Follow the show:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Everywhere else
Today on the podcast, I interview Stacy Mayer, an executive coach and promotion strategist, on what it takes to advance your career as a working mom. During the interview we discuss the challenges that working moms face, some of the mindsets that hold them back and ultimately what it takes to take full control of your career trajectory.
Topics in this episode:
How opportunities have shifted for working moms in the last 5 years and why that is good for you
Is it true that moving up in your career will require more time & energy?
The importance of setting a vision for your career and how to do it
The difference between visioning and goal setting in your career
The importance of intentionality when it comes to career advancement
Show Notes & References:
Maximize Your Career with Stacy Mayer - https://www.stacymayer.com/podcast/
Free career advancement resources: https://www.stacymayer.com/resources/
Get clear on exactly what you want out of your career & motherhood by scheduling a free coaching call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!
Enjoying the podcast?
Make sure you don’t miss a single episode! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
Leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.
Transcript
Intro
Rebecca: Today on the podcast, I interviewed Stacy Mayer. Stacey Mayer is an executive coach and a promotion strategist, but she is also a long time friend and colleague. She lives here in the Berkeley area of California with me. She is raising two amazing humans that are about the same age as my kids, and she is an expert at helping women get promoted.
I really wanted to bring her onto this podcast to talk about the perceived challenges that working moms face when they think about advancing their career. And I use that word perceived really intentionally because on the podcast, we talk about is it really true that moving up in your career is going to require more time and energy which will then take away from your family? This is one of the major roadblocks that many working moms face when they think about going after a promotion, and we talk about that a lot.
We also talk about what it takes to be in control of your career path, to not depend on your boss to notice you when you've done something well and how to advocate for yourself. We talk about Ally meetings and so many other little tips to taking control of your career. And I really want you to listen to the way that Stacey talks about stepping into your executive leadership ahead of time, meaning before you've even gotten that executive leadership job, because this is a point that she comes back to a lot in this interview. The importance of embodying your executive leadership right now and what happens when you do that, the energy shift that happens within you and the impact that that makes on your career, on your boss, on the way you advocate and speak up for yourself. It is almost like magic. So you're going to get so much out of this interview. I really can't wait. Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Hello, Stacey, my friend. I'm so excited that you are here on my podcast today. Thank you for being here.
Stacy: Me too. I'm very excited. Yes.
Rebecca: Working moms, this is my good friend, Stacey Mayer. We actually, until I just moved like a month and a half ago, we lived literally a mile from each other for the last many years and have been growing our businesses as coaches together. And so Stacey is an executive coach and a promotion strategist. I was going to just give a little sense of what that is, but I'm just going to let you say it because you'll do it better than me. So tell me, what is it that you do and who do you coach?
About Stacy.
Stacy: Thank you so much, Rebecca. I love this. And it really, Rebecca and I have absolutely been on this journey together probably for, like, almost over five years. Five, six years. We were, like, in a mentoring program together and then was like, wait, you live down the street from me, and so just really been growing our businesses. But I think transitioning also from that corporate world into entrepreneurial world all sort of happened at the same time and everything like that.
Rebecca: And our kids are the same age, too.
Stacy: Yes. We both have two children.
Rebecca: We're raising children at the same liberal ages.
Stacy: Yeah. So everything has been about work life balance, trying to figure out how to create these businesses and then have these beautiful children and be able to spend time with those beautiful children and not feel like we're, like, always pulling our hair out and figuring it out along the way.
It also kind of points to my introduction of myself and what it is that I do. So, specifically, I coach women to get promoted into higher level executive positions. And that came out of working for a women's leadership group in the Silicon Valley and in that we would work on different skills to learn how to advocate for ourselves, to speak up more. You know, a lot of the traits that are in Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, and I realized that there was a gap between learning these executive leadership skills and actually getting a promotion. It was like, oh, I'm taking on a lot more responsibility. I am speaking up more, but yet I'm still not included in the conversation. And so when I ventured out on my own, I decided that I would really buckle down on how do we get women the title, the compensation to match, and also making sure they have that voice at the table, that inclusion at the table. And so that's been the foundation for my business.
I'm also the author of Promotions Made Easy. My book that came out last year. Best selling Amazon book. Step by Step Guide to the Executive Suite. Where I really break down the principles that I teach so that you can just do it literally from reading this book. Put together this in practice. Get more money. More pay. Higher titles. And that actual voice at the table that we crave to be included in that conversation.
Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited that you're here because you have so much to offer us in this conversation, because for a lot of working moms, they feel very held back in their career because of being a mom. You know, there's almost this thing that happens when we have kids that all of this the responsibility kind of goes way high. And this feeling of, you know, I have to be a good mom, and that means I need to spend all of my time and my priorities have to be on my kids, and then we don't know how to balance it all. You know, we're juggling way more than we could ever have imagined when we started having kids. And for a lot of ambitious women, they feel like they have to choose between them, right?
And so that's at the heart of what I coach on for working moms, is helping them through the internal hurdles that we tend to put up with as we try to go after that kind of ambitious life that we want as working moms and how to have that career that you absolutely love and you can't wait to get up for every single day and still feel like your family is number one and is getting the best of you and that you're not sacrificing your family in the midst of it.
So I'm sure you work with a lot of moms that are a part of your program, you have coached a lot of moms. It was really the impetus for why I wanted you to come on to this podcast. I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit about what it looks like to be a woman and then kind of add that layer of being a mom on top of that and still want to pursue and push your career forward. That's kind of the conversation that we're going to have here today. I'm really excited. I think you’re the best person that I could ever have this conversation with. So thank you for taking the time and sharing your expertise with us.
Just starting out - when you think about working moms, wanting to pursue their career and they have this sense of being held back, what do you notice about those hurdles, those mindsets, whether they're true or not true? Because sometimes we make up our hurdles, right? What do you notice out there for working moms as they go after moving their career forward and getting promoted?
Family is the most important.
Stacy: The whole time that you're talking, I'm thinking about how it's actually a different career. What happens for us in the first half before kids is that we have a certain type of career path. And I know that you talk about balance and integration and there's all these, like, language around work life balances. But as you're talking, I'm like, when push comes to shove, who wins? Your family. Why are we working for our family? For our health, right? Like, there is no way that any working mom is going to sacrifice that solely for working harder.
It's like I say all the time - women are the smartest human beings in the world because we have this beautiful thing called intuition that actually holds us back from raising our hands because we're like, screw that. Because I see all those people at the top and I'm like, I don't want any part of that. My family really does come first. My health comes first. Yes, we all get on the edge of burnout, but I just think a lot of women are smarter than that. They're not going to put themselves through that ringer. And so what we have to do is shift into the second career. So we had the career before kids, and then we sort of feel it out in the first… And this is also so great since we both have I think you have a five year old now, is that true?
Rebecca: Right, just turned five.
Stacy: Yeah. So I'm just like this amazing place of five years old. And I don't know if I'm being naive, but I'm very happy about what's in front of me having a five year old, because I think the first five years is sort of like a, what's going on? But after five years old, when those kids get to a certain point, you can start to look at it and say, okay, what do I want to do with the next 20 years of my career? And start to be very intentional about mapping that out.
Dream big and state what you want.
One of the concepts that I teach is called three X, your vision, right. So what's your C Suite title? If you could have one? Like, I don't even care if you want one, but let's imagine, is it Chief Impact Officer? Is it, Chief Financial Officer? Just like, start to be in that and then add to it Chief Financial Officer who works 30 hours a week. Chief Financial Officer who has support from her leadership team to be able to spend that time with her family, who has three months vacation a year. Like, I don't know, let's dream big and figure out what the remainder of our career is going to be like and then start to put those pieces into place versus how do I take this career that it feels a little wonky and then just kind of make it better.
Rebecca: I love the idea that once you become a mom, assuming that you go back into doing what you were doing before, some don't, right, and they make a total pivot or they become a stay at home mom, or for sure that has happened. Lots of women go, all of a sudden, it's like, I was on this path and now, I don't want to be on this path anymore, my kids have shown me a different way, and I'm going to do a different way. Right. That is for sure happens.
Your outlook on your career changes when you become a mom.
But for the most part, most people return back to the same job that they were in, on the same path that they were on. But the idea that you're actually in a different career now, there's a different mindset around what success looks like, what your future looks like, what balance and managing life looks like. And you have to actually operate quite a bit differently in your job in order to learn how to manage two very important aspects of life, work and family at the same time. Before you were only managing work and yourself, right? And now you're managing both along with yourself in the midst of it. And that's completely different. Success isn't going to look the same anymore. And this idea that it's like it's a second path, like, you got to think about it as a second path.
Get mentors and coaches to support you.
Stacy: And that's great because think about when you were 20 years old, how much help did you get to create that path? Very few people graduate college without support in the sense of guidance counselors, family, friends, people, mentors, people telling them what to do for good or bad. Now at age 35 or 40, we're like, we're just going to figure it out by ourselves. We should be able to do this. And the answer is no - if you know that it's a new career path, then you can start to carve that out and paint that picture for yourself. Get the mentors, the coaches, whatever that is, to figure out and to understand. What does this look like? For me.
Rebecca: One of the things that I hear a lot that I think holds a lot of women back from moving forward in their career in a really, strong way, like, in an aggressive way, if you will. And, all I mean by that is, like, I want this, and I'm going to move towards this and take very intentional steps towards that versus the well, the doors just kind of open to me when they open to me, and I have to wait until this situation really is terrible before I make a change, right? So, like, aggressive in a really intentional way is kind of what I mean by that.
Can I be COO and be a mom?
What I hear from them is a couple of different things - and I'd love actually to hear what you hear as well. But one of the big ones is like, I'm not sure if it exists out there, what I want. I can't be a COO and only work 30 hours that doesn't exist.
Stacy: Yeah. And you know what? You're right. It doesn't. But it's existing more. I just did a recent podcast episode on the new wave of women's leadership, and it's like, it's hitting me in the face so hard right now because I realized very recently that our role models as women, right? So if we just sort of say, I don't want to be at the leadership table, like, maybe the men around me, right. You know, it's like, different priorities, right. I'm not looking to recreate that - the women so then we think, oh, okay, well, because we have the same gender and they are also a mom or something, but you kind of look at the careers. So the people who are actually in the C suite right now in order to get their head to start in sort of the Cheryl Sandberg era, right. So it was still a climbing to the top. It was still executive presence was defined as look and talk like the rest of the room. If you wanted to be included in the conversation, you had to be more like them. So those role models that we currently have in executive leadership positions are not always the people we want to emulate. Those are the people that we're just still looking at. They might be the same gender. They might also happen to be a mom, but nothing about them says anything about me.
Setting your own rules in leadership rolls.
And so over the last five years, there's a lot of women that are rising in what I call authentic power this way, where they get to bring their whole self to the leadership table. They get to set these rules. They're a little bit harder to find, but you're going to start seeing them at the VP, at the senior Vice President level, and sometimes they've already made it to the C suite. They're the ones who are going to have those conversations with you and be a mentor and a role model to you to say how to do this differently. And, look, I'm doing it differently. This is the Sarah Blakeley's of the world who are saying, okay, I have a leadership team where these are actually our priorities. But we have to remember that that's only happened as working moms in our lifetime in the last five or six years, we really didn't…
Rebecca: The conversation has really changed over the last five or six years.
Stacy: Yes, it really has, 150%. It's changing. It's changing also for men and paternal leave their input on the family and the roles are shifting and everything, and that's, like, happening in real time.
Rebecca: Do you think C0VID changed a lot of this, just out of curiosity?
Reinventing what we want.
Stacy: Well, I mean, look at my own life. My husband has helped me so much more internally with my business now. Like, literally, just because we're working down the hallway from each other. I go to playdates with my children, and 50% of them are men who are working fathers. I'm like, what is happening right there's definitely more involvement and more questioning the roles that we're supposed to play. And I know that doesn't happen for everyone, and not all women have that level of support.
But what I want to point to is the questioning - that we are reinventing not only what we want, but companies are going to have to start to follow suit because of the demands of quality leadership and trying to hold on to employees and everything in the Great Recession and just like, all of that stuff. So companies are going to have to actually start listening. And so I really do this is the work I do.
So I'm sure there's an optimistic side, but I'm seeing it in actual proof in the sense of who are the leaders and who are the people who are getting the higher salaries now? And it's women. It's women who are carving out and who are saying, this is what's important to me.
Rebecca: Carving out their space in the world, in the working world on some level.
Stacy: Exactly 100%. I was thinking about a piece of advice to offer your listeners. So this is like a straight up communication technique. It doesn't look the same as what we think, so what we think we're going to do. Okay, I have a personal core value - my kids come first or whatever like that. Right? So we think that that is the pitch that we're going to make to our boss of why we need to leave at 5pm every day. Right? So this is literally like, I'm giving you advice now. Write this down.
Double down on our values for ourselves.
So we lead with, I'd like to leave at 5pm every day because it's really important to me to pick up my kids and blah, blah, blah. And I see your boss right now is like, I could care less. Right? And we know that, right? And so we think that we're carving out this leadership in this authentically, powerful way by sharing more of our values. And I actually see it as a little bit of the opposite, which is, let's double down on our values personally. Personally. Which means I leave at 4pm every single day. I do not need to tell you why, but what I do need to tell you is how I'm getting my work done. I do need to tell you how my work has actually just made the company a lot more money this year. What I do need to tell you, right, let's double down on the values for ourselves, but those values do not always have to be communicated for them to matter.
And so, yes, this happens a lot in diversity and inclusion. Right. So we'll just scream louder what we need and what I say is, like, let's get you in a position of authority so you don't have to scream anymore. And now you just hire the leadership team you want.
Rebecca: Yeah. There's many things that I'm picking up here, and one of the things that I like to talk a lot about is redefining success. Because what you've just said is in your brain, you can't see your success as being sitting in your butt in front of your computer, as that's what makes you successful and that the time that you put into work is what makes you successful. If that's true, then for sure you are doing a disservice to your company by leaving every day to be with your family or whatever it is. But that's not really what the company cares about at all. They care about you doing your job, you furthering your job, you getting new business for your job. You know, whatever it may be. They care about you moving the mission and potentially, like, the profit, if you work for profit forward.
And so that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with time. And if you disassociate that, then it doesn't matter when you leave your office or not, as long as you believe that and your work is in fact moving things forward. And to your point, you're communicating that.
Understanding your value.
Stacy: Oh, Rebecca, that is so good. I love the way you phrase that. Just this idea of getting yourself out of the hourly worker mentality because then the communication just happens in the right way, right? It's like you understand your value, you know what you're bringing, and then that's what you're going to communicate versus the other.
Rebecca: Right. Because if you believe that leaving at 04:00 is in fact a disservice to your company, if you believe that, so you come to your boss and you're like, look, I got to go pick up my kid today. I'm really sorry there's a thing that happened, or I couldn't find another time. If that's your energy about it because you have a thought that you should be in your chair and that you're doing a disservice for them to your company and you're holding them back or you're not doing as good of a job as you could, then that's what you're going to communicate in your energy towards them. It's going to be the words, it's going to be the energy that you use. It's going to be the apologetic nature of it versus if you're like, oh, for sure, I did everything I was supposed to today. Like, I nailed it. And I know exactly how what I did today is a part of the bigger vision of what the company is doing. And so I'm just going to let them know I'm leaving as a courtesy, but here, I'm also going to let them know what I did today.
Stacy: Yes, rebecca, we are changing the world. This is so good.
Rebecca: We are changing the world. I love it. I want to come back to something else you said. I want to highlight it because I said that women will come to me and they say, I want to be CEO, but I only want to work 30 hours. And then your response to that was, you're right, that hasn't existed, but it is starting to exist more and more. It comes back to a couple of things. One is if that's true, that it doesn't exist and that's the mindset you're living in, you're not going to go out and find it, right? If it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. All of your energy is closing you completely off to the possibility that what you want out there is even a possibility, right. And so there's a problem in that mentality.
You have the ability and the authority to leave that job and find another one.
So you have to want to believe that whatever it is that you want exists out there, you have to put it out into the universe, if you will. You got to speak the truth of like, this is what I want, this is the kind of life I want to live. So that your energy kind of moves towards that. But then, two, you have to believe that it's within your power to go find it. That probably doesn't exist at your company right now if that's what you're looking for - you have the ability and the authority to leave that job and find another one. You're not stuck there. And then you can go out and pick the next one and be looking for companies that value this. And, yes, that will take more time. Yes, the pool of those options is smaller, but that's okay. There's no problem with that. You're not looking for every opportunity. You're looking for a specific opportunity that matches the three times vision that you have for yourself and wherever you're headed.
Stacy: Yeah. Oh, my God, I love that. It reminded me of what happened in COVID, because you sort of mentioned that, did COVID change things? And I feel like COVID taught us that we can flip everything on its head, like, super, super quickly. And here's another example of something that I realized that working moms in particular really needed was a better way of networking. And COVID actually gave us this unbelievably beautiful gift.
So there was a woman that I spoke with in March of 2020, and she was like, the worst part about being at home right now is I don't get FaceTime with my boss anymore. And I was like, okay, yeah, that stinks. Because if you're thinking about career progression, this is a huge problem. Right. If you're not in front of your boss, if you're not sharing your ideas right. Huge, huge problem.
Rebecca: You're not having the cost of tax when you walk down the hall or the quick drop in, people's hop in.
Stacy: Exactly. yeah. We all know that that is a part of advancement. That's a huge part. And even if you get direct feedback, they'll say you need more visibility. Right. That's a very common thing for women or men even. Whatever is happening, you need more visibility. But I realized in that second, and I said to her, you also realize that bumping into your boss is not a strategy. And I was like, that is basically passively growing your career. Right? It's what you talked about. Rebecca. It's like, these things just kind of happened to me. I'm in the right time, right place, and I got the promotion. It just happens, you know, they asked me and whatever. No, and if we're wanting to create this three X vision, we're just being more intentional about it.
And so the gift that happened for women going virtual is that it allowed us to schedule these bumps in the hallway, and not everybody did. And you've probably noticed the consequences as a result. But for those of you and I have a process that I teach called 15 Minutes Ally meetings, it's literally to recreate these bumps in the hallway. And that came out of this idea that we have to schedule these coffee chats, and we can do it virtually, and we can get one on one in front of the executive team and do it in a way that is way more strategic, way more repeatable, way more congruent with where we want to be. And so I just have my little army of 15 minutes ally meetings happening all over the world where women are getting FaceTime, with executive leaders, with their CEOs.
A woman asked me on a presentation I was giving, and she was like, how do I get invited to the bar? Right? Because I feel like that's my way of getting in front of them. I was like, stop trying to go to the bar. Do the 15 minutes Ally Meetings. Let's do it our way. And then when we do get promoted now, we're also in control of that. It didn't just happen. We can make sure that we're successful on our terms once we get there.
Finding a different way to create those conversations.
So I really feel like that's a huge gift for women in terms of networking. Oh, my God. That's another thing. Not having to move to headquarters, quote, unquote. Everybody tells you you have to be close to headquarters. You have to be close to the executive team. And you're like, I'm not going to uproot my family. Yes, you can still be an executive leader now and live anywhere, but you have to be intentional. You have to find a different way, a way that works for you to create those conversations.
Not being clear on your vision forward.
Rebecca: You have to see. And this, again, comes back to this mindset that you are in charge of your career path. So often we just graduate from college and we just get into the job, and we keep moving forward and taking these steps that may or may not be good or bad. We don't have to judge them in any way. They may or may not be getting you where you want to go because likely to your point, haven't three X your vision. You haven't decided where you're headed. And then that becomes another mindset that I see a trap for a lot of women, which is like, I don't know where I want to go. I'm not clear on that. What do you say to women that feel that way, that don't have that ending site? It's very specific. I know I want to be a XY or Z. And for them, the path feels very like, I don't know what the path is because I don't see it. I don't see the steps.
Stacy: It's the difference between a vision and a goal. So if you think about vision boarding and things like that, there's very few women that couldn't go through Pinterest or a few magazines and put together some of the beautiful images of what they want. When you're asked what you want from a visionary standpoint, it's incredibly clear. You'll put a walk on the beach or you'll show a picture with throwing kids in the air, right? We know what we want. We get it from a visionary standpoint.
What drives us?
But what happens is that when it comes to work and titles, we instantly click into goals. And I think goals are much more like, how am I going to get there? And if I can't see the path to getting there, then I don't have clarity. I don't care if women become CFOs. The CFO is the vision board, right? Is the dream. And it doesn't have to be called that. It could be called your thought leadership, or I want to be included, or I'd like to be on a board, but I have no idea what that means. So those are the images, and they can also live as words. That's the vision. And then we're not going to worry about how we're going to make that happen, but in order for it to happen at all, we have to just sort of put it out there and then we look at our next role or, our current situation, we pull it back, and that's where we're creating the goals. But I think if you create a goal to become CFO for most women, it's like you're going to give up on it incredibly quickly because it's very ego driven. Right. This is not what stereotypically drives us. it has a lot of attachment in terms of what does that CFO role mean? It has to be in a small enough company. Right. And so then we get into the specifics. That's not what I mean by three X in your vision.
Rebecca: Interesting, I wrote that down. You know, we get it from a visionary standpoint. And the thing that clicked for me, as you were talking, was, we know what we want to feel.
Stacy: There you go.
Feel into the future, the thing you want.
Rebecca: …three times from now. Like, that's a part of the vision. Right. It's like, I could tell you the kind of freedom that I want to experience three times. My vision right now, my life and my career, in my coaching business. Right. I could tell you the kinds of experiences that I want to have during that time, and the kind of clarity that I want to have, and the way that I can imagine, on some level the kind of person I want to wake up and be, and kind of embody in that place. And I don't know exactly what that means for what I'm doing right now. I don't know what that says about my business three years from now or ten years from now, or whatever for me in my business, or for anybody in whatever path they're on. But I can sense the emotional state that I would be in. And that's a really big part of visioning. It is to feel in the future the thing that you want.
Stacy: Yeah. And a lot of times, if you ask somebody the clarity, they'll be like, yes, I know that.
Rebecca: Yeah, for sure they know that part. And then from there, you start to piece pieces together. You don't maybe think about the end goal. You think about the next step. What's the very next space that I need to get into in my career in order to move me closer to that vision of the emotional experience that I want in my life, right?
Stacy: And I was just thinking to translate it into another how. So we do this exercise for ourselves personally, our own professional development, right? Start to understand what's it like to speak in visionary terms, but then bring it back to goals, right? This is what's happening at the executive level every single day. This is how they communicate. So if you're starting to think, what is executive presence? What is executive communication? It's this. So we practice it on ourselves. We sort of figure out, okay, what is holding you back from that clarity? And then that is the conversation that they are having in the C suite. That's the conversation that the executive leaders are having on a regular basis is like, we know where we're going as a company and the impact that we're going to make as an organization and then tying that vision back into day to day goals. And so for a lot of people, and I'll just say people because this, I don't think is female specific. It actually has more to do with subject matter expertise versus executive leadership. When you're a subject matter expert, you stay at the day to day, right? In the weeds, as ah, I call it. Right? So it's like, you stay at the detailed level and you forget why are we doing this?
Rebecca: We're the technician, right?
Stacy: What is the point? And so, like, if you're giving a presentation, why are you giving it? You're like, well, because I need to deliver this. Right? And we're still at the day to day. And then I usually get them to the same answer. It's to make the company more money. And they're like, well, yeah. And I'm like, yeah. So let's start with that. Hello, I have a presentation for you that's going to make you a lot more money. Here we go. Right, like, even that sentence. So now we start to amp up our executive presence. Right? Now we're communicating like an executive leader through an exercise that we do for ourselves, for our own professional do’s.
Moving up in your career does not have to mean more time and energy.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. So good. I want to pivot here because this question is kind of burning a little bit in me as we're having this conversation. And I kind of hinted at it a little bit earlier, and I'm curious what you have to say about it. The idea that if you move forward in your career, this is kind of another limiting belief, or like a roadblock I see for a lot of working mums when we have these conversations about moving their career forward - they think that that means more time and more energy towards their work, which they don't want to give they're already burned out, or they're okay right now, but they don't want it to grow. They want to protect the time that they have with their family. And it already probably doesn't feel like enough for them and this mindset that if I continue to move up in my career, for sure, what I see is usually what they see is a whole lot of people that overwork, right? They see all of the people at that level that are working their 60 hour + a week, and that's not what they want. Do you think that that's actually true? That if you continue to move up in your career, it requires you?
Stacy: Well, of course it's not true, right? Like, at all. Right. It reminds me of the time conversation. We just have to look at time differently. Like, there is no part of me, when you ask me that question, thinks in any way that this is true.
Rebecca: Believe that story.
Stacy: But I do understand why you believe it - the listener, like, why it feels and it feels that way to me. I have to battle that every single day. I get it. One of the things that I try and encourage women is the best thing that could ever happen for your career is to get a role in an area that you know nothing about. And especially if it's a leadership role, you have to be a senior director, VP level role in order for this theory to work. But let's just, like, put that hat on for a minute. So let's say that you get a VP promotion in a group that you know nothing about. First things first. Why did you get that? And I'll give you a very specific example for a woman that got pulled into another group and given a promotion, and then now she's like, this is the best thing that ever happened for my time management. I have so much more time.
She was managing 200 people, and then she went to just being this high level leader. But the thing is, why did she get the job? She got the job because somebody believed in her leadership, not her subject matter expertise. So they said, clearly, you do not get paid because of your butts and seats. You get paid because of your ideas. So in order to get that role, you have communicated your value at a much greater level. So that's the first piece.
Seeing yourself as an executive leader.
And then the second thing is when you are not forced to have all the answers, when you're not that forced, like, deep and you just realize, like, I actually don't know. Let's go to Jim, you know, Jim, why don't you do this presentation and, you know, as high achievers, as people who like to do it all, as people who totally can technically do it all right, I'm one of those. I can do everything. I'm superwoman, right. I'm like, totally I'm proving it time and time again and then being willing to step into something where you're not that subject matter expert. I actually call it subject matter expert prison. It can hold you back. And when you give that description of not wanting to, quote, unquote, scale your career, where you grow in it, in that area, you have to start to see yourself as an executive leader versus a subject matter expert.
And by executive leader, I mean somebody who doesn't get paid for their hours, they get paid for their ideas. And we start to shift that leadership. Yes, exactly. And do it as an experiment. Right. What will happen is I’ll coach women in their one on one with their boss that are normally 2 hours. So that's like a time thing. Right. It's like, wow, I spend 2 hours every week with my boss giving him all of the details of what I'm working on. It's exhausting because not only do I have to do my job, I have to say what I'm doing over and over and over again. When you start to communicate the vision first, really, it's about alignment. Your boss needs to know that you get it. And then you're like, if you want to hear more details, I'm happy to share. 90% of the time they're like, no, I trust you. You've got it.
Rebecca: This is what I paid you for, is to do what you do, go execute.
Stacy: Yeah, exactly. So we start to learn that we have all of these pieces where we're actually creating more work for ourselves. And so even the exercise of getting a role that you know nothing about, you can use that as a mental exercise to just play like, what if I knew nothing about this job that I'm currently in? How would I get support? What would I be doing differently if I just got hired?
Rebecca: How would I manage my time and how would I manage the priorities?
Stacy: Yeah. and just use it as an exercise.
The 3 P’s.
Rebecca: Pretty much. It's always going to come down to like one of the three P's - the people pleasing, the perfectionism, or the procrastination. You can't people please because you don't have all the answers. You're not a subject matter expert. So you can't take everything on because you don't know. You have to ask for help all of the time.
Stacy: You actually don't know.
Rebecca: You really don't know. You have to ask for help. You can't be a perfectionist because once again, you don't exactly know. So all you can do is be at this higher level thinking around strategizing this subject matter, this department, these people at a higher level, connecting it into the bigger vision of the company and whatnot, that's not going to be a perfect presentation that you're going to give. Right. So you're not going to be able to do that. The procrastination, when you're at these levels in your career, everything keeps moving forward. The ball will continue to move forward. And if you don't move forward with it on some level, that's where the overwhelm and the stress tends to hit all of us.
Stacy: The truth is, we're not really pleasing anyone when we go drone on and on about all the details in a management team meeting where no one cares about those details. And let me tell you, they are not pleased, necessarily. They're zoned out. They're not listening. Right? You know it when you did all this work to get there, and you're like, wow, they didn't even seem to care. And I'm like, yeah, they didn't. So how could we have pared that down to these higher level deliverables? Then we give them what they want, we actually end up pleasing them even more. They're like, oh, she's great, let's have her present again next week. She gets what the board needs to hear. She knows how to communicate.
Rebecca: This has reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a client. She was kind of bemoaning and frustrated that the leadership team above her, the managers weren't giving her more praise. They weren't advocating for her as much as she would like them to be doing. And we were having this conversation around it, I kind of asked the question, why would you? That's not their job, why would you think that that's what they're supposed to be doing? She's like, what do you mean it's not their job? It's kind of like, you think that you're supposed to just put your head down and do your job, and somebody is supposed to notice what you're doing, as if you don't have any control over what's going on. As if you don't have words to speak about what you're doing and advocating for what you're doing. She's like, it does kind of feel like that. I'm like, I know. Do you see how that's a problem? She's like, yeah, I am kind of pissed off that I have to advocate for myself. And I'm like, I know, but what if that wasn't true?
Advocating for yourself at work.
What if advocating for yourself looks like you feeling amazed at the kind of work that you do and knowing so intricately the kind of work that you're doing and the impact that you're making. And how important it is to the company and to the vision of the company. And you believed that so much that you could do nothing but communicate that out to everybody around you. And there was no more waiting around for other people to notice how your work was making an impact.
Stacy: Actually, this reminds me when we think of advocating - I love this analogy of the button seat, the hourly. So I think a lot of times we're advocating the hourly, the work. And so what we do and this is where I say women are really freaking smart if you're not speaking up, because you're like, it feels weird. It's actually weird.
Rebecca: Yeah, it is kind of weird.
Stacy: So it would be weird if you started walking around telling everybody about these great projects that you did and all this awesome work that you did. And can't you see? I'm, really great. It's, like, totally weird. It's awkward for everybody in the room, and we've all been there. Usually it happens at performance review when you're not getting promoted. You get all defensive and you're like, can't you see all these great things that I did?
But what I teach is showing your work, and it just kind of sounds like the same thing, but it's totally not. So if you think about math and you have to show your work, you're showing how you came up with the answer. And so what we're doing, and when we're advocating for ourselves, is we're actually communicating what we used in our brain to come up with that decision, what is brilliant about our personality that it got us to the point where we were able to do this great thing for our team? What is part of our Three X vision that made me want to go above and beyond in this role?
So all of that is advocating for your promotion. When we start to do that, it just sounds like normal conversation. And for a lot of women, it also taps into that part of us that, is very passionate, and is very driven from that more emotional standpoint of core values. And so when we can start to communicate from our core values, now we're advocating for ourselves till the cows come home, we can't stop. We're showing our work to everybody because we're just like, wow, this job is so cool. I love what I'm doing. I was able to do this big project now and then. Even your boss, who was not advocating for you all those days, you start communicating to your boss in this way, they will say, you know what? Who's really passionate about this project? Sarah, let's bring her into the room. Right? Because you've clearly shown…
Knowing your value.
Rebecca: It's because you've noticed yourself the kind of impact that you're having and your skill set that you brought to the table, and you see it as being valuable. I talk to my clients all of the time about knowing their own value, right. Knowing it as a human being and knowing it as a professional. I mean, oftentime I start with the human being stuff because that's the kind of work that I do. We always get to that place of thinking outside of your skill set as a professional, to the value that you bring to your company. When you see that to your point, like, you can't do nothing but share it, it just becomes something that oozes out of you. It becomes about more of your energy.
Sometimes I like to think about it as, I don't know, stacey, I have just found the most amazing skincare product. Like, I've been really struggling with my skin for such a long time. And it's so dry. Every day, it's so dry. But I've just started on this stuff. It's remarkable. I can't even tell you how I mean, it's literally changed my life because I only have to put it on once a day. My skin feels so good, and it kind of has this glow to it. I'm talking to you about my skincare product, but I can do nothing but share how amazing it is. And you probably are like, whoa, tell me about this skincare product. I want to know about this product, but not from a place where I'm trying to sell you on it. I am just so excited about what this skincare product did for me and my skin and how it changed my life. That energy oozes out of me, and all of a sudden, you don't hear me selling you on skincare. You hear me going, oh my gosh, she's doing amazing things. This product changed her life.
You are the product. When you believe that you are that product that is life changing, and what you bring to the table is so valuable. What we see as being very egocentric, like, advocating for yourself isn't going to feel that way at all. It's going to become something that feels so natural and obvious and everybody else sees it, and it's going to flow out of you in a completely different way. That was a real weird tangent, but that's where my brain went, too is a skincare product.
Stacy: It's interesting, too, because as you were talking, I was, like, picturing this very uninterested, for lack of a better word, white male executive leader on the other side. And you're like, I don't really care about your passion for that project. And I think that for a lot of people, we're waiting for those role models, like we mentioned earlier, to care about what we're doing, to notice - in terms of executive communication, when I say, how do they talk? They're talking about visionary, like, all the time. If you really start to take note of what's being said, you'll see that the CEO repeats certain phrases. It sounds like a motivational speech over and over and over again, like these sound bites. So you start to create those sound bites for yourself.
Speak the language of passion.
So it might not always be like, that was so fun, that was so rewarding. Because you know that the feedback you're gonna get on the other end is like, blank slate, right? Like, just like, I don't care about your passions very much, right? Like, go do your thing. But what we can say is, I really enjoyed that project because I want more inclusion. And this is an example. So we start to be able to kind of speak their language in our passion, right? Like, we understand and also stop caring if they get behind it or not. Another thing is, people will say, but my boss is going to always quit.
Rebecca: I say that a lot. You can always quit.
Stacy: Yeah. No, I know. Teach always be interviewing. Always be interviewing. You want to understand your value, get the heck out of your company that you've been at for 18 years. Right. Like, there's a lot of stuff out there.
Taking control of our careers and promotions.
Rebecca: 100%. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there. It comes back to control, like, really being intentional and controlling your interview. We kind of have this idea that other people are in control of it and that they're the ones that hold the key to our promotion and are moving up and they're the ones giving us the opportunities. It's like, no, no, you are always 100% in control of where your career is going, and you always have the option to stay or go or ask for something different or move on to something or shape something. You have to believe that that is 100% in your control. Otherwise yeah, you will just feel like you're kind of floating around waiting for opportunities to come to you. It will 100% be your experience.
Stacy: Yeah, exactly.
Rebecca: So good. This has been such a fun conversation, Stacey. I love it. We're kind of coming to an end. I'd love to hear some of your ideas on how working moms make some of those first steps. If they've been feeling really stuck in their career, what would you say they really need to do to start getting their tires out of the mud that they feel like they're spitting in and kind of moving forward, whatever the next step may be for them?
It is unique to be a working mum.
Stacy: Gosh, there's a couple of different ways to go about it. Right. Obviously we spoke about the visionary and the intentionality and you're in charge of your career and everything, but I think that what's kind of coming to mind here is the emotional toll that it takes on us, that it should be easier, it shouldn't feel so hard. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and when we think about the new wave of women in leadership and how that doesn't exist right now, I think that being a working mom - and you can tell me if you experience this is an act of social activism, it actually is unique to be a working mum. You're going against the grain.
When we think about activism, it's like you're doing something that isn't the norm. Just like literally by being a working mom, by just saying that I want to do this, that I can do this. And I know for some people it's not a choice, but I think even then, what we're choosing is to have a job that we actually enjoy, a job that we want to go to, a job that we feel excited about, those types of things. And so if we understand that just the nature of being a working mom is different, it gets us out of that should be easier.
Carving a path on your terms.
And then we start to really tap into the power that actually is our superwoman, that power that says we are kind of amazing and we really can do anything that we want. And actually. If I was going to have a choice between carving out time at night to go to the bar so that I can network with these executives that I don't even really want to be around and then now I have to leave time for my family or schedule a few 15 minutes Ally meetings. Which at first glance might feel hard because it's like, well, why do I have to do that? And other people just get recognized. Well, because what you're doing is you're carving a path on your terms. You are actually creating that vision. And if we're going to create any sort of vision for ourselves that is beyond what is just normally handed to us, then we have to take steps in that direction.
And so I think the biggest advice - going back to feeling stuck right now is really just saying, okay, do I choose this or do I not choose this? Am I choosing to create a life and a career that I love? Am I choosing to create work life balance? So in the immediate moment, it's like, you know what? I do want $50,000 more this year. I don't know how it's going to happen, but just like choosing it, right? Just saying that, you know what? If I'm going to work, I'm at least going to be doing something that I like. And by doing something I like, oftentimes for the women, it's actually way simpler than they think. It's being included in the management team meetings, being asked for their opinion that's the quote unquote, something they like, right. They start to just feel like their work matters.
So really owning that you're choosing to go into this career path, you're choosing this work, you're choosing to create a life that's a little bit different, it will help you make that very next step. It will help you say, okay, I'm going to go to the interview. OK, I'm going to hire the coach. I am going to have a conversation with my husband. I'm going to say, look, I'm choosing this career. This is for me, whatever that might be, whatever you need.
Rebecca: I'm glad that you said this because it was actually on my mind, too. I asked this last question that I just asked you around intentionality. We've been talking a lot about intentionality. Your career doesn't just happen to you. Somebody doesn't just become a CEO if that's what they want. They did a whole bunch of stuff. They had a vision ahead of them that they moved towards. Maybe not specifically, but on some level they did. We as human beings don't like to put a lot of effort into things. Like, we're always trying to conserve effort everywhere possible. And, if you have young kids, there's a lot of energy being expelled into your children and not a lot of, quote, extra energy being able to be put almost anywhere, which is a conversation to be had around what does it look like to move your career forward with really young children where there's a whole lot of energy drain that comes to that and so forth.
You're going to have to step outside of your comfort zone.
But to the point of a lot of this conversation, it isn't going to just happen to you. You're going to have to do some things. It's going to feel hard at times. It's going to go against your comfort level right now. You're going to have to step outside of your comfort zone in lots of different ways. And, that is going to require you to have intentional time to think right, to get your vision in place, to see yourself in a different light, to recognize your value. Most people don't just walk around and go, I was highly valuable today. Here's exactly how I was valuable today. That's just not what we think. That is literally a five or a ten minute conversation with yourself, of thinking about what value you added to the company today, to the mission, to the world, whatever it is, there will literally be time and energy as you're talking.
Stacy: That person makes a really great executive leader. The person that carves out that time for herself is like the person I want at the leadership table, because she's being incredibly intentional. It's so good and so important.
Rebecca: The struggle with that is that we tend to value checking one more thing off of the list and having a shorter to do list. Then we do the five or ten minutes every day to spend vision casting or thinking about our value, or asking for a coffee day and really tailoring an invite for that. We value the one more thing off of the list because we think that that's going to make us feel better and less overwhelmed when, in reality, just moving your career forward and getting yourself into a better paying, happier, more aligned with your goals, your values, whatever it is, is in the long run, is going to help you lessening the overwhelming. All the life that you want to create.
Stacy: You know, it feels really good that your work life balance is an additional $50,000, it does. It feels great.
Rebecca: That is going to contribute to my work life balance in a completely different way than the one extra email that I decide to send in the ten minutes, right. Or the one thing I said I was going to get back to them, and I should really do that, versus just waiting until tomorrow. And they can wait for it.
Intentionality in business.
Stacy: And Rebecca and I are not making this up. I mean, everything that I teach, I learned from other executives. They happen to be, a lot of them, male leaders. But if you really look at what were their secrets to success. And a lot of it was intentionality. It was from a young age, I always knew I wanted to be right, and I set the path and I focused on that. And what we're asking you to do is to focus on something that doesn't just include the title and the money. It includes all things. Right. Which is like, oh, I'm going to set the intention, which is like, the whole life that I'm creating.
Rebecca: Yeah. The motherhood experience that I want to have, the way I want to raise my children, the values I want to instill in them, and the effort and time and flexibility might require for you to have that, that's a part of the vision of your career as well. That's why it's the second part of your career. That's why it's a reboot of your career after you start having kids is because you're adding in criteria that were not there before. You're adding a vision that wasn't there before.
I love that this is what popped into your brain as I asked this question, is like, stop worrying about the fact that it's going to be hard. It is going to be hard. And all things that are hard usually come with some great reward at the end of it.
Stacy: Right. One recommendation is if you're doing your core values and understanding them and looking at them like you suggested is to put growth as number one, even if you're, like, not even sure. Well, I don't know if that's really my core value. You're listening to a podcast. You care about growth, so just stick it up there. Because even that reminder, because we all know that growing does not mean comfort always. Right? So that's the whole thing. Like our small children are proof of that. It hurts to grow physically. So just remind yourself in your core values that I'm choosing this career, I am choosing this life, and I'm choosing to do it on my terms.
Rebecca: So good. Stacey, thank you for being here. This is amazing.
Stacy: Thank you.
Rebecca: I would love for people to be able to connect with you and what you do. tell us how people can connect and what they should do. If they want to learn more about your executive coaching and helping people get promoted.
Connect with Stacy
Stacy: Go to my podcast, which is called Maximize Your Career with Stacy Mayer. You can subscribe to that. And then another thing is, I offer a lot of free resources on my website at stacymayer.com/resources. You can actually download a PDF of questions that you would ask in these 15 minutes Ally meetings. I'm sure your brain goes to, well, what would I even say? So I tell you and give you a starting point for that.
Rebecca: Here is exactly the words you should say.
Stacy: Exactly. I love that.
Rebecca: So good. And of course, I will link to all of that in the show notes. If you didn't catch those titles or URLs so I'll put those in and thanks again. This has been so fun, my friend.
Stacy: Thank you, Rebecca.
Rebecca: There might be a follow up to this one day. I can see it and it'll be interesting to see. Where are we at in a year from now? Where's leadership out in a year from now? Where's the world at? a year from now? How have women and leadership changed and so forth. So you never know, there could be a part 2.
Stacy: Yay, sounds perfect.
Rebecca: But until then, let's get to it working moms.
