Surround yourself with people who light you up. This goes hand in hand with the lesson above, in addition to keeping the energy suckers out, it is a gift to have the people that bring positive energy to your life surrounding you. My best friend of 20 plus years always makes me laugh and lighten up, we believe in a good chit chat and have solved so many problems this way. We both take out time meandering through our thoughts together, she is a steel trap when it comes to secrets, she knows me better than anyone, is never judgmental, really smart and practical and when we come up with wild ideas we are both 100% on-board. There is no hesitation to rearrange a room, book a flight or decide it’s time for a glass of wine.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Helena Goto.
Helena is the founder of Goto Consulting. Since 2013, she has been successfully running her own consulting business, working with, and advising clients from both public and private companies in conflict, culture, and communication. As an Adjunct Professor at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, working from home throughout the pandemic allowed her to hone her virtual teaching and facilitation skills.
Coming out of homeschooling her three boys through the pandemic, Helena moved into a Senior HR Business partner role at a finance company. Focused on employee relations and performance management, Helena loved her work until she encountered bullying and ultimately and ironically a toxic leader.
She moved on to write a book, empowering parents going through the breakdown of their marriage to live honestly whilst keeping the family intact, and has now returned to her consulting work.
Helena’s background gives her the combined benefit of understanding how a successful business functions, as well as the human dynamics that motivate people to work well together. Helena’s work focuses closely on how an individual’s needs impact both business decisions and employee relationships.
Helena graduated from The University of Southern California in 2010 with an MBA and from Pepperdine University’s Straus Institute in 2011 with a Masters in Dispute Resolution. Originally from New Zealand, Helena now lives in Los Angeles with her three sons, ex-husband, and two rescue dogs.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
The question I’m most asked is why would I leave New Zealand? So many people tell me NZ is their dream destination to travel to or retire. This makes it harder for me to honestly tell them why I left New Zealand. So, I distract them with the story of how I won a Greencard in the diversity lottery. This approach typically redirects them, “Wait what? I never even knew you could win a greencard in a lottery!”
Still, some people fixate on knowing the deeper reason as to why I would leave such a beautiful country, even for Los Angeles. I tell them honestly, it’s green because it rains all the time. It is an island at the bottom of the world where I felt very lonely. And at the time, the New Zealand dollar wouldn’t get you very far, so I felt trapped. Yes, all my birth family are there, but I never felt a sense of belonging until I arrived in New York City. The people had so much energy, they moved fast and anything seemed attainable. It’s surprising because I’m from such a small town, the big city should’ve seemed daunting, but it didn’t. Things were so different from what I was used to but I loved it. Even on the plane, I half expected with my thick Kiwi accent to meet some all American family to invite me to stay with them. Obviously that didn’t happen! We’re not in Katikati anymore? Don’t get me wrong, New Zealand is beautiful and idyllic, it just isn’t the place for me.
Having always loved film and television, I eventually found myself in LA and I was excited to start working in the film industry. However it didn’t take long to realize I didn’t like the misogynistic vibe, and I decided to go back to school. While completing my MBA at the University of Southern California, I discovered negotiation and mediation and finally found my niche. And along this journey, my future husband! We graduated, got married and pregnant all in the same week. Even with this whirlwind of magical events, I moved forward with my Masters in Dispute resolution. I thought I’d thrive in divorce mediation because I’d navigated through my parent’s dysfunctional divorce but I didn’t. It was too personal for me, seeing families turning on each other and wasting money on lawyers. Instead, I moved into workplace dispute resolution and mediation.
After having my third child, I began a coaching business so I could work from home and I truly loved it. This developed into contracts with companies and I started consulting and specializing in creating inclusive company cultures, successful workplace communication, and collaboration. I have worked across the field of early dispute resolution, as a mediator, ombudsman, and coach, and am passionate about supporting people to feel empowered to live honestly and at their best.
During the pandemic, my work abruptly stopped, meaning my business was no more. Then due to the prolonged lockdown, I started homeschooling my three young children. Once they could return to school, I moved into a Senior HR Business Partner role at a finance company. I loved my new job until I encountered bullying and ironically a toxic leader. So I quit, wrote a book, and here I am! Continuing to empower people to live honestly and at their best.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
YES! I love this question as I haven’t thought about this book for a really long time. To set the scene, I was 13 and struggling, because I was 13! My dad was an avid reader and a newly minted feminist, and he suggested I read “The Women’s Room” by Marilyn French. This book resonated with me so deeply, that I decided it was my crusade to right the wrongs of the male dominated society that I existed in. Terrible idea…you can imagine how popular that made me.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Determining where I first started is complicated. I have been down many different paths, they have all built on each other, and brought me here. So where do I start?
There is one story that comes to mind and in hindsight is funny, however definitely was not at the time, but it was a huge learning curve for me. It was just as I was transitioning to coaching one on one to working within large companies. I had been coaching the Chief Human Resources Officer from a startup tech company, and as was often the case at this time, the leadership team were predominantly white males, and she wanted to empower the culture for women. She asked me to launch the Women’s Employee Resource group, so I put together a presentation and it tanked! It was my first experience of 20 year old women in the workplace and how their experience and sensitivity was very different from mine. I was reviewing executive presence, and it all kicked off when I brought up unconscious bias, trying to explain that this is just the way our brains organize information and there are certain situations you can choose to interrupt potential bias. I mentioned something about wardrobe and one woman literally said, it feels like you are saying don’t wear this or you are asking for it. As I mentioned above, my identity as a feminist was formed very early on, so a statement like this was matrix shattering for me.
The hardest part of this was that the following day I had to give a similar presentation at another tech company and that night after I had finished having a big cry, I rephrased a few concepts and thankfully the following day was a success and I was invited back.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
As a parent it is paralyzing to be in a miserable marriage and unable to leave because you believe you only have two bad options, and not keeping your family intact feels completely unbearable. I hope that by starting a more open conversation about the gray area between happily married and divorced, parents will start opening themselves up to different options, to see that it is possible to separate from your marriage without blowing your family apart. It’s not easy, yet none of the options are easy when the fairytale of marriage doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to.
The truth is there are thousands of people right now who are living in this limbo, and there is lots of support out there for how to reignite the passion in your relationship or how to divorce. However there is little support or understanding of how a couple can navigate re-orientating their relationship to being about the children and the family and how to also take care of and be honest about their wants and needs.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
Different stories will resonate with readers given where they are in their unique situation, however the most dramatic story in the book has to be the first time my ex husband was aware I was going out on a date.
The abridged version is that I had been covertly dating this one particular person, and when I realized the relationship was getting serious, I told the children and my ex that there was someone that I wanted to date. Everyone had their own reaction but after a week or so everything settled down and I went out on a date. Jun and I had agreed we wouldn’t discuss dating with each other moving forward, but he was adamant that he wanted to know who I was going out with, and he would be fine, so I told him. By the time I came home he had completely fallen apart. It was one of the most harrowing nights of my life, but no one got hurt and we came out the other side with a clear understanding of each other’s boundaries and I believe stronger for it.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
My friend Veronica, who I had lost touch with, heard through the grapevine about my unique approach to leaving, but not leaving my family, and reached out. She wanted to pitch the concept of cohabitating with your ex as a reality show, and suggested we film a sizzle reel, which is a short introduction to the concept of the show to shop around Hollywood. We had many conversations as we developed the concept. She was the one that suggested I should write a book. Then, as it happens all too often, the next day I was on social media and an advertisement popped up for a 30 day book writing challenge. I decided to go for it.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
Janet (not her real name) was about to leave her husband and move with her son into the basement at her mothers house in Idaho. Not exactly her ideal outcome, so she reached out to discuss how she could approach the idea of cohabitating with her husband. Initially, after prepping her that, ‘it’s a process’, and that it’s not going to be all rainbows, I facilitated a conversation with her and her husband (Walter). In the beginning it seemed like an outrageous proposition to him, so we paused the conversation. After about a week, I was able to have a couple of one on one conversations with him and he began to embrace the realities of the other options for both himself and their son. During this time, Janet’s hair started falling out in clumps and Walter had to go on medication for panic attacks, so like I said, not all rainbows. We worked our way through, mostly logistics and identifying professional help they might decide to seek out. They had a builder make a few adjustments to the house, they got their son into therapy to prep him and they had some hard conversations around finances. In the end, Janet didn’t move to Idaho, and they were able to maintain the one house together for the time being. I would put money on this not being a forever situation for them however, I’m confident that the work we did saved them thousands of dollars and allowed them to both be there together to parent their son. For this family, this was the best process they could have taken, not a fairytale ending, but the closest to a happy ending we could get.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Oh my goodness, yes! We need to create a more structured, lawyer free divorce process.
The current Family Law process typically increases conflict and drags out a very painful, wildly expensive process. I believe if there was a process that allowed for a divorcing couple a constructive cooling off period, where there were certain steps that were taken before each party called in the lawyers.
Emotions are high early in a divorce so making decisions together becomes very challenging. I would like us to normalize a process where the divorcing couple works with a therapist until they are able to become more objective, then work with a financial advisor, and finally a mediator to formalize the custody arrangement. Then at that stage, if it’s still needed, the lawyers can step in and fight over who gets what of the material possessions and finalize the divorce.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Leadership is when a person has a vision that inspires others to follow. This is very different from management. A manager will maintain the status quo but a leader will create change.
One of my past projects was developing a cultural integration toolkit for an America Company that was regularly acquiring smaller international companies. One key aspect we identified for a successful acquisition was the ability to create a new ‘us’, rather than an us and them. To do this, the people from the company being acquired need to buy into the change, and change takes leadership. So identifying the leaders becomes key. I can tell you it is definitely not a person’s title that makes them a leader. Instead we created systems to identify the people that others listened to and wanted to follow, getting these influences on board with the company’s new vision, was vital to creating buy-in and the new ‘us’.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
I wish I had been faster to grasp the law of attraction. I have a strong drive and I think that at times this energy has pushed away what I have wanted. I now know that I need to know what it is that I want and then trust the process, while taking small steps every day.
Move on quickly from people that don’t light you up. I wish I hadn’t needed people that didn’t like me to like me, this is the most awful desire. There are trillions of people in the world!
Not everyone will get you, and that’s okay. The role that I was recently in felt like a final test to see if I had learnt this lesson. Thank goodness, I have. I had a manager that seemed to be seeing me through a completely different lens than everyone else around me even to the extent that even when it was at data point she would interpret it differently. For example, I had completed 90 performance management cases over a 5 month period which was the most of the 7 employees doing this work at the time. During a feedback session, she shared that having only done 50 cases, I wasn’t doing as much as the rest of the team or meeting expectations. My response was that I had done 90 and when I showed her the spreadsheet her comment was, perhaps both numbers are true…umm no. When I think about it now, it is comical, but it was a great lesson on how powerful confirmation bias is. She had an opinion and she was able to ignore all evidence to suggest contrary to her opinion.
Surround yourself with people who light you up. This goes hand in hand with the lesson above, in addition to keeping the energy suckers out, it is a gift to have the people that bring positive energy to your life surrounding you. My best friend of 20 plus years always makes me laugh and lighten up, we believe in a good chit chat and have solved so many problems this way. We both take out time meandering through our thoughts together, she is a steel trap when it comes to secrets, she knows me better than anyone, is never judgmental, really smart and practical and when we come up with wild ideas we are both 100% on-board. There is no hesitation to rearrange a room, book a flight or decide it’s time for a glass of wine.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
‘It’s a Process’
This life lesson is ongoing for me, however I look at all aspects of my life and realize that there is no destination, everything is a process and sometimes the process is hard and sometimes it’s fun, but it never stops. This is particularly true as a parent, just when you have one ‘stage’ your child is going through worked out, they move into another one!
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Oprah! Yes, it’s still Oprah for me, she is an incredible woman and I would like to have her lay her hands on my head and bless me with her magic.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Helena Goto Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.