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

114: Why You're Wrong When You Say You Don't Want To Be An Executive As A Quiet Black Woman

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 114

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Stop letting misconceptions about executive life limit your career. This episode reveals why talented Black introverted women reject executive leadership based on incomplete information and what executive life actually looks like for leaders who do it differently.  Learn why the stressed-out executives you see aren't the only option and how you can lead with balance, boundaries, and authentic power while building generational wealth. 


Inside From Invisible To In-Demand, I'll teach you the exclusive strategy that gets Black introverted women promoted to the executive level in 5 months or less.  Save your seat here.



SPEAKER_00:

I don't want to be an executive. They all seem so miserable. Every once in a while, when I tell someone what I do and who I support, I hear this from a talented black introverted woman. And I get it. The executives you see are stressed out, always working, no work-life balance. But here's what I need you to understand the executives you see aren't the only kind that actually exists. So in this episode, I'm breaking down why you think you don't want executive leadership, why those perceptions are based on incomplete information, what executive life actually looks like when you do it your way, and the real comparison between W 2 executive roles and entrepreneurship. Spoiler, the grass isn't always greener. So if you've been limiting yourself based on what you think executive life has to be, then today's episode is for you. Hi, I'm Dr. Nicole, and I help ambitious Black introverted women leaders solve three critical problems. The first is getting promoted to executive leadership in six months or less, even if you've been stuck in your role for years. The second is closing the director to executive skill gap so you can lead with confidence, executive presence, and strategic thinking at that next level. And the third is successfully leading your new team or department, from establishing credibility to building high-performing teams that deliver results. Okay, so I don't want to be an executive. Like I said, I hear this from talented Black introverted women from time to time. And when I ask why, the answer is always some version of executives are always stressed. Executives work 80-hour weeks, they have no life, they're always on call, they seem miserable. So you look at executives at your company and you think, if that's what it takes, I don't want any of that. And I completely understand that reactions. The executives you see are often stressed, overworked, or always on. But here's what I need you to understand. The executives you see are not the only kind that exists. You might be making major career decisions based on incomplete information. And today I'm going to challenge what you think you know about executive life, not to pressure you into wanting something you don't want, but to make sure you're making an informed choice, not one based on myths. So the visible executives at your company, they are sending emails at 11 p.m. They're in back-to-back meetings all day. Maybe they're on calls during their vacation and they're missing their kids' school events. Maybe they look exhausted in every single meeting. And perhaps they're always talking about how busy they are. Now, these are the executives who are visible to you. They're performing their stress, they're making their work visible, and they are always on in ways that you can see. But there are things that you're not seeing. The executives with balance and boundaries, they're not performing their stress. They're not bragging about working weekends, they're not sending emails at midnight to prove that they're working, and they're not visible in the same way. You literally cannot see them because they have set healthy boundaries. They leave at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. They take real vacations and they protect their time and their energy. The critical mistake that we make is that we think we see or what we see is what actually is. We think that's the only way to be an executive because that's our experience. We assume the stressed out executives are stressed because they're executives. When actually they're stressed because they haven't learned to set boundaries. And likely when they were a manager, a director, an assistant vice president, they were doing the same things. They were always stressed because that's who they are. So it's not about the role, but it's about who they are in the role. So let me tell you a little bit, a little story. I had a client who, at one time in her history, had turned down an executive opportunity. And it was the first executive opportunity she was offered. So she was a director, and the role that they were offering her was a vice president. She turned it down, and everybody around her was shocked. But she turned it down because she had looked at the three executives who she worked most closely with at her company, and she thought, that looks miserable, and I don't want anything to do with it. All three of the executives that she was able to see on a day-to-day basis were constantly stressed. They were working all the time and they were always complaining. So she decided, I do not want to be like them. Now, what she learned later was that there were two other executives at her same company who worked 40-hour weeks, who took five-week vacations, and had full complete lives outside of work. But the problem was that she did not interact with those executives on a day-to-day basis. She never saw them because they weren't performing their stress. She later told me that she regretted the decision she made because she made her decision based on incomplete information. She said no to an opportunity that could have changed her entire life at the time. So the lesson here is don't base your decision on biased information or a biased sample. Make sure you collect all the data that you possibly can so you can make an informed decision for yourself. Now, my story about becoming an executive, I did not follow the traditional path. And I'm very proud of the fact that I didn't follow the traditional path. Nor did I, once I landed my executive role and in any of my executive roles, because I've worked for three different Fortune 500 companies as an executive. I've worked in the nonprofit sector as an executive, and I've worked in startup organizations as an executive. But in none of those roles did I allow myself to stress myself in or out of a job, right? So I have, for example, worked four-day work weeks. I used to take Mondays off, actually, in the last two full-time roles, when I worked for T Row Price and when I worked for Med Star Health, I didn't work on Mondays. I didn't check my emails at all hours of the night or on the weekends unless I actually wanted to. What was different is that I didn't let the demands of the organization or other people's demands shift what I needed to do to fulfill the role. It's not required that you work 80, 90, 100 hours a week to be an executive. It's not required. Even in some cultures, some organizations' cultures do actually applaud that. It rewards when people are constantly on. But I've worked in those organizations myself and I still set boundaries and was still extremely successful. So just because the people around you or the organization seems to want that doesn't mean that you have to play that game. I had time to run my own private psychology practice while I was a full-time executive. So I also had hobbies. I saw my family. I spent time with my family. I had time to fall in love, build a relationship, put together a household, raise two children. I had a full life. Now you might be thinking, how is this possible? It's possible because at the executive level, you actually have more control. You have more control, not less. So what middle managers don't have is they don't usually have control over their schedule. You are literally at the mercy of other people's calendars when you are a middle manager. You don't have the ability to delegate effectively. Frankly, you don't have enough resources on your team to delegate to, which means that a lot of the work falls on you to get done. When you're a middle manager, you don't have a lot of negotiating power. You're not at the decision-making level, you're at the execution level. And when you're a middle manager, you don't have the autonomy to design your role the way you see fit because someone else has designed it for you. It's different when you move into executive roles because when you're an executive, you do have control over your schedule. You get to decide what meetings are priorities. Will there be meetings where you don't have that decision-making authority? Yes, but that happens less often than not. When you're an executive, you have resources that you can delegate. You have a whole team, you have a whole department, sometimes you have a whole division and you can hire support. When you're an executive, you do have negotiating power. You can negotiate flexibility, which is what I did. You can negotiate remote work, which is what I did. You can set boundaries, which is what I did, and what I coach my leaders, my clients, to do for themselves. And when you're an executive, you can create autonomy to design your role the way you want it because you are making the rules. The irony here is that you might think executive life means less control when in actuality it means more control. Middle managers, they execute someone else's plan. When you're a middle manager, you're on someone else's timeline. You don't have control over the work and when it gets done. You're constantly reacting, not creating, and you are literally at the mercy of other people's priorities. When you're an executive, which is what I love about being an executive, you create the plan, you set the timeline, you decide how work gets done, you design the role, and you set the priorities. I have to say that I luckily have a very strong network of other executive-level peers. And inside my network, I am interacting with executives who work fully remote from other countries. I'm working with executives who leave at 5 p.m. every day to coach their daughter's soccer team. I'm working with an executive who takes six weeks of vacation every year without having to dial in or be available to the company. I'm working with executives who work four days a week and spend Fridays rock climbing. I'm working with executives who negotiate no travel policy when she took the role. They exist, but you may not see them from the seat that you're sitting in today. Why? Because they're not performing their stress. They are outliving their lives. The miserable executives aren't miserable because they are executives. They're miserable because they never learned to set boundaries. They're miserable because they didn't delegate effectively. They're miserable because they don't protect their energy. They're miserable because they haven't designed their role strategically. That is not a requirement of the position. That is a failure of their strategy. Now, what you're seeing on social media, I want to talk about entrepreneurship because one of the things that I recently had a conversation with a young lady, and she was saying, you know what? I think that I want to be an entrepreneur. And I was like, Great, tell me why. Now, this young lady was a senior manager in a Fortune 500 company. And I was like, tell me more. Like, what do you want to do? What are you interested in becoming? Like, what is it about entrepreneurship that really attracts you? So she started saying all of these things and describing entrepreneurship in a way that as someone who is currently in entrepreneurship, myself, and I've had previous or prior entrepreneurship ventures, I'm listening to her and I'm thinking, that's not the way it is at all. So you yourself, you might be seeing what entrepreneurs entrepreneurship looks like on social media, and you might be thinking, huh, that looks really good. Because there's all this fantasy that is presented out in the media about what entrepreneurship is and what it can do for you. So you're hearing and seeing the fantasy of, you know, quit your nine to five, be your own boss, build your empire, live the digital nomad life, get passive income, have freedom, freedom of time, freedom of energy, freedom of money, work from a beach in Bali. That's what we're seeing and hearing all over social media right now about entrepreneurship. And I get the appeal, particularly in today's economy where you are already feeling threatened. You're like, you know what? How can I just get out there? How can I do something different? So I get the appeal. And it looks amazing on Instagram. But let me tell you some truths. As someone who has done both, I've been a W-2 executive and I've run my own business. And here's what they don't tell you about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, your income can be inconsistent. You have feast or famine months. There's no guaranteed paycheck. It takes years to build executive level salary if you do that at all. Because if you look at the data, the average entrepreneur is making less than 100K a year. And that's only if the entrepreneurial venture actually succeeds, because 60, 70% of entrepreneurial ventures don't even make it beyond the five-year mark. But nobody talks about that. In terms of benefits, you have to pay for your own health insurance, which can range anywhere from$400 to$2,000 a month, depending on where you live, what type of benefits you want to get. There's no employer retirement match, there's no stock options, there's no paid time off. When you take time off, you're usually losing income. And then let's not talk about the workload. Everybody thinks about okay, if I become an entrepreneur, I can work less. No, no, no. If you ask any semi-successful entrepreneur, they will tell you that they usually work harder and longer than they did in their W-2. It's just that they're working now for themselves versus working for an employer. Your workload, when you become an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, you are the business. It does not run without you. So you wear all the hats. You're the CEO, you're the accountant or bookkeeper, you're the marketer, you're the salesperson, you're the tech support, you're customer service, you're doing all the things. And you're usually doing it solo. So that means that you're working in isolation. You don't necessarily have a team or colleagues to brainstorm with. I already mentioned that the timeline for building a successful company, a successful business, it takes three to five years. And frankly, that's on the generous side. Most businesses, like I mentioned, fail in the first five years. So it's hard and it is uncertain. Now, when you're a W-2 executive, things are a little different, right? So let's compare. When you're a WW-2 executive, you're usually earning a consistent salary anywhere between 300K to 600K. And that's just salary. That's not even including benefits. But you do get full benefits, your health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, all of those things. You obviously get retirement match, which means that the company is giving you additional money. And you are getting stock options and equity if you're working for a company who has stock options. You get bonuses. And if you are laid off from your organization as an executive, you get severance. You also get the benefit of working with other people, not working alone. So you have a large team or a department. You have resources available to you, resources in the form of a budget, staff, technology. You are working with infrastructure that's in place. You have legal colleagues, you have finance colleagues, you have HR. All of that is handled for you so you don't have to wear all the hats yourself. And you even, in most cases, get professional development budgets. So you get money in order to develop yourself and improve yourself as a leader. Now, when it comes to time as an executive, you do get paid time off. Most companies offer unlimited PTO to their executives. Whether you take that or not, it's up to you. But you can take vacations and the business will still run. You can put in place your own work-life boundaries. You can log off in the evenings. You cannot log on during the weekends. And if you're in that stage of life, you also get leaves of absence for maternity or paternity. Your career, when you are an executive, you have a built-in career ladder. You have networking opportunities, you have relationships, you have all of these things, and you get industry credibility. Now, I want to say that I am not saying that entrepreneurship is bad. Hell, I am an entrepreneur. So I'm definitely not saying that it is bad. But I do want to be clear that I love aspects of my business. Entrepreneurship has been incredibly, incredibly rewarding. And for some people, it is absolutely the right path. So I'm not saying that it's bad, but what I am saying is don't fall victim to trying to romanticize. Entrepreneurship and villainize corporate. Don't fall victim to poo-pooing what having a W-2 job as an executive can be like and do for you. Both have pros and cons. Just make an informed choice, but not based on what social media fantasizes for you. The question that you need to ask yourself is if you're already excelling in your corporate role, if you're already excelling in your nonprofit, in your W-2, if you're already good at navigating organizations, if you're positioned for executive leadership, why would you leave all that behind to start from scratch? Why not leverage what you've already built to become an executive, making 300, 400, 500, 600K with a team, resources, benefits, and the power to create change. That is not settling from my vantage point. That is being smart and it's being strategic. And it's taking on the fastest path that's going to get you to your own personal and professional goals. Just because the executives you see are stressed and miserable doesn't mean that you have to be. You can be a different kind of executive. You can be an executive who leaves at 5 p.m. without guilt. You can be an executive who works from anywhere if that's what the organization you choose to align yourself supports. You can be an executive who prioritizes rest and boundaries. You can be an executive who leads with quiet authority, not loud, gregarious performance. You can be an executive who changes the culture instead of conforms to it. And you can be an executive who builds wealth and protects peace. You can be the executive who makes decisions strategically and not reactively. And you can be an executive who models sustainable leadership. When you see executives who are miserable, trust me, it is not the role. It's their approach to the role. They never learn to set boundaries, they never learn to delegate effectively, they never learn to protect their energy, and they replicated what they likely saw instead of designing what they actually needed. So that is not a requirement of the role. It's a choice that they make. And you, my friend, can make a totally different choice. Here's the bigger picture. Corporate culture won't change if all the stressed-out executives stay and all the boundary set-setting leaders leave. We need more executives who model how to be great leaders, who show that you can be powerful and you can be balanced, who change what executive leadership looks like and who create space for others to lead differently. That could be you. And it is definitely all of the clients that I work with. So when you say, I don't want to be an executive, there are things that you are saying no to. There are things that you are literally leaving on the table. You're leaving behind the big salary, right? The$300 to$600,000 salary versus maybe$150,000 as a director. You're leaving behind equity and stock options, which are keys to building your wealth, wealth for yourself and for your family. You're leaving behind the ability to build generational wealth for yourself and your family. You're leaving behind the power to create real change inside your organization and inside your industry. You're leaving behind resources to do meaningful, high-impact work. And you're leaving behind the ability to influence your organization's strategic direction. I'm not saying you have to want all of these things, but again, make sure you're making an informed choice, not a decision based on fear or incomplete information, because that's a lot to leave on the table based on what you think executive life has to be versus what executive life you can make it be. This Christmas, I want you to sit with this question. What if you can be an executive on your terms? What if you could have the power, the salary, the influence, the impact, and simultaneously have the balance, the boundaries, the peace, and the life that you've always dreamt of? What if the only thing standing between you and that is your perception of what executive life has to be? What would you do differently if you knew that was possible? That is exactly what I help my clients do. I don't teach you to become the stressed-out executives that you see. I teach you to become the strategic, powerful, balanced executive you didn't even know existed, the one who leads her way and not someone else's way. Now, if this shifted something for you, lady leader, if you're thinking now, wait, maybe I do want this if I can do it my way, then I want you to join me on January 14th for my training from Invisible to Invincible, how black introverted women get promoted to executive leadership in five months or less. I'm breaking down my pivot formula, which is how to get promoted, my aura model, which is how to lead as an introvert and build your leadership brand. I'm also sharing the frameworks for getting promoted and designing executive life on your terms. I'm also going to be talking about how to position yourself strategically and how to build visibility without burning out. Registration for the training opens this week and you can sign up at services.com forward slash execpromotion. That's services.thechangedoc.com forward slash execpromotion. The link is also in the show notes. This is for you if you're starting to think, maybe I do want this. I just want to do it differently. And you're tired of limiting yourself based on what you think it has to be, and you're ready to see what's actually possible. Mark your calendar January 14th at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Here's the truth: you don't have to want executive leadership. That is a valid choice. But make sure it's your choice, not a decision based on incomplete information, not a decision based on fear, not a decision based on stressed-out executives you happen to see on a day-to-day basis. The executives that you see aren't the only kind that exists. You can be different, and different is exactly what your organization needs. Merry Christmas, lady leader. Enjoy your time with your family and your friends. Next week, we're talking about how to get your executive promotion in today's economy and why internal positioning is smarter than job searching right now. Until then, I'm just reminding you that the future of leadership is introduced, it's black, and it's female. So keep leading your introvert way.