Self-Powered: Understanding the Inner Shift for High-Achieving Women

📖 Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/SelfPowerment-Inner-Shift-High-Achieving-Success/dp/1636989985🌐 Deb's website: https://www.selfpowerment.com/🔗 Connect with Deb: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deb-smallwood/

Most careers look clean from the outside. The promotions, the titles, the wins. But what about the costs? The doubts, the mistakes, the undernourished parts of yourself, your relationships, and your life? This week, Deb Smallwood joins us, a 40-year veteran of technology, strategy, and insurance, and author of Self-Powerment: The Inner Shift for High-Achieving Women. Drawing on decades of career wisdom and groundbreaking research with over 52 senior women and 10 male executives, Deb unpacks the silent struggles, the self-doubt, and the moment she stopped asking for permission and started owning her power.

Deb's journey is anything but linear. From joining Liberty Mutual in 1978 and earning 13 promotions in 19 years, to making partner at KPMG in just 18 months, to rebuilding after 9/11, to founding and selling her own advisory firm, Strategy Meets Action, in 2020, she has lived the full arc of what it means to be a high-achieving woman in corporate America. And she's done the work to understand what it really costs.

Her research will challenge what you think you know. She went in expecting things to be better for women today. What she found was sobering. Discrimination is subtler, the glass ceiling is stickier, and the McKinsey Lean In report says gender parity is still 50 years away. But Deb also found something else: women have more choices than ever, and the real shift starts from within.

This is an honest, warm, and deeply practical conversation about redefining success, reclaiming your identity, and making bold choices, whether that means staying, leaving, or simply deciding to stop proving yourself and start being yourself.

In this episode:

[01:05] Introducing Deb Smallwood, from Liberty Mutual to KPMG partner to thought leader to author[06:06] Empowerment vs. self-powerment and why the difference matters more than you think[08:13] The three-year journey to writing the book, coaches, publishers, and why self-publishing wasn't an option[10:13] What "unfiltered" really means, the dips, the pain, and the stories we never put on our resumes[11:40] The research and what Deb found after interviewing 52 senior women executives[13:36] Why Deb assumed things had gotten easier for women and what the data actually showed[15:41] Subtle discrimination, the ambition gap myth, and why women are exhausted not apathetic[19:12] What the 10 male executives revealed and what was strikingly absent from their stories[21:46] The invisible cycle, self-doubt, overperforming, and why women go inward when men move on[25:30] Flipping the script: from "will they choose me?" to "do I choose this?"[26:54] Inside the self-powerment framework, your power comes from who you are, not what you do[28:30] Hustle culture, identity, and the moment you realise you've lost yourself in your career[32:24] Bold choices, staying, leaving, and two powerful stories of women owning their path[33:42] Why women don't ask for help and why that has to change[35:02] The other side of asking: can we actually receive help when it's offered?[39:14] Where to get the book, the free workbook, and how to access Deb's resources[40:44] Women to watch, Gina Hardy, CEO of NC JUA, and Marissa Buckley