SisterSmart Leadership

Think about the last time you got dressed for something that mattered, like a board presentation or a conference where you knew people would be looking at you.

How long did that take?

For a lot of us it’s twenty minutes standing in the closet, then putting on the same thing we always wear, then feeling a little unsure about it all day.

Basia styles executives for a living. She started out with celebrities and moved to women in leadership during the pandemic, and she’s watched what happens when someone finally gets this sorted out.

She and Jill go through the whole thing here. Colors, fit, where to spend and where not to, and how to work out what your own style actually is.

Tune in to learn:

• What to wear instead of black and gray when you need to be seen

• The one fit mistake Basia spots on LinkedIn over and over

• Where to spend your money, and where it makes no difference

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 66, leadership styles with Sara https://youtu.be/btLIEpPEX9s

👋 ABOUT Basia

Basia is an executive stylist who works with women in leadership on their wardrobe and personal style. She started out as a celebrity stylist on commercial and advertising shoots for brands including Adidas, Nintendo and Nokia, and moved into working with leaders during the pandemic. Much of her work now is with analytical women in technology and finance.

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

Most of us never sat down and picked a leadership style. You get the role and you grow into something.And it holds up fine for a long time.

Then you get a hard project, or a hard person, and that’s usually when you find out what you’ve actually been doing all along.

There are ten leadership styles, and most women lean on two or three of them. The ones you use most are usuallythe ones that feel the most like you, so they’re the hardest to notice.

Sara Spencer joins Jill to walk through all ten leadership styles, including the ones they see women fall back on the hardest.

Tune in to learn:

• The style most women fall back on without ever choosing it

• What your team isn’t telling you because they like you

• The two styles women are already great at, and the one worth building

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Sara Spencer’s first appearance on the show https://youtu.be/j3Ol10rcjVw

• Episode 65, how to get buy in from your team https://youtu.be/x1iX5A1lQ4E

👋 ABOUT SARA SPENCER

As a leadership coach for over 12 years at Boeing, Sara saw that health and wellness was integral to a leader’s success. That led her to earn a Health Coaching certification to help leaders bring more balance into their lives.

Sara holds a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) certification from the International Coaching Federation, with supplementary certifications in Positive Intelligence, TILT 365 and the TILT Personality Profile, DiSC, the Energy Management model, Birkman, Inside Out Coaching, Voice Dialogue and Health Coaching.

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

Think about the last time something came back from your team technically fine but not what you wanted.

You probably fixed it yourself. Most of us do. And you told yourself you’d have a real conversation about it later, and later never came.

It’s easy to read that as a performance problem. Or to start quietly wondering whether you hired wrong.

Usually it’s something else. People agreed with you out loud and never really signed up on the inside.

And there’s no way to tell those two apart until it’s too late to do much about it.

Tune in to learn:

• The difference between buy-in and compliance, and why you can’t spot it early

• The trap you fall into when you walk in with the plan finished

• What your canceled one-on-ones are telling your team

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 64, how I treat others https://youtu.be/OTkknLSdY7o

• Episode 61, the 5 qualities of executive presence https://youtu.be/wol4usjToSM

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

Every company has a woman who says the thing out loud. She’s the one who names what isn’t working while the rest of the meeting studies the table.

If that’s you, you’ve probably noticed it doesn’t always land the way you’d hope.

You weren’t complaining. You wanted it fixed and you weren’t looking to pin it on anyone.

But naming a problem in front of people usually costs someone something, and most of us never got told that part.

Then it turns up weeks later in your review, in words like difficult, negative, or a little much. It’s hard to shake those words off once they stick to you.

Tune in to learn:

• Why great problem solvers get labeled negative

• The two questions to ask yourself before you raise a problem

• A five second move that makes people feel heard

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 61, the 5 qualities of executive presence https://youtu.be/wol4usjToSM

• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

• Social Intelligence by Karl Albrecht

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

You are good at your job. Nobody is arguing about that.

So it stings when the promotion goes to someone else and nobody can really tell you why.

You ask for feedback and get told you are doing great. Then you get handed another big project, and another year goes by.

Your skill was never the question. What they are weighing is whether they can hand you something big and then stop thinking about it.

And that gets decided in small moments you never see, by people talking about you when you are not in the meeting.

Most executive presence advice is about how you come across while you are there. This one is about what is left of you after you leave.

Tune in to learn:

• The four things senior leaders judge when your name comes up

• What to do when someone pushes back on your idea

• The two minute move before a big meeting that most women skip

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 61, the 5 qualities of executive presence https://youtu.be/wol4usjToSM

• Episode 58, on the saboteurs https://youtu.be/WMIR0EtJYGQ

• Gretchen’s own episode https://youtu.be/eLXy--PHGJA

• Judith Glaser and the Creating WE Institute

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

People are always deciding how you handle pressure, and most of the time they never tell you what they decide.

They’re going off whatever they saw the last time things got tense. Somebody pushed back, or a project went sideways, and they read how you reacted to it.

That read follows you around. It turns up later when somebody is weighing whether you’re ready for more.

Most of us put our energy into the wrong half of this. We work on feeling calmer and more sure of ourselves. Then we wait until we feel that way before we speak up or make the hard call.

But nobody you work with has any access to how you feel. They only ever see what you do with it.

Jill sat down with SisterSmart coach Kan Yue to go through all three facets of this one.

Tune in to learn:

• The three facets of how you present, and why two of them are not the same skill

• What it actually costs you when you lose your cool

• The one question to ask yourself when the tension spikes

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 61, the 5 qualities of executive presence https://youtu.be/wol4usjToSM

• Episode 58, on the voices in your head https://youtu.be/WMIR0EtJYGQ

👋 ABOUT KAN YUE

Kan Yue is a leadership coach, speaker and economics professor. She works with women leaders on self-leadership and emotional resilience, helping them turn uncertainty into clarity, doubt into confidence and ambition into meaningful impact.

Kan is a Mastery Method Certified coach through the Institute of Coaching Mastery. She has her PhD in Economics from Purdue and teaches as Associate Professor of Economics at Xavier University in Ohio.

💼 Connect with Kan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanyuecoaching/

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

Of all the feedback women get, ‘executive presence’ might be the most common and the least useful.

It turns up in your review. It turns up in the conversation about why somebody else got the role. And it almost never arrives with an example you could actually do anything with.

So it just sits there. You know it’s the thing between you and the next level, and you still have no idea which part of it you’re meant to fix.

That’s not you being slow on the uptake. Those two words cover fifteen separate things, and whoever handed them to you was probably only thinking about one.

Nobody tells you which one. So you work on all of it, or none of it, and the feedback shows up again next year.

So which one is yours?

Tune in to learn:

• What each quality looks like when it’s missing, and what it looks like when it’s there

• The one that most separates a director from a VP

• Why warmth and directness were never opposites

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• 10 Ways to Command a Room, the free guide http://www.sistersmart.com/10WaysToCommand

🎁 GRAB THE FREE GUIDE: 10 WAYS TO COMMAND A ROOM

Ten simple concrete moves that build the exact kind of executive presence we talk about in this episode. Pick one and try it this week. http://www.sistersmart.com/10WaysToCommand

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

One of the things women hardly ever do is own their strengths.

We're taught to be humble. To not get a big head. To not be too full of ourselves. So when you do sit down and really look at what you're good at, it can feel like you're overstepping.

So most of us just never do it. We stay busy and we do the work well and we never put words to any of it.

Then someone senior asks what you want next, and there's nothing there to draw from.

Because we try to answer "What do I want?" before we've ever really answered "Who am I?" And those are two really different questions.

Most people have never thought that through.

Jill is joined by SisterSmart mindset coach Kan Yue for this one.

Tune in to learn:

• Why ‘knowing your genius’ has to be written down and not just vaguely understood

• The difference between your skills and your genius, and why women mix them up

• Which of the five areas of your life is almost always the empty one

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 59, on your zone of brilliance and your realized and unrealized strengths https://youtu.be/aZ1jOrKc6H4

• Kan Yue’s first appearance on the show EPISODE 48 https://youtu.be/5rZsBuWvpYs

• Knowing Your Genius, the twelve part worksheet all of Module 1 converges on

• The aspiration statement, the piece that comes after it

👋 ABOUT KAN YUE

Kan Yue is a leadership coach, speaker and economics professor. She works with women leaders on self-leadership and emotional resilience, helping them turn uncertainty into clarity, doubt into confidence and ambition into meaningful impact.

Kan is a Mastery Method Certified coach through the Institute of Coaching Mastery. She has her PhD in Economics from Purdue and teaches as Associate Professor of Economics at Xavier University in Ohio.

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

Every leadership development plan starts in the same place. Here are your gaps. Now go work on them.

It is the most standard advice in corporate life and almost nobody stops to question it.

And you have done it. You took the feedback seriously. You worked the list quietly and mostly on your own time. You did get better at those things.

And the promotion still went to somebody else.

Here's the thing. Senior leaders were never reading down your gap list. They are trying to answer a completely different question about you, and getting better at your weaknesses does nothing to help them answer it.

Nobody has ever told you what that question is. Or that there are two kinds of strengths, and that the one that could change everything for you is the one you have never once been asked to use.

So what are they actually looking for?

Tune in to learn:

• The one question senior leaders are actually trying to answer about you
• The two kinds of strengths almost nobody has ever explained to you
• Why your 'zone of brilliance' is the one thing you cannot see in yourself

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 35, where Wendy tells this whole story herself: https://youtu.be/HE48xkQ-1xM

• The Strengths Profile assessment, which returns your realized and unrealized strengths

• Knowing Your Genius, the worksheet all of this converges on inside Module 1

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

You’re up for the VP role.

On paper you’re the obvious pick. You have the results, receipts, and a team that would follow you anywhere.

And still there is a voice in your head that keeps you a half step back.

It tells you to check that deck one more time before you send it. To hold the work close because your team is maxed out already.

That voice feels like the very thing that got you there, your work ethic.

But what if you’ve been successful in spite of that voice and not because of it?

There are ten of these voices. One master and nine accomplices. Most women have no idea which ones are running the show.

So which ones are yours?

Jill is joined by SisterSmart coach Monica for this one.

Tune in to learn:

• What a ‘saboteur’ is and why yours shows up hardest at the director to VP line

• The two that almost nobody guesses about themselves

• What to do the moment you catch one in action

👋 ABOUT MONICA

Monica is a SisterSmart coach covering the UK and European time zones. She has been using Positive Intelligence and saboteur work with her clients for more than five years and brings it into her coaching with senior women leaders.

💻 READY TO LEAD WITH THEM INSTEAD OF AGAINST THEM?

Once you know your saboteurs, the real work is learning to lead with them. That is exactly what we do inside the Strategic Leadership Lab for Women. Six weeks, moving you from doing to leading, where you learn to catch that reactive voice and choose the response a senior leader would make. The next group starts September 11. https://sistersmart.com/SLA

—

Register for the Free Executive Presence for Women Masterclass: The 3 keys to Increase Authority and Influence, happening live on Thursday, August 8 at 12 PST.

A replay will be available for those that register! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdOsrDItGdHchQv1BXFozsGRUjL74xlK#/registration

—

🌟 FREE MASTERCLASS: Achieve Your VP Promotion: 3 Steps to Success in the Next Year

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

—

✈️ FREE PASSPORT TO PROMOTION PRIVATE PODCAST: 7 STEPS TO GET PROMOTED FROM DIRECTOR TO VP

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

—

👩‍💻 APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and fulfill their career potential and get promoted from director to VP

Join Sisters in Leadership to Get Promoted to VP

—

💻 EXPLORE OUR LEADERSHIP COURSES

We offer a few leadership courses for you to begin sharpening your skills from meeting management to executive presence and productivity.

Sign Up for a Leadership Course

—

👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/