Speak Your Mind Unapologetically Podcast

Being kind at work is easy when things are going well. Smiling, saying thank you, listening, remembering birthdays. The real test is what you do when there is a problem, a conflict, or a disagreement.
This episode is a self-assessment. Twelve everyday workplace moments that look polite on the surface and cost someone else something real. Escalating to a manager before ever telling the colleague what the problem is. Staying silent in a meeting, then criticizing the decision privately afterward. Calling someone disrespectful instead of naming the behavior. Saying yes when you mean no. Redoing a team member's work instead of telling them what to change.
The pattern underneath all twelve is the same. Avoiding an uncomfortable conversation feels like kindness to the person doing the avoiding, and transfers the cost to someone else in the form of lost information, lost time, lost reputation, or a lost opportunity.
Here is the test: if your discomfort leaves someone else worse off on information, time, reputation, or opportunity, that is not kindness.
Go through the twelve. For each one, decide honestly whether you are being kind or protecting your own comfort. Then pick one to change this week.
Key takeaways
Kindness measured in easy moments is worthless as a measure. What counts is how you behave when something is wrong.
Avoidance is not neutral. It moves the cost off you and onto someone else.
Directness is part of respect, not the opposite of it. Warmth plus avoidance is still a cost passed to somebody.
Character labels like difficult, toxic, abrasive, and disrespectful attack identity and give the other person nothing to act on. Behavior plus impact plus a specific request does.
People can only fix what they know about. Usable information delivered early is the actual kindness.
Leaders set the standard here. How you handle a disagreement teaches your team what is allowed.
The 12 checks 
Escalating to a manager before telling the colleague what the behavior is
Escalating without one conversation plus one reminder first
Staying silent in a meeting, which reads as agreement
Criticizing the decision privately after the meeting ends
Using character labels instead of naming behavior and impact
Being warm and polite as a way to avoid the real conversation
Saying yes when you mean no, then delaying and under-delivering
Passing someone over for an opportunity without naming the gap
Ghosting an email because you do not know what to say yet
Watching work go the wrong direction for weeks before correcting it
Redoing someone's work instead of explaining what needs to change
Concluding someone is not ready without ever telling them why

Most people who challenge a superior's decision get it wrong. They oppose. Nita Patel, VP of Engineering at Otis, says the people who have changed her mind did something else: they stayed curious. They asked what happens after step two. They wanted to understand rather than object. By the end of the conversation she is the one asking them what they think, without realizing she was challenged at all.
That works because of the larger skill underneath it. Nita calls herself a translator, estimating 30 to 40% of her time goes to it: working out why a meeting matters, what the goal is, and which pieces of information will get someone there. The translation changes depending on whom you're speaking to. What she presents to a CEO is different from what she presents to the team building it or to a cross-functional peer.
She splits translation in two. Translating an idea to stakeholders means finding the intent and explaining it separately to each group that has to buy-in. Translating an idea into action means breaking the problem down and moving forward before the full plan is in place. She used both to launch the first IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference, arguing that sometimes you take the leap and build the wings on the way down.
She also names the Toastmasters feedback that changed her most: that she assumes too much and jumps straight to the answer. And she explains why technical leaders labeled direct or difficult are usually being read as too focused on the detail.
 
If you have ever had a good idea die on the way up, this episode is about the trip.
00:00 Meet Nita Patel, VP of Engineering at Otis
01:17 What Chess Teaches About Anticipating the Other Side
02:11 Know the Rules So the Unexpected Move Does Not Derail You
02:58 How to Make a Fair Call When the Rulebook Runs Out
03:56 Where Confidence Comes From in a Gray-Area Decision
04:35 Rules, Experience, Fallbacks: The Three Sources of Confidence
06:15 When Following the Process Costs You the Objective
07:30 Why the Analytically Best Move Is Not Always the Right One
09:02 How to Translate an Idea So Each Stakeholder Cares
10:25 Breaking a Big Idea Down So Others Can Act on It
10:47 Pitch Before It Is Perfect: Build the Wings on the Way Down
13:09 Hold the Why, Stay Flexible on the How
14:03 How to Challenge Your Boss Without It Feeling Like a Challenge
16:39 The Questions That Actually Change a Leader's Mind
19:39 Why "Too Direct" Usually Means "Too Detailed"
22:13 Find the Real Problem Before You Solve the Wrong One
25:56 The Feedback That Changed How She Briefs Executives
30:57 Why 30 to 40% of a VP's Week Goes to Translation
32:13 Nita's Closing Advice: Everyone Has Influence to Use

Two Ways to Fail: Give Up or Die." How Sigma Software CEO Katherine Built a Foreign Office, Completed a Half Ironman, and Learned to Lead on One Rule
"There are only two ways to fail: give up or die. And neither is a reasonable option."
That is the saying Katherine's team uses to remind themselves who they are. She means it literally. When she was trying to open Sigma Software Group's first Latin American office, she tried recruiting agencies, acquisition targets, universities, and different countries for an entire year. Nothing worked. Then in a brainstorming session, someone mentioned speaking at a developer conference. She found one in Brazil, submitted a paper, got accepted to one of the most selective conferences in the region, went, fell in love with the community, and pivoted the entire Latin American strategy to Brazil on the spot.
Then she went back to the same conference the following year and gave her talk in Portuguese. She had submitted the paper in December, in Portuguese, with a translator. The conference was in March. She did not speak Portuguese. She had three months to learn.
Katherine rose from junior software developer to CEO of Sigma Software Group Americas in 16 years. In this episode, she is completely direct about how she actually did it — not as a philosophy, but as a series of specific situations where she refused to stop.
You'll learn:
How she spent a year hitting walls trying to open a Latin American office, the random brainstorming idea that changed everything, and why resolve in the goal combined with total flexibility in the approach is what finally broke through.
Why she submitted a conference paper in a language she couldn't speak, learned Portuguese in three months with 15 minutes a day of consistent practice, and used the speech itself to encourage Brazilian engineers not to be afraid of making mistakes in English.
The grandmother she is named after: a high-level judge described by everyone as tough, smart, and fair. Never nice or sweet. And why Katherine wants to invoke strong opinions rather than be universally liked.
Why she believes being perceived as aggressive is an acceptable trade-off for being decisive and authentic — and where she draws the line between assertive and actually offensive.
Her father's career advice that drives her decisiveness: "A wrong direction is better than no direction." Make the call, correct fast, keep moving.
What she learned from completing a Half Ironman — 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles on a bike, then a half marathon. She was terrified of the bike, had crashes, had scars, genuinely questioned whether to continue. She finished. She signed up for another one.
How she managed a solo transatlantic flight from Barcelona to Dallas with a one-year-old and a not-yet-three-year-old by accepting beforehand that it would be horrible — and why pre-accepting the struggle removes the frustration when it arrives.
The two tools she uses when doubt sets in: reminding herself of hard things she has already done, and surrounding herself with people who will do the same reminding when she can't.
About Katherine: CEO of Sigma Software Group Americas, Katherine rose from junior software developer to CEO in 16 years. She leads the Americas expansion for a global software company originally founded in Eastern Europe, including building the company's Brazilian office from the ground up. She is also a Half Ironman finisher and a Portuguese speaker.

Her first year in corporate. She noticed her male peer was getting more technical work than her. She raised it with her supervisor — not loudly, not aggressively, just directly. Instead of addressing it with her, the supervisor took it to a broader forum and told others there was "a trouble candidate in the team." The message filtered back to her. She had asked for fair treatment and had been labeled a problem for it.
What happened next is what makes the story worth hearing. A senior leader stepped in, routed someone to talk to her properly, understood what she actually needed, and gave her a product certification project. She suspected it was a test. She treated it like an opportunity. She delivered. That quarter, she won a company excellence award.
Aditi is Managing Director at Accenture's Cloud First Data and AI Group, where she leads digital transformation for large clients. She has been called outspoken — a label she has never apologized for — and decisive, a word she noticed women rarely claim for themselves.
In this episode she gets specific about what it actually looks like to speak up when you're new, when the reception is hostile, and when the outcome is uncertain.
You'll hear:
Why being labeled "trouble" for asking a fair question was the moment that taught her the most about how organizations actually work — and why she considers the outcome a net positive even though it was uncomfortable to live through.
What she did when a senior client contact told her directly "I don't think you even know this stuff." She didn't react. She absorbed it, reported it proactively to her leadership before it could reach them filtered through someone else, and stayed focused on delivery. What she learned about the difference between reacting and responding.
Why outspokenness without data is just noise — and why outspokenness backed by facts, research, and conviction is one of the most useful things a leader can bring to a team.
How she creates conditions for her own team members to speak up — and why, when she opens a conversation by sharing her own honest view first, she consistently finds that people who had something to say but were waiting for permission start talking.
What "decisive" actually means in practice when you're managing a team with competing voices, a client with high expectations, and no time to wait for perfect information.
About Aditi: Managing Director, Accenture Cloud First Data and AI Group. Digital transformation leader.

She Stopped Leading With Her Title and Started Saying "I'm a Technology and Business Diplomat." People Immediately Wanted to Know More. Equifax SVP D'Lovely on Networking, Personal Boards, and Career Infrastructure
She was laid off twice. Both times, by the time the hiring manager called her, three or four people at the company had already been talking about her. Not because she got lucky. Because she had spent months having breakfasts, following up on cold contacts, asking questions instead of pitching, and making it easy for people to pass her name along. One of those contacts had been on a month-long holiday — not ignoring her. She kept following up. They finally had lunch. That person said: "You're the real deal." She talked to people. The hiring manager called within a month.
D'Lovely is SVP of Product, Data and Analytics, and Technology Planning and Execution at Equifax, a finalist for Woman of the Year in Engineering by the Women in Technology organization, and the person who calls herself a "Technology and Business Diplomat" — a title that took years to develop and immediately makes people want to know more.
In this episode, she breaks down how networking actually works as a career infrastructure system, not a social obligation.
You'll learn:
Why being laid off the first time forced her to admit her network wasn't working — she was going to events and talking to people, but she wasn't being methodical. What changed after that realization and how she got both subsequent roles entirely through network relationships.
The five-week story: how she targeted a specific company, got stonewalled on LinkedIn, shifted to building relationships across the organization, finally got a lunch, listened more than she talked, and had the hiring manager call her a month later saying people had been talking about her.
Why "I need a job" is the wrong thing to be broadcasting in your network — and what to ask for instead. Almost nobody has a job in their pocket, but everybody can give you their story, their honest read on a company's culture, and an introduction to someone who needs to know you exist.
The three-tier model for a personal board of directors: close inner circle, mid-range colleagues in similar roles and at similar levels, and the periphery of executive mentors and coaches. Who belongs in each tier, how often you should connect with each, and why having everyone at the same level above you actually limits what your board can do for you.
Why you should never introduce yourself by listing what you do — and how to develop a power statement that makes the other person immediately want to know more. The difference between "I manage software projects" and "I turn engineering chaos into customer results."
The exact tactics for staying top of mind without being annoying: leaving voicemails during your commute, following up twice without apology, sending a draft message someone can forward on your behalf so they have to do almost nothing to help you. Make it easy, close the deal, don't wait to be remembered.
Why the most important networking conversations never mention work at all — and how those are often the ones that lead to the most powerful long-term relationships.
About D'Lovely: SVP of Product, Data and Analytics, and Technology Planning and Execution at Equifax. Finalist, Woman of the Year in Engineering, Women in Technology. Self-described Technology and Business Diplomat. Based in Atlanta.