Elizabeth Fiting, Unfiltered (Full Interview)

In honor of Women’s History Month, I sat down with the Chief Learning Officer of Studio 5 (S5), Elizabeth Fiting. For over 15 years, Elizabeth has had a robust career in L&D, acquiring a Master’s degree in Learning Design & Technology along the way. 

Elizabeth is constantly striking a balance between committing her time and expertise to S5’s Thought Partners and her internal team, and her passion for learning and development shines through in every aspect of her work. 

Elizabeth and I conversed for a full hour, in which Elizabeth shared tons of genius nuggets and insightful perspectives. For this blog, I’ve consolidated and pulled out some of the most inspiring and informative pieces. 

by Sam Grom | LXD

Sam Grom (SG): To get us started, can you briefly share a little bit about your role as Chief Learning Officer at Studio 5, perhaps including the most rewarding piece and the most challenging?

Elizabeth Fiting (EF): In my role at Studio 5 I lead our Learning Design and Delivery team on the execution of work contracted by our Thought Partners. The most rewarding piece of my role is honestly getting to watch the team develop and thrive, and become great at their jobs. I recently had this realization that for all the reasons I was attracted to L&D work in the first place, wanting to develop people, that really has come to fruition in the most rewarding way by having a really great team I’m leading, and getting to see people grow and thrive. That’s absolutely my favorite part…my role as CLO is helping to create an environment where people can grow and thrive, and that makes me really proud. 

The most challenging part is time. It never feels like there are enough hours in the day. As the person who leads the largest team and is responsible for a really big body of work, I am often pressed by having to balance supporting the team and their needs with the strategic work I do with Jesse to grow the business. Time is always a big challenge. I’ve had to leave some of my professional development goals off to the side for the last couple of years to just kind of like maintain what I have to do day to day. 

SG: How has your previous experience aided your tenure at Studio 5?

EF: I started my career as a content developer in education, so this has always been my path. I love writing, I love learning technology, and so for a long time, I considered myself more of an eLearning technologist. I was one of those designers who would get enamored with the technology and its capabilities, and wanted to just make cool things all the time. And then I started working in startups, and my perspective changed pretty drastically, particularly at my job previous to S5, where I realized fundamentally the work that I needed to be in was creating the right solutions for the people who are going to engage with them, not creating the solutions I thought were going to be the most fun to build. It led me to forming this perspective around a more simplified and learner-centric approach…and that was heavily influenced by being in a tech startup and seeing how quickly the business moved, and how often learners were left stranded with nothing because we would get stuck in these philosophical arguments about the perfect solution. So tech startups have influenced my perspective on how I do my job now. A lot of my perspective as a learning strategist is to look at what the Thought Partner needs, what the audience needs, and what is the fastest way to close these gaps, because at the end of the day learners don’t actually want to be in training, they just want to be doing their jobs. So, how can we put something in front of them that is going to be engaging but also close their gaps quickly? 

SG: It’s refreshing to hear the journey you went on because I feel like every Learning Experience Designer goes through that, wrestles with their ego and wanting to be on the cutting edge, wanting to flex their creative muscles, but then sometimes the best solution for the learner is the most simple route. 

SG: Noting that Studio 5's leadership team is made up completely of underrepresented identities, what impact has this diversity on the leadership team had on your experience and career at Studio 5, particularly compared to previous experiences in your career?

EF: That’s a great question, and I’ll admit that previous companies I’ve worked with have largely had homogenous leadership teams…I was in a strategic role at my previous company during 2020 when George Floyd passed away, and when Black Lives Matter [gained momentum], and I was one of the team members who was in the work of figuring out what the DEI response should be. Unfortunately, I saw our leadership team really stumble, and I think that was coming from a privileged perspective because our leadership team was, with a few exceptions, white and male, with a pretty big age disparity. I think it influenced the amount of influence the female executives had, because they were so much younger than the male executives. I think there were a lot of people who were trying to fight a good fight against a lot of people who did not see a problem. I left towards the end of 2020, and started as an executive at Studio 5 in 2021. I’ll admit, I came in hot because I directly saw the impact on marginalized communities, like we have to do better than what I was seeing happen at my previous company. My two peers are members of the LGBTQ community, so both of them were like “yeah, totally, we are not going to ignore this, these things are important to us.” It was wonderfully refreshing, and continues to be something I don’t take for granted, that my peers making decisions for this company prioritize and value diversity equity and inclusion so highly. I have never once felt like my role as a woman on the team was anything other than celebrated by Jesse and Marcus, they intentionally seek out my perspective…My voice is valued. My voice would be valued regardless of [my identity], because that’s the world we’re trying to build here, is that everyone has a right to have a voice. 

I think we support it because we make it a priority, and we know the work doesn’t stop. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll get to see the perfect world. Like I want to live in Schitt’s Creek, I want to live in a world where who you are is a non-issue. Like, who do you love, what you look like, your gender, your race, all of those things are non-issues. That’s the world I want to live in, it’s not the one I’m living in. But it’s at least the world we’re trying to create at Studio 5, and that’s done with intentionality. It’s done with a lot of consideration and thought from the leadership team to make sure we’re checking ourselves constantly and honoring the perspectives of the people here. 

I will say that in previous roles, more often for me, I have been the victim of workplace bullying by other women than by male colleagues…When I look at the world at Studio 5 that we’re trying to build, I am so conscious of the fact that we don’t make space for that…we are here to support each other, we are here to uplift each other, and we’re here to respect each other’s differences. Most of the time when I have been on the receiving end of some kind of bullying from another woman, it’s because I am showing up in a way, as a woman, that is unfamiliar to that woman. It’s not the way that woman would show up, or that woman would solve this problem or conduct herself, and therefore, to help me, she feels she has to give me feedback like, “you’re too opinionated, you’re too loud, you’re too all these things,” that, when I’ve reflected later, I’ve asked myself, “would that person have said that to a male colleague?” Is it because I’m showing up in a way where I’m not smiling enough, I’m negative when I point out the ways this project could fail, or something might not work, negative by whose definition? In those cases, I’m doing my job by saying this might not work for these reasons. 

SG: So, what do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace? You’re sort of covering it already, the phenomenon where men have more opportunities to show up in a lot of different ways that are accepted, and often there’s just one accepted way for women to show up in certain situations, I feel like you’re speaking to that because you weren’t showing up in the way those women expected. 

EF: Yes, and it’s made even more difficult when you are a woman who is an introvert, when you are a woman who is a processor, when you are a woman who is not the person who’s going to show up and be super bubbly, happy and chipper, cheerful and jolly. You know, that’s not the person I am, and definitely in certain environments that is an expectation for women. There is this, to your point, a much more narrow road that women are often allowed to walk and how they show up in the world, and if we don’t smile, if we don’t defer to other people, if we don’t find ways to be the peacemakers in a situation, then there’s something wrong with us. And people feel compelled to give us feedback about all of these ways we’re not meeting this standard for what it means to be a woman in the world, but that standard does not apply to a lot of us. As I started to get older and started meeting more women, [I realized] I’m not alone, as a woman who is introverted and much more of a processor, there are other people like me who show up in this way. 

The biggest issue for women in the workplace is that we still have work to do in recognizing differences. I think at the end of the day, if people were more respectful of everyone’s differences we would actually have fewer problems, because so many assumptions are made based on very narrow perspectives. I have been called a b**** over the course of my career because I don’t smile a lot, and that is somebody making an assumption about me as a person because I’m not offering them some kind of physical clue they’re looking for, and that’s hurtful, to walk through life thinking I have to constantly monitor how I show up. If I don’t respond in this particular way, they’re gonna think I’m difficult, if I point out the flaws of a proposed solution, they’re gonna think I’m negative. And those are all reactions coming from that person’s narrow worldview. It took me 20 years to figure out that was the person’s narrow worldview and not something I needed to carry forward. That’s a lesson that takes a long time for most of us to learn, and you can be out in the world as a woman working and trying to find your place, and your voice, with all these challenges, not realizing that so many of the difficulties you’re encountering don’t actually have anything to do with you. But I do think we are seeing a change because we do have more ways for people to share their stories, and share their lived experiences, and recognize themselves in these stories. So, I think narrow perspectives are the biggest challenge women face. 

SG: You mentioned, unfortunately, that a lot of your negative experiences in the workplace were due to women bullying you. So kind of flipping that on its head, how has allyship / mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?

EF: Well, I’m happy to say that my mentor and very good friend, somebody who’s probably had one of the biggest impacts on my career and someone I have a ton of respect for, is a woman, her name is Dr. Teresa Deveaux. Teresa is very extroverted, she is someone who has a big voice, a huge laugh, so much presence, she has enough personality for like four people and that is the person she is and it’s wonderful. The first time I met her, I was terrified. She was coming across as the type of manager I never get along with, because her way of showing up was so different from mine. The first one-on-one conversation she and I had, she sat me down and said, “I’m gonna make some guesses about you and tell me if I’m wrong, you strike me as someone who’s kind of a processor, you’re a little introverted, I bet you need to have time to think about something. If there’s a problem you’re not the person throwing a lot of ideas at the wall, you’re thinking about it…but you’ll come back the next day with the solution and it’s gonna be rock solid, because you thought about all the different ways it could go wrong.” I was like, “do you have my phone tapped? Are you talking to my family?” And she’s like, “I’ve worked with people like you before, and I’m so grateful to have processors on my team, I love them because I am not a processor in that way. I don’t look at things from every angle in the way processors do.” And then she said, “I know I can be a lot for people who show up the way you do, so if you ever feel like I’m too much, I’m giving you permission to let me know you need a break.” And she made it very clear that her goal as a leader was to create a well-balanced team, so she went out of her way to look for people who filled gaps she saw in herself, and to uplift the people quite often marginalized, because contributions of introverts are so often not as loud as contributions of extroverts, so they’re not as highly valued. So she made a point of making sure people knew when I came up with a solution, she gave me credit, she made sure other people recognized my contributions. I’d never experienced that with a manager who, in the first conversation, was like, we’re different but that’s not a bad thing, I will find a way to make our differences complimentary. She also gave me permission to tell her what I needed in that first conversation, and to never feel uncomfortable. That created a lot of trust, and also showed me the kind of manager I want to be at Studio 5. I've always tried to make sure I’m honoring individuals for who they are, that we’re never making anyone feel like their contributions aren’t going to be valued, and that we recognize that not everyone has to show up in the same way I do. A balanced team is going to be much stronger than a team that all think in exactly the same way. We have to have a bit of tension to challenge each other, but also to make the work better. 

SG: Wow, I love that. I think that’s really powerful how there’s a direct opposition between those women who were threatened by, maybe the different way you showed up, whereas Dr. Deveaux completely did the opposite. She wanted to get to know you and accepted you for who you are, the value you brought that complemented her value, and not seeing that as a threat. 

EF: She’s not the type of person who is threatened by other people, she sees the value in other people. I think we all have that fear of other women who are strong contributors, like, “Oh my God. Well there's only room for one of us at the table.” We have to fight for those spaces and that's not the way that Teresa has shown up with anyone, and she really focuses on uplifting the people that she works with. That is something I definitely learned from her. When I first started at Studio 5, I remember one of the first times I had to give feedback to the team, and I was in agony because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Her response to me was, “but you want to see them succeed, right? Then you need to de-center yourself…if you don’t give them that feedback, they’re not going to grow or get better at their careers. So take yourself out of the middle of the problem and think about what your direct report needs.” It has very much shaped my feedback philosophy since that moment. 

SG: It’s funny because you gave me that advice recently, and it’s really interesting to hear about your journey to get to that place. Ok, moving on, what advice can you offer to women, especially those aspiring to be at the executive level?

EF: My easy answer is to go work with people that you already love and trust because that was the best decision that I ever made. You know, Jesse and I had known each other for almost a decade by the time I came to work at Studio 5 and it was a very easy decision because in the back of my head it was something that I knew I always wanted to do when the circumstances were right. It's hard to be in a position of leadership, it’s a lot of pressure, you're responsible for a lot. I couldn't imagine doing this if I didn't have people that I really trusted standing next to me, and I've known people who go into leadership that don’t have that kind of support system, and you can see the gaps they have. 

For women in particular, I would say that it's always going to be a little bit harder, unfortunately, for women than it is for men. and I think that it can be really easy to tell yourself, “I'm lucky to have a seat at the table so I'm going to diminish myself in the face of all of these other voices, just so that I can keep this seat.” And I think that if that's the negotiation you have to make with yourself to keep that seat, you're sitting at the wrong table, like you need to go find a different table. That's been the biggest benefit for me of being at Studio 5 as an executive, is I'm working with people that I trust, people who I know are going to tell me the truth and support me. And I'm not going to pretend like I haven't gotten into fights with both of them…we knew we were going to butt heads eventually, it’s part of the role that I have to play, to sometimes disagree with him, to poke holes in ideas and help stress test them, so that what we end up with is stronger for the business. It's not always an easy role to play, to be the person who is gonna be on the opposite side of the CEO, but we both knew that was gonna happen eventually and we set some ground rules at the start of how that would go down when the day came. The day came, we both cried. It was not fun but we got to the other side of it like, “okay well now we understand each other better and how we need to show up in these situations.” And I've thought about this a lot over the last couple of years, I couldn't imagine having to do that with somebody who I didn't have that kind of trust with and feel like I could get to the other side of that situation and have the relationship still intact, and to feel like the solution that we got to was the right one.

I also recognize that it's not always easy. I'm incredibly lucky and incredibly privileged that I was able to come to Studio 5 in this role with these people and do the work that I'm getting to do, which is work that I really really love doing. That is not the journey that everyone gets to take especially when they go into leadership. So if that is not possible, then my advice would be to listen to your gut, if something doesn't feel right about the situation that you're in, you’re probably right. Have people that you trust that you can bounce ideas off of to check your feelings, and also be honest with yourself. I think critical self-reflection is incredibly important for people and leadership. I always welcome feedback from the team even when I don't like to hear it, and I've gotten feedback from the team that I did not like hearing and really sat with it and examined whether that was valid feedback, because I also feel like as a leader I don't have the privilege of not examining every piece of feedback if it's going to impact the team. Even if I disagree with the piece of feedback, I have to examine it because I won't grow as a leader. And if I am actually doing something wrong or I'm doing something poorly, I want to fix it because I can't expect that the team is going to do that kind of growth and development if I'm not going to do it myself. And so that would be the other thing, be honestly self-reflective about the feedback that you received as a leader. And if it's valid, do something about it and show the team that you're doing something about it. 

SG: That speaks to the power of yourself as a leader and of Jesse, going back to the fact that you are able to even fight, that alone speaks to the trust and psychological safety that exists between you and the leadership team. I think it's almost a red flag if there's nothing going on, if there's no fighting or disagreement going on at all, someone's not speaking up and doesn't feel safe so I think the fact that Jesse is open to that, you're open to it, and you all keep that feedback going in every direction is healthy and speaks to your leadership.

EF: Yeah, it's definitely a condition and you see this in different forms. There's like the brilliant a****** or you'll see think pieces about how CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are often sociopaths. You know, there's a particular mindset that a lot of successful people, particularly successful men, have to have in order to be successful. We can change what that looks like by not continuing to uplift people who are a*******. Something I saw at a previous company was there was a person who was in leadership who did not like being disagreed with. They felt like they had gotten to a point in their career and they had enough of a track record of success that people shouldn't disagree with that person. I believe that was, in many ways, the downfall of some of what happened later at that company…I have ego but I don't have that much ego. I will never put my ego in front of the people about work at Studio 5. It is a lot more fun to support and develop other people than it is to center yourself. It’s a lot more rewarding to watch other people be good at their jobs and to know that I maybe had a small part in either offering advice or helping to create that environment, or telling a story that resonated with them. 

SG: You're certainly in the right field. It's obviously so important for us as women to uplift other women and I think there's a lot of pressure on us to advocate for ourselves and to kind of climb the ladder, work hard, prove ourselves, and I think to be able to see the value in helping other women and using what we've learned to uplift other women and bring them along with us, that's the dream. 

EF: Absolutely and I think we are doing a really good job here. We don't always get it right as the leadership team, we make mistakes, we make assumptions. And then we find out that those assumptions were incorrect, but what I will say that I'm really proud of is that we admit it and then try to do something to fix it. Going back to your earlier question about what's different at Studio 5, as a leadership team we try to model the behavior that we want to see the team exhibiting. So if work-life balance is what we are telling them they need to achieve, we need to demonstrate work-life balance for them.

SG: Well that's an amazing transition to my final question which is, what do you do to have fun and de-stress?

EF: I love to entertain and I love to cook. Tyler and I love having people over, we love to host, we don't like going anywhere, we're both homebodies. So we’re very happy to be like “everyone come over to my house and I'll cook.” And I definitely think that it's the Learning Experience Designer coming out of me because I do love to create an experience. Our house has also been known for having the best parties because I'll do themed parties; I've had like a 1920s murder mystery party, and so, like, that's definitely the Learning Experience Designer in me coming out, wanting to curate very specific party experiences. And the other way that I like to de-stress is travel. You can always tell that I am very stressed because I will obsessively start researching air bnbs and plane tickets. 

SG:  I love that. Well, thank you so much Elizabeth. This has been so much fun, I could talk to you for hours.