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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Transcription
PREDICTIVE INDEX | LEAD THE PEOPLE | DR. MARLINE DUROSEAU
Dr. Marline Duroseau (00:00):
You have to be assertive. You have to speak up. Don't think that you're in the room and you're just there to be there. Your seat is here. Speak up. Say what you think. It matters. And I did. And with that decision, they changed whatever they were going to do and I saved them $522,000.
Matt Poepsel (00:24):
The most powerful thing a leader can do is stop pretending they have it all figured out. Today's guest is proof that your most credible leadership asset might not be your track record. It might be what you survived to get there. She built a 22-year career across finance, operations, HR, rising from payroll professional to chief financial officer of a 1500 person healthcare organization, to managing director of HR and leadership development at one of the world's leading human capital research firms. She's also a TEDx Raleigh speaker, a doctoral scholar, fertility advocate, and author, and she has turned her own 15-year infertility journey into a blueprint for what resilient, empathetic leadership actually looks like. We are joined by Dr. Marline C. DeRoso, Dr. Mar. She is the managing director of HR and leadership development at Brandon Hall Group and author of It'll Happen by 30. Dr. Mar, welcome to the show.
Dr. Marline Duroseau (01:15):
Thank you so very much, Dr. Matt, for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
Matt Poepsel (01:18):
I'm so glad we had a chance to meet at Transform. This was back in March, I think we were saying. Holy cow. It's been a
Dr. Marline Duroseau (01:24):
Bit. Yes. Time flies four months ago. That's so funny.
Matt Poepsel (01:27):
Yeah, so funny. But I'm really glad that we had a chance to sit down and have a conversation. I was so impressed with your background of having been in finance. And as I mentioned, you started off in payroll and you made your way all the way up to CFO of a 1500-person healthcare organization. But what is it that leadership, that lens, that financial leadership lens in particular, taught you about organizational life and about performance?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (01:49):
Starting off in payroll, I was a senior in college, so I really didn't have too much experience outside of what I was learning with my degree. I was in school for my bachelor's and my major, I should say, was in management. So what payroll taught me early, very early on I learned that payroll is just more than the numbers behind every single line item that is on payroll or in accounting, there's a person, there's a family, a decision, a consequence. So outside of everything else when I was doing payroll, it taught me that I can't let the people down because just like I relied on my paycheck every two weeks, I'm like, okay, people are relying on their paycheck. I need to do a good job. Then I eventually became CFO. And what I learned with that is that organizational performance in itself is not just built in the spreadsheet because when you're dealing with payroll, I then went into accounting, I did general ledger work, recording.
(02:49):
So there was a lot of spreadsheets. So having good organizational performance or getting the people in your organization to perform, it's more than just the spreadsheet. You have staffing, you have communication, you have to build trust who's accountable and who's going to execute and how. And just like you mentioned in the intro with healthcare especially financial performance and human impact, they're really, really closely connected Because if we don't have enough staff because staffing is unstable, then your leaders and your employees, they get burned out. And if they're burned out, then maybe the employees become disengaged. So then at that point, the numbers behind all of this that's going on with the people eventually reflect that. So this financial lens that I lived through starting in payroll, it really taught me discipline, of course, because you have to be on time, you have to do things the right way.
(03:43):
But my leadership journey, it taught me that having discipline without the humanity side of it, it causes disconnect. You need both. So in essence, the numbers are going to tell you what happened and the people usually tell you why it happened.
Matt Poepsel (03:58):
It's so impressive, Dr. Mar, because I often think about the nature of the people practices, the way we run our business, maybe the way we work with customers or in healthcare with patients, and it shows up in the spreadsheets as you pointed out. But for you to have started off in payroll and really have honed your ability to see the people in the numbers, I just thought it's so fascinating that's something you always had with you, it sounds like.
Dr. Marline Duroseau (04:22):
Yes, because again, I learned for a long time that without people, you really can't get anything done. The people aspect was always very apparent, especially in healthcare operations, because you'll find where we have multiple buildings, multiple facilities, and let's say you take two buildings, Dr. Matt, they could have similar budgets, they could have similar census and occupancy, have very similar resources, but the two buildings may perform differently. And what causes that difference? The difference often the leadership, the culture, the communication, and whether or not people felt supported enough to execute. And that was a big deal for me because although I saw that early on in my career, it was really evident, Dr. Matt, during COVID. I still don't know how the nursing home industry, the healthcare industry, all of us survived COVID. Of course, thank God we're alive and we're here. But I say that from a leadership standpoint that the buildings that did well, and when I say well, I mean being resilient, pushing through, not having as much turnover with the staff.
(05:36):
They were the buildings that the employees and the direct patient care folks really trusted and believed in their leadership because at that point they weren't coming for them. Yes, they're coming for their residents because they took a oath because they're healthcare providers, but they came for their leadership. I can't let Dr. Matt down, so I want to show up. And people from the beginning, without them, you can't do anything. Nope.
Matt Poepsel (06:00):
Healthcare, it's so challenging because it's such a large system, a little bit like education and government and these systems take on a life of their own. And I remember there was a CEO of a healthcare system and she had told me that COVID really challenged them to develop that leadership and to exhibit it. But the challenge was as soon as the crisis was over, a lot of it went back to the old ways. And so it's one of those things where you're exactly right. It's such a great example. Two seemingly similar buildings operating with totally different outcomes, patient satisfaction, everything. It always comes down to the people and it always comes down to leadership. But I wonder if you might tell me, Dr. Mari, 1500 people, that's a lot of people showing up in a spreadsheet. You're talking about multiple buildings. At that scale and being a CFO, you seemed like really disconnected, you would think, from the actual workers on the front line.
(06:47):
How did you manage that sort of taking the elevator up and down from that massive perch at the top of CFO, but all the way down to people who are actually doing the work?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (06:57):
That's a great question. And I've seen it from both angles because Dr. Matt, when I started in payroll, we worked out of an actual nursing home. We were in the administrative offices in one of the facilities. And as the companies grew and the owner of the company acquired more buildings, we eventually established a home office, so to speak, a corporate office. So with healthcare, the mission is always close because the work serves these vulnerable people. The seniors, the families that come to see them, the caregivers, the communities. And I have to remind myself of that every day. And when I started off, like I mentioned, we were actually in a nursing home. We got to see it day in and day out. We became very close, so to speak, or for lack of better words, with the residents. So at that point, you're managing the margins.
(07:50):
I'm managing the numbers, but also I'm seeing what my work is doing and who it is that's being impacted because I get to run into a particular resident or we worked out of a building maybe five years and you really got to know these folks. So it becomes more than just, okay, I need to put the order in to make sure it's in on time or pay the bill on time for the food vendor. But then the human aspect of that is I get to see resident A and we know that he really enjoys Friday socials because that's the ice cream. So the ice cream is just a line item on my income statement, but it's a person enjoying what it is that I'm doing the behind the scenes spreadsheet work for. So managing margins and doing it responsibly is also part of protecting the overall mission.
(08:43):
So if the organization is not in a place where it's financially sustainable, then we can't continue serving the people, the residents, the families and the vulnerable folks of the community. So I always like to ask myself, how do we protect the financial health of the organization and the dignity of the people we serve? So I know the ice cream may seem like a simple example, but protecting the financial health of the organization may look like choosing a vendor that we may be able to get a better price for a particular volume or amount of ice cream. And protecting the dignity of the resident may be they prefer Haagen-Dazs or they prefer Bluebell or maybe they like, I don't know, Ben and Jerry. So we have to try to figure out how do we balance the two to make sure that we're always on par.
Matt Poepsel (09:36):
It's just amazing when you think about you're seeing the human effects, you're seeing the financial effects, you understand the mechanics about how the two connect. And then eventually you shifted actually from being CFO into HR leadership. And that's not something that happens all the time. Sometimes if we think about sales professionals or software engineers, we kind of lump finance and HR together. They go together, but they're not the same thing. What motivates you to shift from the financial, the CFO world over into an HR world?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (10:05):
Although I've been in the financial arena in terms of the jobs and the positions that I've held for so long, Dr. Matt, it was always with the people because I was not able to generate my numbers or review my numbers or present my numbers, analyze them without having people involved. So for me, having a departure from finance and more of expanding how I saw performance. So after years of leading financially, I kept seeing that many of the problems that we had as a business or business in general organizations were actually people problems when you really peel back the onion. So I wanted to move a little closer to the root causes because leadership and management, the capability of leaders, the type of culture that the organization is promoting, trying to prevent burnout. How do we communicate with our employees and how ready are they for change and how ready are they to even accept the change?
(11:06):
So the HR and the leadership development aspect allowed me to help companies not only measure performance, but build the conditions that are needed in order for the performance to happen. So I didn't in essence leave performance behind when I moved to HR. I moved it closer to what actually drives it. And it's the funniest thing because I'm a product of mentorship and that's why I love good leadership. I love good mentorship. And one of my mentors, I had three, one of them, which she was my direct boss, she was the CFO at the time, and she always told me that at the end of the day, you're going to lose people, you're going to gain people, but you're only as good as the people that are on your team. And it just never escaped me. And I know that the minute I walked in, she told me, she shared this with me maybe a couple years after I joined the organization, she said, "The minute you walked into your interview, I knew that you were going to be my replacement." And she goes, "I kept throwing different projects at you to see how you would handle them.
(12:15):
I didn't know I was being tested," or whatever the word is for that. But she said, "You possess a quality." And I can say this confidently now because I never would say this out loud because I always felt that you can't talk about yourself or that'll bring you bad luck or something. I don't know. But I can say it out loud now because I'm learning what my value is that I add and I bring. And to say that, Dr. Matt, is she said, normally you find people that are good with people or they're good with numbers. You may have people that know how to talk and you have people that are better writers. She said, I'm the CFO at the time. And she said, "You are my people person. I don't know how you do it. Your emails are nice. You talk to the people nice.
(12:56):
You know how to do the job. You've never really found someone that can necessarily do both." And I explained to her that for me, it wasn't even an aspect of trying to people please. It was more, yes, I'm working on these numbers, but I always remember that I need the people. I can't get my job done without the outputs of other departments or the deliverables of other departments. Who are in those departments? People. So no matter what you do, it comes back to people.
Matt Poepsel (13:23):
It is a beautiful situation to have somebody who saw and spotted in you something so early in your career and your time with her that she was able to say, okay, I think this person's going to be my successor, but I got to find out. I'm going to have to test her or I'm going to have to throw her these hairy projects and things and see how she responds before I can be certain. And then helped you along the way. She articulated so well, there do tend to be numbers people and they're people people. And for you to say, I can do the numbers, but I never stopped thinking about the people. I think there's some really important wisdom there, especially now with numbers being what they are and people being what they are in our current frame. I think your financial background then certainly gave you a lot of credibility when working with other executives.
(14:07):
I'm sure when you took on a new role, even though now you're an HR professional and at the same time having been a CFO, I'm sure you could do numbers in circles around a lot of business leaders. My question for you is you've seen HR then from both sides. You understood the HR role when you weren't in it, then you were in it. What advice would you have for HR professionals who are struggling or maybe interested in getting that seat at the table, having that sort of credibility that you had when it comes to working with people who maybe don't understand HR and the importance of people as inherently and as instinctively as you did? To
Dr. Marline Duroseau (14:40):
Get a seat at the table, especially as it relates to HR, HR has to understand the business and not only the policies. And working in the healthcare industry, there was a lot of that, Dr. Matt, with the policies. We always had to be ready for a survey whenever the regulatory agencies would come in and do surveys or you'll have pop-up. My first job was at Taco Bell, so our sense of survey was always called a mystery shopper. Somebody would come in to try to assess and see what's going on. But with that comes a lot of policies. Things have to be at a certain temperature. Employees have to have a certain certification. You have to have a certain number of training. We have to have policies around pre-employment screening and things of that nature. So the way that HR would earn that seat is more by understanding the business as a whole and not just the policies because it can be very hard for HR too, because depending on what industry you're in and different things of that nature, we have to figure out governance and regulatory, which is also vital to make sure you have a successful business because you want to make sure you employ the right people, they're following the rules.
(15:51):
But HR just must be able to connect the talent that they're sourcing, the culture, engagement. How do you retain the folks? How do you work on leadership development, spotting out who has the potential to be a leader and how do we work on helping developing that based on the skills that you're seeing or hearing that they have? And they have to be able to tie the wellbeing, everything together to the outcomes of the business. So HR should bring the data of course, but we also need the story behind the data. That's like I told you with the example with the ice cream, I can bring the data where maybe I'm in a budget meeting or maybe I'm meeting with the owners and they're saying, okay, how can we maximize or reduce whichever word fits better, this line item for dietary, which includes all food. So at that point, me coming from a financial lens, my first focus would be, oh, okay, well just choose a different vendor that it's cheaper.
(16:50):
But no, you come in where you say the story behind us having this line item is because we know from seeing it firsthand that the residents enjoy this one instead. You're trying to connect both things, the numbers and the wants so that you can have a good outcome overall. So compliance also matters, like I mentioned before. So if HR stays only in compliance mode, they're going to be viewed as being a very reactive or preparing to check the box type department versus being strategically aligned with the other departments in the company. And then the additional part is that the best HR leaders, they help the business see what's coming before it becomes a crisis. And that's where I mentioned knowing the story behind the data. So we have all of this data, what does it mean? Are we seeing a potential uprising in unhappy people which may then lead to them leaving?
(17:50):
Are we seeing that a shift going on in the industry where we're getting a lot of people who may be not as qualified? So what does that mean when survey comes along? So there's just always stories and people and everything behind all the data. So HR would earn their seat when they stop being seen as only a department of rules and compliance and governance and they evolve into becoming a function of readiness, helping to reduce risk by analyzing what they see and what they get and by helping to drive results as well.
Matt Poepsel (18:24):
You've had such a versatile skillset that you bring to your work. Even in the short conversation that we've had, we talked about numbers, we talked about people, but then we talked about also the mechanics about how it shows up in different spreadsheets for different facilities, but now we're also talking about the story behind the data. So it's a lot. And I think that it's pretty clear that you have natural talents, but I also love that you called out your three mentors who also poured into you and you took the coaching and you did the things to get to where you are. Leadership is hard. It's multidimensional. You have to take that elevator up and down just like Dr. Mar is teaching us and don't feel like you're just automatically going to be naturally good at it. You see people who are really good and you think, "Man, how did they get that good?" The answer is they took the coaching.
(19:08):
So I'm really glad that you shared the fact that you had those mentors in your life helping develop and shaping your career. I
Dr. Marline Duroseau (19:15):
Owe everything to them. And it took me a long time to lean into that, Dr. Matt, because even when they saw what they felt were great aspects or characteristics that I had, I still was not certain of myself. When I started with the company, I was 21. So it's always, okay, well, I mean, I'm here to learn. I don't know anything. When one of my mentors, she's so funny, I have a story for you. We were in a meeting. I was already with the company maybe it was before I had kids. So maybe 2010, so eight years by now, but I had moved into different departments and ultimately one of the departments that I was in involved reporting to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which is CMS. That's federal, which is CMS. And then I had the state department, which is Medicaid, and a lot of reporting and a lot of things going on.
(20:07):
And we were having a meeting. It was the executive team. And because I was the governmental reporting folksperson there, I'm there taking my notes and being involved, but never really said much. And there was a discussion happening, things are going on, and ultimately the meeting concludes. And when the meeting was over, I went to one of my mentors or we were just huddling around and I said, "I know we're trying to figure out what we need to do with this scenario, but because this is what I do all day, I know a lot of these other regulations that you guys may not know, we may not be able to do it this way. It's better to set it up this way instead, but we can talk to the consultant to confirm." And she said, "Oh my gosh, why didn't you say something? Why didn't you raise your hand or say something in the meeting?" And I'm like, "Well, I mean, I didn't want to sound...
(20:56):
I mean, what if I was wrong?" Or all the things that we have the doubt in ourselves. And she immediately brought all of the executives back into the meeting and she said, "You need to tell them what you just told me. " And I did. And Dr. Matt, with that decision, they changed whatever they were going to do and I saved them $522,000.
Matt Poepsel (21:20):
Wow, unbelievable. And she
Dr. Marline Duroseau (21:22):
Said, "You have to be assertive. You have to speak up. Don't think that you're in the room and you're just there to be there. You're in the room. Your seat is here. Speak up. Say what you think. It matters." And I had to learn. And also I think too, part of my growing up, I'm a first generation American. My parents are Haitian immigrants and I'm also a middle child, all the things. And I always felt that in our culture, everything is very hierarchical. So the higher you are on the hierarchy, whether it's family, work, I just felt like, okay, well, unless I know for sure I'm not going to say anything, because what if I'm wrong? They're going to think I'm dumb and they won't ask me again. And then I become excommunicated. And this whole thing that I made up in my mind. And she said, "Absolutely not.
(22:07):
If you're in the room, you belong there, you speak up." And so what if somebody doesn't take your advice or doesn't, but at least they know they'll make the decision knowing that you brought your expertise or your two cents so then they would decide what to do with it from there. That's always stuck with me. So it's right that you have to have that support.
Matt Poepsel (22:28):
It's a fabulous story, and I'm listening to it from two registers. One is that when you think about taking the advice that we're given, making sure that we do the work, that we respond to the coaching. And then the second bit is when you look at the nature of being able to give that advice, are we being good mentors for those people who are coming up behind us? That's going to be the important thing as well. So I love that a lot. But I want to make a shift to your TEDx talk. So you gave this TEDx talk, the secret battle behind powerful women leaders. And I just want to know, Dr. Mar, what was happening that made you think, you know what? I'm going to take the stage. I'm going to talk about this. It's something that was going on, and I know it bubbled up from your personal life, but you brought it to the stage and you let us benefit from it.
(23:10):
What inspired you to do the TEDx talk?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (23:13):
Firstly, after I kind of got over my fear of even letting my story be known after I wrote my book, I said, "I want to be able to help people. I know I'm not the only one that is going through this. I know I'm not the only one that is now on the other side of it. So how can I do more and how can I help?" For 15 years, I battled infertility and I carried that as a private disruption in my life while still showing up as the payroll lady, the accounting lady, the government reporting lady, and eventually the CFO. And I realized that so many other women were doing the same thing. And that's why it's that secret battle behind powerful women leaders because what society sees, what your team sees, what your boss sees, what your family sees is the strong person that can handle everything.
(24:07):
And how do they see that? You're showing up, you're on time, you're meeting deadlines, you're doing all the things. And I just realized that even though I was still leading and producing and showing up, I was silently suffering inside. I didn't set out to write the book. During my infertility journey, I also suffered loss and just a really tough time. And journaling was something that was always a way for me to have that outlet and express myself in between therapy sessions, of course, but that's another story for another day. So after I said, let me turn my journal entries into a book. After I wrote the book, I said, I want to do more. That's when I got into speaking. So I started speaking at fertility expos, women leadership conferences. Wherever I could talk about it, I would talk about it. And ultimately that led me to say I would love to land a TEDx because this topic is just so important that being able to showcase it on a national stage I think would allow the awareness and the message to get out.
(25:05):
So the TEDx stage gave me that platform to name what many high achieving women experience but don't always have the language for. I wanted to shift the conversation from infertility being this private medical issue to infertility as leadership identity, resilience, being able to disrupt all of the shame and stigma associated with infertility. So in essence, I took the stage because I knew I was not only the woman that was leading in a powerful way and getting all the things done, but I was also privately falling apart and it wasn't only me. There were so many more like me. So I wanted to share that on the TEDx stage.
Matt Poepsel (25:51):
And the stage helped you reach so many people, but it didn't take long. I know somebody came up to you right after and shared something with you too, that their version of a disruption that they were experiencing really resonated too, even though it wasn't exactly the same as yours. And I wonder what that experience just told you about this universal nature. We never know what's going on in people's lives. They may be covering it up pretty well, but they may be enduring something invisible, to use that term again. What does it tell you? How did that shape not only your own experience, but seeing the reaction you've gotten since you've started to share from the stage and in your book? What has it told you about leadership?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (26:25):
It really told me that even though the details of what's causing our disruption, those details may be different, but the emotional construct and the emotional foundation behind that disruption is all similar. Whether it's infertility, it's divorce, it's caregiving, that's become a big one, especially with people in my generation because we're like the sandwich generation. We're either taking care of our kids in addition to caring for our parents. And that can be a big, big disruption, especially if you're not ready for illnesses. Job loss, grief, burnout, all of these can disrupt a person's identity. And leaders often feel that pressure to keep performing as if nothing changed. Those are big deals that we just listed, including so many more. So then the ultimate question becomes who am I now? And how do I keep leading and performing and showing up from this new place? What is this new place a person that has undergone or undergoing this disruption?
(27:29):
So ultimately the disruption may be different for everyone, but the identity question is normally the same. So the young lady who came up to me after the TEDx and said, "I love, like you mentioned, that you framed your experience as a disruption because although I didn't experience infertility, my disruption is dealing with the loss of my father. So grief hit me like a ton of bricks." And she goes, "It was unexpected. I don't know what to do. And I'm a corporate executive, but I'm just expected to, okay, I got these three days of bereavement granted to me and I'm just supposed to be okay and come back to work." And it's like, no, who am I now? What am I doing? How do I get through this? 100%.
Matt Poepsel (28:08):
And has it shaped the way you think about resilience? It's a term I think that we throw around a lot and we almost throw it around like we want to be resilient. Why? So we can get back to performance. And you're like, whoa, hold on a second here. So I just wonder, you had such a great experience in terms of the reception you've gotten, the courage you had to take the stage and what you've personally gone through. How do you think about this term of resilience these days?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (28:30):
Pushing through is what I originally thought resilience was whenever I heard the name, pushing through, surviving something. But I'm learning that resilience now is more intentional. So a person who is resilient, they know when to pause. They know when to reflect. They know when to ask for help. They know when to adapt and they know when to recover. And I also am learning that resilience not about pretending that you're not impacted or affected by all these things that you're going through, all these disruptions. Being resilient is about having the capacity to continue without abandoning yourself. And what's weird, because it seems a bit counterintuitive, but that's where authenticity comes into play because someone may say, "Well, how can I be authentic? And I have to show up at work and authentically I'm sad, but I'm going to show up to work, but put a smile on my face." And that's a question that many of us often grapple with because we think that at that point, well, we're not being resilient because if anything, I'm not being authentically myself.
(29:42):
And that's what resilience is about, being able to adapt and say, okay, I know for the next eight hours I'm going to show up. One, do I want to show up? See, we have to remember that it starts and stops with us. So you have to tell yourself, if I'm going to make the decision to what's a Society calls it as push through, then one, do I want to go? And if I do want to show up and if I do want to attend and if I do want to go, I have to tell myself for the next eight hours, I may have some up and down moments because I'm human, but I'm here, I'm going to get it done and it's going to be okay. And then when I'm off, I can go back into whatever it is that I want to experience at that time.
(30:24):
Maybe it's a cry, maybe it's a nap, maybe it's a shopping spree, I don't know. But you have to be able to show up without abandoning yourself. And just because you're moving forward, it doesn't mean you forgot, it doesn't mean you're okay. And when someone is truly resilient, they create systems that allow other people to recover too, especially as a leader, I had to learn that and found that a lot in my research because ultimately it changes who you are. It changes how you lead. And because you've gone through something, you now have created a safe space or opened up an extra door to allow other people to recover as well.
Matt Poepsel (31:00):
The mental models we construct around work for whatever reason are always so mechanical. And what I'm hearing you say is that resilience is allowing yourself to be human and helping those around you to be human when they're in those moments where they need to find that resilience and the discretion you shared and the willingness to keep coming back to your foundation, your core authenticity, and give yourself what you need in that moment that you need it. It's a more human way of bringing yourself into the work, but recognizing that we're not superhuman and we're not mechanical in that way. I love it. Well, Dr. Mar, I want to shift it over to something I like to do to end my show, which is to have a trivia segment here. I know that you have a finance background. I think you're CPA. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. You just never stop.
(31:47):
It's unbelievable how multidimensional you are. But here's going to be our question. It's a multiple choice question. It says, "The fundamental accounting question states that a company's total assets must always equal its total liabilities plus what? Is it A, revenue, B, equity, or C, expenses? Take your best guess. What do you think? I think I know, but I don't know. I'm not a CPA." It's got to be equity, right? Equity is an asset. Maintained
Dr. Marline Duroseau (32:13):
Earnings. So equity, yes.
Matt Poepsel (32:15):
We're not talking about profit and all that stuff. That's all something else. This is just that. Correct. We are going to get that audience, if you're playing along at home, total assets must have always equaled total liabilities plus what? A revenue, B equity, C expenses. We said B equity and we got it. It is absolutely the balance sheet, the double entry bookkeeping. It's the heart of everything we do. Well,
(32:34):
I tell you what, Dr. Mar, I think your approach is the heart of everything I want to see leaders do. You just crushed it today. I knew it from the moment that you and I sat down to talk and I'm like, this person really gets it in all these different dimensions that you brought in. I mentioned earlier that between the numbers and the people and the story and the mechanics of business and then taking the mentorship and giving it from the stage. I'm just so impressed by you. I'm so glad we got to spend some time together talking about it today.
Dr. Marline Duroseau (33:02):
Thank you so much. And I felt the exact same way when I met you, that this is always a great conversation and it's always great to meet other people who also share the same values, especially when it comes to just helping better people. And once we're able to help people be better, then it just makes the world a better place. So it was always a pleasure of mine to have met you and spoke with you as well.
Matt Poepsel (33:24):
So well said, Dr. Mar. Where can my listeners go to learn more about you and all the amazing work that you do?
Dr. Marline Duroseau (33:30):
Yes, thank you. Definitely LinkedIn. My LinkedIn is my name, Dr. Marline C. Duroseau, and also on my website, www.mcdbe.com.
Matt Poepsel (33:40):
I love it. Listeners, I'm going to have those links for you in the show notes. You're only one click away from getting connected with Dr. Mar and being as inspired by her as I obviously am. Dr. Mar, thanks again for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Marline Duroseau (33:52):
Thank you so very much for having me. Appreciate you.
Matt Poepsel (33:59):
Here are my top three takeaways from my episode that I just recorded with Dr. Mar. The first is around seeing the people in the numbers. I think it was so impressive that starting off in payroll, working your way up to CFO, she never lost sight of the fact that we might be looking at numbers and we might be looking at spreadsheets and all these things, but there's people inherently in them. And the fact that she was positioned and housed within an office that was so directly there with the workforce I think was fortuitous, but she never lost it. And even as she continued to grow and became CFO, she always strived to see the people in the numbers. The second was this notion of being a talent scout. You heard Dr. Mar say that there was a mentor she had, a boss who was the acting CFO at the time who had seen some potential in her, really gave her challenging projects, shepherd her along the way to make sure that she could continue to advance in her career, not knowing that she would take over for her as CFO someday, but ultimately that's what happened.
(34:59):
And that mentoring relationship was a big part of what made that happen. And then finally, of course, the story that Dr. Marr had shared from the stage talking about these invisible disruptions, the experience that people around us may be having. We are in a society where there's so much of this put on a brave face, keep the separation between your personal life and your work life. But we know that when life's big things happen, it's impossible to do that. You never know when somebody's going through something. We never know when those are the types of issues that somebody might be having. So being able to reach out, to demonstrate that, to be kind to ourselves when we need to be kind to ourselves, all these things, she just gave us such a great reminder about how powerful leaders can still go through very powerful things themselves.
(35:47):
So I really enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Mar, and I hope you did too.