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Be Business Savvy - Create a Career that Soars! (Susan Colantuono)

scolantuon@aol.com
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11 Dec 2023Introducing the Be Business Savvy Podcast00:04:17

Hi, this is Susan Colantuono introducing my new mini podcast series, "Be Business Savvy."

I want to share its backstory, so that you understand why you're hearing what you're hearing.

Short to Fit Your Busy Life

I'm a very busy woman, as are you, and I find sitting through 60 minute and even 30 minute podcast really difficult. So I decided that I wanted my podcast to be in bite-size chunks addressing key career and leadership development content that you could. nibble on and take one six minute or less podcast at a time, or listen to a few if you are in the car or at a doctor's office and you have a few longer minutes to listen.

Fresh and Unscripted

The second thing that was my goal for the podcast. I wanted it to be fresh. I don't want to sit in a studio with all the gear and create my content on a schedule. I want to share it with you as it comes to mind. And being a busy woman doing that as part of my day, because my messaging about leadership, The Missing 33% and your career growth has to fit into your day I want you to see how I fit it into my day.

So depending on where I am in the world, you might hear random car sounds, bird song, waves crashing. dogs barking, roosters crowing airplane noise, and you'll definitely hear me huffing and puffing because my favorite time of day to walk and muse is in the morning.

Please accept those as part of my way of modeling the way that you can fit this content into your life, how you can fit the practice of enhancing your business, strategic and financial acumen into your life, and how you can become a greater manager. Individual contributor or executive by addressing Business Savvy in all its iterations.  

Don't Let Imperfection Stop You

Now as I edit this recording, I realize there's a third goal that I have for the podcast, and that's to give the message: "Don't let perfection get in the way of progress." Take a leap forward, take a risk, take an action. If it's not perfect, it's not the end of the world.  

Thanks for listening. I'm excited to share this journey with you. I will catch you in the next podcast.

Show Links:

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Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

30 Dec 2023The Career Advice You Probably Didn't Get00:06:48

This morning I'm using about the fact that you might not have found me through my TED Talk, so I want to share with you key messages from the TED Talk that will help you in your career journey.

First of all, I needed to have a definition of leadership that was actionable if I wanted to help women grow in their careers and be successful. I couldn't find one that met all my criteria, which you can read about in my book. No Ceiling, no Walls. So I developed one and here's my definition. Attend to the three parts because each is important.

Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging to the greatness in others.

  • Part one is what I call "using personal greatness."
  • Part two is achieving and sustaining outcomes, which is where The Missing 33% belongs. We talk more about that in my book and throughout the Be Business Savvy website.
  • Part three is about engaging others: individuals, teams inside the organization, outside the organization, et cetera.

Leaders @ Every Level

Now, per this definition, it's important to realize that leadership manifests at every level.

  • Individual contributors can use their strengths and attributes to. deliver results that drive the business forward by engaging others, even if it's their colleagues or customers.
  • Managers and executives are expected to use their strengths and attributes to move the organization forward by engaging not only colleagues and in many cases customers, but also by engaging their direct reports successfully one-on-one and /or in teams.

So leadership manifests at every level and every day. you can work on identifying what outcomes you want to produce that day or move forward, who you have to engage with in order to do that, and on what personal strengths you're going to draw.

The Missing 33%

A second important message in my TED Talk Is about the importance of The Missing 33% of the career success equation for women. Women don't get mentored on the importance of business, strategic and financial acumen.

  • Most organizations don't provide any formal feedback by way of performance reviews on that.
  • Nor are women in most cases mentored into positions that are in the core of the business and help them gain, develop, and demonstrate their business strategic and financial acumen.

Leadership Differs by Level

Key point number three is that leadership differs by level. The way you demonstrate leadership looks different when you're an individual contributor than it does when you're a manager or an executive.

These three points are crucial because the only way and the best way to advance in your career is on the foundation of your proven and perceived leadership skills.

Take Action

Okay. So let's sum this up with some actionable tips.

Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others.

  1. You are a leader. Think of yourself every day. As being able to and expected to use your greatness to move the organization forward by engaging the greatness and others.
  2. Generally speaking, women are perceived of as lacking the business financial and strategic acumen that comes along with the achieving and sustaining extraordinary outcomes portion of the leadership definition. So make sure every day that you are becoming more business savvy. In other words, enhancing your business, financial and strategic acumen. And that you demonstrate those in your actions and in what you say.
  3. Recognize that leadership differs by levels, and so do the expectations for how you show up as being business savvy. If you're at career start, you're not expected to fully understand and talk the language that your CFO uses when doing quarterly earnings calls. But by the time you're a senior manager, you darn well better understand that level of financial acumen and be using it to take proper action.

This is Susan Colantuono coming to you on a beautiful morning on the shores of Puerto Rico.

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Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

31 Dec 2023The Missing 33%00:06:26

In an earlier musing on The Missing 33%, I gave a brief summary of my TED Talk. On this I want to dive a little further into the concept of The Missing 33%.

Discovering The Missing 33%

I discovered it based on research published in 2000. Which was kicked off by a BusinessWeek title that said, "As leaders, women rule new studies find that female managers outshine their male counterparts on almost every measure."

 Now because I had my three part definition of leadership:

Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in ot,hers

I was able to take the elements in that research. where women were perceived by managers as outperforming their male counterparts and other elements where men were perceived as outperforming their women counterparts, and was able to bucket them into the three elements of leadership.

What I discovered is that:

  • Women were seen as outshining their male counterparts on everything that had to do with engaging the greatness in others.
  • Men and women were seen as relatively equal on tapping  personal greatness, meaning strengths and attributes, but
  • Men were seen as outshining women on every single cited competency that had to do with achieving and sustaining extraordinary outcomes.

And those competencies broke into three areas:

  1. Business acumen
  2. Strategic acumen and
  3. Financial acumen.

Now, you may ask, what about getting results? This is the most bizarre of all the elements that are measured in assessments because in some assessments, managers rate women is outperforming men. On others they rate men as outperforming women. And because getting results is absolutely the bare minimum in order to be considered a viable candidate for advancement, I just wiped it out because it was more or less, null.

So this is when I coined the phrase, "The Missing 33%" and started talking with women about the importance of business, strategic and financial acumen.

Updated Research

Fast forward. to 2023 and a woman on LinkedIn asked me, "How have things changed? Have they changed at all? I would think that this has gotten so much better since your original research and maybe women don't need this message any more."

So again, I dove into all published research that I could find where there were comparisons on the leadership strengths of women and men. And things actually have not changed. I wrote a LinkedIn article about this. I was sad and a little angry about it.

In one way it's gotten worse in that in all these studies, women were now seen as outperforming men on personal greatness. So we are seen as terrific people, great employees who work hard and are curious and we're seen as. excellent at creating inclusive teams, engaging team members, et cetera. But men are still seen as outperforming us on business acumen, strategic acumen, and financial acumen.

Polish the Diamond or Strengthen its Setting?

One implication of this is that if you take most organizations' leadership development programs, what they will do for you is help you polish the diamond instead of strengthening the setting.

Most organizations' leadership development programs are based on research in the 1970s on successful male executives who were seen as being different because they successfully engaged others and they were able to leverage their unique strengths and attributes.

And so these programs are full of important and valuable, but incomplete, skill building based on how to give and receive feedback, how to lead teams and other skills that have to do with engaging the greatness in others. And they often also let you know what Myers-Brigg type you are or what your strengths are.

All useful, but for women incomplete.

This is why finding additional resources to help you understand what is meant by and develop and demonstrate The Missing 33%. Your business, strategic and financial acumen is important, and that's what we're here for.

This is another morning musing by Susan Colantuono coming to you on a beautiful morning on the shores of Puerto Rico. 

Related Links:

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Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

16 Jan 2024Presenting to Higher Levels00:03:29

 "In order to be prepared to present at higher levels. It's important to realize that your work product means different things at different levels."

Susan L. Colantuono

----------------

Yesterday a woman told me that she got feedback about needing executive presence because she had to have all the answers when she went into a meeting to present. Now, that's patently ridiculous.

But here's how The Missing 33%, coupled with the knowledge about how leadership differs by levels, can help.

In order to be prepared to present at higher levels. It's important to realize that your work product means different things at different levels.

  • To you, it's evidence of a job well done and of the effort you put into it. Those two things don't matter to your boss.
  • To your boss. it's work product needed for him or her to be successful in the eyes of his or her boss. 
  • And if your work product ends up, as it did for this woman, being presented to the board of directors, their perspective on its significance is vastly different.

To understand that, it's important to understand through what lens of The Missing 33% they are looking.

Primarily, they'll be looking at the financial implications, so they're looking through the lens of financial acumen, and through the lens of strategic acumen because the connection of your project and its various iterations and manifestations must, in some way, support the organization's strategy or else they wouldn't invest in it.

That's this morning's musing as I walk along the beautiful shore in Rincon, Puerto Rico.

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Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

17 Jan 2024To Have Executive Presence You Have to Know What it Is!00:06:23

" Executive presence is the ability to comfortably draw and hold attention while delivering a business-savvy message."

Susan L. Colantuono

------------------------

 In an earlier podcast I talked about a woman who had received feedback about needing greater executive presence. This could be an any of thousands of women who've received that feedback that I've worked with over the years. So I want to do a quick musing into the topic of executive presence.

What is Executive Presence?

The important thing to understand is, what is executive presence?

Most of what's written about it will not serve you because there's no differentiation between skills and abilities that are needed for a preacher or a doctor or a politician versus an executive.

So when I decided to help women work on their executive presence, again in my nerdy way, I had to come up with a definition that was actionable. So here's the definition I share that many women have found useful as they work on this skill-set and perception.

Executive presence is the ability to comfortably draw and hold attention while delivering a business-savvy message.

Most all of the advice about executive presence is all about the first part of that definition, the ability to draw and hold attention. Nobody in my research has talked about executive presence being differentiated from any other kind of presence by virtue of having to include business savvy messaging. And this is where the very important tie between executive presence and The Missing 33% comes in.

Deliver a Business Savvy Message

It's only possible to deliver business savvy messaging if you are adept at business, strategic and financial acumen. All of the other advice about posture and tone of voice and gestures mean nothing if you can't deliver a business savvy message.

On the other hand, there are many women, even Fortune 500 CEOs, who have not had the polish that one would expect, but could credibly speak about the business of the business, the financial story, and the strategy. So both are important.

If you had to choose one, I would go for business savvy messaging, but luckily you don't.

You can work on your ability to draw and hold attention AND your ability to deliver a business savvy message.

Shape Your Message for Your Audience

Another key piece is the ability to shape that business savvy message to your audience.

A quick example, tapping one of my favorite quotes by anonymous. Not the internet hacking group.

" No one cares the storms you encounter, they only care did you bring in the ship."

What I mean by that is no one cares about the backstory. No one cares about how hard you work.

If you're trying to deliver a business savvy message, you have to pitch it to the lens through which your audience is looking. - If the audience is your boss, the lens is, "How does this help me be successful in the broadest and best meaning of that phrase? How does this help me move my teams and the organization forward? -

Then, the further up you go in the organization, the more the meaning shifts to, "What's the impact of this on the organization? What's the impact of this on its financials? What's the impact of this, on its strategy?

So executive presence, three major elements.

  1. The ability to comfortably draw on hold attention -that touches on all the conventional advice about posture, attire, tone of voice, eye contact, et cetera.
  2. Delivering a business savvy message, which reiterates yet again the importance of The Missing 33%: business, strategic and financial acumen.
  3. Pitching the content to your audience and the lenses through which they are looking.

Susan Colantuono coming to you this morning from the shores of Rincon, Puerto Rico.

Related Links:

 

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

02 Jan 2024The Single Best Way to Proactively Seek the Benefits of Mentoring00:06:13

The Single Best Way to Proactively Seek the Benefits of Mentoring

This will be a multi part series of musings coming to you from the shores of Rincón, Puerto Rico.

Part one.

8 Things To Know About Accessing Mentorship

  1. Women are improperly/imperfectly mentored. So you may have seen books and articles positing the idea that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. What I want to say about that is, yes, women are under-sponsored, but we are most likely improperly mentored.
  2. Mentoring and sponsorship aren't two separate entities. Mentors can become sponsors, and sponsors can be people who mentor you. So it's important to understand the value of mentorship and the value of sponsorship.
  3. Value of mentorship. The way I think about it is that mentors are people inside and outside your organization who help you identify and work toward your career aspirations. They can provide guidance, they can teach skills, they can share their own experiences so that you can learn from them.

    And mentors have traditionally tended to be more senior people, but they can also be more junior people who have a particular skill set that you would like to further develop. The important thing about mentors is you don't have to rely on just one. And it's extremely valuable to have mentors inside the organization who can guide from a perspective of "the way things are done around here" and mentors outside the organization whose only vested interest is in your success and not the overall organization.
  4. Mentors enter your life in two different ways. One is that they recognize something in you and choose to want to support your career success. In this way, it's also true that your manager can be a mentor. He or she can devote additional developmental time  to your skills.  And they too can invest additional time into helping you develop your skills.

    The other way that mentors can enter your life is through your proactive initiative. Now, having been approached many times to be someone's  mentor,
  5. How NOT to seek the benefits of mentoring. The way to proactively seek mentorship is not  to ask someone to be your mentor. Chances are most of the people you would want mentorship from are extremely busy, and an open ended request to become a mentor is quite daunting.

    It doesn't explain what you want mentorship on, what your assessed skills are in that area, or a time frame.  And many people who are approached to become mentors, the minute they hear that question are thinking, "Oh my God. This is a commitment of an indefinite time period. No thank you.
  6. The single best way to proactively seek the benefits of mentoring. Instead, what I recommend that you do if you want to proactively seek mentorship, is to first, do an assessment of the most important skill area for your development.Second, Identify someone who you know is highly skilled in that area and third, come to them with a very specific request along the lines of: 
  7. "Hi Terry, I am working on developing my leadership skills. I've identified that I need further. Expertise in the area of financial acumen. I've seen you present at the All Hands meeting, and you tell a compelling story about the financials. Would you be willing to spend three sessions with me focusing on a high level understanding of our financial reports? How you convert those numbers into a compelling story, and what someone at my level needs to be doing in order to develop their financial acumen further."
  8. How to handle a "no." Now Terry might say yes, in which case the happy child and you can celebrate Or Terry might say no. In the case of no you could follow up and ask, "Are you saying no because it's a busy time for you, and you might be willing to do this at a later date? If so when? or you might follow up by asking, "Is there anyone else you would recommend I approach for this kind of leadership development?"

Now, if you've listened carefully, you've seen that I have not used the word mentorship at all in this request or in the follow up. 

This morning's focus coming to you from the shores of Rincón, Puerto Rico is on mentoring.

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

03 Jan 2024Use Business Savvy to Declutter Your To-Do List00:05:40

Use Business Savvy to De-Clutter Your To-Do List

Hi, this is Susan Colantuono coming to you from beautiful South County, Rhode Island. Today I'm musing on the importance of de-cluttering your to do list for your mental sanity and well being.

Have you ever had the experience where something comes into your inbox or across your desk or into your DMs and you have thought, "I'm going to tackle that later?" Later comes and all of a sudden it's not even important.

I have had that happen so many times and the lesson it taught me is that focusing on what's crucial matters and it can simplify my life a lot.

If I felt like I had to respond to every DM, every email, the moment they come in, I would be a basket case and feel pretty overwhelmed and I think you could probably relate to that.

An executive that I met years ago from Verizon said that one way to demonstrate business acumen was focusing on the right stack of work. I would say that this is also true: only with business acumen can you identify the right stack of work.

Start Each Day with This Question

I offer a really different perspective than all the normal advice about prioritizing. Mine is this:

Once you're clear on your positional purpose and the key financial and other metrics that you are being paid to move forward, then the question to ask at the start of every day is, "What are the most important outcomes that I am being paid to move forward today?

Of course, then if you're working on your leadership, you can ask, "Who do I have to engage in order to move them forward? And what personal greatness will I rest on to do that?"

But I, I would say to start simply by asking, "What are the most important outcomes that I am being paid to move forward today? And then what activities are associated with those? So, as demands come in, as they always will, that pull you away from your early morning bright, sharp focus you can filter them through this question: "Are these going to help me move forward the outcomes that I'm being paid to move forward today?"

If so, then respond or make a plan to respond.

If not, let them wait.

What's a Woman to Do?

To summarize, let's go over the main points.

  1. The first is to know your positional purpose.
  2. The second is every morning use your understanding of your positional purpose to identify the outcomes that you need to advance.
  3. The third is to use that understanding as a filter to judge whether the demands and pulls and tugs and interruptions that are coming at you really do need to be responded to in the moment or whether they don't need to be responded to at all or responded to later.

Now, if You are new to the podcast and you don't understand what I'm talking about when I talk about positional, when I talk about positional purpose or the outcomes that you need to move forward.

You can use hashtags and search in the blog or in the podcast for positional purpose or for outcomes.

Catch you next time. 

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com
​ 

09 Jan 2024Courage, Confidence and Business Savvy00:08:27

Good morning again from the boardwalk in beautiful El Rompido in Spain.

This morning I'm musing about courage, confidence, and business savvy.

You've Earned Your Place

Imagine that you're walking into a business meeting. It's the first time you have encountered the members of the team you'll be working with. And while you carry in with you an exceptional track record of performance and great skills at engaging others, it's natural to have a little trepidation about how you will be received in this team, especially if, as It can often be the case you are the only woman on the team.

You carry with you the:

  • Knowledge that you bring
  • Level of confidence that comes from knowing you were chosen because of your track record and expertise
  • Skills you've used in other situations similar to this
  • Knowledge that those skills have helped get you chosen for this team

Those are all things you have going for you as you enter this new experience.

You've Been Handed Baggage

But being a woman in organizations, chances are you are also carrying some baggage. This has nothing to do with you, by the way. I want to state that right up front. You are carrying with you prior experiences of:

  • Being interrupted
  • Being talked over
  • Having a man who knows less than you explain (or mansplain) the topic that you are weighing in on.
  • Paternalistically been on the receiving end of comments that can be as blatant as, "Now dear, You don't know what you're talking about."

All of these experiences - which people call microaggressions (and that really angers me because they are aggressions, period) - are in some cases consciously intended to shut us up and make us small and in other cases unconsciously used to the same effect.

And I do want to point out that while these behaviors most frequently come from men, they can also come from women who have internalized the misogyny that underlies most organizations. I say that with grace; understanding that women, especially those who have been pioneers in moving to the top of organizations and who are paving the way for the rest of us, have broken through barriers because they have had to not be perceived as threatening. Sometimes they are not even aware when they are perpetuating these toxic and aggressive behaviors.

This morning I want to say to you again,

This is not on you.

These are behaviors of others that, as hard as it is to do, are best handled by shaking them off each time you enter a new situation, if you haven't previously been able to constructively confront them in order to minimize them. That's a whole separate podcast.

Put Down the Bags!

What I want to be encouraging you to do, and I use that word with intention, is to summon up your courage to continue to present yourself as the capable, knowledgeable person you know yourself to be.

And that takes courage.

And that takes grit.

And that takes perseverance.

And I know it's not easy. I have been in your shoes. But I know that when I have summoned up the courage to continue to present myself as the capable, knowledgeable, and big contributor that I can be, the rewards have paid off.

And when I have given in and kept myself small and quiet, it's at the expense of two things:

  1. The forward momentum of the project at hand, and
  2. My own feelings of self worth.

What's a Woman To Do?

So what's a woman to do?

  1. Before any meeting where in the past you have experienced behaviors directed toward you that have the intention of quieting, diminishing, or deflecting your contributions, buoy yourself up with the knowledge that you are in your place for a reason. So that's tip number one.
  2. Tip number two is to make sure that your contributions are grounded in your business savvy. And that you can present them in the language of business.
  3. Number three. If there are other women in the group, engage them in, in activities whereby you support each other by reinforcing each other's points and making space for each other to speak up.
  4. And four is the subject for another podcast, which would be how to constructively engage the facilitator of the meeting and or members who are frequent aggressors in order to reduce that behavior.

Recap

So let's recap.

  • Especially when entering a new group, it's important to recognize that you have been chosen for your expertise and experience. These qualifications won't prevent you from being on the receiving end of behaviors that give the message: diminish yourself, be smaller, and be quiet.
  • There are four ways to respond to these behaviors. So forth, draw on your past successes to create the courage and confidence to contribute at your highest level so that you remain whole, strong, and balanced.

Catch you next time.

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

17 Jan 2024Your Leadership Daily Practice00:04:51

Good morning. It's Susan Colantuono here with my musings on The Missing 33%.

This morning. I want to touch on something that I mentioned in another podcast. It's what I call your leadership daily practice.

I want you to know that I walked my talk about this as I was growing my company that I have since sold. I did this every day and it helped me grow my prior company 1400% in six years.

What is a leadership daily practice?

Well, it's based on my definition of leadership, which is:

"Leadership is using the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others."

In order to do your leadership daily practice, it is crucially important that you understand your Positional Purpose. More on that later.

How do I develop my leadership daily practice?

Your leadership daily practice means asking yourself three questions grounded in my leadership definition:

  1. What outcomes must I absolutely move forward today? These outcomes relate to your positional purpose, whether It's to help the organization enhance cash grow, enhance revenue or decrease expenses or improve velocity. What outcomes do I absolutely have to move forward today?
  2. Who do I have to engage with in order to get that done? So who on my team, which of my direct reports, what internal or external stakeholders and others, and
  3. On what personal greatness will I draw? So what will be my foundation of self-worth  in order to successfully have those interactions and move the outcomes forward? So asking yourself those three questions at the start of every day is part one of your leadership daily  practice.

You can do your leadership daily practice in your car. You can do it on the walk from your bedroom to your home office. You can do it anywhere. You can write it down, you can keep it in your head.

Equally importantly, is at the end of each day, asking yourself:

  1. "How did I do in moving that important outcome or those outcomes forward?
  2. How did I do engaging the greatness of others who had a role to play? And
  3. How did I do standing on my platform of personal greatness?

This helps you set up the next day in case there's something that has to be revisited.

I strongly encourage you to use your leadership daily practice every day.

  • It's practical.
  • It produces results.
  • And it will help you wear your mantle of leadership with pride.

Coming to you this morning from the shores of Rincon, Puerto Rico

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

24 Jan 2024Why You MUST Know Your Positional Purpose00:09:27

If you are like most people, you come to work with a laser sharp focus on the job ahead of you. You've heard messages like 

  • "Work hard."
  • "Do your job."
  • " Get results, and good things will come to you.

So your orientation is looking downward at the job for which you've been hired.

In this morning's musings I want to ask you to lift your head, look around, look above in order to clarify your positional purpose.

Eyes Up!

Every job in an organization exists because it is important to invest money in activities that are integrally connected to what we call our model for business acumen. It's adapted from the extraordinary book by Ram Charan, titled What the CEO Wants You to Know.

Basically, this model explains that every job in an organization is designed to help fuel a virtuous cycle  where

  • Cash  enables growth,
  • Profitable growth drives return, and
  • Return adds to cash.
  • This virtuous cycle made possible by attention to and in service of customers and consumers.  


We can have a lot more conversation about this model, but you have to understand it in order to clarify your positional purpose, which is integral to what I talked about in an earlier podcast  "Your Leadership Daily Practice."

The Importance of Your Positional Purpose

Once a woman told me about her fabulous CEO whom everyone loved, although we're terrified of this one thing that he did.

Instead of eating in the executive dining room, he would come into the cafeteria and sit down with random people. And his go-to question was:

"What do I pay you to do around here?"

Because of my own developing Business Savvy, I realized that he didn't want answers like I'm an accountant or I'm an HR business unit partner, or I am a programmer.

What he was looking for were answers, like:

  • I develop financial information that helps the company make smart decisions about increasing margin or.
  • I make sure the right people are in the right jobs and skilled in order to meet our growth goals for the next four quarters, or 
  • I develop programs that improve velocity by smoothing and shortening the cycle from start of work to the product being in the customer's hands.

To understand your positional purpose, we go back to the cash, growth, return and customer/consumer model.

Recognizing that all  components are integrally connected, every job, including your job, is intended to have a primary impact on one of them.

So where is the primary impact of your job?

For example is it to increase cash by shortening AR days or lengthening accounts payable days?

Or to make wise investments of available cash?

Or is it to fuel growth by creating marketing materials that help the organization gain market share?

Or to investigate  potential targets for acquisitions?

Or identifying new markets or doing R&D on new products.

Or is it driving return by selling products and services  to  clients  at a higher margin  or by decreasing expenses, which by the way, is one way that every person can impact return?

Or is it to increase the speed with which things get done? Are you part of  an Agile team or business process redesign or simply someone who looks to do things more efficiently. Again, that's something that every employee can do.

Or does your job exist in order to increase customer satisfaction and customer retention by ensuring product quality and/or product safety.

And finally, for a staff function like HR or compliance, does your job exist to ensure that the, e.g:

  • Right people are in the right job with the right skills to do the work that's required to move the company forward?
  • Company doesn't get hit with financial fines for non-compliance  with laws in varying geographies.

Contemplate this and come up with your answer to the question, "What do I pay you to do around here?" 

Is That CEO RARE?

I want to tell you that that CEO's question isn't a random occurrence. I've told his story many times and heard similars, including this one from a woman who was at a meeting of the board of directors where she was a senior leader but not presenting.

One of the board members came up to here and asked, "What do you do to help the company grow?"

Now, she was not in any of the typical functions where that's the order of business. Her position had a high impact on employee recruitment and retention. So she answered,

"I make sure that all the positions that are required to meet our strategic growth goals are filled and that we don't incur additional costs of recruitment because we are able to retain our employees."

It's been a longer pod than usual because this such a crucial concept. 

You can of course learn more about it through our Be Business Savvy offerings. And also in my book, No Ceiling, No Walls. 

From the shores of Rincon, Puerto Rico, I hope this musing gives you much to think about and actions to take. 

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

07 Feb 2024Why DIY Business Acumen will Fail You00:07:33

WHY DIY Business Acumen Will Fail You

Imagine that you have just bought the perfect piece of furniture from Ikea and you open the box and in front of you are pieces of wood and screws and screwdrivers and nuts and bolts in the dozens and you frantically search within the packaging And you cannot find the instruction manual. Imagine how frustrated you'd feel if that were to happen.


This is a little bit like trying the do it yourself approach to developing or enhancing your business acumen. Without an organizing model, it's really difficult to make use of the literally millions of pieces of information that will come at you if you do a search, or the dozens of tips that you will get if you ask AI how to develop your business acumen.


Let's say you do a search on, "How do I develop business acumen?" or "Tips on business acumen for women."


The returns are literally impossible to sort through to find actual value and only a tiny number of them provide any kind of organizing structure, framework, or model.

 

Even AI Is Not Your Friend

If you ask AI for tips on how to develop business acumen, or tips for women on how to develop business acumen. You will get advice that has nothing to do with business acumen and which frankly panders to stereotypes about women.

Here are a few that have come up across multiple AI platforms:

Network. Well, without an organizing principle, or a model, or that famed instruction guide for what is business acumen, how will I know who are the right people to engage inside my network and what are the right conversations to have with those people?

Have Work/Life Balance. This piece of AI generated advice frankly blew my mind. Are you kidding me? What the heck does work life balance have to do with acquiring and demonstrating business acumen?

Absolutely nothing.

Continue learning was another tip. Oh, great. Without a model of what I should be learning, how the heck do I efficiently enhance my business acumen?

 

I could go on, but you get my point.

 

These illustrate the reason why I'm deeply grateful that earlier in my career, I discovered a unifying model that I have shared with thousands of women like you that they have then used to great effect in their careers.

 

What's A Woman to Do?

I am delighted and honored to announce my new Build Business Acumen course here inside of Be Business Savvy.

If you want to efficiently develop or enhance and demonstrate your business acumen, I invite you to register for Build Business Acumen.

You'll get:

  • An actionable definition of business acumen.
  • That unifying framework with which you can take many different steps to continuously expand your business acumen as you grow in your career.
  • A tool to enable you to effectively demonstrate your business acumen. A tool that will grow with you as you grow in your career.
  • A strong foundation for developing financial and strategic acumen.

 

I've designed Build Business Acumen for busy, ambitious, career oriented women like you.

  • It's delivered in bite sized chunks that are 10 minutes or less.

    It's packaged as two different modules, one for developing business acumen or enhancing it, and another for demonstrating it.
  • You can take the mini lessons within each module at your own pace.
  • It's supported with live teaching. Meetups, one at the end of each module.

We have a chat capacity, so as you're going along, you can send questions that I will either answer uniquely to you, or if they are of broader general interest, I'll answer in the live meetup or in the chat.

And you have access to this material for as long as it exists. This matters because as you grow in your career, it's useful to come back to this model and refresh it for your new level or your new part of the business. And I want to make this a lifetime tool for you.

So, click the button below, slide on over and read more about the program, and I do hope to see you there.  

 

Although the content is proven, this is the first time Build Business Acumen is being offered in this format. That's why you'll be able to register at a limited time only Inaugural Price.

 

Take advantage by registering here. 

The deadline is 11:59 PM EST on 15 February.

 

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

31 Jan 2024Insights into Business Acumen00:05:01

 Business, financial and strategic acumen are all Interrelated, so sometimes it can be difficult to define each one without slipping over into the others, but this morning I'm going to try to do that for business acumen.

 

Intro

Good morning from the shores of Rincon, Puerto Rico. 

This morning I'm musing about business acumen because a colleague was struggling to find her own definition. So, let me share with you my thoughts about business acumen.

As you know, I've said a million times that business, strategic and financial acumen are all Interrelated, so sometimes it can be difficult to define each one without slipping over into the others.

But this morning I'm going to try to do that for business acumen.

Defining Business Acumen

When I think about business acumen, one of the things that comes first to mind is that it requires you to lift your field of vision from the job that you were hired to do. So whether you're an individual contributor, a manager of individuals, a manager of managers, or an executive, you have to be able to look across and up, not just down at your area or areas of responsibility.

What that means is that business acumen includes an understanding of the entire business, how the various parts support one another in order to bring value to customers and consumers. As I've touched on in other podcasts, it means that you have to understand the entire value creation chain that brings value to those customers and consumers. And you have to understand your role in it.

The other thing that is important when thinking about business acumen is that it means understanding the key outcomes by which the organization is measured and your role in delivering on those key outcomes.

I sometimes say business acumen is understanding the business of the business (which is what I've just discussed) where it's going and your role in taking it there.

"Business acumen is understanding the business, where it's headed and your role in taking it there."

'Where it's going' slips a little bit into strategic acumen, but to the extent that where it's going has to do with meeting short term quarterly or annual goals, that is a part of business acumen.

if you don't understand what those goals are at the highest level and how you contribute to them from wherever you are there's a gap in your business acumen.

What can you do to enhance your business acumen?

There are many many actions you can take. For example:

  • Learning from people adjacent to you in your value creation chain.
  • Interviewing people in other business units about what's going on over there.

These and many, many more tips and concepts and tools are available to you in the Build Business Acumen course.

Click the link below to find out more about it, and I hope I'll see you there.

Build Business Acumen

Catch you next time. 

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

14 Feb 2024Build Business Acumen00:04:30

Build Business Acumen

When I discovered The Missing 33% of the career success equation for women - in other words, the fact that managers don't expect us to have or demonstrate business, financial, and strategic acumen - and that is a barrier to our advancement, it means we have to work extra hard to develop and demonstrate that we have business, financial, and strategic acumen, or what I call Business Savvy. 

I realized that part of my mission was going to be to help women develop, enhance, and demonstrate their business savvy.

Of course,  I didn't have much myself. I never had a mentor who talked to me about how important that was. I didn't have an MBA. That's a whole other podcast. And I saw myself as a practitioner.

What I did instead of starting with academic tomes on business was study the experiences of successful CEOs. 

I learned about business acumen, financial acumen, and strategic acumen first from CEOs, women and men, who were using theirs to get to the top of organizations and run them successfully. This means that I had a much more clear and discreet view than if I had started with an academic approach, because in academia, in order to get published, it's a situation of ever more granular.

It's like, if I had started from an academic standpoint, I would have been reading about dozens of different sizes of nails, dozens of different sizes of screws, dozens of different sizes of nuts and bolts. But instead I started looking at the finished piece of furniture and how it functioned. 

For example, if you search on business acumen, either through AI or basic search engine search you will find that strategic thinking is included in business acumen.  But what I know from is CEOs and what they look for in candidates for senior positions or high potential designation, they see business, financial, and strategic acumen as discrete capabilities...with overlap, of course. The place where strategic thinking most directly belongs is With strategic acumen.

This is the perspective that I bring to my mission to equip women to develop or demonstrate their business savvy. It's the perspective of your executives, not the perspective of your professors.

And that brings unique value that you won't find anywhere else. I feel a little bit braggadocious in saying that, but it's true.

I have had women come through my programs who've said to me, "This is ever so much more useful than what I learned in my MBA." I've had women who come to me and have said, "I never got this information from my executive leadership course sponsored by XYZ, renowned business school."

I hope as you consider whether this program is for you, that you will take these  factors into consideration.

  1. First of all, the material I bring you comes through the perspective from, is derived from the experiences. and reflects the perspectives of your executives. 
  2. And the second is, you can't get this program anywhere else.
  3. And the third is, it has been delivered to, used by and proven results for women from every continent, women at all levels, up to senior leadership, and across pretty much every industry.

 

If you're having any concerns about whether this course will work for you given your profession or level in the organization or the industry you're in, whether it's actionable as opposed to academic, I hope that I've put your mind at ease and that I will see you in

Build Business Acumen

From the beautiful nature walk in El Rompido, Spain. Catch you next time.

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

07 Feb 2024Keep Leadership Simple with Business Acumen00:06:45

This morning as I walk along the beautiful shore in Rincon, Puerto Rico, I'm focusing on keeping leadership simple.

What popped into my mind this morning is when I was working at a large medical center, and I was consulting to the Chief Nursing Officer, working with her managers.

Nurse managers are accountable for an immense number of metrics. And, generally speaking, they feel overwhelmed by the demands to deliver on all of them. This might sound familiar to you in your job.

And of course the demands that they were accountable for delivering trickled down to individual contributors and rolled up to the performance of the Chief Nursing Officer.

My job was to teach nurse managers to be stronger managers. Especially, given that most of them have a professional identity as nurses, it was a challenge in many cases for them to think of themselves as managers.

Leadership is Simple, But it's not Easy

In the spirit of keeping it simple, I used my definition of leadership to help them understand that leadership is simple, even though it's not easy. 

During their leadership development experiences we work together focusing them on getting clear about the outcomes that they had to deliver and sustain how to effectively engage with their staffs to do that. And on what personal greatness they would stand during their actions and interactions.

Now, going back to the metrics, how we kept it simple was using the virtuous business cycle model. To categorize metrics into four basic buckets.

  • Metrics like patient satisfaction scores, and patient safety scores, went into a bucket that had to do with customer and consumer outcomes,
  • Documented medication errors, and staff overtime went into a budget that went into a bucket focused on return, meaning expenses and revenue  and velocity.

There were two other buckets where their actions and the actions of their teams and the related metrics indirectly rolled up to other responsible areas.

This is an effective way for you to think about your role.

And it's based on two things:

  1. Understanding what leadership is and that leadership manifests at every level and
  2. Understanding your business. In other words, developing your business acumen.

 Your job can feel complex and overwhelming, but these are two useful ways of keeping it simple.


So let's Recap

First, because leadership manifests at every level, it's important to think about your role as requiring three essential behaviors:

  1. Identifying the outcomes and related metrics that you're responsible for delivering,
  2. Interacting effectively with others. who are colleagues in the delivery of those metrics and
  3. Tapping your personal greatness in those interactions.

This helps keep your role as a leader, whether you're an individual contributor, manager or executive, clear and simple, although executing it might not be easy.

The second is to use, the second is to use the virtuous business cycle model that we teach in Build Business Acumen to get clear about why the metrics you are responsible for are important and how they roll up to key business outcomes.


So what's a woman to do?


Pick one. 

  • Every day this week, think about yourself  as a leader and set intentions for how you're going to move outcomes forward, who you will engage with effectively to do that, and what personal greatness you'll tap in those interactions.
  • Your second option is to work to gain a clearer understanding of why your metrics matter and how they roll up through the organization to key business outcomes. One easy way to do this is ask your manager about how your key performance indicators are reflected in his or hers.

Let me know which one you choose and how you do.

These and many, many more tips and concepts and tools are available to you in the Build Business Acumen course.

Click the link below to find out more about it, and I hope I'll see you there.

This is Susan Colantuono. 

Catch you next time.

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

21 Feb 20245 Steps You Need to Self-Promote and Still Be Humble00:07:42

5 Steps to Self-Promote with Grace, Ease and Authenticity.

Good morning from the nature trail in El Rompido, Spain. 

Based on a post I wrote on LinkedIn while I was here, I am musing on self promotion. 

Specifically for this podcast, the myth that if you self promote, you cannot be humble. 

The reality couldn't be further from the truth.

And here's why.

Paradoxical Blend of Personal Humility and Intense Professional Will

One of the books that had a profound impact on my understanding of leadership, was Jim Collins' classic, Good to Great.  

In it, one of his and his team's discoveries about the executives who led companies that made the transition from good performance in the marketplace to great performance in the marketplace and sustained it over time was that they embodied a paradoxical blend of personal humility and intense professional will. 

What does that mean, and how does that apply to you?

Well, it means that he discovered that of  the executives he studied, only 1 of them was featured on the cover of an important business publication in spite of the fact that the companies they were leading were 'making transformative and huge leaps in their business performance.

These executives, whom he called Level 5 Leaders, did not seek the limelight. But they were Intensely focused  on delivering the outcomes that were expected in order to position the organization  to be successful today and thrive tomorrow.  

Now, does this mean that the accomplishments of these executives were unknown inside the organization and among its key stakeholders?

Absolutely not.

If the outcomes they were achieving or exceeding hadn't been visible to the board of directors and the analyst community, these executives would not have stayed in place.


Be Like These CEOs

So what does this mean for you? 

It might mean that you do get featured in some business oriented conference, blog, podcast, or magazine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

And you can respond in ways that are generous, that give credit to team members, that are generous in terms of sharing lessons learned with other women, being generous in sharing credit for accomplishments with those who've helped along the way.

This is all good.

But it is also to say, it is your responsibility and, as I talk about in other podcasts, a measure of your self respect to be sure to let your key stakeholders know about the accomplishments that you've produced. And to do that in a way, as I always say, that puts the focus on how the business is moving forward:

  • Because you are there,
  • Because of your most recent accomplishment,
  • Because of your most recent goal achievement or KPI that you've surpassed or
  • Because of how you've led your team or teams tho those successes.

 

Self-Promote With Grace, Authenticity and Ease

When you let your key stakeholders know about your and your team(s) contributions to the business,

  • You are self promoting with grace because it is about  moving the business forward so that it can better serve its customers and consumers if It has them 
  • You are self promoting  with authenticity because You aren't hiding behind the, oh, it was nothing  mantra when you know done right well that you put in a lot of  that you've put in substantial effort,  and
  • You're self promoting with ease because you've you're maintaining your focus on the business


What's a Woman to Do? 

  1. Well, first of all, shake off that myth that self promotion and humility are mutually exclusive.
  2. Secondly,  identify your key stakeholders. These are the people who need to know the ways that you are contributing to moving the business forward.
  3. And the third thing is to use your Business Savvy to identify the accomplishments (that you and your team or teams are responsible for) that have the greatest impact on moving the business forward. 
  4. Combine numbers 2 and 3 together to develop a communication plan with which you will advise,  inform or update one or more key stakeholders about an important  accomplishment,  goal achievement,  KPI met or exceeded  or whatever is meaningful in your world and illustrates how you, your team or team(s) are moving the business forward. 
  5. As I've said In other places, once you have sent the email or the DM or popped into your boss's office; then file it away in a special folder where you keep all of your accomplishments. This way you can avoid "Achievement Amnesia" and will have them at your fingertips when you are pitching yourself for a new opportunity or for your performance review. 

Here's me in the beautiful southwest of Spain saying, "Just do it."

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

 

 

 

 

 

28 Feb 2024The Most Important Thing to Know When Seeking a Promotion00:12:09

 Good morning from the shores of beautiful Rincon, Puerto Rico, where this morning, I am musing on the most important thing to know when you're seeking a promotion.

 

First, Do This!

Before I get into it, I want you to try something. 

 

If you're in a place where you can stand up, I'd like you to do that.  

 

Take your dominant hand, extend your pointer finger and raise your hand with your finger pointing straight up above your head and with your arm, make a circle going clockwise.  Look up to make sure that that circle is going clockwise.

 

 

Now bring your pointer finger directly to eye level, and look at - don't feel - what's happening.



And then lower your hand below eye level, keeping your pointer finger pointing straight up, look down. 

 

What direction is this circle now?  

 

I hope that's blown your mind. When I've done that in workshops, the whole room is saying, "Oh, that's magic!"  

 

(If you're not in a place where you can do that standing up, try this instead.

  • Take a mug or a cup and lift it straight above your head and look up. Chances are you see a circle formed by the bottom of the cup or mug.
  • Now bring it down to eye level, and you'll see a shape representing the side of the cup or mug.
  • And then bring it below eye level and look down and you're seeing into the top of the mug.)

If you did the pointer finger activity as I was best able to describe it without showing you,

  • What you would have seen looking straight up is your finger moving in a clockwise circle.
  • Continuing that clockwise circle with your arm and your finger pointed straight up, at eye level you would have seen pretty much your finger moving back and forth.
  • But when you bring your hand below eye level, you would have seen the circle going counterclockwise (or anticlockwise as they say in some parts of the world).  


Both of these activities drives home the point that

What you see, depends on where you stand.

 

And this is brings us to the single most important thing you need to know when you're seeking a promotion:

 

The job you seek looks very different from where you stand than it does from the shoes of the hiring or promoting manager.

In other words, you see the clockwise circle, the incumbent sees the fingers moving back and forth and the hiring manager sees the counterclockwise circle!

 

Leadership Differs by Level

You might be wondering what's different. Well, for this, it's important to understand that and how leadership differs by level. Generally speaking, the higher you go, the more important become  3 things. 

  1. First, the nature of the work you do,
  2. The shift from operational to strategic work
  3. The importance  and composition of your strategic networks.   

This morning, we'll explore t a little bit about each of them.

 

The Nature of Expected Work & Shift from Operational to Strategic Focus

At the individual contributor level, you are 100% responsible for your work performance and achieving outcomes, but you have opportunities to show interpersonal and team skills in how you interact with others;  whether you're able to bring colleagues together to solve a problem or whether you're able to onboard new colleagues or whether you're able to work effectively with others when you're assigned to a interdepartmental  project.

When you're a manager of individual contributors, your work is primarily focused on developing the individual contributors who do the work in order to ensure that your team is producing  the required operational results.  You're also focused on navigating change as strategic initiatives come to you at your level, which means not only  motivating your team  to perform in the new ways required and deliver the newly expected results,  but also to ensure that you've shifted the metrics of your team to align to the new strategic initiatives. 

When you're a manager of managers, your staff development focus is on developing the leadership capabilities of your direct reports. So you're quite distant from developing the operational skills and more focused on making sure that your team members are doing that.  You're also beginning to be more responsible  for setting strategy, which I've already top which I've already touched on,  which means  that your responsibilities now include  the beginning of positioning the organization in its marketplace  for future success.  

At the executive level, there is some responsibility for developing team members, but pretty much they're already proven.  Your primary responsibility is to position the organization for success in its marketplace  and to manage relationships with the board and other key external stakeholders. 

 

Which leads me to talking about the nature of  your strategic networks and how they change as you move up in the organization and what a promoting manager would be looking for. 

 

The Nature of Strategic Relationships

At the individual contributor level, you're expected to have good collegial relationships with your colleagues and  with others in the value creation chain that you're supporting. Of course, you will want to add to those expectations your own personal goals for developing a strategic network that includes mentors, the potential to earn sponsorship, and career decision makers.  

At the manager level, all of that continues to be true, but in an elevated way.  If you're managing a team of individuals, you're expected to play nicely with other colleagues whose success depends on your team and vice versa. You're beginning to be expected to have  external relationships that enable you to import ideas for innovation.  And you're beginning to be expected to be a voice - perhaps a thought leader in your profession or a voice among your colleagues. 

As a manager of managers, all of the aforementioned continues to exist, but the external relations required  to position the organization in the marketplace come to the fore. This could involve your relationships with vendors, customers, industry leaders. 

At the executive level, you are expected  to have those external relationships in place, to be a voice in the industry,  to have strong relations with the board,  to understand  the concerns of your external stakeholders including key customers, analysts, etc..  

 

Why do I mention all of these expectations?



Because if you're seeking a promotion you have to understand what's expected of you at the next higher level and what the hiring or promoting manager is dealing with. This enables you to:

  • Position your proven performance -  and the case you make for your potential -  to resonate with the hiring manager based on how the new position you're striving for will help him or her succeed,
  • Make the case for how you will be able to be successful yourself in that new position. 

 

What's a Woman To Do?

So let's recap. 

The single most important thing that you need to know when you're seeking a promotion is that and how leadership differs by level. 

Knowing this, what's a woman to do?

  1. First, use that understanding to put yourself in the shoes of the hiring or promoting manager who is looking down at the open position. Seek to understand what his or her expectations are for the person who will fill that position. 
  2. Second, use your business savvy to make the case for why you will be able to perform in the open position. And here, I'm talking specifically about the expectations of developing team members at the manager level  or developing managers' leadership skills at the more senior manager level.
  3. Third, use your business savvy to make the case for your capacity to act more strategically to meet the demands of the open position. 
  4. And fourth, use your business savvy to make the case for how your internal and external networks will enable you to meet the demands and be successful in the open position.  

 

Remember, interviews for promotions are

  • Not a reward for past performance.
  • Not an opportunity to only showcase your past performance.
  • An opportunity to show whether you can perform at the next higher level. That's why it's crucially important that you're prepared to make the case for why and how you will succeed at the next higher level. 

 

I hope you have found this motivating, challenging, and illuminating. 

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

06 Mar 2024No, It's NOT Just You!00:07:12

Stop Accepting the Blame

Good morning from the sleepy little village of El Rompido in Andalusia, Spain.

This morning (Oct '23), for the first time in about 10 days, I scrolled through my homepage on LinkedIn and there were two bits of research that caught my eye.

One was the latest McKinsey and Lean In study. The other was a study about the rates at which United States Supreme Court justices interrupt women versus men attorneys who are presenting oral arguments.

What struck me about the McKinsey and Lean In Study was that it was just more and more of the same thing - research that I've been reading for over 50 years.

And I noticed again, with increasing anger on my part, how the research is framed as a woman's problem. This was brought into stark relief in comparison to the study about Supreme Court justices interrupting women attorneys (as opposed to the problem with women arguing at the Supreme Court). 

So, many, many studies frame problems with a focus on us.

  • Women are underpaid.
  • Women are represented in fewer numbers as you go up the corporate ladder.
  • Women experience microaggressions. And don't get me started on that.

None of these problems is new. Progress has changed only the slightest bit in 50 years. And part of the reason for that is this framing.

While, yes, there may be women who aren't ambitious and lack confidence, the real cause of these problems is the actions that managers take.  And the higher you go in organizations, more accurately, the actions that male managers take. 

  • Women don't experience microaggression. Managers cause aggressions, micro and macro, through their sexist, misogynistic and entitled mindsets.
  • There isn't a broken rung for women. Managers break the rung through their mindsets about women

Which is why, even though it was depressing, and certainly predictable, the study about Supreme Court justices was incredibly refreshing.

We need more studies that focus on the patterns of behaviors of managers. Especially those behaviors that end up keeping women underpaid in relation to their male counterparts  and  further down the career ladders. For example,

  • Studies that tell us what percentage of times male managers advocate for equal pay for their reporting women. 
  • We need to know the numbers of times that  managers give jobs to men because they think a mother wouldn't want to travel or relocate. Even today as it's becoming less and less  necessary for extensive travel or relocation.
  • We need to know and put responsibility on managers for making decisions like these instead of focusing on women as being defective or the problem.

And yes, it's very difficult to gather this kind of information. So in lieu of that, studies that present data on the wage inequities that exist or on the uneven career paths for women and men need to put responsibility for solving the problems front and center - where it actually resides -  in the decisions made by managers.

What's a Woman to Do?

I don't know exactly how to derive guidance for you. from this mini rant this morning except to say this: everything in the literature wants you to believe that:

  • You are the problem,
  • You aren't confident enough. (Maybe even in my case that you don't sufficiently demonstrate  your business, financial and strategic acumen.)
  • Being a mother is a career barrier.

And I want to say to you, no, that is not true.

(Although if you don't have business, financial and strategic acumen, your career will definitely stall.)

Anyway, the fact of the matter is, if you aren't advancing at the rate that you believe is appropriate, it's due to the decisions of managers around you and above you.

And you may actually, as so many women have, get a better break if you move to another organization.

Let's Recap

  1. Career research on women's status in organizations tends to focus on the problems with women, when the focus would be better placed on the actions of managers. 
  2. And if you feel like you aren't progressing, that you've taken every wise step to position yourself for that next move and it's not happening; it's not necessarily you. It is the mindsets of the managers around and above you. And it might be well worth your while to explore opportunities in other organizations.

This is Susan Colantuono recovering from a week of dressage lessons.

Catch you next time!

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

13 Mar 2024Consciously Develop and Use Business Savvy00:08:57

Good morning from the sleepy little village of El Rompido in Andalusia, Spain. About as close to the Portuguese border as I could be. 

This morning I'm musing on the consciousness of successful women about having developed business, financial and strategic acumen.

They Just Don't See It

I have interviewed dozens of women CEOs, some from Fortune 500 companies, And even more women who hold senior positions - mostly in  Fortune 500 or Global 1000 companies.

When I've asked them, "What did you do? Or how did it happen? Or what did it take for you to develop Business Savvy (meaning business  financial and strategic acumen)? it has consistently surprised me that they have difficulty answering that question. Because it's totally outside their frame of reference about what it takes to succeed in business.

They will often fall back to answers like, "Well, I achieved my success because I developed an extensive network," or  "Because I relied on my strong team members." Occasionally, they will talk about having developed an in depth understanding of a function - for example, sales.

Rarely do they talk about having received mentorship, or coaching, or education or experiences that help them gain a deeper understanding of the business, where it was headed and their role in taking it there, or a deeper understanding of the financials beyond the budget they managed.  Some will occasionally talk about gaining experience managing a budget. And virtually none of them talk about any concrete experiences or exposure that help them develop strategic acumen.

Clearly in the case of the Fortune 500 women CEOs I've interviewed and whose books I've read, they have all three. They could not have gotten to the top without being known for having business, financial, and strategic acumen.

I'm having a hard time understanding why they can't easily my question. The only explanation I can attach to this is the fact that they have bought into the incomplete conventional wisdom about what it takes to be a leader, which is, you have to be a wonderful person with excellent interpersonal and team skills, and you have to have a network of people inside and outside of the organization.

Why You Must See It

It continues to be my mission in life to expand your understanding of what it takes to be successful inside of organizations, to build far beyond the personal greatness aspects and the engaging others aspects  and to hone in on the kinds of knowledge and experiences you also need to be recognized as a partner in the business and to be seen as a viable candidate for advancement.

So, here's the foundation. 

  1. First of all, you have to get your results. If you don't get results, you aren't even on the table as a prospect or as a candidate.
  2. You have to show that you have business, financial and strategic acumen appropriate to your level. All of that looks different as you move up inside the organization. And in a field of candidates where everyone is there because they've achieved results, the first disqualifier would be if you aren't seen as having business, financial, and strategic acumen,  then you're off the table.
  3. If you are known for Business Savvy, then your team and interpersonal skills and your personal attributes will become the differentiators as to whether you move ahead.

The implications of this are inside your organization when you're being considered for promotion is that you have to consistently develop your leadership brand. If you've taken Build Business Acumen, you know that I have very strong and specific clarity about what a leadership brand is and isn't.

What this means if you're applying for positions outside of your organization is you have to put your business impact - concrete and measurable - and demonstrations of your business, financial, and strategic acumen, top of mind in your resume, cover letter, and well augmented by proven examples of your interpersonal and team skills.

Let's Recap

There are four things that will represent you as a viable candidate, as a viable candidate for advancement.

  1. One are the results that you have achieved. 
  2. The second known business, financial, and strategic acumen. 
  3. The third is your known capacity for engaging the greatness in others, including a broad network inside and outside of your company.
  4. And the fourth are your personal attributes.


Whether you're applying for a position inside or outside, these four will matter.

  • Inside the company, it's all about reputation, so it's important to begin to work on your leadership brand.
  • Outside, opportunities require that you showcase front and center your outcomes, your business financial and strategic acumen and both strongly supported by your engagement skills and attributes.


I hope that someday in the future, when you're a CEO, or a senior executive and an interviewer asks you, "How did you go about developing your business financial and strategic acumen?"  You will say, "Well, I was exposed to the idea in <insert concrete examples> and these are the concrete steps I took and/or the ways mentors and helped me take in order to extend my skills."

This is Susan Colantuono recovering from a week of dressage lessons.

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

20 Mar 2024Four ways to reclaim confidence in toxic work cultures00:08:02

TLDL: Instead of covering over your flame of confidence, try these 5 ways to give it oxygen! (scan the headings for the 5 tips).

This morning I answered a LinkedIn message from a woman who wanted to know how to deal with "learned" lack of confidence due to the toxic work culture she lived in. She said this was important because she had to deal, and even sometimes partner, with one of the people who created that toxic culture.

Her question gave me pause because I thought about that word learned, especially because she had mentioned that she had a flame of confidence still burning in her.

And I had this insight. Most of us have a flame of confidence that is either tamped down or brightly shining depending on the layers of protection that we place upon or around it.

 

1. Ask This Question

And it made me think of this question that my dear friend and colleague, Wendy Hanson, asked me. She asked,

"What would you do if you were brave?"

Which I think is a really good question to ask in a situation where you want to reclaim your confidence and use it to empower an action or a statement.

But there were two other questions that came to mind about her question.

  1. What's the nature of the toxicity? Being ignored is different than being assaulted and I would offer different advice in each situation.
  2. The second made me think of a situation I encountered early in my career. A colleague instigated  a change in the structure of our department that ended up with me reporting to him. If I had known then what I know now, I would have realized that he had  greater strategic acumen than I. But at the time I had absolutely no framework to understand that it was his strategic acumen that got him to get our boss to agree to the change. At the time I believed he was acting out of malice.

Which leads me to the second tip.


2. Learn What You Can

One of the pieces of advice that I gave this woman was to look and see what she could learn from this man who she described as socially adept, charismatic and also very good at managing up.

Being socially adept and managing up well are skills that can be learned. Not the charismatic thing because charisma is in the eyes of the beholders.

Of course, I wouldn't want her to emulate the things that caused her to feel put down and shut down, but the other two attributes, she could learn from him and then deploy in order to be more successful at putting her ideas forth and take off some of those layers of protection.

There were three other tips that I wanted to give her, but needed more feedback on.

  • Confront bias in an educational way.
  • Use her business savvy.
  • Use assertiveness skills, e.g. broken record.

Here is a generic example of each of them.

 

3. Confront Bias in an Educational Way

Let's say she wants to present an idea or make a recommendation that a process be modified. While in the middle of making her pitch, she gets talked over, or what some of my colleagues call "manterrupted."

If she wanted to call out bias in an educated way, she could say,

"Hey, Bob, thanks for  agreeing with or building on my suggestion. It happens quite frequently to women that  the ideas that they begin talking about are never finished  because someone jumps in. So I'd like to build on what you just said, or add to what you just said, or put a different spin on what you just said, so I can finish my thought"

Not terribly confrontational and it could be done in private.

 

4. Use Business Savvy

When it comes to using Business Savvy, it could be instead of starting out saying, "Oh, I'd like to change this process in this way. 

Try saying, "Hey! Chris and the rest of the team, I know that our goal is to increase margin for this  product. And one way that we can do that is..." Then put forward the process change.

5. Use Assertiveness Techniques

To use assertiveness, specifically the "broken record" technique, it would look like this:

She puts forth her idea for the process change. She gets interrupted.  She says, "I would like to come back to what I was starting to explain before." She gets talked over. She says, "Again, here's what I'm presenting." Rinse and repeat.

If she adds in the business savvy approach, "Our goal is to increase margins. My recommended process change would do that. So let me explain it in full."

With all of these the goal is to brush the ashes off the embers of our flame of confidence so that it can rise again.


Let's Recap

To be honest, most of us who work in corporations deal with toxic people and toxic cultures. There's one way we deal with it is bank (or cover with ashes) the embers of our confidence in order to protect the originating flame. We don't want it to get burned out or smothered.

Five alternatives to banking the embers are alternatives that add oxygen by removing those layers of self protection include:

  1. Ask, "What would I do if I were brave?"
  2. Learn what we can from the toxic person (it also shifts how you see him).
  3. Educate about bias using non-confrontational. language.
  4. Use Business Savvy to make sure our points are heard and demonstrate it to those who are paying attention.
  5. And deploy assertiveness techniques. In this case, I discussed using the broken record, which is to state the point over and over until it gets clearly heard and acknowledged, even if later it is cut down.

Burn brightly you amazing woman!

Catch you next time,

Susan

27 Mar 2024Leadership Differs by Levels00:07:22

Leadership Differs by Levels - Get the Table: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/download-leadership-differs-by-levels

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

TL;DL: As you move into new opportunities there are things you leave behind, there are things you take with you and things you have to add. By "things" I mean: skill sets, perspectives, identity.  You leave "things" behind to create bandwidth for adding what you need to succeed in the new position.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As some of you know, I spend part of my year in Puerto Rico and part of my year on the mainland. Tomorrow I'm headed back to the mainland.

That means I'm in the midst of my leaving and going decisions.

What do I leave behind?

And what do I take when I go?

What?

You might be wondering, what the heck does this have to do with women's career advancement?

Well, it specifically ties to career progression, whether you're moving up the ladder or whether you're moving laterally. Whenever you move, there are things that are important to leave behind and things that are important to take with you.

So let's talk about  leaving  and going. The implications for career moves are most easily understood in the context of advancement.  But they will also translate into lateral opportunities that require you to expand your skill set in order to be successful.


From Individual Contributor to Supervisor

When you make the transition from individual contributor to supervisor, what you leave behind is the doing. Because as a supervisor, your main responsibility is to equip, empower and enable a collection of individual contributors who are doing the doing.

To leave behind the doing is very hard because it's comfortable and it's what you're known for, but you must because leave it. It's the only way to meet the requirement that you add to your skill set of doing, the skill sets for equipping and empowering the individual contributors who report to you to be as successful or even more successful than you were.

This involves interpersonal and team skills that you didn't have to demonstrate or utilize as an individual contributor. For example, you add the capabilities of coaching, training, giving feedback, aligning the team to key outcomes, delivering progress measures and you might be adding project management, et cetera.

In order to create the bandwidth for adding those new skills, you're leaving behind the doing.  As you go into your new position, you are taking with you the knowledge about the doing in order that you can equip and enable and empower your reporting team members.


From Supervisor to Manager

When you make the transition from supervisor to manager, it most often means that you have a team of supervisors reporting to you.  So what do you leave behind?  You leave behind the  equipping, enabling and empowering of individual contributors in order to equip, empower and enable the success of your reporting supervisors.

This is different than doing your supervisory work with individual contributors, because you are no longer interacting with individual contributors.  You are Interacting with supervisors whose leadership skills need to be developed. 

  • You need to make sure that they have the interpersonal and team skills required to motivate their teams.
  • You need to make sure they have the business savvy required to align their teams to the organization.
  • The metrics by which their performance is measured will be different than the metrics by which individual contributors performance is measured. 

You're adding layers of capability. Now you're beginning to equip, empower and enable leadership skills, not the doing.

You do that by leaving behind time spent working with individual contributors. Again, it's hard to do.  You grew comfortable and you were successful supervising individual contributors. If not, you wouldn't have earned this new opportunity.

And On...

And so it goes as you progress up the organization.

The leaving and the going. What you leave behind in order to expand your capabilities.  And what you take with you.


Let's Recap

Whenever you make a career transition, whether it's a lateral move across your latticework career or whether it's a vertical climb up the organizational ladder, give thought in your planning for how you will  spend your first three months to what will be important for you to:

  • Leave behind,
  • Take with you,
  • And what it is that you will be adding to your skill set as you grow the lustrous pearl that is the ambitious woman that you are.


As I listened to this podcast, I realized this is a much bigger topic and I want to give you the full picture.  So, here again is the link to download an illustrative table of the ways leadership differs by level: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/download-leadership-differs-by-levels

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

 

01 May 2024Interview with a STEM Trail Blazer00:08:51

TLDR: Scroll down to the Recap to read the summarized career advice from a woman who was a pioneer in engineering and IT.

Susan: Good morning from beautiful Epona Dressage Center outside of Carmona, Spain, where I have spent the week with some amazing women.

This morning I'm speaking with Wendy McLeod. I was struck by Wendy's career history because she was in the forefront and cutting edge of women in engineering and in IT.

So how did you move into IT? First, let me say one thing about that. Data indicates that, unlike today, there were many women who got into IT in the seventies and eighties. How did you make that transition and what was that like?

Wendy: It was in the late eighties and I graduated from university in 1981. Then I went to work in engineering - you have to apprentice for two years and then you become a professional engineer in Canada.

I apprenticed for two years, and then I was a civil engineer out in Alberta and after three or four years I was starting to get antsy and I didn't really know why.

Then in the 80s they brought out a new wood code. I looked at the old wood code, which was from 1918.  And I thought, "It took them 70 years to figure out that wood is actually as strong as we've been using!?"

Then I looked around and I thought, what innovations have there been in the last five years?  Oh, there was a new concrete additive that made the concrete set faster. And I realized, there's not enough change for me. There's not enough change.

They had just brought out desktop computers like the IBM PC personal desktop computer that really caught on and I thought, well, that's kind of neat. So I started to program that and I got into it more and more. And I was able to actually turn it into an IT job because when I was at university I would take computer subjects to bring my marks up.  

Susan: Let's fast forward to the end of your career because it's fascinating to me.  You progressed dynamically at HSBC and had a tremendous scope of responsibility HSBC.

Wendy: HSBC is very proud of their talent and they work very hard to to promote their talent. At least they did when, when I was there. I actually was in charge of operations, which is the operational work, not the computing work. I was responsible for South America, Central America, and North America.

I was definitely stepping outside my comfort zone to do that.

Of course I wanted to automate everything.

Susan:  Did you get a chance to automate?

Wendy:  Yes, I did, but you kind of have to clean up the processes first.  And that is a huge job in South America, because those banks were acquired more recently and processes were not standardized at all, so it would be pointless trying to computerize. It was quite a contrast from North America.

Susan: And you had how many people?

Wendy: I had 5,000 who rolled up to me, but in HSBC you also had two bosses. So you had an in country boss and you had a regional or a global boss who was trying to promote consistency. Which is hard for newly acquired countries.

I found Brazil particularly fascinating because they had been sort of isolated for so many years with their dictatorships and had invented everything themselves within their own country. They had their own satellite system and they really hadn't been exposed that much, even though it was 15, 20 years on, to connecting with the world, but they're very connecty type people.

They like to, they like to connect.  And I found it fascinating that they had, they were so close to having that isolated setup where you have to just rely on yourselves.  Something to be said about that, but yeah, not functional in a global, global institution.  Yeah.

Susan: So you made a comment to me when I first met you that gave me pause in a very positive way. Can you remember and restate it?

Wendy: Yeah, Susan was asking me what I missed most about that job.

Susan: Because you've, you retired right at COVID.

Wendy: I retired right at COVID. What I enjoyed most about that job, which gave me a global reach, is the fact that they identify talent in all their countries. I could change talented people's lives. I really enjoyed it because I was in charge of manual operations, and the world over, those are the people that were never able to afford university, but generally tend to be quite smart.

They're smart but their career is limited because they've never gone to university, they've never gotten a degree, so therefore they never qualified for work outside their country.

Susan: It's interesting that at the level that HSBC would move them around. How did you reach from your position down through your organization to create that talent development culture?

Wendy: Well, I happened to be in a very high performing team, which was the most high performing team I have ever dealt with and it was a global team. One of the things a high performing team does is identify talent and grow talent.

So the global team would meet four times a year and big on the agenda was always a review of the talent pool. You know that there's types of bosses that will try to hang on to talented people. Well, nobody on this team would do that. And they would be like, "Oh, she's ready to have an international assignment."
or "She's grown enough that she can't learn any more in China. And she needs to grow by going somewhere else and experiencing a different culture."

And like I said, most of these people had no university degree. And HSBC was enlightened enough to be able to say instead of coming in as a a trained so and so like a professional engineer or a skill that they needed, HSBC was large enough to back them and say, I would like to replace this person. So you would bring someone in from another country,  you would be able to bring people from India to Mexico City or China to Vancouver.

Susan: You said that your talent pool was mostly folks who hadn't gone to university. Were you able to export talent?

Wendy: Yes.

Susan: Okay, talk about that, because that must have been relying a lot on your credibility.

Wendy: As well as the bank's philosophy. If I hired someone talented, I would tell them, "Alright, you can work for me for two years, but what do you want to do after that? Let me know, because you're clearly capable of more."

So it was lovely to be on a team where everybody was like-minded - that doesn't happen often.

There were certainly a lot of very talented women in their forties who had never gone to university simply because their family couldn't afford it or it just was something that no one in their family had been to university. But they were very talented, they were extremely good at their jobs, and they understood transactions - letters of credit or loans or fancy types of banking transactions.

Susan: They knew the business of business, which is a big thing that I talk about being important.

Wendy: During their 40s, their children had grown up and it was a time for them to have a chance to test themselves abroad so that they would know how good or how bad they were on an international scale.

And they deserved the chance. Some of them moved and never came back. They're like, "I've got my wings and now I can fly." And they did.

Susan: I talk about creating a career that soars. You really enabled that for them. Literally, they flew away and never came back.

Let's Recap

A quick summary of career lessons from my interview with Wendy:

  • Be curious and seek change
  • Take risks
  • Create opportunities. 
  • Say yes to opportunities that come your way.
  • Discover what's meaningful to you. For her, it was improving operations and developing people.
  • Avoid age-ism. I loved Wendy's emphasis on the 40 year old women who soared.

Catch you next time.
Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

 

08 May 2024Tip: Get Heard in Meetings00:08:48

 

TLDR: Use preparatory language to increase your chances of being heard and gaining the respect you deserve. Preparatory language is a comment made before the important comment. It is designed to draw attention to you so that you have gained attention before making your important point.

"I am unheard in meetings. The men especially talk over me, interrupt or restate - minutes later - the very point I made."

This is one of the most common complaints that I hear from women - especially those who work on predominantly male teams. And while this podcast won't solve the problem, I am going to give you tips for how to deal with it.

The Problem

There are two reasons why the podcast won't solve the problem.

  1. The first is that the mindsets of men  make it less likely for them to listen to us can't be addressed by us at all. They have to be dealt with by the men themselves.
  2. The second is, if you historically haven't had anything of value to share, or don't in the moment have anything of value to share, even these tips will make it difficult for you to be heard, which is why of course I make a pitch for you to develop your business financial and strategic acumen.

So let's assume that your suggestions and ideas in the past and in the present are worthy of attention.

A most valuable tip that I can share with you about increasing your chances of being heard, is to use what a mentor of mine called preparatory language. And here's why.

The Value of Preparatory Language

A husband and wife research team at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered that when men are in boring meetings, their minds turn much more frequently (than do women's) to what I call the battlefield or the bedroom. Men are having thoughts about aggression or sex, which means that they aren't even listening when we pop into a conversation, especially one that hasn't grabbed their rapt attention, and spill our brilliant comment right away.

instead, we need to use preparatory language to grab their attention before we add our brilliance to the conversation.

Men are pretty skilled at doing this. You'll hear them make comments like,

  • "As we all know."
  • "As I've said in prior meetings."
  • "People generally agree."

These are examples of preparatory language. They say nothing, but they grab attention to the speaker.

So preparatory language is a comment made before the important comment. It is designed to draw attention to you before you make your comment.

One of the most brilliant practitioners of this that I've ever known, not only uses preparatory language, but she personalizes them. Here are some examples that you can try out yourself.

Preparatory Language in Action

Let's say your colleague Rakesh made an important point a few minutes ago, and you want to amplify it and add to it. So you could say something like,

"I think the comment that Rakesh made a few minutes ago was important to our discussion. I want to add to what he said, and this is especially of interest to you, Jack."

You've not only taken the floor and drawn attention to you, but you have positively engaged, both Rakesh and Jack.

Let's say you have a different viewpoint from Lars. You might use preparatory language like this.

"Speaking of the impact on our expense goals for this quarter, I have a slightly different take from what Lars said. So let me explain how my broader idea about how to meet our expense targets.

If you're uncomfortable calling out the fact that you have a different point of view than Lars, you could say to the meeting leader - let's assume his name is Salvi.

"Salvi, I would like to cycle back to an earlier point about hitting our expense targets for the quarter. I have three suggestions that haven't been made yet." And then you lay out the three.

In each case, the point is to draw attention to you and to do that by making a connection with at least one other person in the conversation.

Let's Recap

  1. Women are less likely to be heard in meetings for a host of reasons. One of them might be because we haven't had much value to add in the past due to our lack of business savvy. Another is that the mindsets of men make them less inclined to think we have anything to say and less inclined to listen for what value we might add.
  2. A way to overcome this is to use preparatory language to draw attention to you before you contribute your brilliance to the discussion. And to do that by making personal connections with people who are in the conversation.


What's a Woman to Do?

One thing I would suggest before you go out and give this a try is to pay attention to how some of the other people in meetings with you use preparatory language. You're looking for comments such as the ones I've already mentioned and others like:

  • "As you already know."
  • "As people generally agree."
  • "As I've said in past meetings."
  • "It's common knowledge that..."
  • "Experts would say."
  • Etc.

Once you see that it's part of the culture to use preparatory language (and generally it is) then go ahead and try it yourself. Make sure that you are comfortable drawing attention to the point you're about to make, and that you have something of value to add to the conversation.

This is Susan Colantuono coming to you from beautiful South County RI. Catch you next time.

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

 

15 May 2024But I'm Not Ambitious, Do I Need Business Savvy?00:09:11

These are five reasons,  and there are many more, that even if you don't self identify as ambitious,  developing and demonstrating business savvy will serve you well.

Hi, this is Susan Colantuono  coming from beautiful South County, Rhode Island.

Not long ago, a woman said this to me, "Susan, I don't think of myself as ambitious. Why should I care about developing Business Savvy? "

Well, I can think of 15 reasons, but I am going to share  just a few of them here.

1. For me, the most important answer to this question is comfort. This is especially true for women  who work in predominantly male environments where it's very difficult to be seen, to be heard, to be valued and respected.

And one of the paths to that is to be seen as a partner in the business, to be seen as someone who's interested in the business, who's learning about the business, and who is taking action and making decisions that advance the business.  Of course, it's no guarantee that you will be treated differently, but  it does increase your chances significantly of being more seen, more heard, more valued.

So that's an external reason.

2. Let's talk about an internal reason to develop Business Savvy, even if you don't identify as ambitious, feeling more confident.

This is huge.

I have said for years that confidence rests on a platform of competence. And this doesn't just mean technical or professional competence.  It means competence as a business woman.  When you work on better understanding business financials and strategy, it brings your competence to an entirely new level. You add to your identity as a technical pro or as a professional, the identity of a businesswoman.

And if you are in a leadership role, it strengthens your identity as a leader. Because after all, we know  that business, financial, and strategic acumen enable stronger leadership because you're better able to "use the greatness in you to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes by engaging the greatness in others."

3. Here's another reason. Even if you don't think of yourself as ambitious, you know that self promotion matters. You might not be striving for a promotion, but  making others aware of your positive impact on the business helps ensure that you are respected for your contributions and that you get the compensation and/or other rewards that you are due.

As I've talked about in many other places, and you can read about  inside of the Be Business Savvy blog. The key to self promotion  isn't to tell people how great you are, it is to make known to others your positive impact on the business. And the way to do that is to have worked on your Business Savvy - enhanced your business, financial and strategic acumen.

4. Going along with feeling more internally confident, Business Savvy gives you a foundation  for speaking up in meetings or in one-on-ones.

I often talk about my experience of bragging on a project about what a great job I did putting a team together and how great our first meeting was - which created a snooze fest for the project lead.

I finally figured out that what he was interested in hearing about was how the work of my team was going to have a positive impact on revenue, not adversely impact expenses. When I began speaking up about our work toward those goals, all of a sudden  he sat up and paid attention.  

This is an example of how my then increasing Business Savvy enabled me to speak up  more competently, therefore more confidently and more professionally.

5. Another one of the reasons is that when you've been developing and demonstrating Business Savvy people above you are more likely to have conversations with you about the business. And this creates a virtuous cycle where their conversations with you about the business put you in the know.

And you're even more equipped to make recommendations, make comments, get interesting project assignments that relate to moving the business forward.

Let's Recap

These are five reasons, and there are many more, that even if you don't self identify as ambitious,  developing and demonstrating business savvy will serve you well. 

  1. You will feel more confident you will speak up with more authority on a foundation of competence,
  2. You'll be able to self-promote to earn the respect and rewards that you are due,
  3. You will feel more comfortable at work -especially if you work in a mostly male environment, and
  4. You will kick off a virtuous cycle where, by showing that you're focused on the business, you're likely to hear more information from people above you that puts you in the know that better equips you to demonstrate your focus on the business, thereby supporting all of the others that I've talked about.
  5. In other words,  even.  If at this point in your career or this stage of your life, you don't think of yourself as ambitious, Business Savvy helps you navigate the business world with more strength. Ease and less stress.

What's a Woman to Do?

So, what's a woman to do? Well, shift your mindset.  You don't have to be ambitious. Or think of yourself as This powerful career woman in order to benefit from business savvy No matter your level or your degree of aspirations Enhanced business, financial and strategic acumen will help your  daily work life in the future. In immeasurable ways, five of which I've shared with you,  all of which bring more ease  and less overwhelm and stress into your life. And this is what I wish for you.

Catch you next time.

Susan

Go Deeper Links:

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

22 May 20245 Indicators that You're Ready for a Promotion00:07:16

I recently delivered a webinar on how to Make the Most of Mentoring. During the Q& A one of the attendees asked:

"How do I know if I'm ready for a promotion?"

if I were to go simply by my Myers-Briggs preferences, I would say,

"You will know because you feel ready for a promotion."

And while part of that's true, it's not the whole truth.

Five Indicators

So, let me explain 5 indicators that you're ready for a promotion.

1. Feeling Ready. The first, of course, is that you feel ready, but in this sense - you're bored with what you're doing. It's not challenging you. You're feeling compelled to ask yourself, what more could I be doing? Your job has become relatively easy.

That's the first indicator.

2. Successor in Place. The second indicator, if you are a supervisor or manager, is that you have developed a successor.  There's someone on your team, who has the skills and knowledge and experience to take over for you when you move out.

3. High Performance. A third indicator, is that you're performing at a very high level in your current job and - barring any strange dynamic with your current manager - you will have his or her support for moving on.

Those 3 are commonly discussed as indicators that you're ready for a promotion.

Here's one that's not so readily discussed in general, although I have touched on it in other editions of the Be Business Savvy podcast or blog.

4. Ready to Step Up to Higher Expectations. That is understanding what it means to perform at the next higher level, what the expectations are, and to have a sense that you are willing to step up and contribute to the organization using the new skills and identity you will be required to add in order to succeed at that level. I have touched on this before:

This is for sure not to say that you have to Have 100 percent of the skills required to succeed at the next level, but it is important to believe that through disciplined practice you can add those skills and that you understand why they're important.  One of the added benefits of doing this work is equipping yourself for the most excellent answers during your interview for the position.

As always, I make a pitch for you to think about your business, financial, and strategic acumen. The expectations in these three arenas are always elevated by a promotion.

And if you find that you aren't ready to contribute to the organization at the next higher level, Do look around for opportunities to build out the lattice career rather than the ladder career at this stage - which leads me to the 5th indicator.

5. Do You Really Want a Promotion? The fifth indicator that I want to discuss is that you're clear on understanding why a promotion is going to be the right answer for you. Sometimes we think of a promotion as a reward for our good past performance, instead of seeing it as a demand for elevated future performance. And while we may feel itchy and ready to go on to something new, it might be a lateral move. to gather a broader perspective on the organization rather than a move up, which might require us to shift our identity and acquire new skills that we aren't necessarily captivated by.

I think about the many individual contributors - oftentimes men in my experience - who have been promoted on the basis of their technical skills, but have no interest in or even aptitude for engaging the greatness in the team members that now report to them. Avoid this situation!

Let's Recap

Today I've talked about five indicators that you are ready for a promotion.

  1. One is that you feel ready.
  2. Another is that you're itchy.
  3. Another is that you are ready. are  high performing in your current job.
  4. Fourth is that you understand what it means to step up to a higher level. 
  5. And the fifth is that you want it for the right reasons.


What's a Woman To Do?

If you satisfy conditions 1, 2, and 3, be sure to examine your motivations. That addresses number 5.

And do your due diligence in relation to what's required to be successful at the next higher level. Satisfy number 4.

Signing off from beautiful South County, Rhode Island. Here's to your great career success.

Catch you next time.

Go Deeper Links:

Blogs With Further Information

 

Business Savvy You! course and info: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

Take our FREE Email Course - a powerful 12 day email sequence that will help you move from feeling restless, stagnant or overwhelmed to feeling empowered, inspired and equipped to:

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  5. Enhance Your Executive Presence

Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1   

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

 

29 May 2024About Business Savvy YOU!00:09:49

About Business Savvy YOU! 

Good morning from beautiful South County, Rhode Island, where I am enjoying  the second day of sunshine for my morning walk.  It has been kind of a brutal spring.

 As a regular listener to the Be Business Savvy podcast, You've heard me talk about  the many ways that being more business savvy enables you to have a more successful career and a less stressful work life.

 For example,  Business Savvy enables you to be seen as a contender for opportunities because it enriches your leadership brand  and elevates your executive presence. It makes your work life easier  because  you are more likely to have confidence, to speak up with authority, and to make the most of mentoring opportunities that come your way.

If becoming more business savvy is on your to do list for 2024  and you haven't found an effective way to get started. I'm delighted to announce that the full  Business Savvy YOU! course is launching next month. There's been an inaugural cohort that's gone through the program and back in the office, I'm going to  record some of their comments.

Participants Say

Johanna, who is an employee representative on the board of her European company. wrote. "Did some calculations for the company alongside the exercises in the lesson. This is fantastic. It's so much more than the course I took.  Now I can read the story behind the financials."

And I want to note that Johanna attended a three day course on financial acumen for board members.

 Amy says,

"Developing business savvy was instrumental in accelerating my career. Focusing on business results was exactly what I needed. It's the advice I now give everyone I mentor seems intuitive, but it isn't."

"I started to implement the learnings. In different situations at work, I started small in a safe space and then extended the playground. With the result, being that my boss accelerated my promotion.  That was initially scheduled for next year."  is what Samantha had to say about the course.

This morning I want to tell you a bit about what makes the program different.

In all my years of learning and researching. I have yet to find a program  that addresses business, financial, and strategic acumen for the discrete competencies they represent while also  moving participants to The Business Savvy Center in the Venn diagram where all three of them overlap. This is what the Business Savvy YOU! program does in such an effective way.

Designed with YOU in Mind

And I've designed Business Savvy YOU! with you in mind.

1. Short Lessons As a career woman myself, and one who was a parent and a single parent, I know how precious time is. So the program is delivered  in small bites. Most of the lessons can be done in 10 minutes.  Some take longer because they're designed to move you into that business savvy center. So you have to do work to bring the content into your world.

2. Focus on Need-to-Know You can, easily separate the need-to-know from the nice-to-know.The nice-to-know information, is available to you through bonuses.Everything else  you can trust is need to know.

3. Integrated Content One of the features that's important for your learning is that the content builds upon itself. This doesn't happen in any other content that I have found. Build Business Acumen lays the foundation for financial acumen. Financial acumen - because  it's a crucial component of strategic acumen - enables you to strengthen your strategic acumen.

So, three important  features. The content  is delivered In easily digestible short bites, you can choose only the need to know content or supplement it with nice to know bonuses. And  the course content is integrated  interdependent and supports your ongoing development.

There's a lot more I can say, but I do want to talk about what you will find in Business Savvy YOU!

The course has 4 major sections:

1. The first is on developing and demonstrating business acumen.  

2. The second is focusing on  financial acumen, both acquiring and demonstrating it.

3. The third is on strengthening strategic acumen. 

4. The fourth It brings it all together with activities to enable you to showcase your  business savvy

Within each section are those short, easily digestible lessons, in addition to the complementary bonus materials

There are empowering tools to secure what you're learning and enable you to take those learnings into your world of work.

There are six live meet-ups during which you have the opportunity to workshop your learnings, get input from me and others going through the course and ask questions about anything that has been unclear to you.

In addition to the worksheets, there are other interactive tools that will  help you ground your learnings and elevate your capabilities for demonstrating your business savvy.

There's a chat function where if you have an immediate need to know question, you can plop it in the chat and anyone, including me, has the opportunity to respond on a timely basis.

Women who've been exposed to  earlier versions of this content  contact me on a regular basis thanking me for delivering the tools they need to accelerate their careers...and to do so with more ease and less stress.

I hope you will take advantage of the next offering to get yourself moving in the same path.

As always, feel free to  contact me.  You can use the Contact Us page on the site or find me on LinkedIn.

Wishing you great career success Hope to see you in business savvy you there's a link in the show notes. 

Catch you next time,
Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/open-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

 

05 Jun 2024Strengthen Your Strategic Acumen00:08:10

TLDR: This is already a very short summary of key info about strategic acumen. Please Read ON!

Strategic acumen is perhaps my favorite of the three elements of Business Savvy, because I had to unlearn everything that I thought I knew about strategic acumen, and perhaps you will too. 

Strategy Isn't...and Is

I grew up in organizations being told that strategy was comprised of mission, vision, and values. I'm here to tell you that while they might be important elements of an organization's identity and they might shape strategy, they are not strategy and understanding them and being able to create them for your own teams or team does not demonstrate strategic acumen.

So what is strategy?

A strategy is designed to achieve three goals.

  1. Win the customer's preference
  2. Create a sustainable competitive advantage
  3. Leave enough money on the table for shareholders that is in for-profit companies or for re-investment for nonprofits.

The core of strategy work is always the same, "discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors."

These definitions and my understanding draw heavily on the work of Ram Charan and Richard Rumelt. Through their work, I've learned that there are three key, interdependent elements that are examined when setting strategy. And there's one skill that rests at the center of these three elements through which strategy is derived.

The three elements have to do with:

  1. External forces and trends
  2. Financial targets
  3. Internal capabilities

External Forces & Trends

External forces and trends are wide ranging and in our Business Savvy YOU! course, we help you narrow them down as to those most important for you to be attending to.

They could include anything from legislative actions to consumer purchasing trends to demographic shifts,to the price of raw materials. etc.

Financial Targets

Financial targets have to do with and touch on your financial acumen. They are key metrics that have to be attained or exceeded in order to avoid the red zone of failure, in order to lift your organization above its competitors and to draw customers and or investors.

Internal Capabilities

Internal capabilities have to do with the people, their skills, the systems smallest, so those can be processes and  or automated systems and other processes.

The Crux

The skill in the middle is what Richard Rumelt calls The Crux. It involves the ability to disentangle the complex findings as you analyze external forces and trends, financial targets and internal capabilities to clearly identify a path forward that will address the external trends and forces that will allow the achievement or surpassing of financial targets through changes in the internal capabilities.

I always say, "Leadership is about change all the time," and this is one of the reasons. It is impossible for an organization to perform at a higher level, unless it changes "the way we do things around here."

Strategic Acumen @ Different Levels

 So what does strategic acumen look like at varying levels?

At the individual contributor level, it is working to understand why "the way you do things" is changing

At the manager level, regardless of whether you're a team leader or a middle manager, it has to do with understanding the strategic initiatives that are yours to further and effectively communicating them and changing processes. Also changing team metrics in a way that helps align your direct reports to the strategy.

And at senior manager levels, you're expected to be spending about 80% of your time thinking strategically and proposing strategic initiatives up to the top.  

At executive levels, you're responsible for setting strategy and ensuring its execution. Or as Cynthia Montgomery writes in The Strategist, "A strategist's primary job is setting an agenda and putting in place the organization to carry it out."

Because ultimately, a strategy is a promise to shareholders that your organization will continue to return value to them. If you're a non profit, it's a promise to the community that you will continue to add value to the community.

So Let's Recap.

Strategic acumen means knowing that strategy is not mission, vision, and values. It means understanding strategy and how it set. It means Making strategic recommendations appropriate to your level. And it means understanding it is a complex interdependent and iterative process involving the forces outside the organization, it's financial targets and it's internal capabilities in order to determine the crux of the path forward for a viable and vital future.

What's a Woman To Do?

  1. Let go of your belief that strategy is mission, vision, and values. 
  2. Level up your financial acumen because companies generally, aren't very good at telling employees what the strategy is. And if yours is one of those companies, you can discern the strategy by making connections between what's going on inside the company and the financial targets that are being publicized outside.
  3. Pay attention to what's happening in the external marketplace - what trends and forces your executives are attuned to, the trends and forces that analysts (if you're a publicly traded company) are attuned to. 
  4. Pay attention to the strategic importance of the changes that are going on inside the organization, especially those that impact you or for which you're responsible.
  5. Demonstrate all of you understanding and insights in ways that are appropriate to your level. 

We explore all of this more deeply in Business Savvy YOU! I hope to see you there.   

Catch you next time,

Susan

PS Putting time into setting mission, vision, and values could demonstrate strategic acumen to the extent that you are using them to realign your organization toward a new strategy.

But aside from that, mission, vision, and values are not strategy and putting effort into defining them is time and effort that would be better spent on other actions that align your team or teams to the organization's new strategy. Because after all, if you're working on the strategy for your team or function or division, one of your external factors, is the overall organizational strategy and aligning to that should be the primary goal of the strategy that you are developing.

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/open-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

12 Jun 2024Unlock Doors to Opportuinity00:07:45

TLDR: Having financial acumen and speaking the language of business will ensure that you aren't locked out of career opportunities.

You might have noticed in a past podcast that I recorded several  in the town of El Rompido in Spain, where I had  quite an adventure.

I was in an Airbnb and when I checked in, the caretaker said, "If the winds pick up, please close the awnings." 

About three days into my stay, I was sitting in the living room in a sundress and bare feet, when the wind started blowing quite intensely.

I Got Locked Out

So I got up, opened the living room door, went out to the patio to close the awning and a gust of wind blew the door shut.

Now, this was one of those European style doors that are always locked.

Needless to say, I flew into a mild panic, but I remembered having seen a police station on my walk around town. So here I am in a sundress blowing hither and yon by the wind gusts, bare feet walking down the main road toward the police station. 

I also remembered  that small town police stations often are closed. So I had in the back of my mind that I might not be able to find a police officer to help with my situation.

At the first corner, I found a woman standing outside of a lovely shop and I explained what had happened in my wildly deficient Spanish. And I asked if I could use her computer to maybe find the Airbnb host and get in touch with her that way, because of course I had left my phone in the living room. 

Long story short. I couldn't reach the host. The police station was indeed closed. She had to call police from the next town over, who saved the day by borrowing a ladder from the restaurant across the street, going in through the master bedroom slider, which luckily I had left open, and letting me back in to the house.

Learn the Language of Business

Why am I telling you this story as I walk this morning on the shores of Rincon? It's because I've been thinking about the importance of financial acumen And the tendency of so many women I've met to dismiss it as unimportant. When in fact, it is the language of business.

I don't know what would have happened to me or how long it might have taken to resolve my situation if I didn't speak Spanish albeit imperfectly. I had the confidence that I would be able to resolve my situation because I did speak Spanish. I was able to speak up and ask for help because I did speak Spanish.

There's a very real danger in dismissing the importance of financial acumen when it comes to all of the career enablers that help women have rewarding, fulfilling careers.

Speaking the language of business:

  • Enhances your ability to self promote.
  • Will enhance your confidence.
  • Adds  to your leadership brand.
  • Assures that when it comes to delivering business savvy messages, you are able to demonstrate executive presence.
  • Makes it easier to figure out  who to connect with inside and outside the organization to solve organizational challenges, thereby strengthening your network.

And I could go on.

It's funny, so many years after starting my career, that I'm here talking about the importance of financial acumen because, as with so many of the women I meet, I always thought:

  • I was a people-person, not a numbers-person.
  • That leadership success was about human interaction - never thought it had to do with business savvy.
  • Financial reports were indecipherable, and
  • That all hands meetings talking about the performance of the business were just so much blah, blah, blah.


When in fact, I would have been so well served if someone had said to me then, as I am saying to you now, the language of business is the language of outcomes.

Financial reporting is one of the most important ways that your executives and the board,  analysts and shareholders understand how well your organization is doing. That's not to say that there aren't other non financial metrics that matter. And I do talk about those  in the Business Savvy You! course.

There I pair financial acumen, with the course on strategic acumen because you cannot build strategic acumen or demonstrate strategic acumen without a grounding in business acumen that gives you your grounding in financial acumen. 

Avoid Getting Locked Out

No actionable tips in this podcast. Instead, I want to leave you with this important final message, 

If you want to thrive inside an organization (whether for profit or nonprofit) you must enhance your financial acumen so that you are speaking the language of business and so you don't stay locked out of career opportunities in the way that I could have stayed locked out of my rental house.

Catch you next time,
Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

19 Jun 2024Speak Up!00:10:11

I recently gave a webinar and before the webinar I had my colleagues inside the company poll their internal women's group to see which of nine topics they'd prefer me to touch on. One of them was "speaking up with comfort and credibility and authority."

Reflecting on my own and the career journeys of other women I've realized that we don't actually go from not speaking up to confidently speaking up. It's not a digital process, it's an analog process.

I've also recognized multiple reasons for not speaking up.

So let's start there.

Why We Avoid Speaking Up

In my experience, women identify three reasons for not speaking up:

  1. Feeling internally unsure.
  2. Concern about the potential external reaction. That people will think poorly of them, will think poorly of what they have to say, etc.
  3. Having had actual concrete experience of external microaggressions being talked over, being patronized, being mansplained, etc.

Reasons number 1 and 2 is one that I'll discuss in today's blog.

Reason number three, well, we cannot change the conscious and unconscious bias of the people who are in meetings with us, but one thing we can do is be prepared for those situations. That will be the subject of another blog.

If we go back and consider the analog nature of the experience of speaking up, we can deal with our own internal feelings of unsureness, lack of confidence, feeling like an imposter; and fear that we'll be looked down at, or looked askance at, or have our ideas ridiculed or shot down.

So let me talk from my own personal experience. Decades later,it is vivid because there's a lot of emotion attached.

The Analog Journey*

Step 1: When I was starting out in my career and attending meetings, it struck me that occasionally someone else in the meeting would say what I was thinking. I used that as validation for the fact that I was on the right track. Of course people said things that I had no idea about and that was useful for learning how to stay on the right track.

Step 2: The next step in my journey - and you might resonate with this - was to begin to share thoughts, begin to speak up a little bit once I got to a comfort level with the team or the group that I was meeting with.

I had the good fortune of being In an organization where misogyny wasn't rampant and people were very respectful in general. So this wasn't for me what it has become for some women who begin to speak - up an opportunity for others to slap them down.

Step 3: A major step in my speaking up journey was to begin to speak up confidently from my professional platform. Oftentimes, I was in the room because my professional expertise was needed. My being there was an implied value add. And sometimes I was in the room with other professionals where there was a collegiality that made it relatively safe to speak up and share my ideas. Which again, isn't an experience that everyone has had.

Step 4: The final step in my speaking up journey - speaking up on a platform of business savvy - happened at the very end of my internal career. I'm so glad it did because I then went on to having conversations with CEOs and their C suite colleagues. If I hadn't gotten here, I would never have been able to grow the business that I eventually sold.

What I wish in hindsight is that I had that platform of business savvy to start with. It would have benefited me in two major ways: 

  • First, I would have been better able to analyze the comments and suggestions and disagreeing points made by others in the room. I would have been able to analyze them more intelligently.
  • Second, it would have given me a stronger platform for making my own comments and suggestions and points of disagreement

Speaking up with comfort credibility and confidence can't be a performative game. All of the advice about centering yourself, striking power poses and listing all the ways you add value are temporary fixes. And in some cases might not even help.

What will help is to build your platform of competence, both in terms of your profession and in terms of your business, financial and strategic acumen.

I've said it before, so I will say it again. It's never too early to begin to develop your business savvy, but it could end up being too late, if you get to the point where you have an entrenched reputation as a doer rather than as a partner in the business.

Let's Recap

So let's recap. There are three reasons why You might be hesitant to speak up. One is because of your unsureness.  The second is because you are concerned about how what you say will be received. And the third is because you've had actual experience of being minimized, talked over, mansplained, patronized, etc.

What I've covered in this blog will help you deal with the first two. One, by reinforcing the fact that you need a platform of competence, both professionally and as a business woman. in order to speak up with confidence, comfort, and credibility. And the second is, if you're speaking up from a platform of professional competence and business savvy while you still might get unexpected reactions to what you have to say, you will be grounded enough to not let them knock you off your game.

The journey toward speaking up with comfort, confidence, and credibility is an analog journey, not a digital one. So be kind to yourself. Don't expect to flip a switch and have 100 percent success or 100 percent comfort as you progress on your journey.

What's a Woman to Do?

I always advise that you start small and safe.  Test out your next level contributions in a meeting before the meeting, a one-on-one meeting before the meeting.

Try being bolder with your comments, suggestions and points of disagreement in teams where you feel mostly safe and are already respected, and then branch out from there.

Here's to your great continued career success.

Catch you next time!

Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

 

 

26 Jun 2024Biz Talk - A Success Secret00:07:47

This morning I'm musing about the question that I often I've gotten asked, mostly from men in my audiences, "Well, if organizations don't do such a good job teaching about The Missing 33%, how is it the men get ahead?"

Two Reasons Men Advance In Spite of HR

I'm here to explain a couple of reasons that men are able to get ahead more easily than women.

  1. The first I've touched on in prior  podcasts, and that is that men more often get  coached, mentored and sponsored into jobs that are closer to the core of the business.  And by virtue of getting into those jobs, they automatically have an easier time acquiring the business, strategic, and financial acumen they need.  Otherwise, they would fail in their positions.
  2. Here's another more subtle reason that I want to illustrate with an example from a live workshop that I've conducted where, in the first session, I was talking about networking.

The assignment for the class was to go out and practice networking skills and come and report back on their experience.  One of the women went to a business networking event and she came back and she said,

"Holy cow, I didn't do much networking at this event, but I used the assignment to listen to what men were talking about. And do you know what  the first and most frequently asked question was when men were connecting with other men? How's business? "

So think about this.  Think about the men you know when they're in settings with other men.  What are the topics that they talk about?

Probably first thing comes to mind is sports. The second thing that might come to mind is they talk about women, often in denigrating ways.  "Oh, you wouldn't believe what my wife did."  Or, "Oh, you wouldn't believe my mother in law." And the third thing they talk about is business because they assume that they all have that in common.

Talking About the Business

Now consider inside the organization. 

Sports is definitely a topic of conversation among men in organizations.  Maybe even some of them, as a way of bonding over how awful they think women are, will talk about us. But a definitely safe and time honored topic is to talk about the business. And because men expect other men to have business, strategic and financial acumen, and to be interested in advancing in their careers; talking about the business is safe, acceptable, and enjoyable. It's something they share in common.  

I've said before that men don't expect women to have business strategic and financial acumen, nor to be interested in those subjects.  So think about the men that you work with.

When you aren't going through a business agenda or when it's an informal conversation,  how frequently do they raise the topic of the business with you?

 If your experience is anything like mine, they're much more likely to talk about their family. their vacations, the problems they're having with their wife or spouse; and much less likely to talk about the business overall, what's happening in the industry, key customers and their issues and opportunities for sales and the like. 

Because they more comfortably do this with men, men benefit from the conversations we joke that they have in the men's room, or around the water cooler (when people are in offices). I honestly don't know what happens virtually, but there's probably offline conversations that more senior men have with men that they see as mentorable.

Let's Recap

We've covered two ways that men in organizations are able to move up, even if the HR systems insufficiently communicate the importance of business, strategic and financial acumen.

  1. Men are more frequently mentored into positions in the core of the business.
  2. Men are more frequently exposed to conversations about business, finance and strategy and build business savvy as a result.

What's a Woman To Do?

Well, first of all, we have to develop a comfort level with our own business, strategic and financial acumen, because as I explained, when I talk about my discovery of The Missing 33%, men expect other men to be good at business, finances and strategy; but they do not expect that of us.

So to counter that, we have to be comfortable initiating conversations about  the business, about finances, and about strategy.

In order to do that, on a regular basis, tune in to what's happening in our own organization,  in the overall industry, with our competitors and with key customer segments so we can informally say things like: 

  • "Hey Bob, the other morning I was reading about this new initiative at XYZ Competitor, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it."
  • "Hey Chris, I was reading over last quarter's financials and there's something in there I would like to review with you because I don't understand its significance."
  • "Jorge  when the CEO was talking about expanding ABC service line, I started thinking about the impact that might have on our function. I'd like to review my thoughts with you."

Those are a few ideas to get you thinking about how you can raise the subject of what's going on in the business, the stories behind the financials, and what's happening. that has strategic importance.  

Catch you next time.

Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

03 Jul 2024Managers (Not Women) Must Break the Glass Ceiling00:11:28

If organizations, coaches, and consultants spent half as much time getting managers to do their jobs rather than putting energy and effort into "fixing" women, we would be much further ahead on creating a level playing field, on women's advancement and on closing the wage gap.

For far too long, responsibility has been placed on women to break the glass ceiling.

 


This is ludicrous.

Yes, women can be prepared to move into ever higher positions, but the glass ceiling is created by managers, mostly men, whose decisions on promotions and hiring keep women out.

Mindsets of Managers that Hold Women Back

So instead of praising women for breaking the glass ceiling, let's focus attention on the managers who hire them. And on the fact that, by some means, these managers have managed to counter the mindsets held by so many managers that keep women back.

Motherhood Penalty and Fatherhood Reward

Mindsets reflected in comments like these.

  • "She wouldn't want that job. She's a mother."
  • "She wouldn't want that job. She'd have to relocate her family.
  • "She wouldn't want to have that job. It involves too much travel, which would take her away from her family."


These apparently "considerate" and sensitive comments are made from a mindset related to the Motherhood Penalty and Fatherhood Reward because the opposite is also said. 

  • "He deserves that job. He has a family to support."
  • "He's a family man, so let's give him that opportunity."
  • His family won't mind being uprooted. They will follow him wherever we assigned him."

Leadership = Command & Control

Another mindset that holds women back is the mindset that managers, both women and men have about what leadership looks like. 

If managers truly believed all the exhortations they hear from HR, and learning and development professionals, notable business journals and other publications, they would believe that people who engage their teams and who are inclusive should get ahead. They're the right ones to promote.

But a mindset that gets in the way of this is the mindset that says that leadership looks like command and control. And while in emergency situations or when time is essential, It might be true that command and control is a useful  strategy, in general, it is not.

But decisions are made about hiring and promotions where comments like these are made.

  • "Your team loves you. You're nice, but can you be effective?"
  • "She really has the support of her team, but can she make hard decisions?"
  • "She's great at including her team members in decision making. We aren't sure how comfortable she is with making decisions when they need to be made."

Ambitious People Ask for Opportunities

A third mindset that managers hold that will often be detrimental to women is the belief that if someone is ambitious he or she will ask for opportunities.

While this is often true of men and increasingly true of women, it isn't universally true.

There are many women whose mindset is a countervailing one. 

We believe that if we do good work, if we get results, our work will be recognized and rewards will come.

Instead of telling managers that they have to fix these and other mindsets that create career barriers for women, we exhort women to break the glass ceiling and we praise them when they do. 

Managers and HR Cause the Wage Gap

Similarly, when it comes to the wage gap, we tell women to negotiate, ask for more money.

And what happens when we do? Often, especially by the first gatekeepers in HR, we're considered pushy, too aggressive.

And when we don't, of course, we don't get the compensation that might be given to a man. 

Now what enables this?

It truly has nothing to do with whether or not women ask. Because, in many ways we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't.

It does have to do with gatekeeping and the fact that HR and HR systems will often penalize women who negotiate. They will often offer women compensation at the lowest possible point. 

And when it comes to routine salary increases managers, will often favor men (see mindsets above). 

Instead of telling women that we have to negotiate, let's fix the systems and let's change the mindsets of managers.

Let HR make it impossible for wage inequalities to develop over time based on manager's decisions about promotional increases.

Educate HR about how their mindsets can disadvantage women  when their companies are on a path toward wage equity.

This whole thing infuriates me because we've known all of this 50 years.

Differing degrees of sophistication and understanding But I can attest to the fact that these were conversations being had in the company I grew up in 50 years ago.

This it infuriates me because when I was CEO of my consulting business we would find  executives willing to undertake the journey toward changing the mindsets of managers, but then with the slightest of pushback, the shift would be made from:

"Let's talk about the generic mindsets of managers that impact the career trajectories of women."

to

"Let's talk about how unconscious bias affects everybody. Let's do broad diversity training."

Which only tended to water down the initiatives for women's advancement and do nothing for the advancement of other groups that are underrepresented in senior management and or that suffer from wage inequality.

Furthermore, most of these biases aren't unconscious at all. They are conscious, but they are justified in the minds of the people who have them.

So I'm on my soapbox about putting responsibility for women's advancement and wage equity where it belongs - in the hands of managers and in the hands of the HR professionals whose systems enable the inequalities and leave issues of mindset unaddressed.

Let's Recap

  1. Responsibility for breaking the glass ceiling and achieving wage equity rests in the hands of managers and HR. We as women cannot break the glass ceiling ourselves. We as women cannot achieve wage equity ourselves because we do not make promotion or hiring decisions, nor do we make compensation decisions for ourselves.
  2. Organizations that avoid addressing the mindsets that managers hold that are responsible for women's limited advancement need to step up and get it done.

What's A Woman To Do?

  1. If you're a manager, confront your own mindsets. Because sometimes we are in the position of saying things like, "She's nice, but can she be effective?" Or "She wouldn't want that job because of her family. Confront our own mindsets, about who's deserving of a higher pay raise, and why. And about our feelings when a woman pushes back on a salary offer as compared to when a man does.
  2. If you're in HR, I empathize with the fact that it's often an unvalued position and too much pushback can create challenges. But darn, if your company says it wants to do something about women's advancement and wage equity, step up.

    Look at the mindsets on your own team. And look at the mindsets built into HR processes, including - because I have to touch on it - your performance eval criteria, your leadership model and the items on your 360 or 180 evals. All too often these systems fail to give women the messaging we need about the importance of business, financial, and strategic acumen.

    And there's no way we'll be seen as viable candidates for openings if we aren't known for and don't demonstrate business savvy.

  3. If you're a woman ambitious for new opportunities and you're expecting wage equity, demonstrate your value by hitting and achieving your goals and becoming known for your business, financial and strategic acumen. It won't guarantee your success, but if you aren't, it will pretty much guarantee that you'll get stuck.

Catch you next time.

Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

10 Jul 2024Your Strengths Don't Matter00:09:51

Your strengths don't matter!

Do I have your attention yet?

It's not 100 percent true, of course, and I will get to that in a minute. But first, let me explain what I mean.

When it comes to career growth, decisions are made on the basis of your proven and perceived leadership skills.

(Of course, bias in the minds of the hiring or promoting managers come into play, but since we can't do anything about that, I won't address that here.)

What is leadership? You probably already know my leadership definition, but if you don't:

   

So let's examine strengths in the context of each component of the definition.

Using the Greatness in You

When it comes to personal greatness, strengths comprise only 1/6th of the total package.

Based on an extensive review of the leadership literature, personal greatness includes:

  1. Native born attributes (e.g. various intelligences - interpersonal, intra-personal, analytical, spatial, etc.)

  2. Strengths (various skills that have been learned and developed)

  3. Values (answers to the question, "To be a good person I must...")

  4. Worldview or Mindsets (i.e. the lenses through which you see and interpret the world, e.g. egalitarian vs elitist)

  5. Leadership in your whole life (activities outside of work that interest someone and make her/him/them interesting)

  6. Purpose (a sense - however ambiguous or clear - of why you are here, the legacy you're meant to leave.

In other words, strengths comprise only 1/6th of 1/3rd of the leadership definition.

Engaging the Greatness in Others

Let's look at a second component of leadership, the ability to engage the greatness in others.

Basically there are three important and broad elements here:

  1. Interpersonal skills - your ability to effectively interact one on one with others.

  2. Team skills - your ability to engage and align team(s).

  3. Strategic relationships and the way you deploy your relationships

Achieve & Sustain Extraordinary Outcomes

And then the third component of leadership is the ability to achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes.

Here, getting results is neutralized because everyone is expected to get results. And hiring and promotion decisions are based on the fact that people have gotten results.

But what's not talked about as much, except by managers, executive decision-makers, me and a few of my colleagues, are proven and perceived:

  1. Business acumen

  2. Financial Acumen

  3. Strategic Acumen

Strengths Must Be Deployed

I am not saying, pay no attention to your client's strengths.

What I'm saying is give them weight proportional to their contribution to her leadership capabilities.

You've probably heard or read the phrase, "First discover your strengths."

What comes next? Did you ever hear how to deploy those strengths in order to"

  • Develop and demonstrate their business, financial and strategic acumen

  • Engage your strategic network?

 

Strengths must deployed in service of the actions of leadership. They are not the basis of leadership.

They are deployed in order to expand your ability to:

  • Interact effectively with others

  • Engage and align your team(s)

  • Build a network and use it to advance the organization's goals.

  • Develop and demonstrate business, financial, and strategic acumen.

This is what no one is telling you.

If the first step is for you to know your strengths, the second step is to understand that they are only 1/12 of what you need to become a great leader - and that that is only true if you deploys them to continuously improve you other components of leadership.

This is one of the reasons that I so frequently talk about and am annoyed by the fact that most leadership development programs and organizations over-focus on personal greatness using assessments like Strengths Finder and MBTI and DiSC. These have a value because one of the characteristics of successful leaders is that they are self aware.

But leadership development programs and organizations are not appropriately proportioned in relationship to the entirety of leadership.

Most also over-focus on engaging the greatness in others - offering skill building about giving and receiving feedback, how to create high functioning teams, creating an inclusive and safe culture, etc. All of which are important, and most of which managers expect women to be good at (and we are).

If you're "good enough" in the eyes of her management, you don't have to "polish the diamond" by investing time and energy at getting even better at engaging others.

Only ≤ 25% of organizations performance evals focus on business, financial, and strategic acumen, meaning that's developmental feedback that you client don't get. Furthermore, women are rarely told how to deploy our strengths in order to develop these skill areas.

It's important to be asking yourself and your manager(s), "Am I also "good enough" at business, financial, and strategic acumen?" If not, focus on "strengthen the setting."

Let's Recap

  1. Don't rely on your strengths to get you where you want to go.

  2. Deploy your strengths in the service of skills and actions in the areas of strategic networks and business savvy.

  3. Don't rely on feedback you receive from formal HR systems or formal leadership programs. They are singularly untrustworthy indicators of whether you will be seen as a leader and as a viable candidate for open positions.

What's a Woman to Do?

  1. Yes, celebrate the self awareness that comes from knowing your strengths.

  2. Develop a plan or a roadmap for how you can deploy those strengths in areas that need development. For most women, it's not in the areas of interpersonal and team skills. They can be in the area of developing and nurturing a strategic network that drives the organization forward. And they can most certainly be in the area of developing her business savvy (or business financial and strategic acumen).

  3. When you're in a situation of having received feedback about your strengths, think about these questions:

  • How am I deploying my strengths to do a better job at one on one communications?

  • How am I deploying your strengths to do a better job at engaging and aligning my team or teams?

  • How am I deploying your strengths to develop, nurture, and activate a strategic network that helps drive the organization forward?

  • How am I deploying your strengths to develop and demonstrate my business acumen?

  • How am I deploying your strengths to develop and demonstrate my financial acumen?

  • How am I deploying your strengths to develop and demonstrate my strategic acumen?

These are important, because, as I said at the beginning, strengths don't matter...except to the extent that they enable your ever-enhancing leadership capabilities and ever more effective leadership actions.

Here's to your continued success.

Catch you next time,

Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

 

17 Jul 20241 Career-Changing Question Every Woman Should Ask in Interviews00:09:46

TLDR: Use your smart search capabilities to discover where a woman can go in the company you're interviewing for. Also ask questions to discover what the hiring manger thinks about where women can go.

A Lesson for the Ages

As a college graduate, I had the opportunity to interview for two positions, both with insurance companies in the Hartford area. Now, this was the dark ages, so bear with me.

The first position was an opportunity to be a technical writer. I had majored in English and minored in economics, and this felt like a job that was right up my alley. But as the hiring manager escorted me to his office for the interview, I walked through a sea of men. We talked about whatever questions he asked me - none of which I remember, but I do remember the one question I asked him. But I do remember one of the questions I asked him, and that was, "Where can a woman go around here?"

His answer was, "Hmm,  I really don't know."

 The second job I interviewed for was to be secretary to a director.

When I asked him the same question, where can a woman go around here? He pointed outside of the glass walls of his office and said, "Well, over there is Joan Hurwitz. She's a director. And at that desk over there is Betty Cole. She's a manager. And over at that desk is Annette Civitolo.  We just brought her in from the field to be a supervisor."

Any rational person would think that I took the technical writing job. It was up my alley. It tapped my skills. But I took the secretary position because the man who would be my boss, Dave Chichester, could answer my question about where a woman could go around there.

And I had a really rapid rise at that company, primarily because I was such an awful secretary. Dave kicked me out of that role after three months and into a role where I was leading an IT project. Which is a whole other story full of lessons.

What it Means for You

Why am I telling you this?

Because in the age of LinkedIn and corporate websites, you don't have to ask a hiring manager, "Where can a woman go around here?" You can find that out very easily by using smart search skills.

So my advice is to be sure that you do a diligent search to discover what you can about the career trajectories of women who are on the organization's executive team:

  • Were they all hired from the outside?
  • Do any of them have a track record inside the company?
  • Are they only in staff functions?

And what can you find by searching LinkedIn for other women in leadership roles in the company? Especially in whatever function you're interviewing for.

The Question to Get Answered

BUT it would be important to know the hiring manager's perspectives on career growth and mindset about his or her role in developing team members.

 So, you can ask questions such as:

  • Who on your team has advanced in their career and what role did you play in that?
  • In what ways have you actively supported the leadership development of members of your team?
  • Or who has been instrumental in your career progression and how do you, how have you paid that forward? to people who work for you.


 What you're looking for is someone who's conscious of his or her role in developing team members. And also, subtly, you're looking for parity in whether they are talking about the women who report to them and/or the men.

Be Pioneering

 Now let's say it's a position you really want. You know that you are 100% well suited.  That you are aligned with its mission or it's a company whose products or services excite you. And they don't have such a great track record for women in management.

Am I saying that if you're offered the position, you should turn it down?

Absolutely not.

But if you go in, but if you go into that position, go in with eyes wide open.

Every industry has had its women pioneers. Women who started their careers when they were young and the expectations at the time were that women wouldn't go anywhere. Yet these women rose to become CEOs or other senior executives.

One characteristic many of them share is that they were uncomfortable being allies for women or speaking on behalf of women.

Because they had to prove their operational chops first. (Illustrating my point about the importance of Business Savvy.)

As pioneers, they also had to work to fit in.  And I can tell you, many of them have stories about how uncomfortable it was. About jokes they had to put up with, events at private country clubs where women couldn't go in the front door, and about adjusting their communication styles to be more easily heard.

Some of these adjustments are deeply offensive.  Others have to do with expanding your ideas of your capabilities. But if you go into a role in a company where you're going to be a pioneer, it's important to understand what you will be facing.

And I actually want to encourage you to do that. If it's a dream job, and, or, a company that you've been eager to work with, go for it. We need women, especially in STEM industry companies, who will be the pioneers and open the doors for the next generation.

if you do go for it, find allies outside of the company - trustworthy women, with whom you can discuss your successes and the challenges you face.

Let's Recap

When you are interviewing for new opportunities,

  1. You want to know what the environment is like for women and women, women's advancement. You can find that out by smart searches within the company's website and through LinkedIn.
  2. Importantly, you also want to know the mindset of the hiring manager when it comes to his or her responsibilities for developing and actions to enhance the careers of her/his direct reports.
  3. If you take a position where, if you take a position where you're going to be the pioneer, go in with eyes open.

What's A Woman To Do?

1. Make sure you do the preliminary research about the environment for women.

2. Craft an interview question you feel comfortable asking to help Illuminate the hiring manager's mindset about career advancement and development of his or her direct reports.

 A caveat.  You want to ask questions in a way that signals that you're interested in continuous improvement, continuous learning, and  greater contributions to the corporation; without appearing  overly ambitious.  Sad to say it's a double standard that we as women face and we have to walk that very fine line.

That said, a manager who wouldn't hire you because you're ambitious isn't really a manager you would want to work for.

3. If you go in as a pioneer, be sure, be sure that you are able to tap a support system outside of the company. And stay attuned to ways you can maximize your communication style to enhance your effectiveness.

Catch you next time.

Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

24 Jul 2024Kick Your Career into High Gear: 8 Tips from the Pitch00:09:06

This is undoubtedly a blog of a different color!

I had the pleasure of watching many of the Euro Cup games over the last few weeks, and while I'm from the U. S., and more or less agnostic about who wins, I do have to say that this year my preferred team time did win.

 

Spain had an amazing run and is an amazing team. I got to watch almost all of their games.

PSST: I have to admit to having a bit of a crush on their player Marc Cucurella

When he runs down the field with his mop of hair and his pink cleats it's almost like he's floating.

Not to mention the fact that he's a really good soccer/football player.

So what did I learn/remember while watching?

8 Success Tips

Here are Eight career and leadership tips that I was reminded of as I watched the many games that I was able to watch.

1. Sometimes you have to step back in order to go forward. There are many times when the offense passed the ball back to the defense as they were trying to create conditions to score. And the same is true for us. Sometimes we have to take a step back in our careers in order to go forward. I know many women who have done that.

It's also true that sometimes we have to take a step back and rethink our position in the face of new evidence. in order to go forward with a recommendation that will stick.

2.Sometimes we have to go slow to go fast. There were many times in all of the games when, rather than keep an unrelenting offense going, the team would pause to set up a play. So the rhythm of the game changed from fast and frantic to slow and methodical. In business, this is a truth I learned early in my career in relation to Implementing new technology.

When organizations were methodical in their planning, implementation (and I don't mean just the switch over, I mean the switch over and the transition to effective use) of the technology, always went faster.

3. The best players saw the whole picture and communicated with their teammates. There were many times when the camera enabled us to see that, even as they dribbled the ball downfield, players would lift their head, look around for open teammates and successfully pass the ball. Why? Either because the play was known in advance or because there was communication eye to eye, by hand, or sometimes verbally.

This is so true of leaders at every level. Seeing the big picture, especially through business acumen, financial acumen, and strategic acumen and communicating with teammates and direct reports about that big picture, is a success factor for you as the leader (at whatever level) and for your organization.

 

4. Appreciation of diversity matters. Spain (and the other teams) had diversity of talent, diversity of heritage diversity of age. Speaking of age, I also in love with Lamine Yamal, who was playing in a Euro Cup at the age of 16 with much more seasoned and older players. Diversity of style. The Spanish team had their buttoned up players and their scruffy players.

If the field is diverse when we seek talent, our teams become diverse. As I commented on a story that my friend and colleague Sandra Veledar from I.Liv.
told about two managers who headed up similar teams. One was a woman, one was a man. Her team ended up being 50 50, women and men. His ended up being all men.

I explained that it's because women are more likely to recognize talent in other women. Because, in most cases, we don't look through mindsets based on stereotypes about women, men, careers and leadership.

5. Effort doesn't count! Something else that happened in the finals was Spain dominated in the first half And yet the score didn't reflect it at all. They went into halftime and the score was 0 - 0 Spain v England.

This reminded me of something that I say often.

"No one cares the storms you encounter. They only care did you bring in the ship." 

Even though you might work really hard and bring all your expertise to bear, if you don't deliver outcomes, it really doesn't matter in terms of how you're perceived.

It can matter to you in terms of knowing that you are doing your best. But those outside of you who will make career decisions about you in most cases won't care.

6. Celebrate milestones. For each team, every goal was an occasion for celebration. The joy and esprit de corps that they showed after each goal was uplifting.

And we need those interim wins. And we need to celebrate those wins whenever we're on a journey toward hitting key outcomes.

So, as a colleague a manager or an executive, make sure that you build in milestone celebrations - even as your team or your colleagues stay focused on the long term goal of hitting those outcomes that will keep the organization vibrant, vital, and moving forward.


7. Sometimes you have to get out of your lane.  If I turned my head away and then returned to the match, I would be surprised that someone from defense was far up field on offense, or someone on the left had switched over to the right. The same is true for us.

Sometimes to be effective, we have to get out of our lane. Saying, "That's not my job" will hold you back. Hearing, "That's not your job" will hold the organization back.

This is especially true when it comes to creating coalitions for change and or pointing out issues and potential solutions.

And finally, the last lesson I want to mention because it's kind of silly and I think you'll appreciate it.

8. Real men do wear pink. I was flabbergasted at the number of players on all the teams who were wearing pink cleats.

The origin behind them is a little murky.

Some people say it was originally in honor of the Breast Cancer Month. Some people write that it's an anti- homophobic statement

To me the reason doesn't really matter. It's a delightful break from gender norms. Further, now it's a "thing," but I am reminded that the pioneers displayed courage, values and foresight. All aspects of personal greatness - the foundation upon which we stand as leaders.

I hope that one or more of these tips resonates with and inspires you to continue to be the best at what you do!


Catch you next time,
Susan

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

31 Jul 2024I'm All In for VP Harris: Let's Win This!00:03:48

5 reasons ( out of dozens) why I support VP Kamala Harris for President and hope you will too! Check out the Go Deeper Links for a comprehensive list of VP Harris' positions and experience.

 

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Comprehensive list of VP Harris' positions and experience.

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

31 Jul 2024You're NOT "Too Emotional!" Here's Why00:08:21

Your emotions aren't the problem, it's how you're packaging them. Discover how to couple your passion with business savvy to shatter stereotypes and command respect in the workplace.

 

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

07 Aug 2024From Girl Talk to Woman Talk: 3 Shifts to Command Respect00:10:27

In Part 1 of a series of podcasts based on my conversation with Helen Jonsen we discuss the crucial differences between "Girl Talk" and "Woman Talk" in professional settings. She shares three key strategies for women to command respect and authority: eliminating unnecessary apologies, owning the room through strong introductions, and always using your full name. These simple yet powerful communication shifts can significantly impact how women are perceived and treated in the workplace.

Helen has built a kaleidoscope career based on decades of experience from newsrooms to corporate boardrooms really interesting Variants there from startups to established publishers from nonprofits to government agency.

She's been an entrepreneur and an executive at the confluence of digital media and business disruption. Storytelling's in Helen's DNA and at the heart of everything she creates. She speaks on the craft of communication, strengthening advocacy, resiliency in the face of life's challenges, life/work balance, leadership, and the advancement of women.

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Learn about Helen Jonsen's Kaleidoscope Career here: https://helenjonsen.com/helen-s-story

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

14 Aug 2024Don't Just Cope. Conquer 3 Common Career Frustrations00:08:49

We are highlighting 3 common career frustrations that women face:

  1. Overcoming career stagnation,
  2. Standing out in job searches and
  3. Reducing work-related overwhelm

And providing actionable tips for conquering them including prioritizing tasks based on business impact and aligning work with strategic outcomes.

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

 

18 Sep 2024Journey to the Top: Racquel Moses on Career Success00:10:27

Show Notes

Racquel Moses is the CEO of the Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator and host of the "Getting to the Top" podcast.

  • Early career experiences in banking mergers, JP Morgan Chase, and tech startups provided crucial exposure to business strategy and financials.
  • Understanding both the "what" and "why" of business operations is critical for career advancement.

Advice for women:

  • Balance focusing on strengths with addressing weaknesses
  • Don't shy away from financial knowledge - it's crucial for leadership roles
  • Seek challenging experiences to develop new skills
  • Importance of understanding financials and strategy as you move up in management

Recommended book: Where You Are Is Not Who You Are by Ursula Burns

Notable Quotes
"Figure out the things that you need to know that you are weak at and do not run from them. Know that it is the most challenging experiences that will help you to develop in those capacities. " - Racquel Moses

"We are socialized to think that we are not good at financials. But when you look at who's running family budgets and the role that women play in consumer buying, we are naturals at numbers." - Racquel Moses

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Link to Where You Are Is Not Who You Are by Ursula Burns

⭐ Link to Racquel's podcast: Getting to the Top

⭐ Connect with Racquel on Linkedin

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

11 Sep 2024Reimagine Your Career: Helen Jonsen on Your Kaleidoscope Career00:11:56

Key Takeaways from Interview with Helen Jonsen:

A kaleidoscope career utilizes fundamental skills and talents in various roles and industries throughout one's professional life. -

Business disruptions (e.g., pandemic, AI) are changing how people work and view their careers.

Non-linear career paths are becoming more common and accepted.

Key to navigating a kaleidoscope career:

  • Identify and articulate your core skills that transfer across roles
  • Explain your career transitions with confidence -
  • Highlight how your diverse experiences add value

Advice for job seekers:

  • Focus on your transferable skills and how they apply to new roles, even if the job title or industry is different.

Advice for hiring managers:

  • Look beyond traditional career paths and recognize the value of diverse experiences.

Notable Quotes:

"We have fundamental skills, talents, passions, interests that are always a part of us. It's how we change them and move them around and use them in different workplaces, in different opportunities, that builds a kaleidoscope career." - Helen Jonsen

"People need to own their own story, to learn the stories that they want to share about their story. Those remarkable skills that they have and I'll bring them to the table." - Helen Jonsen

Resources Mentioned

Subscribe to Helen Jonsen's newsletter to access her upcoming "Kaleidoscope Career" podcast

Previous podcast episode on "Girl Talk vs. Women Talk - 3 Shifts to Command Respect"

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

 

25 Sep 2024Rewrite Your Career Story: Racquel Moses on Crafting a CEO-Minded Resume00:10:21

Show Notes

In Part 2, Racquel Moses focuses on highlighting your unique impact in each role, not just performing as per your job description.

  • Approach each new role with a mindset of measurable improvement from day one
  • Aim to advance from entry to mid-level positions within two years
  • Track your time meticulously to understand how you're contributing to business goals
  • Think like a CEO of your own career, prioritizing high-value activities
  • Utilize AI tools to streamline low-value tasks and increase productivity

Career Advancement Strategies

Align your KPIs with overall business goals

Regularly evaluate and communicate your impact on the business

Be prepared to discuss how you've improved efficiency or sales in your roles

Use time tracking to identify and reduce low-value activities

Resume Building Tips

  • Highlight measurable impacts and achievements rather than basic job duties
  • Quantify your contributions (e.g., "increased efficiency by 20%")
  • Focus on how you've uniquely contributed to each role

Notable Quotes

"You are the CEO of you.com... You have to think about it in that way." Racquel Moses

"Women on the rise, do not try to get stuck in middle to entry-level positions for more than two years. Two years is enough to prove your worth and to do something, accomplish something that can allow you to get to the next level."  Racquel Moses

"You start thinking about, you scan your environment and think about what can I bring to this role that I can measure and defend? That I was able to do differently from anybody else."  Racquel Moses

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Link to  Part 1 Journey to the Top: Racquel Moses on Career Success

⭐ Link to Racquel's podcast: Getting to the Top

⭐ Connect with Racquel on Linkedin

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

02 Oct 2024Gillian Fox on Unlocking Confidence and Accelerate Your Career00:11:27

Key Takeaways

  • Confidence for women in the workplace is about more than just feeling self-assured; it's about showcasing your business value
  • Developing strategic and financial acumen helps women feel more confident in their ability to contribute to the organization
  • The focus should shift from what women want to get from their work to what they are doing to help the company and themselves get ahead
  • Women need to actively demonstrate their value creation and communicate it effectively to senior leaders
  • Sponsorship cannot be imposed, but providing talented women the opportunity to showcase their thinking can lead to more sponsorship -
  • Senior leaders are interested in seeing how women can contribute to the business, not just their personal development

Strategies for Developing Business Acumen:

  • Understand the broader business landscape and how your work aligns with organizational priorities
  • Identify ways you are creating value and be prepared to articulate your contributions concisely
  • Complete "value creation" assignments that challenge you to present your ideas to senior leadership

Notable Quotes

"If women had the business, strategic and financial acumen, that would help them influence more effectively, they could be compelling presenting a business case, they can understand the numbers and participate in the right conversations." - Gillian Fox

"What is it that you are doing to help your company and yourself get ahead? Because if you're seen as an effective value creator, you will demonstrate your contribution and value more effectively, and it will help you progress your career." - Gillian Fox

"The point is, if you just have your head down and your tail up grinding out the work at your desk, you're missing out potentially on all the important conversations that are shaping the future of the business." - Gillian Fox

About Gillian Fox

Gillian has succeeded in her career, both as a senior executive and an entrepreneur. She is an author, keynote speaker and senior executive coach who also leads gender diversity programs for some of the largest organizations in Australia. In addition, she is the host of the Your Brilliant Career podcast.

Gillian is also the creator and leader of the Rise Accelerate and Rise Elite programs. Both publicly recognized women's career programs.  She works with incredible women and the results are amazing.

Links below.

Go Deeper Links

Gillian's programs: "Rise Accelerate" and "Rise Elite"

Gillian's podcast "Your Brilliant Career"

Connect with Gillian on Linkedin

Susan's TED Talk on The Missing 33%

Susan on Gillian's podcast

Ways Be Business Savvy Equips You for Success

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

 

09 Oct 2024Thrive as an Ambitious Woman00:12:13

Key Takeaways from Part 1 with Michelle Redfern

Being an ambitious woman is often seen as a risk. Lead to Soar helps members practice expressing their ambition comfortably

Ambition should be reframed as a positive force - not just for personal gain, but for improving the world around you

Developing business savvy and aligning one's ambition with the organization's goals is crucial for women's career advancement

The top 3 benefits of the Lead to Soar community:
  1. A safe place for women to express their ambition without fear of judgment
  2. A cadence of weekly "group coaching" sessions that foster community and actionable insights
  3. Pointed feedback on the importance of developing business acumen and intelligence (BQ)

Notable Quotes

"When you're ambitious to make the world a better place, that is a great thing. And that's a real mindset shift." Michelle Redfern

"As a leader, you have a responsibility to go beyond a transactional relationship with your employer. Leaders go beyond that, saying 'I am in a relationship with my employer and it is mutually beneficial."  Michelle Redfern

Go Deeper Links

⭐  About Michelle Redfern

⭐  Lead to Soar online community

⭐   Lead to Soar podcast

⭐   The Leadership Compass by Michelle Redfern

⭐  Connect with Michelle on Linkedin

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed:

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

16 Oct 2024Shine in High-Stakes Meetings - Master Executive Communication00:11:58

Show Notes

  • Understanding business context is crucial for effective communication with senior leaders
  • Tailoring your communication style for executive audiences is essential
  • Preparation and practice are key to improving executive communication skills
  • Body language and voice tone play significant roles in conveying confidence
  • Asking insightful questions can demonstrate engagement and business acumen

Notable Excerpts

"There's a great quote, "Successful people ask better questions." Asking good questions is great too, because we often just focus on delivering our part of the content, but the best leaders ask good questions, which allows them to get good answers. That needs to be built into our repertoire as well. " Gillian Fox

"Choose just one meeting that is important to you... and really focus. Do YOUR prep, do all the things to set yourself up for success and see how you progress." Gillian Fox

About Gillian Fox

Gillian has succeeded in her career, both as a senior executive and an entrepreneur. She is an author, keynote speaker and senior executive coach who also leads gender diversity programs for some of the largest organizations in Australia. In addition, she is the host of the Your Brilliant Career podcast.

Gillian is also the creator and leader of the Rise Accelerate and Rise Elite programs. Both publicly recognized women's career programs.  She works with incredible women and the results are amazing.

Links below.

Go Deeper Links

Gillian's programs: "Rise Accelerate" and "Rise Elite"

Gillian's podcast "Your Brilliant Career"

Connect with Gillian on Linkedin

Susan on Gillian's podcast

Be Business Savvy Equips You for Success

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

13 Nov 2024The Power of Solving Real Business Problems00:10:25

Show Notes

In Part 2 of our conversation, Michelle Redfern reveals what makes her leadership programs transformative for ambitious women. Unlike traditional programs that focus primarily on soft skills, Michelle's approach combines essential business acumen training with real-world strategic projects sponsored by executives. Participants work in teams to solve actual organizational challenges, gaining visibility with senior leaders while building critical financial and strategic capabilities.

Notable Quotes

"This isn't just shoving content down participants' throats. We give them real organizational problems to solve, executive sponsors to work with, and high-stakes opportunities to demonstrate their business acumen." Michelle Redfern

"Executives have told me: 'Wow, I didn't realize we had so many talented women in our organization' - that's exactly the visibility and recognition these women need." Michelle Redfern

Go Deeper Links

⭐  About Michelle Redfern

⭐  Lead to Soar online community

⭐   Lead to Soar podcast

⭐   The Leadership Compass by Michelle Redfern

⭐  Connect with Michelle on Linkedin

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed:

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

20 Nov 2024Master Your Voice, Own Your Message00:11:22

In Part 3 of our conversation with Helen Jonsen, founder of Helen Jonsen Media, we dive into practical media coaching tips that every professional woman can use.

Helen shares insights from vocal technique to signature remarks, revealing why memorization isn't the key to powerful speaking - authenticity and preparation are.

Key Tips Covered:

  • The science behind deep breathing and vocal control
  • Creating effective signature remarks
  • Crafting your personal passion statement
  • The power of authentic storytelling
  • Why poise matters more than perfection

Notable Quotes:

"Your vocal cords are strings like a guitar string. When you get nervous, they get stretched, and your voice goes up. Deep breathing brings your voice to your normal register."

"A passion statement describes you and your work from the heart - it's not an elevator pitch, which is a sell."

"Speakers don't have to be the ones who memorize, but they need to be the ones who are memorable."

Go Deeper Links

⭐ Part 1 with Helen Jonsen "Girl Talk vs Women Talk" here

⭐ Part 2 with Helen Jonsen "Your Kaleidoscope Career" here

⭐ Learn about Helen Jonsen's Kaleidoscope Career here: https://helenjonsen.com/helen-s-story

⭐ Business Savvy YOU! delivers the business, financial and strategic acumen you need to succeed: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/overview-business-savvy-you

⭐ Discover The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed FREE email course: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/newsletter-opt-in-1

⭐ Receive unique and transformative career advice: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/BusinessSavvyNewsletterOpt-In

⭐ Turn Career Advice from Flawed to Fantastic!: https://www.bebusinesssavvy.com/lead-magnet-7-career-tips-keeping-1 

Podcast produced* and original theme music by Megan Tuck www.megantuckaudio.com

*Megan creates a listenable pod from a truly imperfectly created original containing my walking huffs & puffs, footfalls, background noises - birds, waves, cars, dogs, roosters and more. Thank heavens for Megan!

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