The Superpowers of Successful Women

How can you harness the superpowers of successful women for your own success? In this episode of The Science of Superpowers, Tonya Dawn Recla and Ellen Taaffe discuss the attributes that professional women use to increase their career fulfillment. As an expert in women, leadership and culture, Ellen brings a wealth of experience to conversations about females in the workforce and how we can harness our innate wisdom for greater agency and empowerment. Be sure to listen to this amazing episode that highlights the impact of successful women in this new global era.

Tonya Dawn Recla
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Science of Superpowers. So glad to have you here. I’m Tonya Dawn Recla, and I’m here with a fabulous guest, Ellen Taaffe. Ellen, you want to say hello to everyone? 

Ellen Taaffe
Hello. And I’m so glad to be here with you, Tonya.

Tonya Dawn Recla
Well, we’re so glad to have you here, we’re going to have this great conversation today all about the superpowers of successful women. And and I dare say it’s going to have a little bit of a twist, right? A lot of times we hear, you know, what are the traits of success? And how do you be a good leader and all of these things.

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Tonya Dawn Recla
And as we know, over the years, if you’ve been with us, it changes and it’s different and and it’s different for all of us, right? We learn that we’re not all living in the same reality. We’re not all acculturated with the same belief structures. And so we get to talk about that and say, Okay, well, how did you do it? And did that work? And what were the results when we tried this and, and I think as women a lot of ways where we enjoy that, I don’t know, if I do if I’d say that we’re naturally designed that way or we’re nurtured to be that way. But what we do see is that as that in collaborative situations and stuff, oftentimes we’ll see women being a little bit more ready to share those stories and, and to say, Hey, this is what worked for me or you can try this, I see a real generosity of spirit when women come together and in the right containers in the right spaces with the right sort of goals and and, and energetics available to us. There’s real brilliance that comes out of those spaces. And not to leave anyone else out for sure. But there’s something really special in those spaces amongst women. And so we’re going to focus on that today. But certainly, we can take these and extrapolate them out as successful tips for everybody. We’re just using this the, the container of successful women, because that’s Ellen’s specialty. That’s where she comes from. She talks about teaches trains on women leadership culture. And I believe that one of the things that that pandemic really highlighted for all of us was this great call this was readiness for different voices in leadership positions for different perspectives. And some of those are women where we were looking at where women haven’t been part of that dialogue, certainly I come from the military government, even Academia sides of things were, a lot of times we were left out of the equation in the initial creation of things. And and it makes for a really interesting environment to work in, to survive and to, and to thrive in. And so as we allow more of those voices to come forward, we get to see things differently. And we are all better because of it, we all get to grow and expand because of it and learn from each other. And so that’s why I’m really excited about today’s conversation. And we’re gonna learn a lot more about Elon as we go through the dialogue. But the first thing we’re gonna learn about her is what are your superpowers, Ellen? And how are you using them for good?

Ellen Taaffe
I think that my superpowers include seeing the potential in other people, especially when they don’t see it. And I use that as I teach a part of the leadership class I teach. I also coach the students. I use that in the women’s leadership programming that I do. And I also use that as a board director, where I’m helping to, to guide a company or help a new CEO, as well. And I think in addition to that, I would say listening and listening with curiosity, and openness is another superpower. My last one I would say, is courage. Courage to move forward into action, especially when I’m afraid, you know, doubtful. 

Tonya Dawn Recla
Oh, fabulous. And all of those encompass to create a really beautiful container from which you get to teach from to speak from to coach from. And you do that in a number of capacities that you just named I love that you mentioned boards because we you know, the the board positions are really that that kind of driving force behind it the energetics behind an organization what supports it. I have the the honor and the privilege of being a member of the Board of Directors of the local YWCA here in the Phoenix metro area, whose mission is to eliminate racism and empower women. And it’s a board of all women and big shout out to them because they they’re really breaking open what’s possible when we look at how we gather, and how we communicate. And so I really appreciate that you brought that forward because we don’t always think about those positions of in particular as women. A lot of times we don’t even think about being on boards. I know that that wasn’t necessarily part of my upbringing. And then and then all of a sudden, when I went into the business sector, it was in front of me, it’s like, well, what does that even mean? And what would that look like but, but I see the great need to have all of those different voices present, as we’re making decisions for companies, because companies helped shape humanity moving forward. You know, we’re thinking out generationally, particularly with some of our AI and tech companies, environmental companies and other things. And so so I like that you brought that into this dialogue. And, and one of the things I loved about your work is that you take some of these elements that we often see women doing or other individuals doing that, that we would think would be really great, right, like perfectionism, that was one that stuck out stuck out at me. And there were others that a lot of times we pride ourselves on, but the end results aren’t necessarily don’t necessarily lead us to thriving or to success or to accomplishing the goals that we set out to accomplish. Can you talk a little bit about these pesky little kind of traits that we do? And how they backfire on us sometimes?

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