that if you have to ask a question along the way, you don't get any demerits, you know, and to your point of having a culture where it's okay to ask questions where the leaders don't know everything by default just because they're leadership.

I think that's also a huge point in what you're saying. I've worked for both types of organizations where leaders, what they say is what goes and I've worked for organizations where leaders are very open to hearing opinions and perspectives from people on every level of the team. And they let me tell you, it is much better experience working on.

The type of team that's the latter type. 

Kaela Blanks: A hundred and seven percent.

Cause I think about my type a even showing up in my presentations and I used to get so nervous that I had to speak eloquently and I had to know all the right words. Come to find out that me losing my train of thought and me stumbling over my words is my ADHD kicking in it because my brain is going a hundred miles a minute and my mouth can't keep up.

 So I didn't realize how much trying to be a perfectionist and Type A was causing more stress. So now I get up in front of these rooms and I'll just be like. "Oh, I totally just lost my train of thought. It'll eventually come back, but let's keep it moving."

Kaela Blanks: You know what I mean? And I get so much feedback of people like, you're just so authentic. You're so real. We just appreciate your candor. And I was like, well, this is me. And at this point it's going to be who it is. If you don't like it, I don't know what to tell you because it's going to be here.

Beth Lawrence: There you go. Authentic and relatable all the way. And it's because I think of our parents generation and the generation before that. You had a work personality and you had an outside of work personality. And in this digital age, you can't really have Two separate. I mean, if you're lucky enough that your job doesn't require you to have a personal brand online you might not have to worry about any of this, but we are all full people and I love that Millennials and the generations after us are spearheading this fight to bring our entire self to work and for all of the layers of our humanity to be able to work on projects together and really come to true partnership and conclusions and teamwork.

 It's like a revolution that we're all having silently. People in your role, you're doing it, not silently. You're doing it within organizations in a big scale every day. But we're also on an individual level fighting for, I need to work from home. I need additional time for this.

I need someone to edit this for me, whatever it is. And I'm proud of us for that because it's going to open the doors and honestly create more doors, I think. And we need more doors. 

Kaela Blanks: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. We need more avenues. And also, could you imagine how easier it would be to do your job to perform at the highest level that these companies are expecting of you when you also don't have to worry about covering and hyper checking yourself or am I, how am I showing up in these rooms or how am I showing up in these spaces?

Beth Lawrence: Can I wear this lipstick color today? Can I wear my hair like this? Can I wear this shirt? Like all those little things that you have to think about before you enter a space. Like I love when I see people giving presentations and they say, "Oh, I lost my train of thought, but I'll get back to it."

Thank you. We all lose our train of thought. You don't need to be up there like a robot for me to, to understand and appreciate and respect the message that you're giving. 

Kaela Blanks: Yeah. I'm honest. I think people resonate more with my feeling that I'm coming off of a script than me reading a script. Right. It feels so much more personable and all of that fun stuff.

But you know, your quick comment there around knowing what to dress, like I keep forgetting how much even my type A. Shows up in that space. Like I present a lot. I have to do some traveling for work. I'm going to client locations and then all the side things that I do as well has me showing up a certain way.

I also have to represent my company. I have to represent myself. I have to represent like navigating this space also showing up as a black woman. Again, like I can't just come in as shorts and a t-shirt, right? Because a hundred percent I'm also representative of other black women who might not be getting invited to these spaces.

But my type A personality just shows up there too and I'm like, Oh, am I, can I wear a blazer? And so now I've had to institute some behaviors where when I'm doing my prep calls with people, I do ask about the dress code. It used to feel shameful. 

Beth Lawrence: Great idea. That's a great idea. 

Kaela Blanks: I have to, because again, I didn't share this, but I'm the first in my family to be in corporate America as well.

I didn't have the guidance of okay, suit business casual. What do these things mean for me? And so I've had to navigate that in the workplace. The only thing I had from corporate America was suits and ties. Cause that's what I saw on TV. And then I felt like I got into the workplace. It was like, you should just know what to wear.

And now that I've worked in so many different companies, alluding back to what we talked about in the beginning, I've worked for so many different companies, so many different cultures, but now I realized. It changes so drastically that I should not be ashamed to ask because that relieves one little less piece of pressure for myself.

If I can get validation whether or not that y'all are the strict suit and tie type situation, I can at least adjust my style to align with your culture. Because on this flip side, if you are jeans and polo tee kind of culture, I don't want to walk in there suited and booted, right? I still want to be relatable. I still want to align. I still want to be a part.

Of your culture. Now that's my goal.

My goal is now to think about how can I relieve this anxious, stressful burden upon myself. And nine times out of ten, it's just about asking questions. Deadlines and priorities, I need to know right off the bat. If you ask me something, my immediate question back to you is, Well, what's the deadline?

When do you need this by? And then we can negotiate and compromise. 

Beth Lawrence: Amen. I don't do that. And I have some incredible women to thank for thinking about doing it now, including what you just said. I am the type of person, if you give me a task, it's already, it's in the queue.

It'll be done by the end of the day consider it done. I know that there were times where I responded very quickly in an anxious manner. Oh, it's done. Here you go. And a few of my clients and people that I've worked with or have been corresponding with have said, okay, a, it wasn't a big deal or it wasn't urgent. Let me know next time. And I'm happy to tell you where this falls on the priority. 

And I've talked on social media about my anxiety about getting ready for events too.

I totally feel it. Just tell me what to wear or tell me what you expect people to wear and I will make my own version of that.

The parameters give us the tools to be able to show up as ourselves. 

Kaela Blanks: I need to write that down, but you're right. I'm a big believer if I at least know the game, I know how to play it. So tell me what the expectations are.

Tell me how we're showing up in this space so that I also can just show up and be comfortable along with the room. 

Beth Lawrence: Yes. This conversation is amazing. And I knew it would be. And I'm so glad that you joined today. Kaela, can you please tell everybody how they could best get in touch with you if they want to follow your journey. 

Kaela Blanks: Yeah, fantastic. For me probably the first step is LinkedIn is always a really great place to connect and follow me. I'm most active on there sharing resources or comments or even LinkedIn chats are always fun. I was like a good coffee chat with folks , but then also you can Also follow me on Instagram, it's @jediknightkae, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, but K A E, because my name's K A E L A.

Beth Lawrence: You're such an amazing human being. Thank you so much for coming on today, and I can't wait to see you in person soon. 

Kaela Blanks: Oh yeah, me too, Beth. I can't wait as well. 

Beth Lawrence: Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back soon with a new episode of the type a plus podcast.

Take care.

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