Ep. 013 Unbehaved: Meghan French Dunbar with Deepa Purushothaman

"Is Your Job Killing You? Don't Wait Till You Break"

 

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Episode Overview

Deepa Purushothaman was a partner at Deloitte for 21 years. At year 17, she started getting sick — headaches, stomach pains, skin rashes. Small things at first. And then over the course of two years, it grew until she couldn't feel from her knees down or her elbows down. She spent eight months in bed. She saw 14 doctors. And doctor number 14 said the thing the other 13 didn't:

"Your job is killing you. Do you feel like you have to do a big job like this to be worthy? Don't you just see you're worthy being you?"

Deepa left that office in tears. And what followed — the months of sitting in that question, the slow unpacking of what success had actually cost her, the anniversary dinner where her husband told her she didn't seem ambitious anymore and she didn't say a word for the rest of the meal — is what this episode is really about. Not burnout as a buzzword, but burnout as a reckoning. The kind that forces you to ask questions you've been avoiding because they were just too big to unpack.

We get into the four "shoe drops" Deepa sees in 90% of high-achieving women before they finally stop — and why, in high-performing cultures, most people wait until something breaks. We talk about the difference between a season of busyness and a system of busyness, the six to eight things that actually define who you are (and why you can't give on them), and why the research shows it takes about two years to really recover and reset after leaving a toxic situation. And somewhere near the end, Deepa says something I've been sitting with since we recorded:

"It's hard to make the list of what you want your life to look like when you're still in your old life."

That one will stay with you.

 

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In This Episode

• The 14-doctor story — and what Heather finally said that cracked everything open
• What "toxic success" actually looks like while it's happening to you (hint: you don't see it until your body makes you)
• The four "shoe drops" Deepa sees in high-achieving women before they finally stop
• The 9th anniversary dinner — and the comment that sent Deepa into months of shame
• Why ambition isn't about saying yes to everything — it's about guarding your energy
• Season of busyness vs. system of busyness: how to tell which one you're actually in
• The six to eight things that define your identity at work — and why most women haven't named them yet
• Why it usually takes two years to really recover, and what you don't see from the outside
• The corporate heroine's journey — what the hero's journey gets wrong about women
• The questions to start with if you want to actually rewrite your definition of success

 

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Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction: how Meghan and Deepa met (back of a van in Kalamazoo, Michigan) and the framing — recovering from a toxic definition of success

00:36 — Deepa's 21 years at Deloitte, getting sick at year 17, the lifestyle of three cities a week, and what "toxic success" actually cost her physically

02:45 — The 14th doctor, Heather — "Your job is killing you. Do you feel like you have to do a big job like this to be worthy? Don't you just see you're worthy being you?"

03:30 — Leaving the doctor's office in tears; why the worthiness question was too big to let herself think about — and how the last few years have been about unpacking it

04:47 — Is the boulder required? Meghan asks whether crisis is necessary to get off the hamster wheel

04:50 — Deepa's answer: in high-performing cultures, usually yes — the four "shoe drops" she sees in 90% of the women she works with

07:16 — The worthiness question: have you actually gotten there? Deepa's honest answer

07:32 — The 9th anniversary dinner — "you used to be really ambitious and now you just don't seem as ambitious to me"

08:42 — Sitting in that for months; the shame; and how Deepa's definition of ambition quietly changed

09:30 — "If nothing else happens, literally nothing else happens in my career, I'll be okay. I've had enough, done enough."

10:03 — The Rutgers research: men define power as control; women define it as freedom and autonomy — and what that means for how we think about ambition

11:29 — Does the gravity of the old definition pull you back? How do you reground?

13:51 — Season of busyness vs. system of busyness — and how to tell the difference when you're inside it

15:52 — The book Wintering, the fallow period, and why we can't keep producing without resting

17:49 — What Deepa is seeing in the women she works with right now — and why it feels like a return to the COVID-era reckoning, only deeper

22:04 — Can you live a new definition of success inside a high-pressure organization? Deepa's answer (and the conditions required)

24:46 — The six to eight things that define your identity at work — and why most women haven't sat down to name them

26:35 — Authentic power vs. assimilation — and the red lipstick story

28:48 — How Deepa stayed herself even at peak corporate Olympian (the golf story, the "I don't know" story, and what she attributes it to)

33:34 — The questions to start with when rewriting your own definition of success: what gives you angst, what you never want to do again, and what you actually want your day to look like

35:33 — The fallow period: why it takes about two years, and what you don't see from the outside

37:20 — The interstice — the uncomfortable middle period between who you were and who you're becoming, and why you can't go around it

40:15 — Rewriting the corporate heroine's journey — the foundational rewrite Deepa invites

41:33 — Where to find Deepa and how to follow her work

 

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A Few Things That Stayed With Me

"Your job is killing you. Do you feel like you have to do a big job like this to be worthy? Don't you just see you're worthy being you?" — Deepa's 14th doctor, Heather

"My definition of ambition is not saying yes to everything. Being ambitious is guarding your energy, saying yes to the things that you feel like saying yes to." — Deepa Purushothaman

"If nothing else happens, literally nothing else happens in my career, I'll be okay. I've had enough, done enough." — Deepa Purushothaman

"It's hard to make the list of what you want your life to look like when you're still in your old life." — Deepa Purushothaman

"You have to unpack the suitcase and then decide what parts you want to put back in. But most of us don't get the time or give ourselves the grace to unpack the suitcase." — Deepa Purushothaman

"It usually takes two years — what the research shows — to come out of a situation. If you're pivoting, if you've been in a toxic situation, if you're starting over, if you're changing your career." — Deepa Purushothaman

 

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About the Guest

Deepa Purushothaman is a speaker, author, and executive coach whose work centers on what it actually looks like when high-achieving women stop running — and what it takes to build something more honest on the other side. A former national managing principal at Deloitte, where she spent 21 years, she is the author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America. Her research and writing explore power, identity, and the systems that were never designed with women like her in mind.

Find her on LinkedIn and through The Re.Write, where she shares ongoing research and resources.

 

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Connect with Meghan

• Book: This Isn't Working
• Substack: meghanfrenchdunbar.substack.com
• Instagram: @meghanfrenchdunbar
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meghanfrenchdunbar

 

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Full Episode Transcript

A conversation with Deepa Purushothaman— lightly edited for readability.

Meghan French Dunbar [01:35]

My friend Deepa — we met, I think, in the back of a van in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and it's been eight or nine years now. It is such a pleasure to know you. You're all over the interwebs — you're quite a prolific human, and you have an incredible story of being at the top of your career, specifically at Deloitte where you made partner, and what I would call having an awakening around a toxic definition of success. So I'm curious — as you've been recovering from that toxic definition of success, what has that actually looked like?

Deepa Purushothaman [02:12]

The long story short is I was at Deloitte for 21 years, and about 17 years in I started to get sick. It started as small things — headaches, stomach pains, skin rashes. And then over the course of two years, it grew significantly, to the point that I was sick every two weeks. I couldn't feel from my knees down and my elbows down. I ended up spending eight months in bed. So I took a leave of absence and got really serious.

And I should say, this wasn't just the stress of the job. I lived out of a suitcase. A lot of the time I was doing three cities a week. It was a lifestyle more than anything — when you're on the go like that, not sleeping in your bed, not eating properly, just running. The things normal people do to take care of themselves, I wasn't doing, because for so long they just hadn't been part of my life.

When I say toxic success, part of it was I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't really thinking about the me part of the equation. I was looking at the results. And that's really how I was raised. I'm the daughter of immigrants, and in our family there was always a focus on productivity, always a focus on doing more. I grew up with messages about what my parents sacrificed to come here and stay here. I'm the oldest of two daughters, so I have a little bit of that first-daughter thing. There was a lot of that.

For me, there was just such a focus on success, productivity, doing more. Take care of yourself later. Always the next thing. In school it was: when you graduate. Then: when you get married. Then: when you get to the next stage. And then you'll have happiness and joy and take care of yourself. Those things just didn't come — not in the way I was living.

A lot of that rewriting has come down to: what do I want my day to look like? And to be really fair, it wasn't that I had this beautiful awakening like, "I want to build my life in a better way." It was that I wasn't listening to the universe. I love Oprah's framing — you get hit with a pebble, then a rock, then a stone, then a boulder. I wasn't listening to any of those smaller messages.

So the sickness, the illness, the years it took me to get healthy — that was the wake-up sign. This way of living isn't working.

And to be really clear, Meghan — this is told on the internet because I've told the story so many times — it came from my doctor. Heather was the 14th doctor I saw. And she said to me: your job is killing you. What would you do if you didn't do a job like this? Do you feel like you have to do a big job like this to be worthy? And don't you just see your worthiness in being you?

We should pause there and let that land. Didn't you see your worthiness being you? I wasn't. My worthiness was tied to my accolades, how much I accomplished, what I was doing. I left her office in tears, because that question about worthiness was so overwhelming. I hadn't let myself think about it that way. I knew it was lingering in the back of my head, but I hadn't let myself go there because it was too big to unpack.

So a lot of the last couple of years has been: what kind of life do I want? What do I want it to look like? How do I want to feel? Those are big, scary questions when you're not used to having time to think. I left my house at five o'clock in the morning on Mondays and sometimes didn't get back until Friday afternoon. There was no time to think about what my day looked like. There wasn't even milk in the refrigerator. A cup of tea on Friday was a big thing for me.

And what if I don't have my job to lean back on? Who am I? What do I want to be known as? Those are not easy questions. Part of getting sick also took me on a path of meeting a lot of spiritual leaders, healers — people who are not in the traditional corporate path. So I was for years having all these really interesting conversations around what one's life means. What is happiness? What is worthiness? What does it mean to take care of yourself? All of those things came together in a really profound way for me.

 

Meghan French Dunbar [06:23]

Is the boulder required? You can hear it so many times — you're addicted to achievement, you're worthy just as you are — but is a crisis necessary to get people off the hamster wheel? Or have you seen any ways to actually encourage people to do it before they get completely laid out and are forced to stop?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [06:50]

I literally do stage talks on this topic. Don't wait till you break. That's literally the title. I think when you are in high-performing cultures, you often wait till you break. For a lot of the women I work with who are highly ambitious, highly accomplished, they have to have a shoe drop.

So it's either a health issue. It's a divorce that they didn't see coming. It's not getting a promotion that they were promised and they went over and above and beyond for. Or it's the death of a family member — a parent, or someone they had said they would visit and they just didn't get to, that sort of shame and juxtaposition. So it's usually one of those four things. And I would say that's true for 90 percent of the women. I call them corporate heroines — these women who are rising, and at some point they have the awakening, they go through the trek, and then they just hit the wall.

I think it comes from the idea that we haven't given ourselves the chance to stop and ask. And for a lot of us, we're chasing success to feel worthy. So we're not even able to ask the question because we're thinking, if I fill my cup enough, then I'll be okay. You and I have talked about this. I find this with so many authors in particular. They'll finish their book, the book will go out, and then it's like, is this it? Because I just spent two years of my life and there's this quiet.

That happens to everyone. I just think for a lot of the authors I work with, it's more clear because you've been hunkered down by yourself for two years, and then you come out of it and it's, that's it? What happens now? What's next?

It's a very scary process. So I don't think most people figure it out unless they go through some sort of spiritual awakening or realignment. We're taught those lessons even as little girls — how to be what you want, how to be good, how to be cared for. I studied a lot of fairy tales. Unless you rewrite those messages, which most of us won't do unless there is that reckoning point or that fall or that precipice where you literally just fall over — it doesn't happen.

Meghan French Dunbar [08:52]

The question of worth — worth in the absence of success or accomplishment or achievement. Have you gotten to a place now where you're full-on, I regularly feel worthy just as I am? And what has helped you to do so?

Deepa Purushothaman [09:08]

I would say yes, but not a hundred percent of the time. There are still doubts. We were on a call a week ago and we talked about this. I'm in a good place, but it doesn't mean there's not moments where it doesn't creep up on you.

For me, I started to really think about it because two years ago, my husband Manoj and I were out to dinner. I've told the story a few times, but not that many times. It was our ninth wedding anniversary. I'm sitting across from him and I say, what surprised you most about our marriage? Just the basic questions. And he got really quiet, and all he said was: you used to be really ambitious, and now you just don't seem as ambitious to me. You were the most ambitious person I'd ever met.

There's a long story to that, because we were both partners at Deloitte. We were in each other's circle. We knew of each other before we actually met each other. And I just got quiet the rest of the dinner. Just total inner — what does that mean? Especially as someone so focused on success and accomplishment, that was a damning pronouncement of some type that I couldn't even find words for. He knew. He had stepped in something, because I literally did not say a word at all.

 

Meghan French Dunbar [10:07]

Happy anniversary!

 

Deepa Purushothaman [10:17]

I sat in that for months. Not sure why I felt all the things I did. I felt a lot of shame about it, to be honest with you. And I realized — and now I can say to him, and I've said to him, he doesn't get it because I just think we're in different places on our journey around this topic — but my definition of ambition has changed.

My definition of ambition is not saying yes to everything. It's not being so harried. And again, I have moments — during the book launch, I told you I said yes to everything because I thought I had to. But I'm in a moment where, no, I actually think being ambitious is guarding your energy. It's saying yes to the things you feel like saying yes to.

From that redefinition of what success is, that redefinition of boundaries, that redefinition of what I say yes to — I've gotten to a place where I am very clear. There was a moment probably a year and a half ago, at the beginning of the year, where I just sat there and thought: if nothing else happens, literally nothing else happens in my career, I'll be okay. I've had enough, done enough. I don't think I would have been able to say that five years ago. Even two years ago.

So yeah, it's a long journey, but it doesn't mean there's not moments where it's quiet and you're like, is that really what's about to happen? Because this has also just been a really hard year for the work that you and I do. It's been really different than it's been for me for the last five years. So yes, I think that reckoning comes up quite a bit right now.

Meghan French Dunbar [11:39]

I think it was Rutgers Business School — you did a piece on this — how they looked at the concept of power. With men it manifested as control, like power over. And with women, their concept of power was freedom and autonomy and building power with. I'm curious about the tie-in with the idea of freedom for you, with ambition, and how those two things come together and inform the overall concept of success you're looking at now.

Deepa Purushothaman [12:08]

For a lot of us, we have an inherited definition of success, of freedom, of ambition that isn't really ours. We don't have alternatives. So part of what we do is just latch onto the definition we get from other people. For a lot of women, especially in midlife, I think that's the reckoning we're seeing now — on Instagram and other places — realizing that doesn't really work for us. And there isn't a definition that was made for us. We just kind of assumed the 50-year-old definition of ambition applies.

I think we're in this moment where we're like, we don't have the new definition yet. But that's really what it is. So yes, part of it is that it just didn't fit anymore. I think we'll get there — with a new definition, or we'll see that there are so many different definitions, not just one or two. But in corporate spaces or in these high-performing spaces, it's often just that one definition. So when you leave that behind, it's hard to know what to replace it with.

Meghan French Dunbar [13:05]

Do you have moments where the gravity of the old definition of success pulls you back in? And if so, how do you reground and keep returning to the new practice?

Deepa Purushothaman [13:18]

I have late-stage Lyme disease, and it definitely flares at times. I feel like my body knows better than my mind. My body will just decide it's going to get sick if I say yes to too many things.

I think sometimes I look around and I have FOMO, and that's when I start to pay attention: is that real? Or is that just because I'm not doing all the things? So yes, it creeps up in those ways. My issue is more that I sometimes say yes to too many things I don't really enjoy doing, and I don't ask enough questions. I say no to more things than I ever did — probably more no's than yes's — but still sometimes it's too many things. There are seasons where it just gets super busy.

So I've gotten better about criteria for what I say yes to, and trying to honor that. And also listening — because sometimes when I say yes, I'll have regrets afterward, and I'm not one that likes to back down or back away once I've said yes. But I'll start to pay attention to that, maybe even journal about it so I know next time not to do that. It's a process.

Meghan French Dunbar [14:25]

Are there any beliefs or practices or norms from the old playbook that you're surprised at how long they've held on, or that you still struggle with, or where you were like, wow, I thought I was going to be able to release that pretty easily and it still creeps up from time to time?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [14:45]

I think the schedule. Having my day scheduled. Feeling like, if I'm done at three o'clock and there are no other meetings, am I allowed to go take a walk? Manoj and I always talk because we could never go to dinner on a Tuesday afternoon. For a long time we weren't even in the same city — he traveled too. So it's odd to us to be able to go to dinner on a Tuesday. It's those moments where it feels strange and I have to rewrite it, or pay attention. The other thing is when I don't feel super busy — when I don't have my checklist going. I catch myself in those moments.

Meghan French Dunbar [15:27]

You mentioned something in the previous answer that I want to get back to — the difference between being in a season of busyness and being in a system of busyness. I have a lot of people I know who I feel like have been in a season of busyness for a decade. And I'm still like, a season requires it to have a beginning and an end. There is no end. So how do people recognize and get themselves out of, I am actually in a season, versus, this season has become my entire life?

Deepa Purushothaman [15:59]

Most of the people who come to me are in the system of busyness. I love that phrasing. They don't even see it. Part of, I think, the work that you and I do is pointing out the deficiencies in the system, because until a few years ago we didn't even talk about that. It's new language, new vocabulary.

This is not my work, but I've seen it spoken of enough that I don't think you can necessarily attribute it to one person — but I have come to believe that thinking of it almost like a harvest, that there are seasons where you're planting and seasons where you are reaping. To think about it that way has really given me some freedom. There are parts like right now, for example — I'm redoing a lot of my website, redoing a lot of my speaking topics. The things I used to talk about are not necessarily things people want to hear now. That's a lot of busy work. There's not necessarily an immediate reward to it, but it has to get done and it's tedious. It's taken me a month, and that's all I've been doing.

But I also know come the fall, that'll pay dividends. If I don't do it now, I'm not going to be able to reap that later. So thinking about it in that way has really helped me, and given me some freedom to realize that it's okay to have the fallow periods. It's okay to rotate even what you're doing and what you're talking about. That's given me some flexibility.

Meghan French Dunbar [17:27]

I read the book Wintering when I resigned from my first company. Between COVID and babies and all the things, I ended up having a fallow period of about two years. I was wrestling with my sense of self and worth and all the things, but I was also just recovering. It was an insane time. And the concept of seasonality based on our actual seasons — I was like, how has this never occurred to me that we do in fact need to sit fallow for a bit? Otherwise we can't continually produce.

Deepa Purushothaman [17:57]

Absolutely. And there's a lot of writing on how women especially need that — we should really think about the moon cycles. There are all these different things out there if you start to get a little bit woo-woo about it, depending on how far you're willing to go and what you're willing to read. There are a lot of different ways that people work, and I think that's part of the rewriting. Most of us have been taught this very specific capitalist way of working, and there are different ways of working that are just as rewarding.

I started to look at a lot of artists and writers. Growing up, there wasn't a lot of space in my world or I didn't necessarily understand the process of creation in that way. Creative energy is a very different process. I might have maybe looked down on it a little bit as I was growing up because it wasn't part of what was encouraged in our family. And so those quiet periods are like, I'm thinking about what I'm going to write, thinking about what I'm going to do. That wasn't encouraged. So now I can see that's part of it — you can't just keep creating, you can't just keep writing, because the words don't land in the same way. Taking breaks and coming back to it, taking a walk and coming back to it, changes it.

There's even just an appreciation for the different ways people work. And why can't we bring more of those worlds together? That's part of the work that you and I do, in small ways.

Meghan French Dunbar [19:24]

The women you're working with regularly — are there constant or regular themes you're seeing, especially around consistently harmful beliefs? Or anything that's surprising you, where you're like, I had a narrative about how they were all going to do X, but instead they're actually totally different?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [19:45]

Unfortunately, no. Coming out of COVID, it felt like we were switching and there was an awakening, people were changing. I ran a women's organization or a community for a couple of years after COVID. There was a really intense interest in doing that work around COVID. Then it felt like a lot of the women who were coming to me were like, I'm done with that. I'm back in my job full-time. I don't have time for it. Everything's great. Everything's better.

I've had a lot of women reaching out to me just in the last month or two who are feeling broken again — in a very different way, in a very deep sort of way — and asking where they can go for community, where they can go for the conversation again. So I do feel like we're back to a little bit of that COVID energy, energetic time for women especially. I've been everywhere and done everything and it's still not working.

I also think we're starting to see the system cracks. In just the last week or two, there have been new job numbers, new leadership numbers — because we're in Women's History Month in some places, I want to say in quotes. There's a lot of new data about women advancing, and all the numbers for the first time in ever, it feels like, in the last 20, 30 years, are actually regressing.

So a lot of women are feeling like — if they're in these traditional jobs, especially the women who come to me, who are more corporate or lead large organizations — they're realizing that it felt like the system got better. We figured some things out. And now they're seeing the numbers dwindle again. So there's a sense of overwhelm, not only in themselves but just like, it's really broken and it didn't get any better. And it's almost worse now because there's a denial, after kind of taking the lid off of it the last couple of years.

What I'm trying to say is, I feel a genuine sense of hopelessness, of anxiety. I think we'll get past it. I think we'll come back to, what are we going to do about it now? But in this moment, it feels like we're in the anxiety, overwhelmed part of the cycle, until we organize and figure out what we're doing about it.

Meghan French Dunbar [21:51]

It's bringing up another question for me. For context, Deepa and I are in an authors' group together with some other extraordinary humans. Every six weeks or so we have a call. One of the things that came up on our last call was around freedom and around our work, and a lot of us having opportunities to potentially go in-house somewhere or be hired for certain roles. And all of us saying, nah, for now, being an entrepreneur and running my own thing is what I need.

For me personally, my experience is that in order to fully live into my newer definition of success — which is really built around what do I want my days to look like, what do I want to feel like, mental health, physical health, my connection with my kids and my family, my friends — it's really, here is my life, how does my work fit into that? Not basing everything around my work. For me, so far, that has at least required me to run my own company. The flip side is the financial stress of eat-what-you-kill — figuring out how to make revenue, which is stressful. But for me the trade-off, I'm like, yeah, there's not even a question that I wouldn't go somewhere.

So I'm curious for you — and this doesn't have to be an absolute — but is running your own company or breaking out to do your own thing necessary to live a really new and profound definition of success? Or have you seen it done with someone working for a high-pressure organization?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [23:40]

I have, and I think if I were to go back, I would do it differently. But it's rare. What it requires is knowing who you are. Knowing what your boundaries are in a very clear way — and I'll unpack that in a minute — and also knowing where you can conform and where you won't. That's a little bit of boundaries, but in a very different way.

Part of what you're describing is that for a lot of the women we both know, there's a force-fitting that happens when you're in these high-performing structures. A lot of it has to do with how they were built. They were built decades ago, based on centuries-ago capitalism. The idea of a two-parent household where one person went out to work and one person was always home, usually the woman. That ideal-worker model doesn't work today. It's never been updated.

So this idea of freedom — most women I know don't feel free, because when they're at work they're worried about their kids at home, and when they're at home they're worried about not doing all the things at work. And the men I talk to, I'm not saying they don't have it, but they don't have it to the extent that I see it with the women I work with. So I do think it comes from how we define an ideal worker and the expectations around that work.

It's very hard to find that freedom, but it can happen if you go into these systems knowing — it may cost me, but I'm going to be true to who I am. I'm going to push back on the things that don't feel right. I'm going to be in full voice as I navigate these places. Which a lot of women don't do.

You asked me before — what do I see a lot of women struggle with? A lot of them believe they have to be grateful for the opportunities they're given. So they don't speak up. They don't push back. They work two and four times as hard as others around them because they feel like they have to. They're walking that tightrope.

Part of what you have to become is really clear who you are. And the women who are really clear are able to set those boundaries, are able to be themselves in those situations. They know it may cost them, but they'll be okay. They actually do better than everybody else because they're so clear. And back to your question around what's powerful — they're so powerful. But it's not just authentic power. I don't love that label. It's just clarity. No, I'm not going to do that. It may cost me, but that's okay. And there's such gravitas in that that we don't talk about enough.

Two things added to that. One — when I work with women, what I find is it's not a hundred things that define those boundaries that really are their identity, that give them that power. It's usually six to eight things. But most of us haven't sat down to figure out what those six or eight things are. Once you know those things, then I tell women: don't give on those things at work. That's super important. If you start to give on those things, you're not going to feel great. You're not going to feel like you have freedom. You're not going to feel powerful.

That's a lot of where my work comes from. So many women, when I was doing dinners before leaving and before writing the book, were sitting in these rooms saying, I don't feel powerful. And these were very senior women. If they don't feel powerful, what hope do the rest of us have? So it's a real concern.

Meghan French Dunbar [26:29]

Can you give any specific examples of those six to eight — either someone else's or yours — where it's really clear what they found?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [26:42]

For some women, it's, I have a chronic illness, and people need to know that. I work with some women, it's migraines or heart issues — if they're having a really stressful day, they need to set that boundary. But if they don't let people around them know that's a concern, they'll be in this constant, should I go to that meeting? Should I answer that email right now? They know what they need to do, but they're not honoring themselves. They're not able to set that boundary.

Or, I need to be at my kid's soccer game. I'm their soccer coach. That's really an important part of my identity. I spend hours a week doing this. Once they tell their teammates that, their teammates are the ones pushing them out the door, because they know they'll get back online after those two hours. It's not ten hours, it's two hours. But because they haven't told people around them, they don't get the support they need. They don't get the recognition.

Or, I'm from another country, and this other part is who I am — it's really important and I don't want to hide it anymore. Those are more around authenticity. But it's a little bit of just the things that are who you are outside of your workplace that you need some help on, so that you can honor those things and not feel like you're pushing them aside or in constant pressure from that ideal-worker idea — that I have to let all of those things go, because in the workplace I'm only that ideal worker and I don't have any needs or wants or life outside of the desk I'm chained to.

Meghan French Dunbar [28:10]

The concept of authenticity — there's this conflation of authenticity meaning just show up as yourself. I always imagine someone being like, I can dye my hair whatever I want and say whatever I want.

 

Deepa Purushothaman [28:22]

I would say wear flip-flops to work. That's one over there

Meghan French Dunbar [28:33]

So just digging in a little around the nuance — what does authentic power or authentic leadership really look like? And how do people know when they're tiptoeing the line between professionalism and assimilation? That feels like a line to toe sometimes.

Deepa Purushothaman [28:50]

I think only you can know. Again, that's the work of those eight to ten things. For some women it's, I'm not going to change my hair, or, I'm going to dress in this very unique, specific way, because that's important to my identity. It's understanding what your own list is.

But it's also understanding the context you're in, because not every company culture is the same. What are some of the things that are not important in your company culture? Maybe email etiquette is, but what your footwear is doesn't matter. You need to understand both, and then you need to decide. It's an active choice — am I going to push on that or not? If it's not an okay boundary that they've set for you, and it feels like something that takes your power or freedom away, then you push.

In some cases you have to dip your toe in and do it wrong, and then you get the feedback, and then you figure it out. For a lot of us — I say in the book — I was surprised how many young women, and this just came up for whatever reason, were talking about red lipstick. Young women I interviewed were like, I love to wear red lipstick, and I just don't know if I'll be taken seriously if I wear it. It was a small example, but at least ten or twelve women said that to me — red lipstick seems to be like, not gonna be taken seriously in the workplace. I had never thought about that or heard of that. I would wear red lipstick whenever I wanted to. It never occurred to me.

It can be a small thing, but you have to gauge — is that important to me? Is that part of my identity? And then in your workplace, is that going to push people? It doesn't mean don't do it. It just means figure out how you do it in a way that you take people along the journey with you, maybe.

 

Meghan French Dunbar [30:23]

From the initial book interview I did with you almost two and a half years ago — even at the height of your old playbook, toxic definition of success, working up to be a partner at Deloitte — there was still this part of you that didn't assimilate fully into what you "should" do. Two examples come to mind. One, your ability, when a partner would give you work you didn't fully understand, to say, I don't know, can you help? And there was a story you told about when you were thinking about becoming a partner, hearing from other women specifically who had made partner that you were going to need to learn how to play golf. And you were just like, yeah, hard no. I'm just not going to do that.

So even at your busiest, when you were a corporate Olympian as you often say, you still had this presence of mind to not fully drink all the Kool-Aid. What do you attribute that to — the ability to still say no, even in the highest-pressure environments?

Deepa Purushothaman [31:25]

I think it comes from not ever feeling like I belonged. Growing up in places where I just felt so different. My dad wanted, I think, two boys, and he ended up with two girls. I come from an Indian culture where he would often say to us when we were little, if I had a boy — and that became I'll show you. There was always this I'll show you energy.

At Deloitte, to be super clear, I was the only non-MBA in my 700-person start class. So I came in not feeling like I knew anything. I would ask questions from the start. I was single when I made partner, and I was in my early 30s. A lot of the partners around me had a partner — a spouse who was able to spend, for the most part, a significant amount of time at home. So I had a different set of issues for how I was going to make my life work. I talked about it a lot because I didn't feel like I belonged.

So to answer your question — I started from, I'm totally different. I'm an orange in a sea of apples. I never even tried to fit in in those sorts of ways. Fitting in might have been the odd thing to do, as opposed to being different. It came from the background, the training more than anything — not so much gender or race. It was just that I was younger than everybody and I had such a different skill set.

Meghan French Dunbar [32:40]

When you're talking about the bell curve of adoption — you're someone who's always a bit ahead of things. You're a future trend spotter, an issue spotter. The First, The Few, The Only came out at a really relevant time, which for it to come out at a really relevant time means you've been working on it for a few years. So what are you thinking about now? Where's your curiosity leading you that might be a little bit ahead of its time?

Deepa Purushothaman [33:13]

That's a great question. I think it's a lot of things we covered. The last couple of years I was writing a lot about toxic workplaces, so I felt very on the front end of that. By the way, I've had a number of people describe me in that way, which is interesting because I don't see myself that way.

I think then the last year or so, I've been really thinking, for women, just what's happening. Because it feels like a particular and really difficult time for women. And on top of it, we have all of this sort of trad-wife versus feminist conversation. If you post anything about it — I've never experienced anything like this on social media, the comments, the feedback. It's fascinating. So I think that's the moment we're in right now.

I think what's coming next — I was doing some work on martyrs, modern martyrs, just what it means to really look at all the stories that we've inherited as women about how we should be, what success should look like.

The thing I'm sitting in a little bit now is really around success and ambition. They're very much tied to being the same thing, but I think we're in this moment where a lot of us are going to start to look at success and ambition in very different ways, and define them for ourselves versus the way they've been defined and given to us. So that's probably where I see a lot of the work going.

I also think we're in this moment of great uncertainty in a way we've never seen before. When I say that, people are like, well, it's always been uncertain — but it feels extra layered. So that's also part of, how do we navigate this time and where are we going to end up coming out of this? What matters to us, how do we start to work differently? Our workplace cultures are completely changing as a result of the moment we're in, and also just AI and everything else coming. So what is truly important for the ways we work feels like where I'm headed.

Meghan French Dunbar [35:09]

Is there a question or set of questions that you recommend to people to help them begin thinking about a new definition of success?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [35:19]

Just very simply, starting with a list of: what about your life gives you angst right now? For me, it was travel.

I remember when I was a new partner, I made a list of the kind of partner I wanted to be, and I still have that list. It wasn't a long list — it was like 15 things. Which is why I can say, for most people, it's not a long list. It had small things, like — I'd worked with someone who constantly did Saturday morning calls. I remember writing, number seven on my list: I'm never going to do a Saturday morning call. And I became a partner that never did a Saturday morning call.

So it's a little bit of, what's the aspiration? But also, what do you never want to do? You need both lists — the negatives of what you don't enjoy, what you really despise about your work week or the life you've set up.

And then I think it's, what do you wish you had? And it's just journaling. What do you want your day to look like? Your week? Your month? Just journaling and seeing the patterns that come out.

So much of what I do now is just looking at patterns. So many of us think it's just me, but those patterns are pretty consistent, especially for the women I work with. For a lot of them, it's about having flexibility at work — which is the thing that feels like it's under attack in this moment. Being able to turn off at certain points, to have shutdown time. It's also related to travel and hours. That's a lot of what freedom looks like — being able to manage that and to make your life work with your work, versus working your life around your work.

 

Meghan French Dunbar [36:42]

Yeah. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wish I had?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [37:09]

I wanted to come back to the toxic thing, because you mentioned for yourself it took you a while — that fallow period. I just want to acknowledge, because I think a lot of people listening are going through periods of fallow.

It usually takes two years, is what the research shows, to come out of a situation — if you're pivoting, if you've been in a toxic situation, if you're starting over, if you're changing your career. For a lot of us, we look at someone who's left, and people look at me, because I did sell my book like six weeks after I left and my whole life took off in a very fast way. But there was a lot of stuff you don't see behind the scenes.

So for most people, just understanding that it takes a couple of years to start over, to recover, to re-regulate your nervous system from the machine and the system. There's a process to unplug. And it's a slow process to really pivot your life in the ways we're describing. And these are big, big ways. I would say of the thousands of women I work with, less than 100 pivot in very big ways. Because it's scary, and you get a lot of questions. So it's rare.

I would just give yourself the grace to leave where you are, to figure out what you want next, and to also realize that it's hard to make the list of what you want your life to look like when you're still in your old life. If you can afford it — if you can take that fallow period and just be quiet and just see who emerges — the life that you create two years later will be completely different than what you would have penned when you were in the chaos, in the discomfort, in the questions about success and ambition.

You almost have to unplug, be quiet, look around, and then reset.

Meghan French Dunbar [38:56]

I'm so glad you brought up — when you left Deloitte you sold the book six weeks later, and all the things. It looks easy. It looks like it can be done pretty quickly. The work behind the scenes, at least in my experience, was incredibly uncomfortable. I felt unmoored and untethered. I was frustrated and angry. I felt very lost. I took a full two years.

My therapist at the time, she had this word — I think it was interstice. It's this middle period where on your journey, you've been in this land for a while and you want to get to a healthier land over here, but you have to take the journey in between, the mucky swamp, to get there. There is no going around it. If you don't go through that uncomfortable transformational period and give yourself the grace and the patience, nothing will change. You might change your title, you might change your position, but your mentality, your mindset, you can't change in a matter of weeks.

It's really hard to say that to people, because it almost discourages them from taking the leap. Practically, I just hobbled together some consulting gigs, took some little side projects here and there, and made it work financially for myself. So it is doable. And it doesn't take away from the fact that it's necessary and uncomfortable — but it's completely and totally worth it.

Of all the gobbledygook I just spit out — what resonates for you around the is it necessary for full transformation?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [40:24]

Mine was getting sick and having to figure out what I was going to do next, how I was going to heal. I literally was in bed for almost a year before that point.

In order to figure out who you want to be, you almost have to take all the parts of yourself out. That's how I describe it. You have to unpack the suitcase and then decide what parts you want to put back in. But most of us don't get the time, or give ourselves the grace, to unpack the suitcase. That's the part I got pushed into, because I got sick. So yes, it looks like on the outside it was six weeks, but there was a year where I literally physically couldn't get out of bed, couldn't get on calls. All I was doing was laying in bed thinking about what is my life.

I also think it's very much tied to the hero's journey, which is why I call it the corporate heroine. There's a process by which — the hero's journey, for the hero to become the hero, he has to hit this reckoning and then go figure out, go on the odyssey, and then come back to who he is by learning all the parts he picks up in that odyssey, in that desert you're describing. That's literally what the hero's journey is. I don't love it because it doesn't really talk about women's journeys, but that's the idea of it. And it's been well documented, well researched. Most psychologists will talk about that.

So you don't actually create a new life unless you're forced to. Unless you go through that period of figuring out what makes sense.

Meghan French Dunbar [41:51]

As we think about rewriting the heroine's journey, what is the foundational rewrite you would like to offer or invite people to explore?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [42:01]

I think figuring out what your core — I don't want to call it issue — but your core desire is. You talked about that Rutgers paper. Freedom spoke to me. Part of why I love that paper and wanted to be a part of it is because for me, it was freedom.

You have to figure out what your North Star is. Because it's not freedom for everybody. For some, it's just space. Or it's quiet. Or it's slowing down. And yes, in some ways it's all tied to freedom — but it's defined in a very different way.

So my advice is figuring out what your North Star is. I did a lot of work when I was still at Deloitte to realize for me it was alignment. And alignment eventually became freedom. You can do that part of the work wherever you are right now, figuring out what it is that drives you and is important to you and would thrill you. Once you know that, you can start on the journey and do everything else. But if you don't know what that North Star is, it's really hard.

Meghan French Dunbar [42:50]

Every time I talk to you, my cup feels so much fuller. How do people support you, find you, plug in with you? What is really helpful to you right now, besides going out and buying your book?

 

Deepa Purushothaman [43:08]

I do a lot of writing on LinkedIn. So that's probably the best way to follow me or hear what's going on — Deepa P-U-R-U. And then we have The Re-Write, which is where we post a lot of the research and the things we're doing. But LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to go right now.

 

Meghan French Dunbar [43:28]

I'll put that in the show notes. Thank you.

Deepa Purushothaman [43:32]

Thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, because I know you've been grappling with a lot of the same conversations.

 

Meghan French Dunbar [43:44]

Fellow travelers.

 

 

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