Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
About This Episode
Stephanie Chung, groundbreaking executive and bestselling author, joins us to explore how Ally Leadership is reshaping the modern workplace.
Drawing from her extraordinary journey — from baggage handler to aviation company president — Stephanie shares practical, heartfelt strategies for leading today’s multigenerational, diverse, and evolving workforce.
Her Ask, Listen, Learn, Act model transforms leadership into a simple, actionable path forward. In a world marked by change, remote work, AI disruption, and growing calls for inclusion, Stephanie provides leaders at every stage with a roadmap to foster belonging, drive results, and future-proof their teams.
Whether you are an aspiring leader or a seasoned executive, this conversation is a must-listen for anyone ready to lead courageously in 2025 and beyond.
What You’ll Learn
- What Ally Leadership truly means—and why it’s crucial today.
- How to lead high-performing teams across generations, backgrounds, and beliefs.
- Practical ways to overcome unconscious bias in leadership.
- Why embracing privilege can empower your leadership and your team.
- The winning formula for creating belonging, loyalty, and next-level results.
- How remote and hybrid workforces are changing diversity and inclusion.
- Strategies for communicating more authentically across diverse teams.
- Why vulnerability, empathy, and action are the new cornerstones of leadership.
- The neuroscience behind bias—and how to “rewire” your leadership brain.
- A glimpse into the future of leadership—and why mediocrity won’t survive.
About Stephanie Chung
Stephanie Chung is a trailblazing corporate leader and breast cancer warrior with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, and human capital management.
As the first African-American president of a private aviation company and former Chief Growth Officer at Wheels Up, she has redefined brand strategies and driven sales teams to surpass $1 billion in annual quotas.
A #1 international best-selling author, keynote speaker, and Make-A-Wish Foundation board member, Stephanie combines neuroscience with business strategy to inspire growth and transformation.
Named among Adweek’s “Women Trailblazers” and Robb Report’s “23 Black Visionaries,” her influence spans industries, languages, and borders, embodying resilience, innovation, and the power of human connection.
Transcript
Stephanie Chung [00:00:00] Because I think leadership is an honorable profession, but it’s also a big responsibility. I don’t take lightly the fact that, you know, God’s most important asset, human beings, right? He’s given me influence over different ones throughout the years. And so I have a responsibility to make sure that I help them and not hurt them. And I can do either, right, every leader can, but we’ve got to be mindful. We have to know what we’re all about when we’re leading, what’s our talent, what’s are gifting, what’s is skill set, what our leadership style.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:00:28] Stephanie, thank you so much for taking the time to coming with us on the future work podcast. How are you today?
Stephanie Chung [00:00:34] I am fantastic. How are you doing today?
Daniel Lamadrid [00:00:37] I’m doing good. I can’t complain. I can complain. I’m really excited. And thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us. I’m real excited to dive into this topic, especially now when diversity, equity, and inclusion, it’s being ripped up. There’s a lot of things happening in the world of work right now. And we’re here to talk about ally leadership, your book, right? How to lead people who are not like you. This topic, I believe, like I said, is very important right now, and I think The first question I have for you is, what is ally leadership? What does that mean? And why is it so important these days?
Stephanie Chung [00:01:13] I love it. So thank you for the question. And again, thank you for having me here. So let’s first start with Ally Leadership. I could have named the book Ally-ship, right? How to lead people who are not like you. But I purposely didn’t because I didn’t want to put the book in a DEI box, right. So Ally Leadership, Ally is an acronym, Daniel, and it stands for ask, listen, learn, you take action. Because no matter what type of leader you are, no matter, you know, what age, race, gender, you know ethnic group, whatever, if you’re a leader, you need to know how to be an ally. And to do that, you’ve got to know how to ask, listen, learn, and then you take action. So that’s really the, yeah, that’s the important part of the book is because that then now makes it more of a leadership book. Versus a DEI, you know, put it in the box kind of book. If you’re a leader today, you need to know how to lead today’s modern workforce. And then just to kind of add a little bit more to depth to that as well, Daniel, today’s model and workforce consists of several different factors. So first factor is that we’ve got six generations working. Which is unheard of, like that’s the first time in history we’ve had so many different generations working. So people are, you know, ages 16 to 75 that are in the workforce. And really what that means for those of us as leaders is we’re leading a whole lot of people that have different perspectives, different expectations. I mean, you and I both know we’re probably two different generations. A Gen Z thinks very differently than let’s say a boomer, right? So every leader is dealing with the intergenerational situation. So let’s. For stage one. Stage two, women are the majority of the population. And so why that’s different is that changes the dynamics in the workforce as well, because women see things differently. We communicate differently. We think differently. So that’s going to change the dynamics in the workplace. Then also, when you look at the ethnic demographics, right? So every ethnic group is growing, non-ethnic group shrinking. It has been shrinking for past decade. And so that changes the dynamics in the workplace as well. Then when you add in, you know, neurodiversity or people with different able-bodied folks or LGBTQ plus. So we as leaders have a plethora of people who are not like each other and they’re not like us, right? So as today’s leader, what they have to get a handle on is how do you lead people who are like you? Because either you are going to lead people who are are not you, or you’re already leading people who’re not you. And so the book is really designed to give leaders a tool. Of here’s how I did it and got to the highest level in hopes that these tools can be helpful for you as well, for you on your journey to make it a little bit easier. And of course, for you to get to your highest level and importantly get big, big results.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:04:02] Amazing. And I mean, I’m assuming that that’s why you wrote the book. I mean is it is it from personal experience? Is it like Why did you write the book and what is it that you expect readers to really take from the book?
Stephanie Chung [00:04:20] Yeah, thank you. So what I really want them to take from the book is that don’t overcomplicate this. That’s the first thing, right? Let’s keep it simple, you know? And then because I think what happens is people get so nervous when they’re around people who are not like them that they are afraid of making a mistake or they’re afraid of being criticized or canceled, right, any of that. And so what happens is they stop trying. And it’s crazy, I hate it, yes. Yeah, and as leaders, we don’t have that option. Our job is to like do bold things, think differently so we can get different results. We’re the leader, right? So my real purpose of writing the book was really to let leaders, to give them an easy way to do this and to not overcomplicate it and to give them grace and to encourage everybody else to give each other grace, right, because this is foreign for all of us and we’re all going to make mistakes. So don’t just get out there and slaughter people because they may have had a misstep. You know, step back, give them some grace. And if we all do that, then this is gonna be much simpler. The truth of the matter is, when you think about leading people who are not like you, and if you go with the acronym of ask, listen, learn, you take action, this is the same stuff that five-year-olds do in kindergarten. It is not that complicated, right? And so that was one of the main things I wanted to do is to really just demystify the whole thing. The other part in regards to your first question, yeah, the book is based on my experiences. So there are times that I knocked it out the park, Daniel, and then there are time that I absolutely missed the mark. And so I’m incredibly vulnerable in this book, letting people know the times I did great, and then letting them know the time I didn’t do great. So the book itself is packed with a lot of stories. And I thought that was gonna be important because we don’t need more theoretical books out there. And I’m not saying they’re not good. But at the end of the day, we want to, you know, everybody’s got so much on their plate that I think most of us are going, just tell me how to do it. You know, I want time to figure all this out. Give me the three steps I need to know. So that was really the mission behind the book, but a little bit about my story is I come from a, uh, male, well, let me be really specific, a white male dominated industry. And so, you, I start the book with how I was asked to take over this team. And the team didn’t look anything like me, right? It was all white men. They all had a military background. They all were like former fighter pilots and you know, like just like everything you could think of that could be completely opposite of me. That was the team, right. And so when I looked at, you know the team as I’m standing in front of them for the first time, I’m thinking, oh boy, right and they’re looking at me like, where’d she come from? You know.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:07:08] It’s starting to sound like an intro of a movie, a lot of movies I’ve seen.
Stephanie Chung [00:07:12] Matt, how did we get here, right, you know?
Daniel Lamadrid [00:07:14] But this just goes to show that this happens every day in every company.
Stephanie Chung [00:07:19] All the time. And so for me, Daniel, I felt like we needed to go deeper and wider because every book that I saw out there up until this point was a book written to basically white men saying, here’s how you lead women and people of color. And I was like, okay, that’s good. And granted, for the most part, white men still control, at least in the US, 80% of the leadership positions, especially in Fortune 500 companies. So though I understood the thought process as to why the book would be targeted towards that specific demographic, but I felt like we needed to go deeper and wider. This isn’t just white men, you need to figure out how to get it. That’s not true. We all have to figure how to do it, right? If you’re leading because of all the reasons I said, you’re going to be leading people who are not like you either. And so I just wanted to have a book that went deeper and whiter for the conversation and to also. Uh you know get give give all of us as leaders um an opportunity to not just kind of look to one group and go you need to get it no no no we need to look in the mirror and go well actually i need to get it right how do i do this and so that’s what the
Daniel Lamadrid [00:08:29] And that’s amazing. And something I really liked about the book is that within the title, one can say that this is a book for leaders, but I’d say otherwise. I think it’s also a book, a manual, an instruction for people aspiring to be leaders, right? Because in order to become a leader, you need to have these tactics and these. Ways of treating people and engaging with people that will get you to a leadership position. And that’s something I really enjoyed about the book. It’s not just from the top down, it’s also from the bottom up.
Stephanie Chung [00:09:02] Thank you. Thank you for saying that. That blesses me. And, you know, and I think you’re 100% right, because listen, the advantage that leaders, let’s say from your generation, you know, I’m assuming you’re a millennial, but you know you
Daniel Lamadrid [00:09:14] Yes, I am. I am, I’m here.
Stephanie Chung [00:09:16] Very well, Daniel. Okay. So, you know, right now the largest workforce are millennials and I’m Gen X. So I’m just one group ahead of you, but millennials and zoomers and of course now the alphas have come into the workplace. They’re coming. They are coming. Exactly. So that’s the majority of the workforce is really younger, you, know, young folks. And so they may or may not, to your point, they may, or may, not be in the leadership positions right now, but the advantage that you all have. Is that you’re not as hung up on this stuff as the older generations were, right? We have a lot of baggage, a lot of history and a lot of feelings in regards to, you know, when it comes to having conversations of diversity and equity and so on and so forth. Lots of trigger points, right. Whereas the younger generation doesn’t have that. Thank God. So that’s one lesson you have to deal with. But what it does do is a hundred percent right is that I want the groups that are maybe getting into their leadership position. Let you have that unfair advantage, because you don’t already have that baggage, right? Then you can really just come in going, okay, how am I gonna be successful as a leader? The truth of the matter is how you get to the C-suite, because that’s where I tend to focus is people who wanna get to this C-Suite or to a board. How you get there is A, producing amazing results, right, because the results don’t matter. But B, also being visible, so knowing how to communicate and work up, down, sideways, right. And three, and it’s not that it’s the last, but it’s you really have to understand how to effectively communicate with everybody, not just people who are like you. If you can get those three things done, you’re golden. You’ll go wherever you want to go. You’ll be unstoppable in your career. And so the way that I see this book for younger folks who maybe to your point aren’t in leadership right now, but want to get there, master how do you effectively create teams that are going to be high performing teams. And the stats are clear, Daniel. The highest performing teams are teams that don’t think alike. They don’t look alike. They don’t have the same background. They don t have the the same work experience. They don’t have the Same schooling. They are as different as possible. That’s when you get the best performance because you’ve got different ideas coming to the table. So the numbers are clear. We don’t have to have a discussion anymore about. Whether diverse teams perform or not, they simply outperform traditional teams by 25%. I could rattle off stats from Deloitte, Harvard, McKinsey, I could go on and on with the statistics. So that we don’t need to discuss anymore. What we do have to discuss is having diverse teams is great from a results perspective, but you have to be a leader that knows how to lead in order to be able to get all of these people who are so different from each other to be able to perform as one high performing team. That’s where I’m focused is getting leaders to be able to level up their leadership.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:12:07] And that’s amazing, and that’s why I’m truly an advocate of remote work or flexible work. People are calling it a lot of things these days because within this work structure, you can actually get people from other backgrounds. Like in the past, it would be a company in Ohio and Cincinnati, let’s say. They would only hire in a 10 kilometer radius, a 10 mile radius, right? And then everyone’s thinking the same. And now with remote work, companies are able to attract talent. From other countries, from other perspectives.
Speaker 3 [00:12:39] Yeah.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:12:40] I think that’s something that in today’s leadership style is also tricky, communicating via technology, right? It’s sometimes easier to communicate face-to-face in an office setting, but nowadays that’s also another tricky part, right, communicating through technology. And something you mentioned right now is communication. I’ve had experiences in the past as a leader. Where I think that’s what I’ve struggled with the most, communication. And by that, I mean the lack of communication. When people don’t communicate from the top down, from the bottom up, they tend to get in their heads and they start talking to themselves. And it’s just, I think communication is key. And I think this is a good segue into my next question. What do you think is the biggest mistake leaders are making when trying to foster this inclusivity, this, this, um… This work scenario, what is that one thing you see leaders struggling with the most?
Stephanie Chung [00:13:44] Well, so I love the question and I and I’ll answer that in just a second. But I also want to go back to something that you said, because I loved how you positioned it, which was the remote work. Right. A lot of times I am asked to quote different magazines. We’ll call my PR people and say, hey, what steps, you know, stance on this. Right. And hybrid work, remote work is such a heavy subject right now. And everybody’s trying to figure it out. And here’s and I just love how you position it, which is true now, the sudden, if people can work from all over, then then you can, you have. Even more opportunity to grab, you know, different perspectives, different types of employees. The second side of that, and here’s kind of where I’m coming from, even before I started running companies or gotten a C suite or did board work, I was coming up usually as a VP of sales, right? And so one of the things that I am saying as loud as I can without making everybody mad is I am a big fan of remote work and hybrid work. And here’s why. As a head of sales, most VPs of sales have always led remote teams. Your salespeople are not in the office. They’re actually in the field. And so they’re in different countries, different states. I mean, that’s just how the job is, right?
Speaker 3 [00:15:00] That’s it.
Stephanie Chung [00:15:01] Heads of sales have from the beginning of time always led remote teams and think about the sales team. They are the drivers of the top line sales. Without the sales team, you don’t exist as a business, right?
Speaker 3 [00:15:15] Definitely, yeah.
Stephanie Chung [00:15:15] You’ve got the people who are driving the revenue, who are remote. You’re not seeing them every day. Usually they’ve got corporate cards. They’re taking people out. They’ve got expenses. They’re doing they’re doing whatever they need to do to drive the revenue back into the business. And so all of that to say that nobody ever. You’ve never heard a head of sales complaining that, oh my God, my people are remote and I need to get them back in here because of company culture. We just have never had that. We’re not moaning and groaning about that, right? Because we’ve always, always led remote teams. And that means what I’m, what I, the reason why I say all this is I’m challenging leaders to don’t believe the hype. Don’t believe that because the team’s not sitting in front of you, they’re not productive. We’ve got all these different generations working. They have a different work style. What do you care? What you care about is can they produce the result? If it takes you 10 hours, two hours, why do you You give them a mission, a job, a result that needs to be done. And if they’re doing it, great, right? So that’s where I want leaders to like, again, and it’s usually the older leaders that are having this problem, you’ve got to realize that times have changed. You have to do is to figure out how do I get the best people who can get the best result and get it into the point where none of us are burning out. That’s the job, right? So how do i do that? So communication is one way, which now I’m going to go back to your second question. How do you communicate? We communicate through, you know, yes, technology. You know, right now there’s a big discussion about AI. AI is fantastic. I love it.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:16:51] I don’t get why people are scared of it. I mean, I think people are so afraid of AI taking their jobs and it’s change. Yes, which the only thing, the only inevitable things in life I believe are death and change. You cannot go against those. You can’t run against it, that’s right. Yeah, but people are afraid of AI taking their job and AI is not gonna take your job. Someone who knows and understands AI is, and that’s just the fact, it’s going to be another human that leverages AI to take the job.
Stephanie Chung [00:17:28] Yeah, and when you think about AI, right, it’s such it’s so good for efficiency. It’s going to save us a ton of time. And so but what it won’t replace, at least not in the near future, is it’s not going to replace that human interaction. We were created as human beings to interact with each other, right? And so so now kind of pulling this all together. So when we think of being a leader who knows how to ask, listen, learn and take action, all of those things have to do with communication, and all of those things have to do you as a leader, realizing that, A, you don’t know everything, B, your way is not the only way, it’s just one way of doing it, right? And so now, as a true ally trying to lead a diverse team, because you know that they’re going to simply outperform traditional teams, then what you have to do when it comes to communication is you’ve just got to realize that I have to be open and acceptable of people having different communication styles. So if you go into the conversation with how you see things, right, then you kind of cut the communication down already before it even got started. But if you go into with the spirit and an attitude of like, I don’t know everything and I want to get to know, you know, how you See things, how your, you know, your perspective, if you’re going, because I always say it’s a heart and head issue, Right? We’ve been addressing DEI from a head issue. And that’s fine. But it’s actually a head and heart issue, right? Because most people will know, like I’ll speak for myself. I’m a double minority, right, I’m a woman and a person of color. Well, I have a super spidey sense that if you’re coming to me, and I think every marginalized group does, right. No matter who you are, we all have that secret sauce. We’re like, I can tell if you are coming in with a pure heart, or if you’ve got like an undertone there that’s like, you know what I mean? I can’t
Speaker 3 [00:19:16] Yeah.
Stephanie Chung [00:19:16] Can feel it. And I think I’m no different than every other marginalized group out there. So here’s why I say this is important. If we realize that you’re coming truly with an attitude of, I don’t know, but I want to get to know, we can sense your heart there. And we’re okay if you maybe even make a little misstep of a mistake, because we know that your intentions were right, right? You may not have used the right verbiage, or maybe you didn’t understand, you know, what you said, and just kind of the cultural fluency and the undertone of it. All of that we can give you some grace on. Because we realize that your heart is in the right place, because what we find is most people would rather have a conversation. I’d rather have conversation with you and me realize that your intentions are pure than to have you not want to talk to me because you’re so afraid of making a mistake, right? So I’d ask you to make the mistake because I can tell you didn’t mean to make the mistake than to not talk to me at all, right? You keep going on with the assumptions based on however you were raised however you saw things you know because nobody we don’t move the ball forward from there that was a really long answer but i hope i know you’re picking up what i’m laying down daniel yes
Daniel Lamadrid [00:20:23] Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. And I think that’s something that I will share with other leaders listening. It’s it’s okay to make mistakes. That’s how we learn. And that’s something I really like about your book as well. You share a lot of experiences, and we can’t grow if we don’t experience the ups and the downs, right? I believe at this point in my professional life, I currently have an amazing mentor, Frank Cottle, our CEO, who is day by day. Sort of, I don’t want to say teaching me, but molding me into the leader I want to be. But before him, I’ve had very crappy leaders when I was at the bottom. And that’s where I learned the most at this point. I don’t want to. Be like him. I don’t want to, be like her because at the bottom, they made me feel like this.
Speaker 3 [00:21:13] Yes.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:21:13] So I think it’s all, it’s a tug of war and we can’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Speaker 3 [00:21:19] Mm-hmm.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:21:19] The important thing is to learn from them, I believe. That’s right. It’s just like you said at the beginning, let’s just keep it simple, you guys. This is not rocket science, right? It’s no rocket science. It’s now.
Stephanie Chung [00:21:32] It’s not. And if you go into, you know, with an attitude of, again, not knowing everything, right, you’re just asking the question. You know, one of, let’s just say, you know, and I, and by the way, kudos to your boss, Frank, I think you said his name was. Yes. Who’s voting you and throwing you. Yeah. Because we’re all going to learn something from bosses and leaders. Let me just speak directly to leaders. You are going to be a part of story. Now, you have the ability to dictate how they just how they tell that story about your leadership. But every day as leaders, you are part of someone’s story. So what will they be saying about you five years from now, 10 years from now, et cetera? So now Frank knows, right, that, you know, he knows what Daniel’s going to say, because he just heard it. So Daniel was like, hey, I had horrible leaders, right. And kudos to you for not naming them. But you’re like, but you know, and they know who they are, they always know who they are. Right. They will see me. But, you know. So that’s that’s a reminder for all of us as leaders is, you know, everybody that we’ve ever led somewhere along the line, it could be at the Thanksgiving table or, you know, some event and they’re like oh, yeah, I used to work, you know, at such and such company and I worked for so and so and they were amazing. I learned so much about or they’re going to say I worked for so-and-so and like this, you know what I mean? Every day, we leaders are having the ability to determine how our personal brand is gonna be marketed out there, every single day with our actions. But it does start with ask, listen, learn. And don’t just ask, listen and learn and do nothing with it. You have to take action, right? How do you use your power and your privilege to make sure that you’re able to help other people? Because I think leadership is an honorable profession, but it’s also a big responsibility. I take, I don’t take lightly the fact that, you know, God’s most important asset, human beings, right? He’s given me influence over different ones throughout the years. And so I have a responsibility to make sure that I help them and not hurt them. And I can do either, right? Every leader can, but we’ve got to be mindful. We have to know what we’re all about when we’re leading. What’s our talent, what’s our gifting, what our skill set, what is our leadership style, and then how do we use that to better the team.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:23:44] Yeah, I love it. I love it. And in your book, you and I really like this, because it might, it might sound silly, but you really emphasize leading people who are not like you. And I like that term. You didn’t use who are different people who are not, like you and in a way, if we think about it, everyone else is not like us, different. Right. I mean, we might share some technical backgrounds, skin color, whatever, but everyone is different. Because of that, there’s this thing called unconscious bias, right? And I believe we all have that in our systems. How can a leader or anyone for this matter, overcome unconscious bias and truly connect with people? Is it, is it through ally leadership or what would, even if from your own experiences, how can we overcome unconscious? Bias. What is it to begin with in your words?
Stephanie Chung [00:24:43] Yeah, absolutely. So unconscious bias, and you know, because you’ve read the book, I spend time on the science of how the brain functions, because I wanted that to be super important for people to realize that some of it is not also just us. Like we just don’t, you know. I’ll use the example. Let’s use bias. The brain is not made up to just not like somebody. Like, it doesn’t work that way, right? So if you don’t like someone, it’s because there’s something about that person that reminds you of something else, right. So it could be somebody else that you mentioned. Even yourself. Even yourself, exactly. So that’s why, you know, when I take the science part of it. Then all of a sudden it becomes less complicated and messy, right? So from a brain perspective, you know, unconscious bias is actually a good thing. It actually helps protect us. Back in the day, it protected us a long time ago, right, because we had natural fears and there are fears that we should have had. Right? And so, you know, if you if you’re thinking that, you know, for some reason, especially women, we will sense this a lot where we feel like this guy’s like in my personal space, you have a natural your your body language will start to send off signal certain signals that you don’t want to ignore it necessarily, right? So biases, unconscious biases are not necessarily a bad thing, So so I want people to get released from that. Survival mechanism. Right? Exactly. Now what we can do is you can’t override that part of your brain, right? The brain is designed to protect us. That’s the point of the brain, right? It’s one of the points. It has other ones too. So it will naturally have certain instincts that, you know, the fear factor of the, which is back in the back of your, the oldest part of our brain, it will, it will actually come up and come alive during certain times because its job is to protect you. So you’re not going to be able to change that. It’s an instinct. However, what you can change is the information that you feed your brain. Right? Because the brain is just a predictive model. It’s just literally talk about AI, right? Yeah, I just figure out when’s the last time I saw this, heard this, and it’s trying to make sense of it. So what you can do is if you can’t change the instinct, just change the information. You feed it. So if your instinct was, hey, you know, this particular group of people or this particular person or this particular accent, like if you had these for whatever reason, you’re you don’t necessarily jive with that area. Then how you override it is to feed yourself new information. That’s because, again, the brain’s just taking it from the information it’s received, right? So a simple way to do this, really simple way, is I did this just a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that you saw this in the book, because I’m all about how do we keep this simple, one of the easiest ways to get to know people who are not like you is to go, you’re not going to do it just reading a book and just sitting behind your desk, right. That’s not how you’re going to. You’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and get in the game, right? And so one simple way of doing that could just be go to a neighborhood that it’s not everybody doesn’t look like you, think like you act like you have the same background as you. Right. Go into those neighborhoods and within those neighborhoods, there’s usually great restaurants. Go check them out. Right. There’s usually culture centers or museums or festivals, you know, whatever. That’s just like one of the most basic ways to do it, um, and I do this all the time because I want to practice what I preach. So two weeks ago, I know you’ve been here in Dallas before. I did something I’ve never done before. There’s like this Dallas, Buddhist, um. You know, I don’t know, Buddhist area.
Speaker 3 [00:28:31] Yeah, yeah, okay.
Stephanie Chung [00:28:32] So on Sundays, you can go there. You can go into their temple. You can kind of see what that whole experience is like. Obviously, I’m not of that same faith, so it was really new and different for me. But, and they open up the community, right? So that the people who are working there, you can go buy food from nine to three. You can go by food who is, it’s made by actual Thai folks. So it’s like, your Thai grandma cooking for you, right. And the money that you spend on the food goes back to the monks who are now, obviously trying to do nonprofit type of things. So everybody wins in this scenario. I get to have great food. I get go spend some time in an area, and a culture that’s not like me. I get to learn, I get talk, I got to mingle, I get, you know, it’s something simple. I have the best time. And there’s every single one of us, unless you live in some weird remote area, you have that access as well in that community and so you just have to put yourself out there and put yourself in it. And so that’s one easy, easy way to chart, to override the biases that you have. How you do it is you literally feed your brain. New information. That’s how you do it.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:29:41] I love that. And from personal experience as well, I think it’s really important who we surround ourselves with because we tend to allow other people’s information to dictate what our brain feels. And yes, I’ll go into a little something here and I hope people don’t get mad at me. I’ve had the I’ve the privilege and we’ll talk about privilege in a second, but I’ve had the privilege. I currently have the privilege to be working remotely. Currently, I believe it’s a privilege. A lot of people want it. Most people don’t. I’ve had the privilege of, I’m Mexican. I’ve lived in the U.S. I studied in the US. I speak the language. A lot doors have opened for me, et cetera, et cetera, etc. And because I’m currently working remotely, I tend to move around a lot within my country, Mexico. It can be Monterey, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City. And I’ve had the honor of meeting a lot of people from abroad, especially Americans and Canadians, especially those two groups of people. And I just love seeing how these people who are now my friends, and they’ve shared this with me is. We had such an idea about Mexicans or Mexico in the US because that’s what we were fed. And now that they live here and they’ve engaged with the culture of what you’re saying, right? They don’t want to leave. That’s right. They should say, we welcome everyone here. That’s Right. Exactly. You really won’t get to shift your mindset if you don’t allow yourself to position yourself either physically or however, outside your comfort zone. That’s correct. Okay, next. I just love hearing those stories to this day from my friends who currently live here with me in Mexico and they’re not Mexican and they are from Canada or US. Their minds just shifted in sharing other spaces with other people and I think that’s amazing.
Stephanie Chung [00:31:40] Yeah, and I love that. I love that for them. I loved that for all of us because, you know, travel, I come from, I come from aviation. So travel is a big part of, obviously, my world. And I think the biggest way, the easiest way to expand one’s brain is travel.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:31:57] Is travel.
Stephanie Chung [00:31:58] It’s a whole big old world out there. Get out from your small town. Small town creates small thinking, right? And so expand your thought process. And again, that’s another easy way to feed your mind new information. Because again, the brain is, I interviewed a neurologist recently, his name is Dr. Philip Dion, and he said something really profound that I absolutely loved. And what he was talking about is the brain, if you don’t grab hold of it, it can take you into a dark spiral, right? Because the whole design is to keep you safe. But by default, then you start fearing everything. But one of the things he was sharing is that when the brain at the beginning, we have this fear, let’s say, of tigers chasing us because that was our survival mechanism. Well, now as the brain continues to evolve, which it does all the time, you’re constantly rewiring your brain. Then now it’s evolved into, we’re not fearing a tiger chasing us down the street because the odds of that are quite far, you know, this is crazy. But what we do now, perhaps fear, is the unknown or a person that’s not like me or rejection or fear of failure, right? So the brain has evolved to replace the fear, you know with something different. And so you’re constantly having to pay attention. That’s why this book is not just my stories, but I start with the research so that people realize like, this is a big, this is much bigger than you don’t like somebody, right? Your brain is hardwired a certain way, and so you’re going to have to rewire this thing as well, but it’s not as hard as you may think it is. It’s actually quite simple, right? So yeah, so that’s one way is just to realize that the fear evolves, and now the fear may be people, because you’ve read a particular article, and you’re convinced that that’s true, and you know, all that stuff. So it’s like, you can override all this with simply asking, listening, learning, and then you taking action. It really is that simple.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:33:48] I love that. I love that. And we’re going to get into privilege. And I think it’s a very taboo topic right now. Privilege. Who has it? Who doesn’t? Do they deserve it? Et cetera. We’re not get very in-depth into it, but I think something that we can just say is the fact is there are people with privilege, either in a professional setting, in a socio-economic setting, in whichever setting. There’s people with And I believe, personally, the first one way to… Make this less of a taboo topic is to realize that there is privilege and those who hold it, that they have it. That’s right, yeah. That’s my way of thinking.
Stephanie Chung [00:34:25] Well, can I go even one step further, Daniel? My thing is to let everybody know everybody has privilege, right? Because it’s such a positive word that we’ve made it a negative feeling, you know, because it’s gotten grabbed by the by just, you know. Talking points, right, for politics. And so when you think of the word privilege, it’s a positive word, right? Like you have a privilege, that’s a good thing. But what I want everyone to know is everybody has privilege, literally everybody. So I’ll use me as an example, right? My privilege is the fact that I don’t have a disability. So I can, if I’m going to have a meeting, I don’t have to worry about what, is there a ramp? Is there an elevator? Do I have to take the stairs? Because I don’t have a disability. I don’t have to think about any of that. I’m just going to take a meeting in whatever building it’s in, right? That’s a privilege that I have. I’m a right-handed person. So if I have a, go rent a car and it’s a stick shift, I don’s have to, you know, the car is designed for right- handed people. If you’re a left-handed, you gotta figure that whole thing out, right, because cars are designed for right-handed people. So there’s basics like if everybody realizes that you, you, no matter who you are, you have privilege. Now, if we start with that as the equal playing field, now we can look at privilege a way, right? I love it. Yeah, it’s just it’s again, super simple, you know.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:35:48] I want to say thank you to you. You know how you sometimes meet someone and they just say something and then you’re like, oh, this person just molded my life a little. You just did that. I had not thought about that and I appreciate that. Thank you. I will take that into my daily life. I love it.
Speaker 3 [00:36:02] I love it. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:36:05] But how can we make privilege not taboo? How can we turn it into a tool for empowerment and advocacy?
Stephanie Chung [00:36:12] Yes. Well, is one, realize you have it, right? Don’t let don’t let, don’t get triggered by the word privilege. You’ve got privilege no matter who you are, no matter what your circumstances, you have privilege over somebody else. And in the book, I actually talk about it. And I know, you know this five different types of privileges, right, because it’s not, yes, it could be, you know, money. It could be social economic status. It can be all kinds of things, but it can also be something as simple as proximity privilege. And I tell a story about, you know when my husband got sick, and proximity privilege that we could. Get the ball moving in the complex world of insurance, right?
Speaker 3 [00:36:45] Yes.
Stephanie Chung [00:36:46] And so there’s all kinds of ways to think about privilege. Now, to answer your question, how do we use it for good, right? Is once you realize you have it, then that alone should change you, right. That should make you realize that. And let’s just bring it back to a leadership perspective. As leaders, you have privilege and you have more privilege than the people who work on your team. You may be in meetings that they’re not in. You may given opportunities to experience different experiences that they don’t get to experience. So all of that is a privilege. Now, how do I use that privilege to actually help further the team, right? So I can grow them, you know, based on their gift, their talent, etc. So something is super simple. When I was working in executives, especially in the C-suite, I was media trained, right? Because if, you now, in our industry, if something crazy happened, then you’ve got to get the executives out there on the on the speaking circuit. And talk about, you know, let’s say the worst case scenario, a plane crash, right? Now, all of a sudden, you got to kind of manage this whole story. And so, uh, so I’m media trained. Now that is a privilege that I know how to work and talk to the media. My team doesn’t have, you know, if something’s going down, we’re not going to stick my sales team out there to talk to media. That’s like the people who are not talking to media is the sales team. They will lead them a lot. Ain’t nobody talking to the media, right. Unless you’re trained to talk with me. But what I can do as a privilege that I have is to take the training that I received and then take it back to the team. Because salespeople spend 90% of their day communicating, right? Like their whole job is communication. And so if I can teach them things that I’ve been taught, that I had the privilege to be, you know, taught, how can I teach them, you, know, a different version that can be applicable to their job. Well, that’s how you use your privilege. So now all of a sudden, I’m furthering their growth, their understanding, their talent, and that’s now gonna make them a better presenter, make them better listener, make them have a better salesperson, make them had a better mom, dad, you know, whatever, because communication is communication. So that’s a simple way of using your privilege for the betterment of the team. Right? Another way that, you know, leaders should be always thinking about is, well, if I have a privilege and I have been exposed, like, you I tell the story about when I first got into aviation, I didn’t, I always had a uniform, like I grew up a child of a soldier, my dad was in the Air Force. So I saw uniforms all the time. And then I worked for the airline and I was given a uniform. Right. Then all of a sudden I was promoted into sales and I could wear whatever I wanted. Well, I wore this pantsuit that I think I was looking good, right? And my boss was like…
Speaker 3 [00:39:31] Yeah!
Stephanie Chung [00:39:32] Because I didn’t know how to dress or it was a great pantsuit. But back in the day, women didn’t wear pantsuits, right? I didn’t know that. And so I had to have somebody who had the privilege and understanding and a bigger scope to teach me this is not how, you know, ladies. This is 40 years ago. This is not how women dress when going to meet corporate clients. Right. You don’t do pantsuits. You do skirts, dresses, whatever. Right. That’s a simple way that you can go, oh, OK, people may not know how to dress in this particular environment. I may take somebody to a country club and there’s 16 pieces of silverware in front of them. They don’t know how do maneuver with that. It’s a privilege that I can teach. OK, here’s how you work this thing. Red milk water, right? BMW, right. Teaching different things to different people. The leaders, I guess the biggest message is a long answer. But the biggest message is be. Um, proactive about what your privileges are so that when you see other people don’t have them, you can spring into action and privilege doesn’t happen to be this big grandiose thing. Every day you have privilege that somebody else you’re around doesn’t have. How do you use that privilege for good?
Daniel Lamadrid [00:40:44] I love it, I love. And I honestly feel before we were coming to the end of our episode, before we wrap up, I have one final question. First of all, I feel like I’ve had the privilege of speaking with you. So I just wanna go ahead and say that. Oh, you’re so sweet, thank you. One last question before we go, and I wanna take us into a little time machine here, if you will. I want to leave you with one final big question. You’ve seen how leadership has evolved. We’ve talked about how allyship is shaping the workforce. And currently, I love that you mentioned this. At this point in time, the workforce is comprised of as many generations as possible. Gen Alpha’s coming in. That’s going to be a, wow, I can’t. I’m actually excited. People should be excited about the future. That’s right. And technology, technology right now, AI, It’s just shaping. Everything we do. So let’s fast forward maybe 10-20 years from now. If you had to paint a vision of what the future work should look like, what would it be? What’s the world of work you hope we’re building toward?
Stephanie Chung [00:41:47] Yeah, that everybody feels like they belong at that company or in that department, right? Because we think of, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion. A lot of times where people don’t really take that next step is belonging. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what your, you know race, gender, sex, you, know, sexual orientation, all that stuff is. It doesn’t really matter. It’s really all about how do people feel at work? Do they feel safe enough that they can voice their opinion. They can provide feedback. They can even challenge and ask questions like, well, why are we doing this? I’m not really clear. You know, that type of environment is what we leaders need to be creating. And so where I see the future is where people feel like they can come to work. And we always hear this, bring your best selves to work And really, what does that mean? Really, what that means is based on my talent and my gifting, you’ve, you know, hired me into this company for those reasons. And then now that I’m here, I can get behind because I completely understand because the leaders done a good job communicating. I know what the purpose of the business is. I understand that what my contribution is, how it helps the business, and I understand what business we are in as a business, right? And therefore, I now have the liberty to be able to use my gifts and my talents to be to contribute so that we can all, the business as a whole, can move forward and grow. And so it’s not about what my uh, race or gender is it’s about how much do I feel safe enough to be able to literally use my talents and my gifts in a way that’s gonna overall contribute to the results of the company. And so what I would say is, you know, long term, if we leaders, all of us can step up in our sphere of influence, it could be a department, it could b one person you’re leading, it could be all company, right? Or it could countries. If we take that mentality, which is, I just want to create an environment and you, by the way, you have to be a really secure leader for this, okay? So this isn’t for everybody. Mediocre leadership is dying off quickly, right? Because you’ve got to be secure enough in yourself to be able to say to people, listen, guys, what is it that I’m missing? Because I feel like this is from where I see there’s this, but what haven’t we discussed, what haven’t, we addressed, like, where am I missing the mark?
Daniel Lamadrid [00:44:03] Leaders gotta be vulnerable.
Stephanie Chung [00:44:04] You’ve got to be vulnerable, right? And you’ve got it bring the whole team because the whole has different gifts and talents, right. You got to bring the team in. How can we be better guys? What is it that I, and they need to be safe enough to go, you know what, actually, I think we’re going to miss the mark on this one because of this, this, and not be shunned, but be like, thank you so much. That’s really good point. How do you feel over there, Daniel? What are your thoughts here? If you can get that kind of synergy going, and by the way, it can be done. You have a team that is unstoppable. And you have a team that knows how to perform at the highest level. And that that’s leadership. And so that’s what I really want to see. And I’m doing my part to help leaders if they’re willing to listen and learn. This is how you do it. And you don’t need to overcomplicate this. This is how you win. You know what? What the science I talk about this in the book and now and now shut up. The secret to Daniel, the secret to winning is winning.
Speaker 3 [00:44:55] Yeah, yes.
Stephanie Chung [00:44:56] Secret to winning. People are always like, how do you win? How you win is you win, right? The reason why that’s important is because once you win the brain actually, again, it’s an AI, it is a predictive model. It realizes and recognizes the chemicals that were created, how you’re feeling with that win, the adrenaline that’s flowing, and what the brain then does is goes, I want that feeling again. So it’s literally called the winning effect. That’s the science behind it. The secret to winning is winning. But the only way that you win is you have to figure out what makes people winnable. And then once you find that out, then you have to become an ally, ask, listen, learn, you take action to their win. You do that leaders and man, you’re going to be like marketable, making a ton of money because everybody’s going to want you on their team because you actually know how to lead.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:45:43] And yes, I love it. And just adding to what you said, I hope there comes a time where we actually live in a world and a future of work like that. And especially that leader CEOs who I’m just going to go out and say, tend to see things with dollar bills, realize that if you make people feel this way.
Speaker 3 [00:46:01] Company.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:46:05] I mean, people who feel happy, encouraged, like they belong, they do their best. And if they do the best, they’re making more money for you. It’s simple. It’s very simple. It’s.
Stephanie Chung [00:46:14] Stephanie, it’s… A little bit more complicated, yep.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:46:16] Don’t overcomplicate it. Stephanie, it’s been a pleasure speaking to you. I hope that we can, there’s just so much more that we can go into and maybe we’ll do a part two.
Stephanie Chung [00:46:24] I love it, Daniel. Don’t you threaten me a good time.
Speaker 3 [00:46:29] With a good time. Yeah, I love it.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:46:32] Thank you so much. Before we go, how can our listeners get in touch with you? Where is the best way they could acquire your book before we take off?
Stephanie Chung [00:46:43] Yeah. Yeah. So book is sold anywhere, anywhere books are sold. You go to Amazon and what have you the best way to connect with me. I’m on all the socials at, at my call sign is at the Stephanie Chung, or you can just go to Stephanie Chung.com and get all the information there. So that might be the easiest. Thank you so much for having me, Daniel. This was a really good time.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:47:03] It was a pleasure as well. Thank you so much for being here and I hope we get to do this soon enough again.
Stephanie Chung [00:47:09] Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Have a good one. You as well.
Daniel Lamadrid [00:47:13] If it’s impacting the future of work, it’s in the Future of Work podcast by allwork.com.
