55: N. Chloé Nwangwu on Your Circle of Recognition, and Workplace Transitions
N. Chloé Nwangwu, the brand scientist, is a speaker, behavioral strategist, and brand visibility expert. A former international conflict mediator, she is now the founder of NobiWorks, a brand visibility consultancy where she partners with underrecognized brands, leveraging science to ensure they are impossible to ignore. Her clients have included a number of boutique firms, the High Ambition Coalition, and the first refugee delegation to the UN.
Main quote:
“Your circle of recognition is just fancy talk for your network. But it is your network organized around a specific behavior, namely recognition. And ensuring that your circle of recognition is designed to amplify your ideas in the right kind of way, that's going to be the path forward.”
Additional Quotes:
“Don't be content with disrupting the present. Focus on shaping the future.”
“One of the most pernicious things that ideal client avatars do, and why I find them so dangerous, is that they segment us and our world into demographic, sometimes psychographic segments.”
To connect with Chloé:
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcript:
This episode with Chloé is really powerful. Chloé's going to talk about under recognition being a systemic failure, and I think that's so powerful. One of the things that we talked about was the reality that we need to start building and nurturing and expanding, as Chloé says, your circle of recognition, which is something she borrowed from Angela Bassett, and I am loving what Chloé's done with this work.
The Circle of Recognition is really fancy talk for your network, as Chloe says, and it's organized around a specific behavior, which is to design it to amplify your work in a super specific way. I love that so much, and it reminds me of my own signature block. Um, currently, if you receive an email from me, I talk about the fact that I am looking for specific referrals.
And in asking for referrals. I am calling in my circle of recognition. I'm asking folks that I engage with on email to keep me in mind for the things that I excel at and for the impact that I can bring organization. Chloe talks about in this interview that there are active actors in our world and in our networks.
So she says, let's make them point in our favor. I really love another thing that Chloe talks about, which you'll hear in this interview, which is talking about the fact that every executive director transition. Is an inflection point, and she says that it's also in the legacy of the organization, but also the individual.
So, so powerful. I'm excited for you to dig in. I would love to hear from you after you listen to this interview, what your favorite take takeaways were. Email me at naomi@eighthandhome.com. That's the number eight T eight and home.com. Let's get into the interview.
Chloe Wagu, the brand scientist, is a speaker. Behavioral strategist and brand visibility expert. A former international conflict mediator, she is now the founder of NobiWorks, a brand visibility consultancy where she partners with under recognized brands leveraging science to ensure that they are impossible to ignore.
Her clients have included a number of boutique firms, the High Ambition Coalition, and the First Refugee Delegation to the UN. Chloe, I am so excited to have this conversation, and I'm excited partially because I don't know exactly where it's going to go. Neither do I. I know, that's what's going to be great about it.
My first question for you, because this is a lot of what you do around brand visibility, is to maybe tie it into the work of non profit leaders. And I'd love for you to share maybe what you wish that leaders of social impact orgs knew about something that you call the invisibility tax when those leaders are women, BIPOC, or hold other underrepresented identities.
Yeah, yeah, this is such a great question and thank you for starting here. I feel like you gave me like a little layup. The thing that I want desperately for folks to know is that your suspicions are accurate. Visibility is not neutral. In fact, as a society, we've been conditioned to allocate our attention in discriminatory ways.
Great example of this is some research that came out in 2021, I want to say, and these researchers were able to empirically demonstrate that white Americans are 33 percent more likely to overlook their black peers. And that's even when they've been incentivized to pay attention to those peers. Right?
And this study was limited. It looked at race as a binary of black and white. It didn't include gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, like none of those things, right? And all of those things compound and shift where you are on that spectrum as far as attention that you are getting or you're not getting.
And so what I would say to this is that this absolutely has consequences for The work you're doing, uh, whether or not it is how you're managing people in your organization, whether or not it's the fundraising that you are doing, this has consequences that spread throughout just about everything that you do as a leader.
Well, and I'm thinking about a lot of the clients that I work with who are in positions of executive leadership, whether it was an internal promotion or they were hired for it. From from an external space, and a lot of them will say to me that they are worried that they may have made a mistake, not that they made a mistake in taking the job, but that the hiring folks made a mistake in choosing them for the role, or they'll say things like, I think I'm being set up like I can't possibly.
Succeed at this knowing all of the high level expectations that are in place for me in this role. And so I think a lot about your work too when you talk about leveraging science to ensure that people are impossible to ignore and that just feels really relevant. Yeah, yeah. And so what I what I'd say to that is a few things.
On the one hand, I know that mindset is a key thing here, right? And I'm not going to knock mindset or anything like that, because I think that's key. And it's important to your health and thriving and flourishing as a leader. And also, I will also say that mindset is often something that's being used to bypass the experiences of Folks who are under recognized and also happen to be in leadership.
And so those fears that sort of come up and are being expressed. Often folks will refer to those as imposter syndrome, right? Like, Oh, you just have imposter syndrome. Don't worry, like, get over it, you know, push past it. And to that, I would say, actually. As an under recognized person, you are really, really good at picking up on cues in the environment that can indicate possible harm.
And so rather than saying that you have imposter syndrome, I would say that you are part of a, a sort of industrial complex that manufactures that feeling in you because of the lack of safety that it provides. So then if, if you're, if you're in front of one of my clients, then Chloe, what would you say to them?
When that, so that might be the case, right? Like it's, it's so likely, I love that you said industrial complex. They're asked, they're being asked to manage a budget. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things that I, that I always stress is this, that, you know, when you're working with a team, they're being asked to solve the problems that their organization exists to solve and eradicate at the same time that they also have to manage this.
So what, what are some key things that, that we can think about when it comes to navigating that industrial complex that we had nothing, no part to play in creating? Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things that I, that I always stress is this, that, um, um, All the things that I've been talking about, under recognition especially, and the ways in which it trickles out into all the work that we do, all of those are behavioral challenges.
Underrecognition is a behavior. The ways in which your organization is asking you to change the world, you know, that social change that they're trying to get you to make, that's behavior change at scale, right? The ways in which they are asking you to leverage the volunteers and the various employees at your organization, they are asking you to initiate behavior change in those individuals, right?
The thing about behavior change, uh, is twofold. One, information is not going to be as helpful as we want, right? I know, you're like, just tell them, just tell them, and it'll change. Behavioral science is pretty clear about the fact that that is, um, not often the case, and when it is the case, the change is not often sustainable or long lasting.
And the second thing I would say is that the environment, the environment, that you are building up for yourself and within your organization are going to be really key to how likely that behavior change that you're trying to foster it is. Behavior change is, I won't say only predicated upon by, but largely influenced by the environment that the individuals are in.
This is why I always tell under recognized folks to start building and or continue to nurture and expand what I call your circle of recognition. Now, I actually stole this term circle of recognition from Angela Bassett. Um, I heard her mention it in her Oscar acceptance speech, and I was just like, Ooh, yeah, that's a great term for this thing that I've been trying to describe.
Yoink. Thank you, Queen. And when I say circle of recognition, it's just fancy talk for your network, right? That's all it is. But it is your network organized around a specific behavior, namely recognition. And ensuring that your circle of recognition is designed to amplify your ideas in the right kind of way.
That's going to be the way forward, the path forward. That I'll stop here for questions. And I, well, I'm thinking about that. And I'm thinking, one of the things that hit me as you were talking is the act of being unrecognized is not our fault. You know, and so to just think about. If someone else is doing that, they're not recognizing and they're ignoring or what have you.
And so then when you add in the circle of recognition, especially if we can be strategic about how those folks in our circle of recognition are amplifying our work, even I'm guessing you, you might even mean so specifically to say to your circle, Hey, I would love for you to amplify this or here's the things that I'm working on and getting out into the world.
Could you help me, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that's exactly right. And. Underrecognition is a systemic failing. It's not an individual one, right? And it's, it's why I say the word underrecognition instead of underrepresentation. Right? Because when we say underrepresentation, we are, we are in, We're doing a lot of things, but one of the key things that we're doing is that we are making it that underrepresented person's fault, that like, it is your job to now be represented, right?
Show up and be represented, like, you know, fix the thing. And it also is such a passive term. Oh, they just happen to be underrepresented rather than it being the, the direct result of behaviors. Yeah. And so that's why I like saying under recognized instead, because it points to the fact that there are actors, active actors at play, that behavior is the cause, and it also points us towards what solutions might look like.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Okay, so there's a little bit of a segue with what you've just been talking about, and then I know that you are So sometimes you have to start really big on storytelling in your work and with the clients that you work with. And so a big part of what I do is all around transitions in the workplace.
A lot of times it's executive leadership, they're coming to me to ask for support, sometimes it's board of directors or the organization saying we have this upcoming. In any case, in any of those situations, storytelling and how we communicate about transitions is really, really important. So I would love if you have some pointers on what you would recommend on what we should storytell or where we should kind of begin when it comes to navigating executive transitions.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that I'll say is that, and you know this, I, I know you know this, um, but every executive transition is an inflection point in the legacy of both the organization and the executive who's transitioning. And so I think one of the, The things that can often get lost in this sort of transition shuffle is one, what do you want to be remembered?
What do you want people to remember? And that's from an organizational standpoint. And that's also from an individual standpoint. What do you want people to remember? State that thing repeatedly more times than feels comfortable. Because that is how. That thing has the best chance of getting past all of the brain's filters, right?
And back into that mass of ideas and memories that make up our brains. So that's one thing that I would say, right? Be really clear on what it is that we want to be remembered from this situation here. So the next, the next thing that I would say, and this is where I bring back the idea of your circle of recognition, We want to work with key stakeholders to signal boost.
And again, this is from an organizational standpoint, and this is also from the standpoint of you as an individual. And this is especially true because of what, where I started our conversation, right? That visibility is not neutral. Yeah. And so having a strategic selection of folks reinforcing that thing that we want remembered is going to be so so key, because the status quo is already for folks to overlook or underappreciate or Good news.
Good news. Invisible eyes, right? Or warp. That's already the status quo, especially if you're under recognized. And so having those strategic partners to signal this is going to be really, really, really key. Yeah, that feels so potent for for the nonprofit leader. And you know, I, a lot of times people are leader by title, and sometimes they are leaders without title.
But I'm just thinking of as we seek to. Uphold the mission of our organizations. There are community partners. There's other nonprofits that are in partnership with us. There are funders and Community leaders and elected officials There's so many different people that you could think about when you think of that Fill of recognition and I think that we often so I when when I first heard you say that I thought about like my close friends, you know, like the people who No, like, and trust me, but as you were talking, I'm like, oh, that the circle of recognition could actually be expanded to really include people that might be a surprise for others that they're shouting me out.
And so that feels really important to say, you can talk a little more about that. Not you picking up what I'm putting down. We love it here. Uh, that is precisely correct. That's precisely correct. And I'm glad that you brought that up, especially because I understand that in an executive transition, it can be really tempting to want to shrink or to handle the, the sort of communication or the storytelling on your own.
But remember, Under recognition and all the dynamics that are at play executive transition is already kind of weird thorny enough as it is add to the mix under recognition and all the stuff that comes with that. So I'm especially glad that you mentioned that because yes, your circle of recognition. Oh, boy.
Okay. Oh, boy. Go into it. Yeah, okay. Alright, alright. So, this is where I start talking about the various kinds of stakeholders that one can have in a circle of recognition. So, yes, absolutely, there are the folks who are, like, your close friends and confidants and that sort of thing, right? And they may be at your organization, they may not be.
They may not even be in your industry. There's that. And also there are gatekeepers, folks who might be standing between you and opportunities that you need moving forward, whatever your goals happen to be. And these folks, they are not necessarily your adversaries, right? They're just the person standing at the gate.
So gatekeepers. Mediators, right? Folks who are directly connecting you to opportunities. Advocates, folks who are speaking about you in rooms that you don't happen to be in yet. These are all, at least four, I think, count this. Yeah. And there are many, and there are many others. Strategic kinds of stakeholders that you can Place in your circle of recognition.
So that's why when I initially spoke about it, I spoke about it as a, a designing process, designing your circle of recognition so that it amplifies your ideas and your work and the right kind of way. And when you, when you talk about designing, there's also the ability to then design your communication.
And so as you're talking about designing who those people are, those interested parties that are in that circle of recognition, also then design your communication and going back to what you said about. Making sure that you know what about your legacy you want people to remember. That can be in your notification email.
That could be as you are passing projects off to someone. You could, I mean, I'm thinking about the actionable step here for you, listener. Yeah. If you are introducing someone on your team, To someone else, because you're passing that project, you're delegating the project because you're about to leave. You could say, as you know about me and people that know me know that I, I strive to be kind.
So I could say in my email, as you know, I strive to be kind and everything that I do. And that's part of the legacy. I want to leave everywhere I go. So as I want to be kind, I wanted to give you all ample notice to get to know each other. And I also have prepared this summary document to let you know about the project.
Like, it's that easy, I think. And we think it's that easy. Yeah. It's literally that easy. It's literally that easy. Yes. Chef's kiss. Yeah. I, I, I could not have come up with a more picturesque illustration of my point. And you know, sometimes you listen to a podcast and you're like, Oh yeah, I totally get that.
I can get down with that. And then you're like, but I don't know how to do that. And so I think as you're listening to Chloe and I just practice thinking in your head, where are the moments during normal conversation that I could inject the work that I do and how important it is that I leave a certain type of legacy.
So that's really cool. Could you talk a little bit about your own work for yourself and how this applies? This is a question I didn't give you to prepare, but how do you navigate your own bumping up against brand visibility for yourself? Because one would think that if you're, I mean, you're, you're the expert and so do you still have issues with it and how do you navigate that for yourself?
Oh my gosh, yeah, um, I absolutely still have issues with it, and it's very, you know, Cobbler's Kids over here in my world. I think the thing that plagues me the most is my impatience. I think that's it. My impatience. That I know. From my research, researchers, right? That there is in fact, uh, a sequence of things as far as a brand's visibility is concerned, as far as notability is concerned, right?
Like there is a sequence of things. And it gets really easy for me to pretend that I am a special snowflake and not because I know it is coming. And know how to handle that thing that's coming that I could just jump ahead, right, just jump ahead and that way ends only in tears. And I, I say that laughingly, but also, you know, with the kernel of truth that it's, and this is something that probably will come up later, but it's my impatience.
activates in me a desire to be disruptive, right, in the present. And that's not a bad thing. That's a great thing. That's a good thing. And also being disruptive in the present is a thing that can be really hard on our nervous systems and on our bodies. And especially in the, in, in our world or the world that we're talking about, social impact, nonprofit, public, right.
It is incredibly easy to just sort of put our heads down and just. Go, go, go, go, go. Because now, now, now is really important. And we have to do this thing. Now, we have to do this thing. Now, it has to be big and loud and people have to see and know and all of that. Otherwise, it's not working. It's not successful.
It's not right. All of those things. And the thing that I have come into the habit of saying and have to remind myself of always whenever these. Tendencies come up for me is that I should not and I don't like shoulds but maybe I'll say don't be content with disrupting the present focus on shaping the future.
And I found that that sort of view of the work that I'm doing, and the. Visibility and recognition of that work that will take it to the next level and the level after that and the level after that. That view allows me to allow those things to come when they do. When you were saying that it makes me think about the co creation of work together that if you're Sewing those seeds for the future conditions, it allows other people to step in and support or work alongside you or have ideas to add to it instead of the disruption of the present.
That's really, really helpful. And that's going to stick with me for a long time about the hardness of disrupting in the present disruptor by nature. But that's also part of being a visionary and a leader is being able to see far in advance and what's going to need to be there. Yeah, that's exactly right.
And I think that the, the infrastructure around us, and I think a really great example of this is like social media, the infrastructure around us is counting on us to focus on disrupting the present. Yeah. That's how they make their money. Um, it's in the spin. Exactly. And it keeps us in the spin, which allows us then to.
Fall prey to other things that come, you know, like, so an understanding, and again, that's what sort of that view allows me to, to see right of shaping the future and understanding that all of that is also by design. Yeah. Are there things that, that people are consistently surprised about when they learn about your work and the concept of brand visibility and under recognition and all of that?
I'm not sure if this is very surprising. No. No. No. No. And I've, I've actually found that folks, when I. express this are like, Oh, thank God. Or like, Oh, okay. Right. But up until, up until it said like, they're like, Oh, this is the only way. Right. And this is me getting into things that are more like marketing E adjacent.
If this feels, um, less relevant, we, we can make it more relevant. And it's this, there's this. Propensity to leverage what folks in my field and adjacent fields call the ideal client avatar. And I'm sure those who are listening, uh, I have heard of a similar concept, maybe a consultant was hired and came in to help you all sync up on your communications or something like that.
And they started with this exercise of, well, who are we talking to? Let's put together this avatar. I am, if anyone can truly be known, I am known in these internet streets for not, not liking that practice. It is bad. It's not good. It's poisonous. And I think when I first say this, A lot of folks are, it depends on, it depends on like the world they're coming from, right?
Some folks are sort of like, Oh, okay, thank God. But why? Also tell me why? Like, what do I do instead? And then other folks are like, no, that doesn't make sense. Like, how am I going to, like, who, how do I talk to people then? Right. If I don't have an avatar of them and I'm like, are you hearing the words that you're saying?
But okay, sure. One of the most, the most pernicious things that ideal client avatars do, and this is why I find them so dangerous, is that they segment us and our world into demographic, sometimes psychographic segments. And when, for those who are listening, when I say demographic, I mean like census level data, right, your age, your gender, those sorts of things.
And when I say psychographic, I mean things like hobbies, affiliations, that sort of thing, like, do you like Netflix or Hulu? Psychographics. And the problem with this is that those Demographically and psychographically homogenous segments become these echo chambers that often can and have exploded into violence across our news screens, woke backlash, for example, right, that is born out of this practice.
And, and that's because when you have a segment that is so homogenous. Disinformation and misinformation can spread like wildfire because there are no, in, in network science, they're called countervailing forces, but there's no diversity of, of thought or experience in those places to sort of slow down the spread of, or even end the spread of that sort of stuff.
And so here's one like really innocuous practice that like, yeah, this is how everyone does it. And here's the consequence of it on the other side. And you know what that makes me think of is I'm thinking about the ED. Or the ceo, whatever the title is. Hmm. There's a lot of that same ideal avatar happening when we think about our funders.
Yes. When we think about frontline staff and even when we think about communities that we serve. And so that's just a good challenge for us. I'm often on the side of the ED and wanting to support the ed, but this is a, a reverse challenge almost for the ED who's listening to stop thinking about your board as all one body.
And your funders as all the same because it might not be as violent as what you were describing, but it's it can be really harmful. Um, yeah, it can be options. Yeah, it can be deeply harmful. And I think it's also part of what can lead to Or or ease the way for underrecognition in the first place. Right.
And the perpetuation of more of it. Exactly. Right. That, and, and that's why, like my quick alternative to that is to segment folks, um, motivationally. Because lots of different kinds of people can have the same motivations and, and, and drivers that generate those motivations. And so when you're looking at folks, motivationally, it means that when you're looking for a funder, let's say that you're not necessarily only looking for the, the retired former executive in his mid sixties, the, you know, all the, the usual thing that you're, Your stakeholders can be anyone if you share the same motivations.
That, that might be the answer to what would you say about this that like that's shocking or surprising. I think that right there, and not in a bad way but could ruffle some feathers in a way that might help people think more nuanced about all those things. I love it. I'm going to flip the last two questions, um, on you personally, and I would, I'd be curious to know how you would describe your relationship to change and or transition.
Funny that you bring that up because this is, this is where I would say shape the future. That's, that's my relationship to change that I am focused on sowing seeds and tilling ground now. That allows for the kinds of changes that I'm hoping to see in the future. And allowing myself to have that longer term view allows me to also build in safeguards for those changes, right?
And ultimately my legacy. It allows me to build a truly indomitable coalition or circle of recognition that can not only support, but also contribute to the, like the tipping point, like reaching the tipping point societally. Yeah. For this work. Yeah. So I feel like that is so reminiscent of I don't know if you know about Fireweed.
It's, um, in several parts of the world, I'm, I'm not sure exactly what regions, but in several parts of the world, it's the first plant to come back after a fire. Mm-Hmm. . And it has such beautiful, um, network of roots underground that the fire can't destroy that, but it's the thing that replenishes the soil so that other things can grow.
And so now I'll just think of Fireweed every time I think of you. Oh my gosh, please do. That's exact. Now that I know about fireweed, I'm using that metaphor everywhere. It's really, it's the coolest. It's the coolest. What is the concept of leaving well mean to you? I think it's really easy to sort of fall into this sense of like protectiveness, right?
When I think about leaving and leaving well, but when I'm my best self, I think leaving well means. Expanding my circle of recognition. I'm not burning any bridges. Those folks are still within this. This coalition, and I'm leaving to, to expand that to bring more folks in. I love that. I love that so much.
Chloe, thank you so much for everything that you do and everything that you bring to this world. Thank you for this conversation. As you're listening to this, you can find all of the things that Chloe has in the world and all those things in the show notes so you can connect with her as well. Thank you.
Thank you for having me. If you've not yet taken the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz to discover your natural relationship to change and transition, you can do that at NaomiHattaway.com/quiz. To learn more about leading well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit NaomiHathaway.
com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.
