SisterSmart Leadership

How do you decide what to work on first when your manager hands you a list of ten priorities with no order and no deadlines, and every single item on that list is something she needs done right away?

This is the exact same question that our client Mandy was facing when she joined the Strategic Leadership Lab for Women.

Tune in to hear how Mandy found her starting point, what she carried into her next one-to-one with her manager and the surprising thing that shifted between the two of them once she did.

Mandy walks through all of it in this episode. Where she started. What she built. What she carried into the one-to-one that shifted everything. And the one sentence she began saying to herself before every meeting with her boss.

If you are a woman in leadership who is buried under competing priorities and quietly wondering whether you are the problem, this conversation is for you.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL FIND OUT

▪︎ The three questions Mandy asked about every item on the list before she touched a single one

▪︎ The rule she pulled out of the Strategic Leadership Lab that finally told her where to start

▪︎ What she built on a spreadsheet and why the tabs were ordered the way they were

▪︎ What she brought to her next one-to-one instead of a status update

▪︎ The sentence she started saying to herself before every meeting with her manager

▪︎ Why her manager never changed her communication style and the whole dynamic still turned around

▪︎ What surprised her most about being in a cohort with other women leaders

▪︎ The question you can ask that makes a boss choose between her own priorities

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

▪︎ The Pareto Principle, also called the 80/20 rule. Taught in Week 4 of the Strategic Leadership Lab for Women.

▪︎ The Vital Few, from the Sisters in Leadership curriculum on the busyness trap.

▪︎ Strategic Leadership Lab for Women. Next cohort starts September 11. Early bird pricing closes August 15. https://sistersmart.com/SLA

▪︎ The saying Mandy carries with her: no good sailor was made in calm waters.

👋 ABOUT MANDY

Mandy leads a clinical department inside a large hospital system where competing priorities shift by the minute. She is a graduate of the Strategic Leadership Lab for Women and a member of the SisterSmart community.

RELATED TOPICS

This episode covers how to prioritize when everything is a priority, what to do when your boss gives you too many priorities at once, how to prioritize tasks at work as a manager, the Pareto principle and the 80/20 rule applied to a real workload, how to manage up when your manager does not set a clear vision, how to build trust with a difficult boss, how to run a better one-to-one with your manager, how to stop being reactive at work, prioritization frameworks for leaders, workload overwhelm and burnout prevention for women in leadership, how to delegate and get input from your team, career advice for women in healthcare leadership, executive presence for female leaders, leadership development for women, women in leadership podcast episodes and how to get promoted from director to vice president.

—

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

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🌟 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/

Do you keep doing brilliant work and getting warm reviews while the VP title goes to someone you outwork every single day? If you want to know how to get promoted from director to vice president, the answer is not working harder. It is becoming someone your senior leaders can already picture in that next chair.

In this episode of the SisterSmart Leadership podcast, executive coach Jill Avey takes you inside one woman's year. The year she went from passed over to promoted. Hidden inside her story are the five things that actually separate directors from VPs. We call them the Big Five of Strategy®.

You will learn why a promotion is a bet on your future rather than a prize for your past, what the feedback "be more strategic" actually means and how to let senior leaders watch you think so your best ideas stop staying locked inside your head.

Jill also shares research from Yale, MIT and the University of Minnesota on 30,000 employees that reveals the real reason so many high performing women keep getting passed over for promotion.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why being the most capable person on the team can keep you stuck at the director level
• The Big Five of Strategy® senior leaders look for when they fill a VP seat: grasp the present, shape the future, move the system, deliver the results and adapt to change
• How narrating your reasoning out loud changes how leaders rate your potential
• Why one gap in the five is enough to cost you a promotion cycle even when the other four are strong
• Three shifts you can make this week to become imaginable in the next chair

Chapters:

📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Study: Potential and the Gender Promotion Gap (researchers at Yale, MIT and the University of Minnesota) : https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4747175
• Free Big Five of Strategy self-assessment PDF: score yourself across the five and see in black and white which gap to close first : https://sistersmart.kit.com/fae7bb76e5

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP LAB FOR WOMEN: the six week program where you’ll get the Big 5 of Strategy® Assessment and we build all five of these competencies with a small group of women leaders.

Next cohort starts September 11. Register by August 15 to grab the early bird special. https://sistersmart.com/sla

Whether you are searching for how to be seen as VP material, how to get promoted to vice president, women in leadership advice, strategic thinking for leaders, executive presence, leadership potential versus performance, how to delegate as a leader or how to stop being the dependable doer and start leading at a higher level, this episode gives you a clear path from director to VP.

—

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/

How do you become more strategic at work and finally get seen as a leader instead of the best doer in the room? Strategic perspective is the single biggest skill that separates senior leaders from middle managers and it is the one capability that quietly decides who rises into executive roles and who stalls out at the director level.

In this episode of the SisterSmart Leadership podcast Executive Coach Jill Avey shares a surprising truth for women leaders who want to get promoted from director to vice president. Research shows that women outscore men on 17 of 19 leadership measures and yet rank dead last on strategic perspective. Most women are already strategic. The real problem is that they are not being seen as strategic and that is a much easier fix.

Jill walks through the doer to leader spectrum, why strategy lives in your visible behavior and not in your head and how one small shift can set off a visibility flywheel. You will leave with three concrete shifts you can make this week to be recognized as the strategic leader you already are.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why strategic perspective is the number one skill that separates senior leaders from middle managers
• The signs you are being seen as a doer and not yet a leader
• Why strategy lives in your behavior and how to make your thinking visible
• Three simple shifts you can make this week to be seen as strategic

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Free Strategic Perspective Worksheet: rate yourself across the five places strategic perspective shows up
• Strategic Leadership Lab: six live sessions to build the strategic perspective that gets you seen as a leader

RESOURCES AND LINKS

FREE STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE WORKSHEET: https://sistersmart.kit.com/f669e87427

JOIN THE STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP LAB: sistersmart.com/SLA

APPLY FOR THE SISTERS IN LEADERSHIP PROGRAM: joinsistersinleadership.com

SUBSCRIBE AND LEAVE A REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS: Apple Podcasts

SUBSCRIBE AND LEAVE A REVIEW ON SPOTIFY: Spotify

—

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/

Have you been at the same company for years, even decades, and suddenly the work that once excited you feels stale? You are not alone and there is a clear path forward.

This is the question so many ambitious women face: how do you know when it is time to leave a job you have loved? When the culture shifts, when new leadership changes everything, when an outside force like a merger or a pandemic rewires the workplace, the thought of moving can feel daunting. You know you feel stuck but you do not know what the next steps are.

In this episode of the SisterSmart Leadership Podcast, Jill Avey sits down with her client Rebecca H., a privacy specialist in the legal field who spent more than 15 years at the same organization before she made her move. Through the Sisters in Leadership program, Rebecca was able to recognize the leadership skills she had been quietly building for over a decade, develop the executive presence she needed to interview at a higher level and land a role at an established publicly traded mid-sized consumer products company where she leads a sizable team with a real mandate and the resources to deliver on it.

Whether you are a woman leader who has outgrown your current role, a high performer wondering whether your complacency is really stagnation in disguise, or an in-house specialist who has never been told you are a leader, you will find inspiration and a roadmap in Rebecca's story.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How to recognize the difference between contentment and complacency in your career
• Why a culture shift can quietly drain your enthusiasm for the work you used to love
• How leadership skills get built off the org chart, and why that matters when you are ready to move up
• The executive presence work that helps women get hired into bigger leadership roles
• A networking and resume strategy that opens doors without ever telling anyone you are looking
• How to step into a brand-new leadership role and build psychological safety from day one
• Why being a likeable badass is the sweet spot for women leaders who refuse to be trampled or seen as a pushover
• How a personal strategy retreat can reframe your whole career and create real long-term balance

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Likeable Badass by Alison Fragale

ABOUT REBECCA H.

Rebecca H. is an experienced privacy specialist in the legal field with more than two decades in legal practice. After spending over 15 years building her career at her previous organization, she recently moved into a senior in-house leadership role at an established publicly traded mid-sized consumer products company, where she leads a sizable team and is responsible for redefining the company's privacy program. Because of the sensitive nature of her work, Rebecca is sharing her story on audio only and using her first name and last initial.

—

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/

Are you a high performer who has been waiting for your hard work to speak for itself? You are not alone. Most women rise to the director level by being exceptional individual contributors, then hit an invisible ceiling that no one warned them about. The people getting promoted to vice president are not always working harder, they are working differently, and they understand a set of corporate power dynamics that nobody teaches women in business school, in onboarding, or anywhere along the way.

In this episode of the SisterSmart Leadership Podcast, host and executive coach Jill Avey sits down with Linda Reddy, Global Supply Chain Director at Nando's, to decode the invisible games of corporate power that determine who advances into senior leadership and who stays stuck at director. Linda has more than 25 years of leadership experience across South Africa, India, the Middle East, Africa, and globally, and she has watched countless talented women plateau at the same level she once did, until she figured out the real rules.

If you are a woman leader, director, senior director, or aspiring vice president looking for a roadmap from high performer to executive, this conversation will reframe how you think about visibility, influence, narrative, and what it really takes to be promoted to vice president. Linda walks through her framework of three career stages, the three elements of power, and the biggest mistakes women make when they pursue promotion. By the end of this episode you will know exactly where to focus to break through your next ceiling.

In this episode of the SisterSmart Leadership Podcast you will learn:

• Why high performance alone will not get you promoted to vice president, and what does
• The three corporate stages every woman leader must move through to reach senior leadership: high performer, influencer, and authority
• How to use visibility, influence, and narrative as your real path to executive promotion
• Why decisions about your career are happening outside the boardroom, and how to position yourself to be in those rooms
• How to reframe self-promotion as a service that helps others do their job better
• The high performer trap that is causing senior leaders to see you as an operator instead of a thought leader
• Why being your own ambassador is the mindset shift that unlocks your next promotion
• The biggest mistake women make when they say I am not 150 percent ready, and how to stop waiting
• How to start small with risk and build the confidence muscle that gets you promoted
• Linda's framework of the 11 invisible games of corporate power and the 22 human dynamics that underpin them

Related topics covered in this episode for women leaders:

How to get promoted from director to vice president, corporate power dynamics for women, executive presence for senior women leaders, women in supply chain leadership, leadership skills for women, how to be more visible at work, how to build influence as a woman leader, narrative framing for executives, sponsorship and mentorship for women, women in male dominated industries, women in global leadership, breaking the glass ceiling, gender in the workplace, leadership development for women, becoming a senior director, becoming a vice president, women and confidence, women and risk taking, professional growth for women leaders, how to be promoted faster.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Get Linda Reddy's reflection journal on the invisible games of corporate power when you subscribe to her newsletter: https://lindareddy.uk/
• Linda Reddy's framework of the 11 invisible games of corporate power
• The 22 human dynamics that underpin corporate power across identity and status, fear and control, relationships and trust, ambition and survival, narrative and perception, and influence

ABOUT LINDA REDDY

Linda Reddy is a London-based Global Executive and international speaker specialising in corporate systems, power, and performance.

Over 25 years, she has led large-scale supply chain and operational transformation across FMCG, banking, and hospitality in more than 24 countries running complex operations, multi-country P&Ls, and delivering over 400% EBITDA growth at C-suite level.

A Harvard Business School alumna, she identified early that corporate success is not driven by strategy alone—but by the invisible dynamics of power, positioning, and human behaviour.

That insight was sharpened beyond the boardroom.

Summiting Mount Kilimanjaro, climbing Mount Fuji, and carrying the torch for the Olympic Games shaped a defining perspective on resilience, clarity, and legacy.

Today, she is the creator of two proprietary frameworks:

• The 11 Invisible Games of Corporate Power and

• The 22 Human Dynamics used to help professionals understand how decisions are really made, build influence, and avoid being overlooked despite strong performance.

Her work sits at the intersection of systems, power, and performance focused on how corporate actually functions, not how it is designed to

—

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/

If you are a woman in leadership right now, ask yourself one honest question. When was the last time you felt like you had enough time, enough energy and enough space for yourself? If you had to think about it, you are not alone.

For women leaders pursuing VP-level and executive roles, work-life balance often feels like a myth. You are leading teams, running households, showing up for aging parents, raising kids, and somewhere at the bottom of the list you are trying to remember what you used to love doing just for yourself.

In this episode of SisterSmart Leadership, Jill Avey is joined by SisterSmart coach Lydia Fogo Johnson for a real conversation about the busyness trap and why the old idea of perfect balance is quietly keeping women leaders stuck at the director level and below. Together they break down the three root causes of overwhelm for high-achieving women, the reality of caregiver burnout, and the specific boundaries every woman leader needs in order to rise up without burning out.

Whether you are a director trying to get promoted to VP, an executive managing a big team while caring for kids or aging parents, or a high-achieving woman who feels like you have been saying yes to everything for years, this episode gives you the permission and the practical tools to shift from perfect balance to sustainable integration.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why the model of perfect work-life balance was never built for the reality of a woman's life and what to aim for instead
• The three hidden root causes of busyness for high-achieving women: overfunctioning, overdelivering, and overidentifying with work
• How context switching silently drains up to forty percent of your productivity
• Why overdelivery is actually a form of waste, and how a minimum viable product mindset speeds up your impact
• How to recognize when your self-worth has become tied to your output and how to reconnect with who you are outside of work
• Why caregiver burnout is a structural problem, not a personal failure, and what to do about it
• How to run caregiving like a project using division of labor, delegation and stakeholder management skills from your day job
• The mental load trap most women fall into when they delegate execution but keep ownership, and how to actually hand off the whole thing
• Why sleep, recovery, and personal time are not selfish and how modeling self-care shapes your entire team
• The boundaries every woman leader needs with a deep dive on time boundaries and digital boundaries for a twenty-four-seven world
• Three practical shifts you can make this week to reclaim your time, your energy, and your sense of self

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
• Emily Oster on work life balance
• The SisterSmart personal strategy retreat
• The SisterSmart time inventory tool: https://sistersmart.kit.com/bcc912c74a

ABOUT LYDIA FOGO JOHNSON

Lydia Fogo Johnson is a SisterSmart coach who helps women leaders find sustainable balance while navigating demanding careers and significant caregiving responsibilities. Her work focuses on helping high achieving women break out of the busyness trap, set meaningful boundaries, and reconnect with who they are outside of their professional and caregiving roles.

—

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/

Have you ever hit a career level where everything you used to do to succeed suddenly stops working? The problem is not usually a skills gap. It is an identity gap -- and it is one of the most misunderstood moments in a woman's leadership journey.

In this episode, Jill is joined by SisterSmart mindset coach Kan Yue to unpack the leadership identity upgrade: the quiet inner shift that has to happen before your next promotion, your next level of influence, or the next version of you can actually show up.

Most high-achieving women try to solve this by working harder, taking on more, or adding another certification to their resume. But none of that touches the real issue -- because the real issue is not what you are doing, it is who you believe you need to be to do it.

If you have been feeling that quiet nudge that something needs to change, even when you cannot quite name it, this episode is for you.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What a leadership identity upgrade really is and how it differs from just building new skills
• The three key signs that you have outgrown your current leadership identity
• The overcompensation behaviors that keep high-achieving women stuck and exhausted
• Why setting boundaries is an identity upgrade, not just a communication or time management skill
• What does not work when you try to rise into senior leadership without an identity shift
• How to begin your own identity upgrade using awareness, acceptance, and ownership
• How the saboteur work and mindset coaching inside the SisterSmart program drives lasting inner change

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Free Identity Upgrade Guide: https://sistersmart.kit.com/d727218543

ABOUT KAN YUE

Kan Yue is the mindset and identity coach inside the SisterSmart Sisters in Leadership community. She works with high-achieving women leaders to unlock the inner shifts required to rise into senior leadership roles with clarity, confidence, and ease.

—

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/

Are you trying to figure out how to get promoted to VP but feel like you are missing pieces of the puzzle? This episode is the career strategy for women in leadership that no one talks about openly.

April Little is an executive career coach and promotion strategist who helps senior women leaders build executive-level influence, positioning, and decision authority inside complex organizations. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Human Resources. Prior to launching her coaching practice, April served as Vice President of Human Resources at a venture-backed startup. Immediately before that role, she led senior-level recruiting and talent strategy, advising executive teams on leadership selection, organizational design, and succession planning. She brings over 15 years of experience in human resources, recruiting, and leadership development.

In this conversation, Jill Avey and April Little cover the exact executive career strategy that gets women promoted faster. You will learn what executive presence for women really means, how to master strategic storytelling as a leader, how to communicate at every level of the organization, how to navigate the broken rung, and how to know when it is time to stop waiting and start looking for a new opportunity.

Whether you are a director aiming for VP or a senior manager ready to break through to the C-suite, this episode will give you a clear and actionable roadmap for your next career move.

0:00 --- Introduction: April Little's background and what makes her executive promotion expertise unique

2:32 --- How to assess your executive readiness using the 10 steps to building executive level influence

4:34 --- Executive presence for women: what the internal uniform concept really means and why consistency is everything

5:43 --- Storytelling and strategic communication: the leadership skills that drive influence at the executive level

10:16 --- How to tailor your communication style at every level of leadership from your direct manager to the C-suite

13:03 --- Breaking through the broken rung: shifting your mindset and using what you already have to rise into leadership

15:03 --- Sponsors, mentors, and peer networks: how to build the relationships that get your name in rooms you are not in

20:22 --- How to map your career path and determine what advancement is realistically and ambitiously possible in your organization

23:23 --- When to stop waiting and start looking: recognizing when your organization does not have a path forward for you

27:44 --- Education vs. executive coaching: what actually moves the needle when you want to get promoted to VP

In this episode you will learn:

• How to assess where you stand on the 10 steps to building executive level influence
• Why executive presence is really about consistent and predictable leadership behavior
• The 3 back pocket stories every leader should always have ready
• How to communicate differently with direct managers, skip levels, and C-suite executives
• Why the broken rung exists and the mindset shift you need to move past it
• The strategic difference between a sponsor, a mentor, and a peer network
• How to build sponsor relationships that get your name in rooms you are not in
• How to determine a realistic and ambitious career path inside your current organization
• The 18 to 24 month rule for knowing when it is time to leave
• Why doing your leadership development work before your job search gives you a competitive edge
• The honest truth about whether an MBA or executive coaching will actually get you promoted faster

Topics covered in this episode include women in leadership, how to get promoted to VP, executive presence for women, career advancement strategies, women in executive roles, how to get promoted as a woman, executive mindset, leadership skills for women, career strategy for women, women at work, women leadership podcast, career coach for women, leadership development, strategic communication for leaders, the broken rung in leadership, how to build a sponsor relationship, when to leave your job, women in the C-suite, how to fast track your promotion, and director to VP career path.

April Little - Career Coach for Women:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprillatoyalittle
• Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/iamaprillittle
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamaprillittle
• April Little's Website: https://www.aprillittle.co/

April Little is an executive career coach and promotion strategist who helps senior women leaders build executive-level influence, positioning, and decision authority inside complex organizations. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Human Resources. Prior to launching her coaching practice, April served as Vice President of Human Resources at a venture-backed startup. Immediately before that role, she led senior-level recruiting and talent strategy, advising executive teams on leadership selection, organizational design, and succession planning. She brings over 15 years of experience in human resources, recruiting, and leadership development.

• FREE Passport to Promotion Private Podcast: 7 Steps to Get Promoted from Director to VP - https://joinsistersinleadership.com/7-steps
• Apply for the Sisters in Leadership Program - An 12-month coaching program for women leaders who want to rise up and get promoted from director to VP - https://joinsistersinleadership.com/
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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillavey/

#WomenInLeadership #HowToGetPromoted #ExecutivePresence #CareerAdvancement #WomenInBusiness #LeadershipSkills #CareerCoach #WomenExecutives #GetPromoted #DirectorToVP #ExecutiveMindset #StrategicCommunication #CareerStrategy #WomenAtWork #SisterSmartLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #CareerGrowth #WomenLeaders #ProfessionalDevelopment #BreakingTheGlassCeiling

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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

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

https://sistersmart.com/register-sil

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

Get access to the Passport to Promotion Private Podcast

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👩‍💻 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

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💻 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.

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👋 CONNECT WITH JILL 

🌐 Website: https://sistersmart.com/ 

🎥 YouTube: https://linktw.in/uWD3ko 

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

Have you ever been told you are too direct, too strong, or too bossy -- only to find yourself shrinking down just to keep others comfortable? If so, you are not alone, and this episode was made for you.

Christel is a former military veteran, corporate leader, and SisterSmart Elite client who walked into a new company with impressive credentials -- mentors, leadership program visibility and years of high-performance experience. Yet her career was not advancing the way she knew it should. Her direct style was being flagged in performance reviews and the guidance she was receiving from mentors was not specific enough to help her break through.

In this client story episode, Christel shares the exact blind spots that were holding her back, how she learned to communicate with impact and brevity to earn a seat in senior leader briefings, and how she ultimately landed a high-visibility promotion that required a full relocation and a major team turnaround -- all in the span of one year.

Whether you are a woman in senior leadership navigating the double bind of being too much or not enough, wondering whether executive coaching is worth the investment, or preparing to step into a new high-visibility role, Christel's story is proof that the right development program changes everything.

In this episode you will discover:

• Why mentors alone may not get you promoted -- and what fills the gap
• How to stop being labeled too bossy, too direct, or too strong without losing who you are
• The communicating with impact shift that earns you access to senior leader rooms
• How to receive performance feedback without defensiveness -- so your leaders thank you
• What the first 30-60-90 days look like in a high-visibility new leadership role
• How to lead with your feminine strengths in even the most male-dominated environments
• What Christel says to every woman who is on the fence about investing in executive coaching

2:56 -- The real limitations of mentorship for high-achieving women leaders

4:26 -- What Christel was looking for when she chose executive coaching over self-help

6:46 -- Looking back: the blind spots she did not know were blocking her promotion

8:09 -- Being labeled too strong, too bossy, and too direct in corporate leadership

9:47 -- Understanding social dynamics and finding your authentic place in the leadership hierarchy

10:39 -- The communicating with impact shift that got her into senior leader briefings

14:26 -- How to receive feedback without defensiveness so your managers actually thank you

15:26 -- Landing a high-visibility senior leadership promotion and relocating for the role

17:12 -- How to navigate career relocations without letting them derail your momentum

19:32 -- The 30-60-90 day framework for entering a new role and building high-performing team trust

22:22 -- Leading with feminine strengths in a male-dominated manufacturing environment

24:57 -- Is executive coaching worth it? What Christel says to every woman on the fence

27:00 -- How to protect time for your own development when you feel too busy

29:41 -- The women leaders who inspired Christel: Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright

If you are searching for how to get promoted from director to vice president, how to overcome imposter syndrome as a woman leader, executive presence for women, leadership coaching for women, communicating with impact, or how to build a high-performing team in a new leadership role -- this episode covers all of it through Christel's real client story.

ABOUT CHRISTEL

Christel is a former military veteran and senior corporate leader who has built her career across multiple industries and geographies. After joining the SisterSmart Elite program, she identified key blind spots, transformed her leadership communication style and was promoted into a high-visibility senior leadership role leading a turnaround. She now leads a large team and continues to grow as an executive leader.

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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/

Have you ever trained the person who got promoted over you? Or held your entire department together behind the scenes while someone else got credit for the results?

Here is what no one tells you about getting promoted: it is rarely the hardest worker who moves up. It is the person whose work is visible to the right people.

In this episode, Jill Avey and SisterSmart coach Sarah Spencer break down the five types of invisible work that women leaders take on every day -- work that carries enormous strategic value but almost never surfaces in performance reviews or promotion conversations. You will learn how to identify this hidden work, translate it into impact language, and build a visible case for your promotion to VP without changing who you are.

You will also hear about Simone, a leader who was passed over for promotion twice before using this exact framework to land her VP promotion in under 10 months.

Whether you are currently being overlooked, preparing for your next review, or simply tired of being the person who holds everything together without recognition -- this episode gives you a practical framework you can start using this week.

In this episode, you will learn:

1. Why non-promotable tasks are keeping women stuck in the leadership pipeline
2. The 5 types of invisible work that are secretly your biggest career assets
3. How to use impact language to translate behind-the-scenes contributions into a powerful promotion case
4. The 4-step Quiet Promotion Framework for making your invisible work visible to decision makers
5. How Simone went from being passed over twice to landing her VP promotion in under 10 months

0:00 -- Introduction: The invisible work problem and why the hardest worker rarely gets promoted

4:57 -- Why your results are not speaking for themselves (and Jill's own experience with this trap)

5:51 -- Meet the 5 types of invisible work with SisterSmart coach Sarah Spencer

16:30 -- Simone's story: passed over twice, promoted to VP in under 10 months using impact language

19:15 -- How to use impact language to completely change the story you tell about your work

20:45 -- The Quiet Promotion Framework: 4 practical steps to make your invisible work visible

your career

Topics covered in this episode include: invisible work at work, getting promoted from director to VP, women in leadership, executive presence for women, non-promotable tasks, self-promotion at work, how to ask for a promotion, career advancement for women, leadership development for women, building visibility at work, impact language for leaders, how to get noticed at work, and the quiet promotion strategy.

1. Episode 40: How to Build a Professional Network (referenced for deeper work on strategic relationships)
2. Emotional Labor Episode 42
3. Malia Mason episode 44 on non-promotable tasks (referenced as the previous episode)
4. The Bates Model of Leadership Presence (referenced by Sarah Spencer in the executive presence discussion)