Leading Her Introvert Way: Conversations about executive leadership, career growth, business and mindset for mid-life Black women.

94: How To Diagnose Why Your Company Isn't Promoting You As A Black Introvert Woman

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 94

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Have you been wondering why—despite your hard work, qualifications, and dedication—you're still not getting that leadership promotion you've been seeking? This revealing episode uncovers the hidden obstacles preventing you as a Black introverted woman from advancing into executive leadership positions. And introduces a powerful diagnostic framework that explains exactly what's holding you back plus action steps you can take to break through to senior management.


Listen now to discover how to position yourself as the obvious choice for your next leadership promotion and finally advance your career to the executive level you deserve.


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Speaker 1:

I, lady Leader, and welcome to this week's episode of Leading Her Introvert Way. My name is Dr Nicole Bryan and I am your host this podcast. If you are new, first of all, welcome. This podcast is dedicated to helping Black introverted women get promoted into executive to executive leadership roles, build generational wealth, all while not getting burnt out or becoming addicted to work. And today's episode is really an interesting one, because what I hear from so many of you is I don't understand why I am not getting the leadership promotion that I want.

Speaker 1:

So many of you are working tirelessly for the company or the organizations that you serve. You are leading and giving to your team, the people who report directly into you on a day-to-day basis. You are acquiring new certifications, new degrees, learning and constantly trying to stay ahead of your industry and your specialty area. Yet, no matter all that you do for your company, every time you want to get promoted, you raise your hand or you say that you're interested. You don't get it. You don't get that promotion and you are left wondering why You're scratching your head because no one is being upfront with you, no one is giving you the direct feedback, right, they're telling you you're great, yet their actions don't align with that, because you're not getting your promotion that you want, you're not getting the salary increase that you want and you're left wondering why the heck not? So today's episode, I am sharing with you a replay of a LinkedIn Live that I did a couple of weeks ago, and I specifically did it to answer that question and to help you answer the question why am I not getting the leadership promotion that I want? It's essentially a diagnostic tool that I'm laying out in this LinkedIn Live that I think will benefit you. If you use it. You will hear all of the different reasons why you are likely not getting promoted. You're going to understand what your boss, what your company, has been unable to or unwilling to tell you directly, and you will be able to not only understand what's going on, but figure out what you can and need to do differently to finally get the promotion that you're seeking. So, without further ado, lady leader, enjoy the live replay.

Speaker 1:

What we're going to be talking about is something that you should be able to relate to, particularly if you are a Black, introverted woman who is looking to excel or accelerate her career into senior leadership or executive leadership. Now, the thing that you have probably said to yourself at some point in time during your career so far is why the hell am I not getting promoted? I'm doing all the right things, everything that they've asked of me. I've done Everything that I've learned in school. I'm executing on Everything that I see other people doing. I'm doing that and more. So why is my career not moving forward or not moving up the way that I want it to Right? So, if you are a Black woman who is crushing it right now as maybe a team leader, or maybe you're a supervisor, but you can't break through to senior level or executive roles, then this is for you, and what is happening is that you are likely missing one or two key levels in leadership. Right, and many people, many of us, think about our leadership in terms of one way, and what I want to talk about today is I want to talk about three different levels of leadership that anyone who is looking to get promoted needs to be firing on all cylinders when it comes to those three levels and what your company is looking for that maybe they are not seeing in you yet. It doesn't mean that you don't have it. It doesn't mean that you don't know how to do it, but they may not be seeing you do it on a day-to-day basis and that is likely what is keeping you back.

Speaker 1:

So a really interesting statistic that when I learned it I was like that's a lot. So only 23% of middle managers ever reach senior leadership right, and that's 23% of middle managers who actually want to go into senior leadership. That's it. It's 23%. So that means that one out of four middle managers think about all of your peers who maybe are looking for and want that next level role. Out of all of them, one out of four actually will get into that next level. So if you are a supervisor or you might have a manager title that's considered middle manager. And, frankly, middle managers are really important to the world of work because without us, without them, without middle managers, nothing would get done right. Because middle managers have the opportunity to you know, they manage up and they manage individuals who may be reporting into them right. So middle managers I think of are hearts of the organization. They keep the organization functioning. But only one out of four who want to move into more senior level leadership roles actually get to do that. And there's all this mystery around why. Why, that is One reality that we have to face is that there are.

Speaker 1:

The more senior you go in your career, there are fewer and fewer opportunities, right, like meaning that there are not. You know, if you think about your current organization, the current company that you work for, there's not endless opportunities to be a vice president, or to be a senior vice president, or an executive vice president or whatever CEO chief, whatever. There's not endless opportunities. Usually there's only one of those roles in the entire company a vice president of finance. There's not going to be 50 vice presidents of finance unless, of course, you work for an extremely large multinational, global company like a Citibank or, you know, philip Morris or whatever. But usually most of us, there's like one vice president of financial planning, one vice president of human resources, one right, and if that's the case, then it's going to be really hard for you to truly diagnose what might be missing in presence, your leadership style, how you're showing up at work. That may, in fact, be preventing you from getting the leadership promotion that you're interested in. Ok, so let's talk about it. Before.

Speaker 1:

I mentioned that there are three different levels of leadership, and if you are someone who has tried previously to get promoted into senior leadership and maybe you've applied for the roles and no one has kind of bitten. You haven't gotten the role. Maybe you have talked to your manager, for example, or your boss, to say, hey, I'm interested, and they kind of placate you yeah, yeah, you're great at your current role. You do this very, very well. Yes, we want you, yes, you're high potential, but they never actually promote you. Or you might be someone who has been thinking about getting promoted and wanting to be promoted, but you're not quite sure how to articulate it, because you see other people getting handpicked into different roles and no one is handpicking you. You could be one or all of these things, but if it doesn't really matter which one, which category you fall into, what we're going to talk about today is how you can make sure you best position yourself to be the next person selected for that leadership role. Okay, so you are probably asking all right, so, all right. So you said there's three levels of leadership. What I want to say is most people will only focus on one of these three levels and, honestly, that is why many of us are not the ones who are hand-selected over and, over and over again for that leadership promotion.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let me draw my little diagram here. This is actually the first time I'm using a whiteboard, so I hope I don't mess this up. Okay, it's a really simple diagram and it's one that I've used for decades at least two or three decades. So there are three levels and I like to think of them as circles, right, because it's layers. I think about it, I think of leadership in layers. Okay, so in the first one, this is the center, this is the core, right, and in here is self. Now, you may or may not have heard about self-leadership, right, but here's what it is.

Speaker 1:

Many of us go into our world of work, doesn't matter, doesn't matter if you're working for a nonprofit, for-profit, big, small organization, it doesn't matter. But when you go in, we are normally, when we hear leadership, we normally think about leading a team, leading other people, other people being responsible for supervising other people's work. But what we don't think about on a regular basis or enough, is how we are managing our own work. It really doesn't matter what level of the organization you work at what level of the organization, whether or not you supervise other people, you as an individual worker, someone who is doing on behalf of an organization, you should always, always be managing your own self, but we don't think about that for some reason. We only think about other people managing us, or us managing other people, but we don't think about managing ourselves. This is what I would call foundational right, foundational. And again, it doesn't matter where you start, right, some of us have started. We started our careers as individual contributors, meaning that we were not responsible for anybody else, right, but we still were looking, and always looking, to someone else to tell us what the work is, what we have to do, what our job description says, what are we responsible for? What are we responsible for, instead of taking responsibility, to either create that for ourselves, based on what we know about the job and the company and the goals, or to co-create it with whomever we're reporting into of things, certain things right, at the leading self standpoint.

Speaker 1:

It requires a level of self awareness and it requires emotional regulation. Now, self-awareness meaning you have to know how you are coming off and engaging with other people. You have to know what's important to you, what's not important to you. You got to know what you stand for and what you don't stand for not important to you. You got to know what you stand for and what you don't stand for. And emotional regulation is super important in any work environment because the truth is, even if we work from our homes, we are a part of a larger organization, which means we have to engage with other people and, frankly, people are going to either piss us off, make us happy, whatever right. So the emotional regulation is important because if we are not able to manage our own emotions and reactions to other people or information or the environment that we're in, then we're not leading ourselves right. We're letting the outside world influence us in a negative way and that's going to show up negatively in the work environment. So self-awareness and emotional regulation really important at the self leading self level.

Speaker 1:

The other thing in terms of leading self is decision-making capability. So, again, it really doesn't matter where you are currently in your job excuse me, in your company. You could be at what you might foresee is the top of the org chart, or you can be at a lower level in the org. You could be among the masses within the org chart, it doesn't matter. But you have, within your role and within your responsibilities, you do have decision-making authority and decision-making capability. You must be able to when you're leading yourself, you have to be able to make decisions. Your company, your boss, your colleagues, your peers. They have to see you and be able to depend on you to make decisions that are within your realm, within your responsibility. When they don't see that, they will not determine that you are in fact, qualified and have the capability to move up in the organization right.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that happens at the self level is that you have to have a personal brand and you have to have presence, and what that means is, I think many people kind of confuse presence with confidence per se, presence with confidence per se. Confidence is a part of it, but your personal brand and your presence is really your aura, like how you actually physically show up. What do you exude without even saying a word? What does your body language say? What does your body language say? How you sit in meetings, how you pay attention, your eye contact, all of these non-verbals count just as much, particularly when you're trying to move into a senior leadership role. It counts just as much as all of the verbs right, everything that you say, because the piece that you say is actually not necessarily your presentation skills, which, frankly, many of us introverts. Many of us are not the best presenters, but the piece that you say in terms of sharing your ideas with other people, that also is leading yourself, right you having the courage, the chutzpah, the strategic thinking capabilities to determine and to decide what unique thoughts that you have that you can share and contribute to your organization, to your team, to your department.

Speaker 1:

Leading self is so important. It is foundational in terms of level one, ground zero, when it comes to being a strong leader. And it matters because the executives in your company evaluate you on self-leadership and they're going to do that before they trust you with broader or deeper responsibilities. Right? Because, think about it If you are unable or not capable of leading yourself, why would anyone give you a team to lead? Why would anyone trust you to lead other people if they see that you can't manage yourself and not managing yourself looks like maybe you don't manage. Maybe you're a person who comes in late or leaves early. Maybe you're a person who doesn't get your projects done on time, on budget. Maybe you're a person who requires your boss to tell you frequently what you have to do, what you should be doing and what you should not be doing. If that is you, then you're still here. You're here and you need to be focusing on getting better at leading yourself, and not just inwardly, but outwardly as well, because other people have to see it, and when other people see you being strong at self-leadership, that is when they are going to endorse you for bigger and better opportunities.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, self-leadership, that is. You got to start there. Okay, the second level right, second level is leading teams. Now, this level, leading teams when we hear the term leader, this is what we talk, this is what we think about, right, we think of, we automatically think about being responsible for other people and other people's work, and that's fine, right, that's fine. But what I will say is, if you focus here on leading teams and so many of us do on leading teams and so many of us do like, we're great at this level, but we skip being an expert at the self level, leading self then you're missing an important component. So what I want you to do, as we're talking about this, is I want you to think about how you are at work, think about how you show up. Are you demonstrating the things that we just talked about at the self level? Are you leading yourself effectively? Are you self-aware? Are you regulating your emotions? Are you thinking strategically? Are you making decisions that are within your realm to make? Are you showcasing your personal brand? Are you showcasing your presence? Are you managing your time? All of those things are self-leadership right. Leading yourself.

Speaker 1:

When we hear leadership, we think leading teams automatically, and leading teams includes things like developing others right and building high performance teams, making sure we, the people who we are responsible for they, work well together and they get their stuff done for the organization for themselves, for others, okay. Organization for themselves for others Okay. Leading teams at that level. We're also talking about you having the ability to create psychological safety for your team, because you want to make sure that, no matter what's happening outside of your department, that you are creating an environment where the people that report to you have as much opportunity to be successful as possible, and I think most of us really pride ourselves about that right, like I know I do. I don't care what kind of craziness is happening in the company, the broader company, if I can make sure that my direct reports feel safe and they know they can talk to me about anything and they know that I will always have their back. Like. I feel like I have done my job right. So, leading teams, creating the psychological safety and being inclusive that's also skills that you would be demonstrating at the level two level, so the leading teams level.

Speaker 1:

Other things that fall into the leading teams level is things like managing performance right, having difficult conversations, and not just with those that you are responsible for, not just with your direct reports. But when you're at level two, you should be capable of having difficult conversations not just with the people who you have supervisory responsibility for, but also with your boss, and I know many of us don't like that. We shy away from that right, probably because of the power dynamic, but when you're leading a team, part of leading the team is you got to be able to advocate for them, and part of being able to advocate for them is to go toe-to-toe with your boss from time to time. And, trust me, companies are looking for that right. If they don't see you as a potential leader moving up, having the bravery and the courage and the skillset to be able to debate with or, you know, advocate not just for yourself but for others or just for ideas, then that's probably going to be held against you when it comes to promotion time. Okay. So, leading teams, managing performance, having difficult conversations, delegating Delegating effectively is a level two skill set right, many of us are.

Speaker 1:

We usually most of us get to level two because we were exceptional at level one, like we were really good, high performers in our job and then when we looked around at other people, we were the best, we were delivering the most, you know, we were most effective, and that's how you usually get your first or second promotion and then you become the supervisor or manager to other team members who used to be your peers. That's usually how you get from level one to level two. But when you are trying to get even more senior in the organization, you got to be able to delegate. Organization you got to be able to delegate. Like some of the responsibilities that may be yours technically doesn't always require you to actually be the physical person who does them. Because you should be delegating? Because you want to make sure that you are taking care of the things that only you can take care of. That's what you should be doing on a day-to-day basis, and those things that are a part of your responsibilities but other people can do on your behalf. You should be delegating. So organizations, senior leaders, executives want to see you having that capability, that skill to be able to delegate, before they will promote you. Why? Because the more senior you get, the broader your responsibilities are and you can't do everything alone, right? The best executives, the best senior leaders, are able to create an environment where everybody is kind of helping each other out. Create an environment where they themselves don't have to do everything, but the team will work together to get it done. If you can't demonstrate that at level two, no one's going to want to promote you to level three.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So why is leading teams, level two, important? It's because this is where most of us get stuck. I'll say it again this is where most of us, particularly those of us people of color, particularly those of us who are introverted, definitely those of us who are Black females and introverted this is where we get stuck. Now. We get stuck here for a variety of different reasons. One it's not comfortable there. It's not comfortable. We don't have the ultimate responsibility for anything.

Speaker 1:

So we feel like this is the middle manager tier that I was talking about when we first started, middle manager tier that I was talking about when we first started. We feel like, okay, I'm not the most junior person in the organization anymore. Right, I'm in the middle, so I can look up, I can look down, I can look across. It feels good here. It feels safe for me here because I'm ultimately not accountable for anything. Right, if I drop the ball, someone more senior than me is going to. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to take a hit, but someone more senior than me is ultimately accountable. We feel good. And we also feel good here because we don't feel like we're the most junior person either. So you don't have to be the person who only take orders.

Speaker 1:

When you're at level two, you should be making some decisions for yourself, your team and for the organization. And making some decisions, versus making all decisions, probably feels better not better, but safer than anything else being any place else inside the organization. So this is where we get stuck. We also get stuck again because of what I said at the top, which is there are a lot more manager roles inside any organization than there are executive roles or senior leader roles. So by default, everybody who is here at level two cannot get to that executive level. That's a pure numbers game, right? It's numbers. And then obviously it's also experience and capability right. But even if everybody had the same level of capability, which we don't right. The way you're going to distinguish yourself is through your capabilities, but let's just assume, let's assume that we all had the same level of capabilities. There's only if there's four of us here, only one of us. There's only one executive role, and all four of us are not going to get that one executive role. So the competition gets steeper for us when we get to level two.

Speaker 1:

That's why this level is such an important level. It's not because it's the first thing that we think about when we, when we think about, when we hear the word leadership, leading teams, right, leading that's what the first thing we think about. It's not because of that. It's because this is where most of us initially aspire to be. Two, it's also where most of us get real comfortable. Two, it's also where most of us get real comfortable right. This is when you got that good job and you know you're making a decent salary. You don't feel. You feel like you worked and you achieved something, maybe more than what other people in your family and your friends have achieved. That's what we get here. And the third reason we get stuck here is because it's a pure numbers game that the amount of people or amount of manager slash director roles in any organization is going to be much more than the senior level, senior leader and or executive roles. Okay, so, if you're just joining, we are talking about the three levels of leadership and the three levels of leadership. The reason why we're talking about this is because you can use it as a we should all be using it as a diagnostic tool to answer the question for us, for yourself why are you really not getting promoted into that leadership role that you want?

Speaker 1:

The first level of leadership self-leadership. That's when we're talking about self-awareness. We're talking about emotional regulation, strategic thinking, decision-making capability, managing your time, managing your energy, having a personal brand. All of that is self-leadership. That is the first level. It is central to this, central to you being a leader of any kind. You got to master that first. The second level, right, is leading teams. Now, leading teams is that level where, like I said, that's the immediate thing that we think of when we hear the word leader or manager. We think leading teams, and leading teams.

Speaker 1:

That's all about developing other people, building a high-performing team. It's about creating psychological safety for other people, people that you're responsible for. It's about creating an inclusive environment, managing performance, having difficult conversations, delegating right, building succession plans. That is all level two, right? So my question to you would be are you doing those things? Which of those things are you not doing? Are you developing others? Are you building high-performing teams? Are you creating psychological safety? Are you managing performance? Are you delegating effectively? Are you building succession plans? That is extremely important. All of those are factors to be able to say I mastered that level. I mastered level two, and everyone is seeing me master level two, which makes me an ideal candidate to go to level three, right.

Speaker 1:

So level three and this is one I'm telling you right now I struggled with level three. I don't think I've met a leader yet, frankly, who, or an executive yet, who has not struggled in some shape, form or fashion in getting to level three. So level three is organization. Listen, don't sit here talking about my handwriting, I know it's bad. Okay. Level three is organization, right.

Speaker 1:

And that is again leading across the organization. Now, that's the one that he talks about. I didn't learn about it in grad school. I didn't learn it in college. I didn't learn it. I didn't even realize I needed to be doing it until I don't know, maybe like year 10 in my career and I'm at year 30 right now. Okay, so, leading across the organization.

Speaker 1:

Leading across the organization, let's talk about what that is. You may have heard about leading self, farron. You may have heard about leading self, I know for sure. You heard about leading teams, right? So I know you heard about level two, but level three, leading across the organization, not leading an organization. Leading across the organization. This is that senior leadership capability. This is the executive level thought processes, how you show up and everything related to it. So let's talk about leading across the organization.

Speaker 1:

Leading across the organization includes activities and skill sets like influencing across different functions. So not just whatever your discipline is. Most of us we only think about having input and say, in our discipline, whatever that discipline is, if you're an electrical engineer and you're on the electrical engineering team, that's where, because you have the subject matter expertise, that's where you're thinking and seeing that you should be contributing. That's a leading teams. That's a level two thought process. When you're trying to operate or get to level three, you need to be thinking about it doesn't matter what your subject matter expertise is. It doesn't matter what you have your certifications or your degrees in, you need to be thinking about going across the organization.

Speaker 1:

So, outside of your specific team or your specific function or discipline area, cross-functional influence is a key aspect of leading across the organization. Right, that? And managing stakeholders. Now, if you're not familiar with the term managing stakeholders, it's basically that because you as a person, or as a person responsible for a team, you don't operate in a solo. What you do, what you contribute to the organization, it impacts other teams, other departments around you, and when you are needing to manage a decision, make a decision, or you need to get additional resources maybe you need more budget dollars.

Speaker 1:

Whatever it is, whatever you need to accomplish inside your organization, 99% of the time you are going to need other people around you to get it done, other people outside of your team to get it done, and that is those people outside of your team. Those are your stakeholders. Those are people who give a damn about the decision that you're actually trying to make, and you want to be able to manage those individuals. You want to be able to and when I say manage, not like oversee their work, but you want to be able to understand what they need from you. You need to understand why they need it. You need to understand what's important to them, because how you make the decision that you're trying to make is going to impact them.

Speaker 1:

Ok, so, stakeholder management, influencing outside of your team those are leading across the organization qualities, traits, skill sets that are necessary when you want to get promoted to senior leadership and or the executive level. Other things that you need to be demonstrating and you're. If you're someone who's looking to move up into senior leadership, you can bet that people are watching to see if you have these qualities Enterprise-wide thinking right and or strategically thinking. So one of the things that I tell my clients all the time is you have to, you cannot own, you cannot work with blinders on.

Speaker 1:

When you're a Black female who wants to move up into, wants to advance your career, what people want to see is that you understand the broader context of what you're working, where you're working. They want they want to make sure that you can see and understand how your work contributes to the bigger picture. I don't care if you work in the basement in a customer service think tank, I don't care where you work. You can work in HR finance product, you can work in sales, it doesn't matter. But what you are going to need to demonstrate if you want to move up, if you want other people to endorse you moving up in your company, is that you understand how what you do on a day to day basis contributes to the overall goal of the company, not just to your team and to your department, so that enterprise-wide thinking is truly that it is you are. When you become an executive, one of the things that they're going your responsibilities is you're going to have to be able to help other executives make the best decisions for the company, and the only way you can do that is if you understand how the business works and how you and your responsibilities contribute to the whole. Whatever you're responsible for, it is just a sliver of what the company is responsible for, of what the company is responsible for right, unless you're the CEO, and even the CEO, who has ultimately responsible for everything, his or her expertise is a piecemeal of what's happening in the overall company. So when you're thinking about how come I'm not getting promoted to that senior leader role, it might be because you're not demonstrating, you have not sufficiently shown that you can think at the enterprise level. You might be a master at what you're currently doing, but you haven't shown that you can come out of that silo and make an impact and think differently outside of it. Okay, so that's enterprise-wide thinking. Other skill sets at the leading across the organizational level, building coalitions, right Building relationships, strong working relationships with people that you may have nothing in common with right I don't have hardly anything in common with, let's see.

Speaker 1:

So my background is in human. My background is, my background is in human resources. I don't have, I don't know nothing about finance Not a thing, not a thing. But in every organization that I've worked in, finance and HR have been hand in hand. Why? Obviously because when you think about the people aspect, there's a lot of financial. When you're, when you have an employee base, there are a lot of other financial things that are related payroll, bonuses, equity, all of that stuff, right. So HR and finance in most companies have to work together, right? In some companies they're actually together, they're in the same department. So I don't know anything about finance. So what does that mean? I know that because, as an HR person, my responsibilities will impact employees very similarly to the finance team. I got to know that. I got to have to build strong relationships with that finance team. I need to be able to talk to them about anything. I got to be able to problem solve with them by my side, right? So building coalitions is actually basically building strong relationships within your company, even when you got nothing in common with the people except the end goal, except the results that you're trying to create, right? Okay, so building coalitions is a leading across the organization quality skillset. Managing competing priorities, that's another executive senior leadership skillset.

Speaker 1:

Representing the company externally. That is usually a very important executive or senior leadership role, right, and that is a quality in terms of leading across the organization. Now, as an introvert, I'm going to tell you right now I hate that I don't even like to be on stage inside the company, but what I had to learn to do was I had to learn to represent the company in my own way outside. And that could look like, for example, you being on podcast In this day and age. It could be you being on podcast, but you're not representing yourself. I'm not representing Nicole Bryant, I'm representing the company that I work for. Or it could be you being interviewed by a news station or somebody else. Or it could be you going to a conference, and when you go to a conference, obviously you, physically, are showing up, but the people that you meet, you are representing the company. Or it could be you being a keynote speaker on a stage. Again, your name is associated with it, but you are so-and-so from X company. That is really important because, as an executive, as a senior leader, part of your responsibilities is not just representing yourself, it is representing the company, right. So that's another aspect.

Speaker 1:

So this leading across the organization, what I want you to think about when you're asking yourself, why the hell am I not getting promoted, why do I keep getting passed over for those senior level executive roles? Why am I not becoming a VP, a senior VP, an executive VP? I want you to ask yourself where, in this whole scheme, are you truly operating on a day-to-day basis? Are you operating at level one, in terms of leading yourself? Are there aspects of level one that you have not mastered yet? Are you operating at level two, primarily, with maybe some level ones that you haven't mastered but you're feeling really good about where you are here. Or are you operating at the organizational level?

Speaker 1:

And I'm going to take a bet, and not because I know you so well, but because, out of all the women that I work with, the honor to work with, all the women that I coach, all the women I mentor. Even myself, I didn't even know this level existed. I didn't know it existed. And when I didn't understand that it existed, then I was like that's a complicated level that takes a whole nother level of energy. That takes a whole nother level of leadership. And so, if that's what I'm experiencing and if that's what I've seen time and time and time again out of the hundreds of women that I've been able to work with, I'm going to take a bet that you're experiencing something similar. And this do not beat yourself up. Like I said, I didn't even know it existed myself for decades, right, but it exists.

Speaker 1:

And so, when you're trying to make the leap from middle manager to senior leader, to executive, those are the things that you have to demonstrate. Those are the things that you have to master. You have to master the cross-functional influence without having direct responsibility for things. You have to master being able to get a decision made even though you're not the decision holder, you're not the final decision maker, right. You have to master managing others across the enterprise, people who don't report into you. You've got to be able to influence those individuals. You've got to master building strong relationships with people you have absolutely nothing in common with and, frankly, you would want to walk by them on the street. You don't even care about these people technically, but they hold something that you need, and so building a strong relationship with them is really smart and it's going to help you get your job done faster, more efficiently, more effectively, right? So all of that is what I wanted to talk to you about today.

Speaker 1:

Three levels of leadership Level one, leading yourself. Level two, leading teams. Level three, leading across the organization. And I really want you to be honest with yourself and ask the question where am I operating? Where am I currently operating? And then I want you to ask the question. Once you answer that honestly, then I want you to look at and think about what I talked about at each of the levels and where is it that you need to get better? Where is it that you need to lean in? Where is it that you need to close the gap between what you want and what you're showing to other people on a day-to-day basis and what you're showing to other people on a day-to-day basis? That, my friends, is how you will move from where you currently are to the senior leadership and or executive level. Okay, here's what I don't want you to do, and I've seen it time and time again and it frustrates the hell out of me and I know it's frustrating the hell out of you. I don't want you to fall into becoming the indispensable team leader or team manager or or supervisor or even director.

Speaker 1:

Right, so many of us, particularly as Black people, we know how to work hard, working hard. It runs in our veins. Right, it pumps through. We know how to do that. Nobody has to tell us how to do that. We know how to do that. We also know how not to work hard, but by default we go to working hard. Okay, so that's what we're going to do regardless. That is fantastic. But some of us work so hard and work so well, do our jobs so well, that the people around us see us as indispensable, and normally you would think you know what. That's a good thing. I want to. I want them to want me Totally makes sense.

Speaker 1:

The problem becomes when they think you're so indispensable or they want you to be in that role. So bad at that, at that team, at that leading the number, level two or you know, being a supervisor, a manager or a director. They want you in that role. You're so indispensable, right? What happens is you get stuck there. You easily get stuck there. Why? Because if they moved you and by they I mean it could be your boss or, you know, the company If they chose to move you and allowed you to move up in your career inside the organization, then who the hell is going to do that job? Like they won't have, the person that they need, the best person to do that job, from their perspective, is you, because you've made yourself indispensable and they want you to stay there, right.

Speaker 1:

So what I've seen is so many of us work so hard, we do our job so well. We love the, you know, we love the ego boost that we get when we feel like, yeah, we're, we're getting, we're knocking out the park, we're getting fives out of fives on on on our performance reviews. Right, we are like, yeah, we're getting all the kudos, we're getting the great feedback. Everybody loves us. Okay, great, everybody loves us. That's why you ain't moving, because they love you so much. They don't want you to go anywhere, because if you left, if you moved, if you went to some other role. Who the hell going to do the job and the current job? And no one's going to do it as good as you because you've made yourself so indispensable.

Speaker 1:

That is what I call the indispensable team leader trap. We get trapped there and we we do it mostly to ourselves. Organizations will do it too, they will hold us there, but we do it to ourselves because it feels good, it makes us, our egos, feel we want to be wanted, we want to be wanted, and that's what happens, right? So the truth of the matter is, when we fall in that indispensable team leader trap, it's a comfort zone for us. It's a comfort zone because we know who we're dealing with on a day to day basis. We know how to do that job and we know how to do that job very well. It also, you know we don't necessarily have to delegate the responsibilities right, because we, that it's ours, that role is ours, like we are queens and Kings of that role, and so that's a trap that I will just warn you about and ask you to ask yourself is that you have you made yourself so indispensable that, even though you have aspirations to do bigger and better things that the people around you don't want to let you go. Right? That's a question to ask yourself. Okay, so that's what I wanted to say. I'm thinking in my mind. I'm like is there anything else I want to leave you guys with? That is it. I'll say it.

Speaker 1:

One of us find ourselves in situations where we're not moving up in our careers or we're not getting the roles that we actually want and most times those roles are more senior than the one that we currently have but we can't, for the life of us, figure out why that's happening. Up until now in our careers, we've been knocking it out the park. We've been getting to where we need to get right, but all of a sudden, there's no movement in our careers. We've reached what will be a middle manager level and we're not advancing as quickly as we used to. We're not getting all the great feedback that we once did. So what the hell has changed? You're still doing the same thing. So why is it different?

Speaker 1:

And what I'm saying to you is, instead of scratching your head, I want you to use the three leader diagnostic tool, the three leader level diagnostic tool. Right, and it's not rocket science, it's really simple, and the reason why I've made it this simple is because everything else in our lives and our careers can be extra complicated. We don't need anything else that's complicated. What you need to understand is that there are three different levels of leadership in any organization any organization, right, even those who own their own business, if they have people working for them. There's three levels of leadership, okay, and when you think about the three levels of leadership, if you're trying to figure out why, what's the specific thing or things that are keeping me from getting to that next level of leadership that I want to get to, this is the tool. This simple tool will help you figure it out.

Speaker 1:

The three levels of leadership self-leadership, leading teams. Level two Organizing leading across the organization is level three. Ideally, you should be moving from what we should master one level before you move to the next. So you should master self-leadership right. Self-leadership right, and self-leadership again, are things like self-control, self-awareness, emotional regulation, strategic thinking, decision-making, exhibiting your personal brand, having a presence, time management. That's self-leadership. Some of us never master self-leadership, but if you're trying to take your career as far as you can take it, you need to master self-leadership.

Speaker 1:

When you master self-leadership, the next step is level two, which is leading teams. Leading teams is the number one thing that we think of when we hear leader. We think of someone who supervises or has direct management over other people, a team, et cetera, a department. Leading teams requires different leadership skills than what you would find in terms of leaders leading self. You can lead. You cannot leave the leading yourself skills behind. They come with you into level two, right they? Level two builds upon level one and with leading teams, there are new skills and capabilities, right? Skills like developing other people, building a high-performing team, creating psychological safety, creating inclusive environments, managing performance, having difficult conversations, delegating effectively, building succession plans. That's what's happening at level two. So level two is the combination of what happens at level one, when you're leading yourself and you take on the responsibilities of leading others.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you should be asking yourself do I have all of those traits and qualities that we talked about in terms of level one? Which ones am I missing? Whichever you're missing, you need to work on those. Then you move into level two. Which ones of those leading team traits do I have? Skill sets? Am I good at what? And you can't listen, don't also be like, yeah, I'm good at it.

Speaker 1:

What's the evidence that you're good at it. It can't just be your opinion. What's the evidence that you're good at it? It can't just be your opinion. Who has told you that you're really, really, really good, as you have great self-awareness? Level one who has said to you that you are? Your personal brand is stellar? Level one you can't just think it because we think we great, we are from our perspectives, we are great, but we're not the ones who hold the power to help you get promoted. That's the organization. Those are the people around you, so they also have to think that you're great, right.

Speaker 1:

So what is the evidence? Move from level one to level two. Level two you're leading teams. These are things like I said developing others, building high performance teams, et cetera. What is the evidence that you are great at developing others? Do the people that you lead? Do they leave and go to other teams? Do they do? They do great work? Like right? Do they tell you? Do your directs tell you that, yes, you are a great leader? Do your directs tell you that, yes, you are a great leader? You are great at managing performance? Do they give you that feedback? Or is like? Mom is the word? Do you delegate effectively, right? What is the evidence that you delegate effectively. Those are the questions that you need to start asking yourself. So that's level one. Level one, managing yourself. Level two excuse me, leading teams. And then level three, the one that I didn't know about for a very long time leading across the organization.

Speaker 1:

Again, not leading an organization. Leading across an organization, right, and those are things like influencing other people who you don't have direct management relationships with stakeholder management, demonstrating enterprise-wide thinking, having a strategic perspective, building relationships and coalitions outside of your expertise and your discipline, representing the company externally, thought leadership all of these things leading across the organization. So, if you're someone who keeps getting overlooked or keeps getting bypassed, or that senior level role VP, senior VP, executive, vp, chief chief, whatever those are the things, that those are the qualities, those are the skillsets that you need to be asking yourself do I have these? Do I have influence across this organization? Do people give a damn about what I say? Can I make, help, influence decisions, even though I don't hold the final decision-making authority? Do I demonstrate that I understand how this entire business works and how my one sliver impacts that? These are the questions that you need to be asking yourself. And if you don't do those things that we talked about. I talked about like maybe eight or nine things at leading across the organization. If you're not doing five or more of those things to not just your satisfaction but to those around you satisfaction, if you're not getting that feedback, if you don't have the data to demonstrate that you're doing all those things, then I'm sorry you're not doing it. Oh yeah, you're not doing it enough for people to be able to associate your name with those qualities and skill sets.

Speaker 1:

I've lived this model throughout my 30 year career. I've lived this model myself and I've been able to replicate it and use it to help all of my clients get their leadership promotions. So when I tell you it works, it works Okay. When I tell you you need to use it, use it. It will only benefit you.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't matter what level of the organization you are currently in. It doesn't matter what your current role is. It doesn't even matter where you ultimately want to go and take your career. This model is neutral. It applies in every work environment and it applies to every role that you want to get promoted to. This is it Okay? All right, that's a wrap for this episode of Leading Her Way. Thanks for tuning in. If you have thoughts, questions or ideas for future topics, connect and send me a message on LinkedIn and if you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe. And please take a minute to write a quick review on Apple Podcasts. Your review will help spread the word to other ambitious females so they know they're not alone and that this podcast is a community of support for all of us leading her way to the top. Remember your leadership is needed, your leadership is powerful, so lead boldly Until next time.