STYLE & STRATEGY WITH SONYA

By Sonya Choi La RosaBusiness Education Arts Self-Improvement Fashion & Beauty Careers

STYLE & STRATEGY WITH SONYA episodes

October 30104: There's More to You Than Your Job Title, with Karen Tisdell
You know you're ready for more than where you're at. The people who haven't met you yet often find you online first, and what they find is a job title and a list of where you've been.
Sonya has had a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn for years, so she asked Karen Tisdell what it is actually for. Karen spent 14 years in recruitment and has been writing LinkedIn profiles since 2009, and she thinks of LinkedIn as an address book: a place to meet the people your future self needs to know.
They get into why most of us write our profile looking backwards, how to find the thread that connects a career that never ran in a straight line, and how much of yourself to let into a headline (Karen likes to start with the box, Sonya would rather not be boxed in). You choose what to make visible, and this conversation is about choosing it on purpose. If you have no wish to post all the time, this one is for you: Karen's favourite clients are the socially reluctant ones.
What would you want the next room to know about you before you walk in? Sonya would like to know. A DM or an email, either works.

Key takeaways
Write your profile for the role you're moving towards, not as an old CV looking backwards.
Karen's three legs: your profile, your people and your proof. Proof is how you think, and it can live in comments as much as posts.
Before you get contenting, get commenting, on the people your future self needs to know rather than the feed.
There's always a thread. It's hard to see the label on the jar when you're inside it.
Starting a new role? Point your profile at it, then connect with your new colleagues.

Timestamps
00:00 Before the next room meets you, it looks you up
01:59 Welcome, and the LinkedIn queen
03:06 Recruitment, a lunch and learn, and profiles written from home
05:20 Why LinkedIn is an address book, not a content machine
07:39 The digital handshake: profile, people, proof
08:56 The woman who knows she should be more visible, and doesn't want to be
09:36 Writing for your future self
12:13 Before you get contenting, get commenting
14:18 Fitting the depth of your experience onto a page
17:36 There's always a thread
21:15 The headline: boxed in, or more to you than that?
27:10 Starting a new role: what to do on LinkedIn this week
28:46 Quickfire: signature piece, book, the ten minutes before
33:19 Where to find Karen

Links and resources
Karen Tisdell's website
Karen on LinkedIn
Karen on YouTube
Gallup CliftonStrengths
The Leadership Impact Profile
The Leadership Presence Audit, a 30-minute call
Style as a Signal, the private podcast

Connect with Sonya
Instagram · LinkedIn · YouTube · Substack

Related episodes
101: Actress or Singer: The Half of You That Never Makes the Meeting Why the room reaches for a category.
98: Reading the Room Isn't Code-Switching. It's Amplifying the Right Frequency. Choosing which parts of you to bring forward.
36 min
October 16103: Why Your Point Doesn't Land, and the Four Ways a Room Listens
You walk into the room ready. You know your material and you say it well. And still, some days, it doesn't land. Not because you were wrong, and not because you weren't prepared. Because of what Sonya calls the translation gap: the distance between how you're wired to communicate and how the person across the table takes information in.
This episode was recorded as a members' masterclass and it's here because the idea is too useful to keep inside. Sonya walks through the four ways a room processes what you say, the one structure that catches all four in a single presentation, and why most communication training makes you worse at this by teaching you to sound like someone else.
For the woman who leads and has been told to be more concise, more bottom-line, more like him, and has a feeling that the advice is costing her something. It is. This is the version that keeps you in the room as yourself.

Key takeaways
The translation gap is real, and it isn't a confidence problem. It sits between your natural way of communicating and your audience's way of receiving.
A room listens in four channels: visual (they need to see it), auditory (tone, pacing, what sounds right), kinesthetic (they need to feel it before it makes sense) and auditory digital (step by step, logically). Most people favour one or two.
A brilliant strategy gets labelled "too in the weeds" or "not practical enough" when it only speaks to one channel.
One presentation can catch all four: a story up front for the visual listeners, the data for the logical ones, your own conviction for the ones who need to feel it, and your pauses and structure for the ones who listen to how it sounds.
Standard communication training gets it wrong because it's teaching you to communicate like someone else. The three costs: you feel inauthentic, your audience finds you flat, and the feedback you get afterwards doesn't help.
Translating isn't abandoning your design. The precise communicator keeps the precision and gives the number a picture. The storyteller keeps the story and gives it a step one, two, three.
Before your next high-stakes conversation: name your natural way, name the channel your audience favours, and add only what it takes for the message to land.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction: Why Communication Doesn’t Always Land
01:14 Understanding the Translation Gap in Communication
02:35 The Four Audience Processing Channels
04:00 Visual and Auditory Communication Styles
05:15 Kinesthetic and Auditory Digital Processing
07:00 Using the 4MAT Model to Structure Presentations
10:00 Staying Authentic While Adapting Your Communication Style
Further reading
The 4MAT structure Sonya uses comes from Bernice McCarthy, The 4MAT System (1980).
Links and resources
Style as a Signal, the private podcast
Book a complimentary 30-minute Leadership Presence Audit
The Leadership Impact Profile
Connect with Sonya
Substack
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
Related episodes
97: Executive Presence Teaches You to Perform. Leadership Presence Lets You Stop.
94: Beyond Executive Presence: What Women in Leadership Actually Need (Part 2)
15 min
September 25102: She Hasn't Lost Capability. She's Lost Capacity.
A woman who has led for twenty years starts saying less in the rooms she used to run. She stops putting her hand up. Everyone around her calls it confidence. She reaches the same conclusion herself.
Karen Stein spent twenty-nine years at Deloitte, twenty-four of them as a partner, before moving into executive coaching. She was coaching women partners when she began hearing a different conversation in the room, and noticing the same thing in herself. Tears in the car on the way to work, then again on the way home, with nothing wrong at work or at home. Thinning hair. Leg cramps that wrecked her sleep. Blood pressure spikes that sent her to a cardiologist. Every test came back fine. Nobody said the word perimenopause.
In this conversation Karen draws the distinction the whole episode rests on. Capability has not gone anywhere. Capacity to act, in that particular moment, has. She talks about what happens when a leader carries that silently, how to raise it at work without it becoming your whole story, what she teaches the men in the room, and what to do when brain fog arrives mid-presentation. Plus the virtual backpack she wants every midlife leader carrying, and why she stopped colouring her hair.

Key takeaways
Capability and capacity are not the same thing. As Karen puts it: "It's not that they've lost their capability, it's just that they've lost their capacity to act in that moment." What gets called confidence going is often capacity, temporarily.
The cost is opportunity. When a leader reduces her participation, she stops being championed for the next role, because people are no longer hearing from her. She is not passed over on merit. She is passed over on visibility she withdrew herself.
Karen's own experience went undiagnosed by professionals. Cardiologist, stress tests, blood tests, all clear. She found the word perimenopause through her own research, and asked what that meant for every other woman in the workforce.
The timing is not a coincidence. The age bracket Karen works with, roughly forty to sixty, sits directly on top of the point where women are expected to move into more senior roles. Karen's position is that the two have to be addressed together.
How menopause is handled tells you what the culture is. If people can talk safely about this, they can talk safely about mental wellbeing, relationship breakdowns and everything else. If they cannot, that is information about the organisation, not about them.
Raise it as an operational ask, not a diagnosis. Karen's approach is to assume the other person may never have heard of it, explain what you are experiencing, name a specific and small request, and open a conversation about what is possible. Her example is a twenty-five dollar desk fan.
Practical tools exist for the moments that arrive without warning. Breathable fabrics and layers, hair up, a handheld fan, a pause and a sip of cold water mid-meeting, palm cards you rarely look at but know are there, and naming a hot flush so it is not misread as anxiety.
Every midlife leader is carrying a virtual backpack. Experience, wisdom, foresight, a clearer sense of boundaries and strengths, and a changed tolerance for what is worth their energy. Karen's coaching question is which of those to reach for in the moment, because by the time you get there you forget what you are carrying.

Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
1:48 Welcome & Guest Introduction
3:06 Karen's Career Journey & Discovering Perimenopause
8:23 The Cost of Handling Menopause Silently at Work
11:18 How to Raise Menopause at Work & Organizational Culture
14:16 Success Stories from Coaching Programs
17:01 MAD: Men Making a Difference About Menopause
22:39 Brain Fog & Hot Flushes in the Boardroom
27:21 Self-Coaching Questions for Midlife Leaders
29:13 Style Signature, Book Recommendation & Closing

Links and resources
Sophie Bretag, The Kind Way: The Life-Changing Metric for Leadership, Success and the Human Spirit. ISBN 9781764207492
Karen Stein
Website: karensteincoaching.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karen-stein-coaching
Newsletters on LinkedIn: MAD About Menopause, and The Midlife Leadership Series
Book: Be Your Own Leadership Coach: Self-Coaching Strategies to Lead Your Way
Programs mentioned: MAD about Menopause (making a difference at work), Men are MAD about Menopause, Peri Pathways group coaching, The Midlife Leadership Series
Sonya Choi La Rosa
Leadership Impact Profile
Style Guide
The Leadership Presence Audit, 30 minute triage call
Confidential Conversation
Programs and services

Connect with Sonya
Substack
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
38 min
September 11101: Actress or Singer: The Half of You That Never Makes the Meeting
At nineteen, Kylie Minogue was asked the same question in interview after interview. Are you an actress or a singer? No one was asking which one she was better at. They were asking her to pick one and park the other, because you can only have one.
Sonya watched the documentary on a free evening and recognised the question straight away, because it's the one she's been sitting in with so many women, clients and not. A room holds an enormous amount of complexity about a project, a market, a set of numbers, and very little about the person who walks into it. So it reaches for a category, and the category is almost always what you're known for.
If you're fine with the category and know there's more to you than it, this one is for you. Sonya works through what it costs to keep the other half parked, why it stops feeling like a decision at all, and the two steps she uses to catch it. She closes on where Kylie landed, and on the one question she wants you carrying into every room this week.

Key takeaways
A room holds enormous complexity about the work and very little about the person, so it reaches for a category, and the category is almost always what you're known for. The operator, the safe pair of hands. The one who is good with people. The commercial one. The storyteller. Each carries a compliment behind it, which is exactly what makes it hard to push back on.
The skill that earns her the category is the same skill that keeps her inside it. The question is whether that skill is the thing standing between her and the bigger room.
The parking is yours. Somewhere between the minute you walk in the door and the meeting, you decide which version of you comes in, and you park the other one for a moment.
Do it meeting after meeting and it stops being a decision. It becomes second nature, and that's the point at which you stop feeling connected to who you are.
Leading takes energy. Performing a version of yourself on top of it takes extra, and no one accounts for that second job. There's no line for it. You feel it on a Thursday or Friday afternoon when there's nothing left, and you put it down to the workload.
Profiling makes the distance visible. With DISC, the distance between your natural state and how you operate in a given environment may be what that room requires. Holding it over time is where the energy goes.
The first step is awareness. Going into work, going out with friends, ask which part of you is in the room and which part you're parking, and whether that's draining you.
The second step is to say it out loud on the way home. Naming the version they got today makes it concrete, and it starts showing you which rooms ask for more of you and where there's room to adjust.
It reaches what you put on. Reaching for the outfit that will not draw a comment is the same parking decision, made in the morning. It's not about the clothes so much as the decision fatigue, and how much of you is coming through.
Adapting to a room is a leadership skill, and every executive does it. The cost starts when you're adapting yourself continuously and it becomes an energy drain, and the work is finding where you can bring more of you into the room.
Kylie was nineteen when she was first asked to pick, and as far as Sonya can tell she never did. She kept doing both, leaned into music as the years went on, and eventually the question stopped being asked.
Timestamps
00:00 Cold open: the question Kylie was asked, and the skill that earns the category
00:35 Intro
01:00 A free evening, the Taylor Sheridan universe, and the Kylie documentary
02:00 Pick one and park the other, so the world can make sense of you
03:00 The women in the same conversation: which version of me does this room need?
04:00 A room holds complexity about the work, not the person, so it reaches for a category
04:15 The operator, the safe pair of hands, the people one, the commercial one, the storyteller
05:00 "Yeah, but I'm more than that," and the skill that keeps you inside the category
06:00 Her own early career, and the tipping point where women want to shift the narrative
07:00 What it costs: parking the other half, one meeting at a time
08:00 When it becomes second nature and you stop catching yourself
08:45 Leading takes energy. Performing a version of yourself takes more
09:30 DISC, and the distance between your natural state and the room
10:15 The second job no one accounts for, and the Thursday afternoon
11:00 Step one, awareness: which part of you is in the room today?
11:50 Step two, say it out loud on the way home
12:20 What you reach for in the morning
13:00 Not looking the part. Where style meets leadership, and decision fatigue
13:35 Adapting is a leadership skill. The cost is adapting continuously
14:05 Kylie never picked, and the question stopped being asked
14:30 This week's question, and how to tell her
Links and resources
Style as a Signal, the private podcast, plus the bonus guide The Leadership Wardrobe Essentials
The Leadership Impact Profile
The Leadership Presence Audit, a 30-minute call
Programs and services

Connect with Sonya
Instagram
Substack
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook

Related episodes
If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like:
98: Reading the Room Isn't Code-Switching. It's Amplifying the Right Frequency. The same woman in every room, choosing which frequency to lead with rather than which version to be. Listen to the episode
97: Executive Presence Teaches You to Perform. Leadership Presence Lets You Stop. The energy cost of performing a version of yourself, and what changes when you stop. Listen to the episode
16 min
September 04100: A Boutique Not a Sale Rack: The Seasonal Leadership Wardrobe Reset
One hundred episodes. Sonya marks it by going back to the thing this all started with, which is a weekend spent in front of her own wardrobe.
This is the seasonal reset she runs at least twice a year and asks her clients to run too. Heading into spring, she takes it back to three jobs: organise what is already there, put the knitwear away, and take a clear look at what is left. She works the whole thing through on air, including the part most people skip, which is deciding what to replace and being specific enough that the decision is already made by the time the thing turns up in a store.
Then the season ahead. Spring/summer colour, what is landing in Australian stores now, and why she watches the runway without buying from it. If you have a wardrobe full of perfectly nice things that somehow never quite come together, this is the weekend that sorts it.

Key takeaways
Twice a year is the real minimum. Quarterly is better and almost nobody does it. Book it in, and it gets faster every year, with less coming out each round.
Organisation on its own is a reset. Moving where things sit changes how the wardrobe reads before a single item leaves it.
What Sonya changed this season: knitwear folded and colour-coordinated onto shelves rather than hanging, shirts grouped together, tops together, pants and skirts in categories, dresses moved to one side, suits brought together. Same hangers, all facing the same way.
The standard is a boutique, not a sale rack. Her words: when it reads that way, "it always feels like you're going in and picking something new."
Repairs and replacements get their own pass. Stained, worn, needs mending, each into its own pile, dealt with separately from the sorting.
The replacement list is specific and short. Sonya wants two T-shirts. She has written down the colour and the shape, so she will recognise them on sight and can wait for the right ones. No shopping trip.
A settled colour palette does most of the work. When the palette already holds together, the pieces already mix, and the whole audit takes a fraction of the time.
Trends are for reading, not buying. Three questions before anything comes home: will I get longevity out of this, do I like it, would I wear it.

What Sonya is seeing for spring/summer
Colour: blush pink everywhere, right through to activewear, where a few seasons ago it was the hot Barbie pink. Chocolate brown is not going anywhere. Neutrals hold, with a deeper aubergine now reading as a neutral base. Acacia as the accent.
Shape: the statement midi skirt with more texture in it, relaxed suiting, collarless blazers, plenty happening at the neckline, which works hard on video. Tonal dressing continues, so co-ords stay. Lace and sheer for texture, and fringing is still around.
Accessories: statement jewellery is back after several seasons of fine chains. Bigger neck pieces, and earrings and brooches still strong.

Timestamps
00:00 How to Create a Wardrobe That Feels Like a Boutique
01:00 Why You Should Review Your Wardrobe Each Season
02:00 The 3 Key Goals of a Seasonal Closet Clear-Out
03:00 Simple Ways to Refresh and Reorganise Your Wardrobe
04:00 Finding a Wardrobe Organisation System That Works for You
05:00 How to Make Your Wardrobe Feel Like a Boutique
06:00 What to Keep, Repair, Replace, or Remove From Your Wardrobe
07:00 How to Identify What You Actually Need to Buy
08:00 How to Use Seasonal Trends Without Following Every Trend
09:00 Spring/Summer Colour Trends to Look Out For
10:00 The Key Clothing Trends Coming Through This Season
11:00 Exploring Texture, Lace, Silk, Sheer Details and More
12:00 The Return of Statement Jewellery and Accessories
12:00 Get the Free Seasonal Style Guide
12:30 Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead
Links and resources
The episode 100 gift. To mark one hundred, the Leadership Style Radar is yours. It is the full spring/summer 2026-27 read for the Australian seasonal clock: colour, shape, cloth and finish, the season in ten pieces, and where to find each of them here. Nothing to fill in.
sonyachoilarosa.com/styleradar
Standing links:
Style as a Signal, the private podcast, plus the bonus guide The Leadership Wardrobe Essentials: eleven foundation pieces, twenty rooms, and an audit of what you already own. sonyachoilarosa.com/privatepodcast
The Leadership Impact Profile: sonyachoilarosa.com/quiz
The Leadership Presence Audit, 30-minute call: sonyachoilarosa.com/book-a-call
Programs and services: sonyachoilarosa.com/services

Connect with Sonya
Instagram
Substack
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook

Related episodes
99: Nobody Taught You How to Negotiate Listen to the episode
14 min
August 2899: Nobody Taught You How to Negotiate
Nobody sat you down and taught you how to negotiate. You watched someone do it, you guessed, and you have been improvising ever since.
Angela Langmann spent sixteen years at Amazon across the US, UK and Australia, finishing as a General Manager and helping launch Amazon Australia in 2017. She was an Amazon Bar Raiser who conducted more than 700 interviews, held the deciding vote in hiring decisions and sat on promotion panels. She is also a certified negotiations trainer who taught buyers how to close multimillion dollar vendor deals. So she has sat on both sides of the table: the one asking, and the one in the room deciding.
In this conversation she takes apart the two myths that keep capable women underpaid, explains what actually gets said when your name comes up for promotion, and lists what is genuinely on the table at senior level beyond base salary. She is direct about the advice she refuses to give. Her words: don't tell me to be more confident, give me the data and a strategy, and the confidence comes after.
If you have ever discounted your own ask before you walked into the room, this one is for you.

Key takeaways
Negotiation is expected, and employers build for it. Most large organisations have mechanisms inside their salary bands specifically to handle it. Asking does not make you difficult.
"Be more confident" is not advice. Angela's position is that women are already confident. What is missing is data and a strategy, and confidence follows those, not the other way around.
The cheaper candidate does not win. Employers decide who they want before the pay conversation happens. Recruiters screen for range up front, so underselling yourself early removes you rather than protecting you.
Use ten sources, not one. Glassdoor, Levels, PayScale, SEEK, LinkedIn and the Hay Salary Guide in Australia. Then talk to friends about money, which women do far less than men.
Know your leverage before you open. Scarce expertise, or a role that has been open seven months, puts you at the top of the range rather than the middle.
Promotions are decided backwards, not forwards. The room looks at what you have delivered over twelve months, not what someone thinks you could do. Rarely is anyone promoted on potential.
Work outside your remit, or nobody in that room knows you. Angela's line: either it is "Angela who?", or it is someone saying she delivered for my team and it was not even her job.
Base salary is one of the least flexible levers. Vacation days, coaching, travel stipends, business class, parking, share vesting acceleration. Often a different budget, so far easier to say yes to, and frequently worth tens of thousands.
Start by finding out what your job pays now. If you have been in your role more than three years, Angela's experience is that the market has moved faster than your salary has.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro: why negotiation is a skill nobody formally teaches; guest intro (Angela Langmann, 16 years at Amazon)
02:00 Welcome to the episode
02:30 The most misunderstood myth about negotiation (aggression and likeability)
03:00 Debunking the "just be more confident" advice
04:00 Why negotiation is expected, and why people undercut themselves before they even walk in
05:00 How Angela actually learned to negotiate (spoiler: nobody taught her either)
06:00 The mentor story, being pushed to negotiate a promotion at Amazon
07:00 Becoming a certified Amazon negotiations trainer
09:00 The ripple effect of women talking openly about negotiating
10:00 The "insider strategy method", triangulating salary data from multiple sources
11:00 Her salary analyser tool plus asking friends what they earn
12:00 Why hiring a negotiation coach changes what you ask for
13:00 Myth busting: the cheaper candidate doesn't win the job
14:00 How salary ranges actually get set with recruiters
15:00 High leverage vs low leverage negotiating positions
17:00 Amazon's "rock star" hiring bar and upward mobility
18:00 Internal promotions, the "raised the bar" language and thinking beyond your team
19:00 Being visible cross functionally so you get considered for promotion
20:00 Staying agile and flexible through layoffs
21:00 What's negotiable beyond salary, total comp thinking, unusual perks (like parking)
22:00 Extra vacation days, travel upgrades, coaching stipends
23:00 Mutual value exchange, equity vesting acceleration example
24:00 Step one: go get your market data before assuming you're underpaid
25:00 Rapid fire round: her signature style piece (the earrings story)
26:00 Book recommendation: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
27:00 Her pre important conversation ritual: box breathing plus framing the other person's takeaway
28:00 Where to find Angela: her website, negotiation course, free monthly masterclass

References:
➡ McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Crown Business.
➡ Scotwork negotiation training.
➡ Salary data sources: Hay Salary Guide (Australia), Glassdoor, PayScale, SEEK, LinkedIn Salary.

Links and resources
➡ Angela Langmann's
- Website
- LinkedIn
- Substack, Future You
- YouTube

Working with Sonya:
➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins.
Complete the Leadership Presence Impact Profile here: Take it now
➡ Book Your Strategy Call
➡ Find out more about programs and services

Connect with Sonya
➡ Connect with me on social media
Substack
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
29 min
March 2698: Reading the Room Isn't Code-Switching. It's Amplifying the Right Frequency.
You've got the boardroom dialled. But what about the networking event? The industry dinner? The school fundraiser where you run into a board member at the cake stall? Most women in senior leadership have a presence strategy for one room and wing every other context they find themselves in.
In this episode, I break down why adjusting how you present yourself for different rooms isn't code-switching, and what frequency tuning actually looks like in practice. Using real client stories and observations from 25 years in corporate, I walk you through how to carry the same identity across every room by choosing which facets of your leadership to amplify depending on what the moment requires.

Key takeaways
Most women have a presence strategy for one room, usually the boardroom, and wing every other context. The hallway conversation, the Zoom call, the networking event, and the school pickup are all presence moments that require different things from you.

Code-switching implies becoming someone else. Frequency tuning means choosing which facets of your existing identity to bring forward depending on what the context requires. Your identity stays constant. Your expression adapts.

Locking into one mode across every room isn't consistency, it's rigidity. A boardroom and a school fundraiser require different things from you, and treating them the same creates friction in both.

Your leadership has multiple facets: strategic thinking, warmth, precision, creativity, directness, collaboration. Not every context requires all of them at the same volume. The skill is knowing which to amplify and when.

When your identity is clear, the tuning feels natural. You're not managing the question "how do I need to present myself?" because the answer becomes obvious. Your wardrobe, your tone, and your energy all serve the same foundation.
Building a presence strategy across your rooms starts with three steps: get clear on your leadership facets, map your regular contexts and what each one requires, and audit your wardrobe against all of your rooms, not just the one you've optimised for.

Timestamps
0:00 Opening: The Gap Between Projection and Reality
0:31 Welcome to the Style and Strategy Podcast
0:51 Leadership Presence Beyond the Workplace
2:08 It's a Presence Problem, Not a Wardrobe Problem
3:01 Why Reading the Room Is Not Code Switching
3:31 Balancing Authenticity and Projecting Style
5:34 Fine Tuning Your Frequency
6:40 The Musician Analogy
7:38 From Jeans to the Executive Table
8:31 Strategy for Only One Room
10:16 When Your Identity's Clear, Tuning Feels Natural
10:56 Map Your Rooms
12:23 Wardrobe as a System
12:44 The Masterclass Follow-Up
13:04 The Real Cost of Not Having a Strategy
13:26 You're the Same Woman in Every Room

Links and resources
➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment
➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide
➡ Book Your Strategy Call
➡ Find out more about programs and services

Connect with Sonya
➡ Connect with me on social media
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
Substack
15 min
March 1897: Executive Presence Teaches You to Perform. Leadership Presence Lets You Stop.
What happens when you've been told to "work on your executive presence" and you take that advice seriously? You learn to project confidence, manage your body language, speak with brevity, dress the part. And it works on the surface. But inside, it costs you something, and the gap between what you're projecting and how you actually feel keeps getting wider.
In this episode, I unpack the difference between performing presence and leading from identity, using a fascinating psychology experiment from Dartmouth and real client examples to show why the old model breaks down. If you listened to episodes 93 and 94, this is where the conversation gets practical: what does it actually look like when you stop performing and start leading from who you are?

Key takeaways
The Dartmouth scar study showed that when people believed they had a visible facial scar (which had been secretly removed), they reported being treated differently. Their expectation shaped their experience, not reality. The same dynamic plays out in corporate leadership when women internalise feedback about their presence.

The performance trap happens when you build presence on tactics without a foundation of identity. You learn to project confidence, but managing the gap between projection and reality drains cognitive energy in every room.

Confidence is built through mastery experience, not projection. Bandura's self-efficacy research confirms that the most powerful source of confidence is successful action, but you need self-trust to take the action in the first place.

You cannot fix the external components of presence without addressing internal clarity first. A stylist can dress you. A communication coach can sharpen your delivery. Neither will hold without understanding how you're naturally designed to lead.

Identity-first presence changes three things: your morning gets simpler (wardrobe becomes a tool, not a daily decision), your conversations change (preparation is about content, not performance), and the gap between rooms closes (you're the same person in every context).

When presence comes from identity rather than performance, it sustains without the energy cost of constant recalibration.

Timestamps
0:00 Opening: The Gap Between Projection and Reality
0:25 Welcome to Style and Strategy Podcast
1:10 The Dartmouth Scar Study
2:41 Corporate Version: Executive Presence Feedback
3:27 Putting On vs. Leading From Identity
4:52 The Founder Who Rated Herself a 3/10
6:18 The Three Components of Leadership Presence
7:23 Style Serves Identity
9:19 What Changes When You Lead From Identity
10:49 The Scar Study Revisited
12:11 Where the Real Work Begins

Further reading
Kleck, R.E. & Strenta, A. (1980). Perceptions of the impact of negatively valued physical characteristics on social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 861-873.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.

Links and resources
➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment
➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide
➡ Book Your Strategy Call
➡ Find out more about programs and services

Connect with Sonya
➡ Connect with me on social media
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
Substack
15 min
March 1196: She Stopped Being the Busiest Person in the Room. Here's What Happened
Every senior woman I work with says some version of the same thing: "I know I need to work on this, but I'm so busy." The busyness is real. The workload is real. But what most women don't realise is that busyness isn't a neutral holding pattern. Every week you show up without strategic intent, the perception people have of you is hardening. The "safe pair of hands" label, the "reliable executor" reputation, those calcify into how people read you.
In this episode, I name the busyness pattern for what it is, share the research on why perception doesn't wait, and give you a five-minute starting point that breaks the cycle. This episode is for the senior woman who rates her capability at eight or nine and her presence at three or four, and keeps telling herself she'll get to it when things calm down.

Key takeaways
The gap between capability and presence widens while you wait. Perception isn't static. First impressions and early labels shape how people interpret everything that follows (Asch, 1946; Sullivan, 2019).

Delivering is safe. Positioning is vulnerable. For women who've built careers on output, claiming space through presence instead of performance feels like a risk. Busyness becomes the acceptable reason to avoid it.

Unintentional signals are still signals. Research on the Red Sneakers Effect (Bellezza, Gino & Keinan, 2014) shows that deliberate nonconformity signals status and competence, but only when it's perceived as intentional. Showing up without strategic thought sends the opposite signal.

The "safe pair of hands" perception calcifies over time. The primacy effect means early impressions carry disproportionate weight. The longer the "reliable executor" label sits, the harder it is to shift.

Working on your presence doesn't require a sabbatical. The first step is diagnostic: naming where the gap between capability and how you're experienced is actually showing up. That takes five minutes.
Clarity comes before the wardrobe. The first thing that changes isn't what you wear or how you speak. It's your ability to articulate who you are as a leader and how you want to be experienced.

Timestamps
0:00 Opening: Strategic Presence
0:28 Welcome & Introduction
1:24 The Capability vs. Presence Gap
2:20 When Busyness Becomes the Problem
4:04 Three Women, One Pattern
5:53 The Primacy Effect
7:56 Deliberate vs. Unintentional Presence
9:04 Breaking the Cycle
10:21 Identifying Your Gap
12:11 Take the Leadership Presence Profile
12:19 Final Thoughts

Further reading
Asch, S.E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41(3), 258-290.
Sullivan, J. (2019). The primacy effect in impression formation: Some replications and extensions. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(4), 432-439.
Bellezza, S., Gino, F. & Keinan, A. (2014). The red sneakers effect: Inferring status and competence from signals of nonconformity. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(1), 35-54.

Links and resources
➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment
➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide
➡ Book Your Strategy Call
➡ Find out more about programs and services

Connect with Sonya
➡ Connect with me on social media
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
Substack
14 min
March 0595: The Advice to Not Stand Out Is Keeping You Invisible
A charisma expert recently advised women not to dress in ways that make them stand out for the wrong reasons. The advice isn't wrong. It's just not finished. It tells you what to avoid but gives you nothing to do instead.
In this episode, I unpack why the "stay safe" strategy that helped you belong early in your career is the same strategy that's making you invisible at senior levels. I walk through the research on how visual signals shape perception in under 100 milliseconds, why what you wear changes how you think and perform (not just how others see you), and the three questions I use with every client to move from default dressing to strategic presence.
If you've been fitting in so successfully that you're not being read at all, this episode is for you.

Key takeaways
The advice to "not stand out for the wrong reasons" is protective, but it leaves a gap. It tells you what to avoid without giving you a framework for what works instead. For senior women, the real risk isn't standing out wrong. It's not being read at all.

Willis and Todorov's research at Princeton found that competence judgments form within 100 milliseconds. If your visual signal is neutral, you're not getting a negative read. You're not getting a read at all. At Director level and above, that's a problem.

Enclothed cognition research by Adam and Galinsky showed that what you wear changes how you think and perform, not just how others see you. Defaulting to safe reinforces a neutral signal internally, costing you cognitive energy even when you can't name it.

The Dartmouth scar study (Kleck and Strenta, 1980) demonstrated expectation bias: participants who believed they had a visible scar reported being judged by strangers, even after the scar had been secretly removed. When you feel like you don't look the part, you read the room through that filter.

Three questions to move from default to strategic: What does this room need from me? Does what I'm wearing reflect the level I'm operating at or the level I came from? Am I making a choice, or am I avoiding one?

Visual friction doesn't just affect how others see you. It affects how you see the room seeing you. The longer it sits, the more it reinforces how people already read you.

Timestamps
0:00 Opening: Visual Friction & First Impressions
0:37 Welcome & Podcast Introduction
1:24 The "Don't Stand Out" Advice Problem
2:39 When Safe Strategies Stop Working
4:45 What is Visual Friction?
5:56 The 100 Millisecond Judgment Research
7:04 Client Example: Marketing Executive
8:09 How Self-Doubt Shifts with Seniority
9:17 Strategic Presence Framework
11:14 Three Key Questions for Any Outfit
14:36 The Dartmouth Scar Study
15:35 How Visual Friction Compounds
16:37 Leadership Presence Impact Profile
17:42 Closing: Creating the Right Attention

Further reading
Willis, J. & Todorov, A. (2006). First Impressions: Making Up Your Mind After a 100-Ms Exposure to a Face. Psychological Science, 17(7), 592-598.
Adam, H. & Galinsky, A.D. (2012). Enclothed Cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918-925.
Kleck, R.E. & Strenta, A. (1980). Perceptions of the impact of negatively valued physical characteristics on social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 861-873.

Links and resources
➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment
➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide
➡ Book Your Strategy Call
➡ Find out more about programs and services

Connect with Sonya
➡ Connect with me on social media
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube
Facebook
Substack
19 min

About STYLE & STRATEGY WITH SONYA

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Style & Strategy: the leadership presence podcast for women in leadership who are respected for what they deliver and ready to be remembered for who they are.

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STYLE & STRATEGY WITH SONYA

STYLE & STRATEGY WITH SONYA episodes

About STYLE & STRATEGY WITH SONYA