145: Ask Dr. Nicole: Leadership Without the Rank — Or the Raise

In the launch episode of a new recurring segment, Ask Dr. Nicole, Dr. Nicole Bryan responds — in her own voice, directly — to a listener she calls D, a woman serving in the military whose actual voice note opens the episode. D's question: leadership positions are often reserved for higher-ranking officers regardless of who's most qualified, and taking on additional leadership responsibility comes with no additional compensation. So how does a capable, junior-ranked woman leader decide how to move? 

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Transcript

A Listener’s Military Leadership Question

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, lady leader. So I want to start today's episode a little differently. A listener sent me a voice note, and I'm not going to try to paraphrase it for you. I want you to hear it exactly the way that she said it. I'm going to call her D, and she didn't ask necessarily to keep her name confidential, but since she didn't say one way or the other, that's what I'm going to do, right? Just to respect her and her privacy. But I do want you to hear her voice because there's something in how she says this and asks her question that you won't get from me trying to summarize it. Okay, so here is D.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So I am in the military and majority of the leadership positions are often reserved for higher ranking officers, even though a lower ranking officer may be more qualified. And the other aspects that leadership impacts is there is no compensation from a financial uh aspect when it comes to taking on more leadership positions. So how would you recommend a woman leader who recognizes their ability to make an impact to improve an organization but is junior in rank and also would not be financially compensated for taking on the additional okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

So, D, first of all, thank you for trusting me with your question. You just heard it, right, listeners. Uh leadership positions reserved for rank, regardless of who's actually qualified. And when she does take on leadership, more leadership work, nothing extra for it. She doesn't get anything extra for it. Not a title, not a dollar. This is the first episode of a new recurring segment on the show called Ask Dr. Nicole. Actually, that's a little bit of a little bit of a lie. It's not new. I did something like this. If you've been rolling with me and writing and listening to this show from the beginning, the first year, we're in year three now. So the first year I did uh ask Dr. Nicole segment as well. Uh, but I have been away from that for quite some time. And in the last month, I've gotten a couple of questions, which means to me that many of you listening have questions. So I am reinstating this ask Dr. Nicole segment. So if you've got a question of your own, I want to hear it in your own voice, the same way that D just did. And I'll tell you exactly how to submit your question at the end of the episode. So for now, D, this one is for you. Let's get into it.

The System Problem Behind Rank

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Now let's start with what's real, because I'm not gonna minimize either half of what D just described. In a rank-based system, qualification and authority are not the same thing. You can be the most capable person in the room and still not be the person with the title, because the title is allocated by seniority, not by merit. That is not a mindset problem for you to fix. That's the architecture of the system. It is the way it is set up. And the second part, having no compensation for additional leadership duties, that's not a small detail. That's a system asking for leadership or executive level output while paying rank level wages. Too much leadership advice tells women today to absorb that quietly and call it growth. But I'm not gonna do that. So here's what I want to be precise about. Rank controls the title. Compensation is a separate lever entirely, and it's tied to policy and structure. And in a system like the military, it often genuinely is fixed in ways a corporate compensation structure is not. But there is a third lever in this equation that neither rank nor pay controls. And it's the one that you actually have full ownership of, no matter what your rank is, it's readiness, it's visibility, it's the evidence trail that gets built before the system is even capable of recognizing you for it. D, that's where I want to spend the rest of this time with you directly. So here's the distinction that I want you to walk away with. Whether you are D or you're listening from somewhere else entirely, it maps onto what I call the execution to executive gap.

The Execution To Executive Gap

SPEAKER_01 5:32

And I've talked about this gap before, but probably not in this way. The execution to executive gap. There is a difference between stepping into leadership work strategically and absorbing leadership work invisibly. Most high achievers default to the second one without realizing that they have another option. And D, I want to talk to you directly for this next part. I want to talk to you about four things, D. Okay.

Four Moves To Build Visible Readiness

SPEAKER_01 6:05

So the first one is if you are already doing the work of leading, then you should be documenting it as leadership, not as a favor, and not just as a part of your regular duties. Every project that you lead, every team that you influence, every decision that you shape, that gets written down in your own words as leadership impact. Not for your file draw, for the conversation that you're eventually going to have about promotion timing or about a role that actually compensates for what you've already proven that you can do. The second thing is I want you to ask the direct, unglamorous question about the actual path forward. Not am I doing a good job? The real question, which is what does the record need to show, and on what timeline for someone with your qualifications to be considered, regardless of when you're technically eligible by rank? That information already exists inside the military. It already exists inside the system. It's just rarely offered. You have to request it. And I already know people, and I'm sure you do as well, Dee, people who have not followed the traditional rank promotions, right? They are maybe seen as the exception to the rule or the exception to the path. There's no reason you can't be the exception to the path, but you have to be able to ask how you can accomplish that or what you need to show and demonstrate who might be able to help you get there. Which leads me to number three: build sponsors who outrank the system's blind spots. Every single rigid hierarchy has senior people who see talent and are frustrated by how slowly the system rewards it. Those are your people, Dee. Not because they can promote you tomorrow, they likely can't, but because they can vouch for your readiness the moment a door opens or the moment a position becomes available and tell you the truth about how the system actually moves, not how it's supposed to move on paper, not how the path is supposed to be followed, but the truth of what happens behind the scenes that you in your current position today don't get to see. You only hear the stories about it secondhand, third hand, fourth hand. But there are people in your organization, in your rank and file, in your leadership who actually do experience those things firsthand and who sees them and who are in some cases making the decisions. And those are the people who need to be your sponsors. The fourth thing I'll say, now this is a boundary. Lead the work. Don't absorb the exploitation, though, right? Strategic leadership without title, it's actually a bridge, D. It's not a permanent arrangement you should accept indefinitely or silently without ever naming the imbalance out loud to the people who can change it. There's a difference between I am building my business case or I'm gonna do this for the next two, three months, and I have quietly agreed to be underpaid for the rest of my career. You D get to decide on a timeline that you set, not one that the system sets for you, how long you're willing to build that case before you ask for it to be resolved formally and out loud. Now, this is the recognized to indispensable move inside my IRISE model. But here's the part most leadership content leaves out. Becoming indispensable only works as a strategy if you eventually make your indispensability visible and costly to lose. Otherwise, it's not a strategy at all. It's just you being quiet and self-sacrificing without getting better branding. So, D, by now you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense. But what should I do or what should I not do? Okay, so practically, here's where I'd have you start.

Three Practical Steps And Your Timeline

SPEAKER_01 10:46

I would make sure that you start a running record today of every piece of leadership work you've carried and that you are carrying that exceeds your current rank. Be specific. Make sure it's dated, make sure you also write down who it impacts, all in your own words. Then what I would want you to do is I would want you to identify one senior officer outside of your direct command who already recognizes that you have impact. And I would want you to have one direct conversation this month with them about what the actual path forward looks like for someone with your qualifications. And then the third thing I would want you to do is set an internal timeline, not a public one, a private one, just for you. A point where I'm building my business case needs to become, I'm asking for this to be resolved. Those are the three steps I would have you take. Start documenting everything, every leadership piece of work that you're doing and have done. Be very, very specific. Then I want you to identify a senior officer outside your chain of command who already recognizes your impact and have a conversation with them about what your path could and should look like, right? What you are qualified to do and how long it's gonna take you to land where you want to land. And then the third thing is set a timeline for yourself. Like make sure you're really clear about this is how long I'm willing to do this. And if it doesn't happen in X time, this is the next step that I'm gonna take for myself. Okay, Dee, again, I want to thank you for sending this question in and for jump starting or re-jump starting this segment. This is exactly why I built Ask Dr. Nicole, right? Because so many of us are going through things, doing things, working our career, and we just have one quick question that we could use an objective piece of advice on from an expert. And that's what I'm here

Applying The Framework Anywhere Plus Submit Yours

SPEAKER_01 13:06

for. So here's what I want everyone else listening to sit with. Dee brought this to me through the lens of the military. But the truth of the matter is this applies to just about every work environment that I have ever worked in or coached inside of, any work environment that I've ever been exposed to. And every environment has a formal structure that decides who gets the title. Every work environment has some version of compensation or compensation gap between what you're actually doing and what you're actually being paid for. And every work environment has that third lever, that lever of readiness, visibility, and the case you build before the system actually catches up. And that lever, that third lever is always yours, regardless of rank, regardless of title, regardless of what your pay grade says today. So I want you to take a minute and think about what that actually looks like in your work environment. I'm confident that you're encountering some version of what Dee described. It may look different, it may feel a little different, but you are experiencing some piece of this too. And everything I just walked Dee through, document the leadership work, ask the direct question about the real path forward, build sponsors who see your readiness, and set your own timeline for when quiet needs to become a direct ask, you can leverage every bit of that where you are too. You might need to adjust the language, right? Or shift it a little bit, but the mechanism doesn't change. Now, if you've got a question of your own, something that you've been sitting with, or something that you want me to think through with you on the air, leave me a voice note at speakpipe.com forward slash leading her way. That's speakpipe.com forward slash leading her way. The link is in the show notes as well. This segment has been reborn because of D. So keep them coming. And I'll see you next episode.