UFYB 273: TRANSITIONING TO LEADERSHIP + NAVIGATING OFFICE POLITICS: A CONVERSATION WITH JENN DEAL, ANNIE FRAMAND, AND JAMIE LEE

If you’re a woman who works or has worked, you’re in luck. I’m sitting down with three fantastic students who are currently in the process of getting certified through ACFC, and we’re talking about women at work and some of the challenges that come along with showing up as a confident leader in the workplace. 

Jenn Deal is a life coach and practicing lawyer who works with high-achieving women who feel stuck, Jamie Lee is an executive coach for smart women, and Annie Framand is a psychologist and leadership coach. All three of them have both personally navigated being ambitious women in the workplace and also now coach their clients on creating careers they love, and they’re here to share their insights.

Listen in this week as Jenn, Jamie, and Annie offer their expertise on ambition, professionalism, racist and sexist socialization in the workplace, and their top tips for overcoming the most common challenges to women stepping into confident leadership at work.

Joining The Clutch is easier than ever! Text your email address to 347-934-8861 and we will text you right back with a link to all the information you need. Hope to see you inside The Clutch soon!

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • The most common mindset challenges Jamie, Jenn, and Annie see their clients encounter at work.
  • Our thoughts on what ambition means, and why women have trouble identifying with being ambitious.
  • How Jamie, Jenn, and Annie navigated their careers pre-coaching as ambitious women.
  • What tiara syndrome means, and how it’s holding you back. 
  • Jamie, Jenn, and Annie’s thoughts on how women can deal with the repercussions of standing up for themselves.
  • The difference between being assertive because you back yourself versus because of anxiety or defensiveness.
  • Our top tips for women stepping into leadership. 

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome to Unf*ck Your Brain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use psychology, feminism, and coaching, to rewire your brain and get what you want in life. And now here’s your host, Harvard Law School grad, feminist rockstar, and master coach, Kara Loewentheil.

Hello, my chickens. Any of you who are listening to this episode who work or have worked are in luck because we are going to be talking to you and about your brain. I’m here with three of my fantastic students who are certified or in the process of getting certified through the Advanced Certification in Feminist Coaching, Jenn, and Jamie, and Annie. And I’m going to let them introduce themselves and tell you who they are, and what they do.

And then we are going to talk about women at work, and ambition, and professionalism, and racist, and sexist socialization and all the fun uplifting topics we like to talk about here on this podcast. So I’m just going to go kind of counter clockwise on my screen, Jenn do you want to start us off, introducing yourself?

Jenn: Yeah, sure. I am Jenn Deal, I am a life coach and I’m also a practicing lawyer. I work with high achieving women who feel stuck and unfulfilled, overwhelmed and anxious. And we work together to create lives and careers that they love, basically trying to get them to feel the way they thought they’d feel once they check all the boxes and did all the things they were supposed to do.

Kara: All those boxes. I feel like you’re supposed to get a publisher’s clearinghouse check to your house when you check all the boxes and you don’t. What about you, Jamie?

Jamie: Hello. My name is Jamie Lee, I’m an executive coach for smart women. I help them get promoted and better paid without throwing anyone under the bus. I do this by marrying the best of mutual win negotiation strategies with the best of feminist coaching tools. And I work with women who work in male dominated industries, tech, finance, life sciences, sales, engineering etc.

Kara: So, many of the industries. And what about you, Annie?

Annie: Hey, I’m Annie Framand. I’m a psychologist and a leadership coach. So I help newly promoted overthinkers show out so that they can own their magic and fast track their success in their new role.

Kara: Nice. Such a good elevator pitch. Also I definitely did not correctly pronounce your last name until just now, so [crosstalk]. So I’d love to hear kind of from each of you in a little round robin, what do you see come up in your work? What are the most common mindset challenges that you see or clients encounter when they have to deal with relationship conflicts or kind of office politics? I think this is an area where I feel it’s so important to talk about because it’s one of those places where it’s not all mindset and it’s not all oppression.

There are reactions to women when they try to stand up for themselves, negotiate for themselves, whatever. And also there’s mindset work to be done around it so I think that balance is so important and I’m glad we’re going to talk about it. What about you, Jenn? We’ll go the same order for this one.

Jenn: Yeah, sure. When Jamie and Annie and I were talking about this sort of in advance of the podcast, I think Jamie and Annie are going to touch on people a little further along in their career. I work with people that’s in all stages of their career. But when I’m thinking about women who are sort of early on in their career, one of the main relationships that they struggle with of course is with whoever’s managing them, their bosses, supervisors.

And I think that struggle can be heightened often for people who are working in an environment like a big law firm or a big corporate team where you don’t have just one boss or manager. And so you’re dealing with a bunch of different people, a bunch of different personalities and all sorts of requests and demands coming your way.

But no matter how many people that you are getting work assigned from, the main thing I really see is women letting the things that their managers or bosses say or do, or don’t say or don’t do. Or all of these expectations they think their managers have really dictate the way that they see themselves and how they feel about themselves, and what they’re willing to ask for or do and just how their careers look in general.

Jamie: Yeah, I’ll go next. So continuing on that, what happens is that because as women we’ve been socialized to seek other people’s validation we feel other people’s opinions of us matter more than the opinion we actively choose for ourselves. And that can really get tricky when you have conflict, whether that is office politics or just in terms of relationships that you have at the office. You just feel like what they think about me matters so much more. And for my clients, several of them tend to be women of color.

What happens is that it gets mixed up with the perfectionism that they apply to themselves and I have to do it just right. I have to know what to say. There are some magic sequence of words that I have to say or do something to get people to behave a certain way. This can be really crippling because there is no such thing. There is no perfection. There is no magic sequence of words that’s going to have people magically become different, behaving in such a way that makes you feel good.

So for some of my clients in addition to that the mindset challenge is I don’t have somebody who looks like me at the top. I don’t see other women of color at the top. And if I don’t have that allyship I don’t know how I can feel stable. I don’t know how I can grow my career sustainably. And so that can be a mindset challenge because let’s just be honest, still 90% plus, 90% plus of leadership at these corporations tend to be male and pale. And so when you’re looking for that allyship and you want them to look just like you and they’re not there you feel like, I can’t feel confident. I don’t know how to proceed.

And so I just coached a client on this right now. It’s like do they have to look just like you? Or do they even have to be in the same industry as you? Do you have to find them in LinkedIn? Does it have to be a specific structure? What if not, what if you can find those people in other areas? Maybe you can find slices of mentorship and allyship in different ways. And so I coach my clients who think about how she can cultivate that support for herself so that she can feel confident in speaking up for herself even if she is the only woman or the only woman of color.

Kara: I think that’s so important because there is this way in which we can get over-fixated on identity and identity groups. I know plenty of women who went through law firms who will tell you that the couple of women who made partner were not the people who supported them, or mentored them, or championed them. Obviously some of them were and were amazing. And then some of them, it just all depended on what their thoughts were. Some of them had thoughts like, I paid my dues the hard way or I chose not to have a family so I could get here or whatever.

And you need to do it the way I did it or you should have to go through what I went through. And then of course some people were amazing and supportive. But some people have also been championed, and mentored, and promoted by people who didn’t look like them or didn’t share their identity. So going into it with a blanket, if somebody looks like me or shares my identity they’re going to be my support and ally and if they don’t they won’t, I think you’re going to miss possible allies and also mistake people who are not going to be your allies if that’s what you’re kind of operating from.

Jamie: Yeah. And you miss out on the opportunity to be your own best ally.

Kara: Yeah, so good. What about you, Annie?

Annie: I would say so many things that Jenn and Jamie have said really do apply to the women I coach as well. But I would add that more specifically because they are women stepping into leadership for the first time which is really a difficult transition, going from the expert who ‘knows’ and has the answers to stepping into this whole new world of holy shit, I’m not the one doing any more. I am leading the ones doing. And so in school we’ve been socialized that there is one right way to be and there’s one right answer.

But it’s kind of like parenting, there is no one way to parent. And it’s going to depend on the kids you have and, etc. So I find what’s more specific with my clientele is there’s a shift in the nature of the relationships. So often the women will be promoted within their same team. And they will then lead people who used to be their colleagues and often their friends. And now there is a shift in that relationship and they’re like, “Oh, shit, how do I have to do this? What is the ‘right way’ of being and leading people who used to be my friends? Are they still my friends?”

How do we navigate that relationship? How do I manage performance? How do I have performance conversations? And often there is a perception of favoritism. We know that you will treat this person differently because that person is your friend or used to be your friend. So I feel like that’s different for women stepping into leadership, it’s like, how do I even do this? So I find a lot of them are at first, I certainly was when I was promoted a little bit like deer in the headlights. And then you start looking for ways to do it outside of yourself.

You start looking for an authority outside yourself which is often, yes, an older white dude who’s written a bunch of leadership books. And you’re like, “What’s the way to do this?” So struggling with managing performance, struggling with, how should I show up in meetings now. How should I navigate these relationships? I feel like that’s a little bit different from my clientele.

Kara: And I’d be curious to hear how kind of each of you, presumably each of you dealt with this in your own lives, that’s how you came to this niche. And Jenn is still a lawyer but the rest of you have sort of retired from your previous careers to coach. So I’d be curious to hear kind of what were your experiences as an ambitious.

First of all actually I’d love to hear what do we think ambition means and why do women have such trouble identifying with that? Did you identify as ambitious? And what was kind of your journey to becoming a coach and working on this topic? Let’s just go randomly. Jamie, do you want to go first?

Jamie: Yeah, I love this question. Ambition for me is being growth oriented. I’ve always had this desire for growing myself, growing what I am capable of, what I achieve, growing my income, growing my impact. And I remember very early in my career, the CEO of this company I was working at asked us to all write in, what’s the most important to you? And so I wrote, growth. And then I found out at the town hall meeting, the CEO was like, “I’m so glad. Most of you agree that the most important thing is family.” And I was that [crosstalk].

Kara: Also why is that what he wants everyone to say at the business meeting? Why is it his business if you like your family or not?

Jamie: He was trying to market himself as a family oriented guy. That’s something that I just realized this moment, so thank you, Kara. So I came to this work because I really felt so much pain and suffering in the workplace. I knew that I had this ambition. I knew that I had this desire to contribute and contribute in a bigger way. But every time I was in the workplace I was just overcome with so much drama. And only after I became a coach did I realize 99.9% of that drama was fiction.

And I was always worrying about, what is that colleague thinking about me? She didn’t wave back, is she mad at me? This guy’s getting promoted and I’m not, what’s going on? Is my boss going to fire me? I just had so much drama. And I was working in the tech startup field before I retired from working as an employee. I was promoted to operations director. And at the startup, all of the C level executives, all of the executives were men who all happened to be white.

And I was the only person who was attending the leadership meeting, I was the only non-white person, the only woman. And I just recall every day seeing the two C level executives go to lunch with each other. They were very close. The bromance was clear as day. And to me this was clearly office politics because they were leveraging that informal relationship with each other in terms of decision making in terms of clout that they had with each other. And I just recall feeling so excluded and beyond that, Kara, you taught me this, that I even felt a little bit of survivalist reaction.

I am left out, clearly I am, and this is, almost unconsciously I was thinking this is a threat to my survival. Obviously I was still getting paid six figures. I was still managing my reports and doing a good job but I just remember feeling, this is so terrible. And so I really needed the coaching for myself to heal my own suffering. And to just know that my survival was never at threat. And it didn’t mean that I didn’t have a say at the decision making table, just me believing that I didn’t have a say just kept me quiet in a way that really didn’t help me serve my own desire for growth and contribution.

And so that’s a similar trajectory some of my clients have. And so I help them see that, no, you always have power. You always have choice. You belong there. And yes, people will have informal conversations outside of the formal discussions and sometimes that does inform decision, actually it almost always does inform decision making process. And that’s not evil. Just because women and people of color have been excluded from that process, doesn’t mean that we can’t get involved. We can get involved and we can get involved in a way that actually serves the decision making process.

So I teach my clients that advocating for yourself, getting involved in that informal decision making process is actually an act of service.

Kara: I think that’s such an important point, Jamie. And I did an interview with Lisa Watson that was, I don’t know, a couple of months ago. But she talked about how – and she’s a Black woman who’s worked in tech, and finance, all these very heavily male dominated fields. She’s young also. And she said she would do things like make friends with the administrative assistants and then just tell them that she was supposed to be at the meeting. And then they would include her in the meeting. And then she would show up at the meeting.

And then she’d be like, “Yeah, I’m supposed to be here and here’s why you need me here. And I’ll run that project.” I mean that is a level that possibly most people are not comfortable doing. But I love that mindset of I’m going to put myself in the room. And what’s the worst thing that happens?

Jamie: So good. Everyone should listen to that podcast episode, it’s so good.

Kara: Yeah, listen to that episode and you’re going to feel like, okay, I can definitely do a bit more than I’m doing. If that’s the far end of the spectrum then I can at least ask to go to the meeting as opposed to wait for someone to invite me. I mean I think so much of what happens is that women are socialized to believe that they’re just supposed to work harder then they’ll be rewarded. It’s this grading mentality. Someone else is going to evaluate my performance and then they will reward me.

So we don’t even ask to go to the meeting, to have a conversation to discuss the raise or promotion, whatever it is. We’re waiting to be recognized for all the good work we’ve done and our suffering in silence. And that is not really how the business world generally works.

Jamie: There’s a term for this that a woman negotiation scholar termed, it’s called TRS Syndrome.

Kara: TRS Syndrome, I love that because also I think people who do this think of themselves as being very humble. But I love that TRS Syndrome is actually kind of like, you’re just kind of waiting for someone to come and crown you and that’s not really how it works.

Annie: Even when you have the crown, you just got promoted into a leadership role, you get promoted and your happiness lasts about 30 seconds and you’re like, “Oh shit, I wonder what I’m doing here.” They’ll probably discover that I shouldn’t be here and so that whole imposter syndrome comes in.

Kara: I needed to be promoted to prove to me that I’m good enough. And then the minute I get promoted I’m like, “No, I’m still not good enough, they must be wrong.”

Annie: Right, yeah. And I wonder what they think of me. Still outsourcing your self-worth, yet you just got promoted, yeah.

Kara: So that’s such a good example of how the circumstance is not going to change your thoughts and feelings, you’re just going to adapt them.

Jamie: So true.

Jenn: And I see it happen so often too on even a smaller level than that, if I think about the times myself and my clients, and the people I used to mentor or coach in the law firm environment spent just poring over an email that they were sending.

Kara: Or that they already sent.

Jenn: That they already sent, yes.

Kara: Reading emails that have already been sent. When we just stop doing that we would increase the GDP by 20%.

Jenn: Yes. I used to get emails sent to me by more junior colleagues to get my input on, is this the right way to say this, could I say it better? And every single time, this is a little nice in fact. I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for or what you need, you can just say it, it’s fine.

Kara: It’s actually just six lines of you saying you’re sorry you wrote the email and then signing off without ever actually making a point in the email or asking for anything.

Annie: So true and I think too for performance conversations, same thing. I remember driving back home from work, every time I had a performance conversation with an employee thinking, should I have said that? Was I too rude? Is she going to think I’m a bitch? Overthinking our conversations whether they’re by email or verbal as well.

Kara: Let’s talk about that because that is the sort of double bind which is that other people in the workplace also are socialized by the patriarchy and white supremacy and everything else. So I mean, and there’s studies showing that there can be repercussions for women for negotiating, for speaking up, for whatever. You’ll be seen as oppressive, or as a bitch, or as whatever, or as cold. There are sometimes repercussions for doing a lot of things that we advise women to do or to change the thoughts to be able to do.

So I’m curious what your thinking is around that. How do you coach around that? Or what is your sort of theory about how women can try to deal with that?

Annie: For me I find for every person who thinks you’re a bitch there’s going to be one person who thinks you’re too nice. And I see that a lot in 360s. I’ve done a lot of 360s. As a psychologist I did leadership assessments and 360s with my clients. And honestly, there is never one person who had a 360 where everyone agreed on them. Everyone’s perception is always going to be different.

Kara: I love that, you say that all the time but you have data on it. You’re like, “No, but I actually read the receipts and this is true.”

Annie: Yeah. And then they’re going to fixate on that one person who said they’re a bitch. But then look at all the other people who said you’re amazing. Yeah.

Jenn: Also there’s repercussions either way. So you show up in the way that makes you a bitch, or aggressive, or whatever. But then you show up the way where you’re just putting your head down and you’re working hard, and you’re not getting promoted anyways. And so really just deciding, how do I want to show up in a way that advocates for myself and gets me closer to my goals regardless of what other people are going to think because I can’t control them like Annie said. Who knows what they’re thinking? They’re probably all thinking something different.

And so you’re getting some consequences either way and if that’s the case, then which one do you want to choose?

Kara: Choose your own repercussions. There’s no such thing as a repercussion for your life, you’ve got to choose which set you want to experience.

Jamie: And I want to add, agree with everything, those are excellent points. And especially in terms of gender blow back for negotiation. I think this really is a matter of how do you marry that strategy really well with the mindset. Because I have talked to clients who have negotiated for themselves and they got a negative result out of that where they were shut out of any sort of feedback. And they really felt like they were pushed out of the leadership team. This does happen.

But when I asked them, “How did you negotiate? How did you advocate for yourself?” They didn’t do it in a strategic way. And this is something that is so near and dear to my heart because I want to scream it at the top of rooftops all day long. You have to start early. You have to see that conversation and let people know that this is coming up. Don’t just drop the bomb of like, “Hey, I want a 50% raise. I deserve it because I just got my MBA or I just achieved this big win.” It never works that way in the real world but some people think, I’ve got to negotiate, I’ve got to advocate.

I’ve got to speak up for myself and they do drop those bombs like that which ends up blowing up in their face. So strategy wise, you’ve got to play the long game. It is not a once and done thing. It is a process you engage in with three to six months in mind. And you’ll have to do that with the mindset of speaking up for my value, advocating for myself, helping my employers see how what I’m doing connects to the bigger goal of what they’re trying to achieve. This is an act of service. This isn’t bragging. I’m not trying to fan my ego.

Sure I mean it will help build your confidence but it isn’t about making myself seem better than other people. It is about helping the organization make better decisions, make better decisions about who they promote, how they go about achieving their goal. It helps them do their jobs better. So you’ve got to advocate with a long term strategy in mind and remember, when you connect the dots between what you do and the bigger goal, it is of value, it is of service.

And when you do that, when you ask for that raise and promotion they’re going to be like, “Thank you for advocating for yourself.” My clients hear this.

Annie: And I love that. Sorry, Jamie, I interrupted you, I’m so excited.

Jamie: It’s okay. I get so passionate about this because yeah, they thanked because we appreciate how you advocated for yourself. The bosses are genuinely grateful because the advocacy of my clients help their bosses become even better managers.

Kara: I think that mindset piece is really important because one of the things that I think about a lot is what is the energy with which you have gone into these negotiations and what is your mindset? So if your mindset is fuck you, you don’t value me, and I am going to force you to or I mean I think part of the big problem is a lot of the empowerment advice for women is know your value and your worth which is your value and your worth aren’t infinite and not measurable as a human being.

Which is not the same as whether this particular dude named Brian wants to give you a raise. But I mean capitalism encourages us to conflate them. And then a lot of women’s empowerment advice is like know your worth. Don’t let them get you down. And so if you go into a negotiation, I mean I love this point about long term strategy also but even if you do that, if you go in with a mindset of if they don’t see my worth then I’m not good enough and they’d better do it.

If it’s aggressive, there’s a big difference between assertive because you believe in yourself and when you are coming out of anxiety, shame, defensiveness, putting your ego and your worth on the conversation. I just don’t think you ever, when you are grippy about something it’s very hard to negotiate cleanly. It’s very hard to negotiate strategically.

And I feel it’s sort of there is also in every psychological study, I believe the result and also it was done on most – I mean people don’t know about thought work and then for a lot of psyche experiments just white college dudes which is really not representative of the general population. So I think that having that mindset piece. And then the far end of it is like, yeah, and sometimes you are going to be negotiating with somebody who is like, “I don’t really care what you say, I think women should stay home with their kids.” That’s going to be their thought process.

And then it’s like you have to believe in your value enough to be like, “I’m going to walk. I’m out of here. There are places that will value me. There are places that care about what I can offer.” And making your self-worth dependent on the outcome of these negotiations, I think, trips people up so much because it makes them less effective at negotiating. And it blinds them to when they occasionally are in a place that is not the right fit or not going to advance them.

And I feel you can get sucked in to almost, it’s like having a partner who’s ambivalent about you and you’re like, “I’m just going to stay and make it. I’m going to get them to finally propose to prove that I’m good enough as opposed to being like, “This person does not really want me enough for me to stay here. I need to believe in my ability to get another job.” I mean it’s insane how many women at a C Suite level you will talk to who secretly believe that somehow they can’t get another job anywhere else, they’re not good enough, that they have no options. Annie, what did you want to get in?

Annie: Yeah, sorry, I got super passionate when you talked about advocating. So the number one thing that every single woman I coach has said that has changed for them after the coaching relationship is the importance of advocating for themselves. And as women will come into leadership roles, they’ll think, most of them will think the work will speak for me. The work will speak for itself. I don’t have to speak up for myself, they will see.

Kara: Not unless you’re the Mona Lisa, the work is not speaking for itself. If you are not a piece of art, don’t think that.

Annie: Exactly. So the importance of networking and the importance of advocating for yourself, exactly, your work will not speak for you.

Kara: That’s also, so I’ve heard coaches say that sometimes. I’m just like, “Coaching work doesn’t speak for itself. What is supposed to be speaking for itself? You made a Facebook post about a thought you had and now someone’s supposed to hire you off of that.” Everything in life is communicating value for other people.

Jenn: And I think we lose sight of the fact that even if you have a really great manager or boss, even if you take any sort of bias or whatever out of play. People are just busy. And so it’s not that they don’t care what…

Kara: People aren’t sitting around thinking about you. I have employees. I’m not sitting around being like, “Maybe I should.” But I’m just not, I’m a human, I’m trying to run a whole business, also create a podcast. And I’m doing 10 million things, I need my employees to come to me and be like, “Here’s the value I’ve created.” I mean yeah, I think that is such – women are just so socialized though to put your head down and wait until someone rewards you.

Annie: They will see.

Kara: They will see some day, just flash forward in your mind though, you’re doing this in the same place, 50 years from now being like, “I hope Brian comes in from the retirement home to see how hard I’m working to finally give me that promotion.” That is not happening. I also just love what Jamie said about, we do this with people in my business. We actually will, when they send for promotions or raises we will give them feedback on their proposal and send them back to do it again because I want them to learn how.

And because people make it personal then when they make the proposal they are telling you things about them personally, “I’ve got an MBA.” It’s focused on them as opposed to a raise or promotion is not a reward for being a good person, or fun to be around. It’s like what is the value you created for the business? That is what the point of the system is. But I feel because women are socialized to see their value as dependent on everything outside of them, it gets all muddled up. And the number one – I want to hear from you guys what your top tip would be.

But my top tip to close this out would be divorce your personal worth from your value as an employee in terms of what you contribute to an organization, what you contribute to the revenue or the bottom line. Your value as a human is infinite and cannot be affected. It exists even in Armageddon if the banking system collapses and you are a financial investor, it’s unrelated. But when you conflate these things it just fucks you up in all of the ways that you’re trying to negotiate or navigate those relationships or whatever else.

So I’d love to hear from your guys, for people who want to start working on this, what is the thing you will tell them? Let’s give them four different things to focus on and then they can just be overwhelmed. Just pick one, pick whatever resonates with your listeners.

Jamie: I’ll go first. So touching on what you said earlier, going back to the dating analogy, it’s like you want to think about you as on equal footing with the employer because healthy relationships are a partnership of equals. We’re equal, we’re meeting each other. And from that place I want to give some very tactical advice for people who want to advocate for their value and they’re stuck in, “How do I do that? I don’t know how.” Many women say this, very common due to the socialization that we just mentioned.

So my specific advice is make a list. Make a list of what got done. Quantify it if you can, make a list of what you think is most important to your employer. What are the goals and the priorities? Do they have a long term vision? Do they have a five year goal? Write that down. And then once you’ve made your list of contributions, now you ask yourself these questions. What becomes possible now? What becomes possible that will help drive the goal and the mission of this organization?

But don’t stop there. Ask it again. Okay, I got this project done, it’s going to help us increase client retention. Great, that’s going to help us achieve profitability goals. Amazing, but don’t stop there. Ask again. Okay, now that we are driving profitability, customer retention, what else becomes possible? Is it going to free up the time of the CEO? Is it going to help us look better to the investors? Is it going to help us make a really banging presentation with the board? So continue to ask yourself.

And this way it helps to take your brain out of your self-worth and then take your brain to, okay, what is the true impact of my contribution? And this is something that may come more easily to people who are not socialized as women. They may be socialized to think my work is important, it has impact. But for us maybe we have to sit down and direct our brain to thinking through that process so that we can really think about what is the true value that is separate from the niggling self-doubt.

Kara: So good, you guys just got a coaching package worth of value right there. So write that all down. Right, what about the rest of you?

Annie: What I want to tell women that are stepping into leadership is relax, you already got the job. You are a leader. So they’ll often see leaders and other people as the authority rather as seeing themselves as the authority. I think it’s really realizing that all the answers are within you. And that it’s a journey. You will build your relationships as you go, as we were talking about earlier, it’s a long game. You don’t need to overthink it. You don’t need to overdo it.

Your value does not come from doing and delivering your sense of worth as you were saying earlier, Kara, is not dependent on what you deliver or if people like you. You already got the job, you can do it. And it’s one step at a time, one day at a time. And if I look back on my own journey 15 years ago as I became a leader, you will fuck up. There will be moments where you’ll make mistakes and you’re just going to learn from them and you’re going to get back up. And so I think it’s that, it’s one day at a time. You already got the job, you’ll figure it out.

And what I like to do as a first exercise for my clients is have them think about their future self in one year because they’re struggling, they just started as a leader. They’re trying to figure out their relationships and how do they dispatch the work etc. So in a year from now you’re the confident leader that you want to be, what does that look like and how can you get there step by step?

Kara: Love it. And what have you got, Jenn?

Jenn: On the mindset side I think some of it, a lot of it is really selling yourself on your value before you try selling yourself to other people. And so on the practical side of that I love for people to keep track throughout the entire year of all the wins that they had. And so keep it all in one place and don’t wait until your annual review or when you’re up for promotion or whatever to share that with someone. There’s a lot of ways you can share it along the way, that probably feel uncomfortable to you now but that you can do on a daily, or weekly, or monthly basis.

So the people who are making decisions, so like Jamie said, it’s not a surprise and you’ve really laid the path for whatever your next move is in advance of that. And I think in my experience and the way my clients have done it, people are really receptive to this in a way that I think that we expect they won’t be because we think it’s bragging or we think it’s talking too much about ourselves. But as Jamie said, super beneficial for the people above you, it looks good for them to be able to promote you. It looks good for them to be able to tell their people that you are doing great things.

And so doing that along the way and also really selling yourself on your own value I just think goes hand in hand.

Kara: I think that’s so important because there’s something about the way that, I don’t know if it’s because we just live in this macho culture. But people think that negotiation is somehow an adversarial process as opposed to what is the win, win. I feel like lawyers and especially I was just talking to somebody about law school and how when I was at HLS, when I was at Harvard Law School, it was like the people who took the negotiation clinic, that was weird hippies. They want to learn about negotiation.

Even though most of law is negotiation, even if you’re a litigator you mostly are not going to trial nor do you want to most of the time. But that was such a bizarre mindset for the entire industry to have. And I think it comes from this sort of – and I think women are scared to negotiate because it’s coded as aggressive and so one person has to win and one person loses. And then women are going to feel afraid and then shame themselves because of how we’re socialized.

And if you think of it as we’re looking for the win here. We’re looking for the win, win scenario here. We are looking for the scenario where everybody is glad that this happened. That is a much more welcoming thought process to go into it with than, I’ve got to fight for my dignity and beat this other person into submission to honor and acknowledge that I am good enough which is a very stressful place to be coming from.

Annie: And women are significantly underearning and it really starts at the bottom, yeah.

Kara: Yeah, so good. Alright my friends, tell people where they can find you if they want to learn more about you.

Jamie: Okay, you can find me on my podcast, Negotiate Your Career Growth, on Instagram I’m Jamie Lee Coach. And I think the link to my LinkedIn profile is going to also be in the show notes. My website is jamieleecoach.com J-A-M-I-E L-E-E C-O-H – C-O-A-C-H.com.

Kara: C-H.com, the coach part, tricky but the name we got down.

Jamie: I know how to spell, I swear. And I can help women too.

Kara: Alright, what about you, Annie?

Annie: So they can find me at my website annieframand.com. And Instagram, Facebook, same thing A-N-N-I-E F-R-A-M-A-N-D.com.

Jenn: So, Annie, you’re definitely going to need to spell that last name for people.

Annie: Yeah, that’s right.

Jenn: You can find me at jenndealcoaching.com and I’m also on LinkedIn which is my favorite platform like a true lawyer and Instagram.

Annie: Yeah, I didn’t even say LinkedIn obviously.

Kara: Alright my friends, go to LinkedIn where everyone except for me is hanging out. Talk to you all next week. Bye everybody.

If you’re loving what you’re learning in the podcast, you have got to come check out The Clutch. The Clutch is the podcast community for all things Unf*ck Your Brain. It’s where you can get individual help applying the concepts to your own life.

It’s where you can learn new coaching tools not shared on the podcast that will blow your mind even more. And it’s where you can hang out and connect over all things thought work with other podcast chickens just like you and me. It’s my favorite place on earth and it will change your life, I guarantee it. Come join us at www.unfuckyourbrain.com/theclutch. That’s unfuckyourbrain.com/theclutch. I can’t wait to see you there.

Enjoy the Show?