#114 Career Progression Formula: 11% Pay Raise, Headcount Approval, and Boss’s Successor in Under 6 Months
The 360 Leadhership Podcast, Episode 114, 28 February 2024 by Lucy Gernon
Wondering how to get the recognition and opportunities you deserve?
While it’s common to blame companies for the gender pay gap, it’s essential to acknowledge our own worth and embrace a mindset shift and in my experience working with ambitious women in leadership positions, I’ve seen firsthand the remarkable impact of positive mindset and confidence in reshaping careers and lives.
That’s why on this week’s episode, I share another inspiring story from one of my star clients who applied all the tools and strategies I taught her. She did the mindset work, stepped out of her comfort zone, worked on her leadership and committed to strategic efforts.
The result? An 11% off-cycle pay increase with an amazing long-term incentive grant, permission to build a new team and a solid path to Director where she has been named as her boss’s successor. I mean come on!
This wasn’t magic, it was pure grit and dedication. No fancy degrees, no secret family fortune, just a hardworking woman like any of us, juggling careers and families. She was just as busy as you are, but she carved out time to invest in herself. And it bloody paid off. So when I say she’s “not special,” I mean she’s just like us, with the same potential and the same chance to rock her world. The difference? She put in the work.
So take this client’s success story as a reminder: you’ve got this! Own your journey, invest in yourself, and watch your career dreams take flight.
Tune in to discover:
🔑 The key strategies that drove my client’s remarkable success.
🧠 The importance of a success mindset and solid personal practices
💥 Being strategic when seeking headcount approval
👩🏼💼 The crucial role internal mentors and coaches play in career acceleration
💬 Effective strategies for communicating your value to your employer.
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Welcome to the 360 leadership podcast, the top rated show for driven women in senior leadership with new episodes released every Wednesday. I’m your host, Lucy Gernon, a multi award winning executive coach for women leaders and the founder of 360. Leaders Club exclusive high level membership for career driven family orientated women just like you. I created the 360 leadership podcast to share practical tips, actionable step by step strategies, and inspiring stories to support you to unlock the power and belief within to accelerate your impact and potential. So you can build a life filled with success, balance and happiness. So are you ready to achieve 360 degree success? No more excuses. No more waiting. Your time is now. Hi, there. And welcome back to another episode of the 360 leadership podcast. I am your host, Lucy Garnon. I am now just have to celebrate my birthday. So I’m a little bit older than I was last week. So thank you all for your wonderful birthday wishes, I couldn’t be happier to be 43 years of age, I just love my 40s so much. I’ve never felt better in my body in my mind, in who I am and what you bring to the world. And this is what I want every single one of you people listening to me to feel like to because for so long, I did not feel this way. And it just feels so good to finally feel good in myself and who I am. So we had a lovely time and went out for dinner with my husband, my kids were there. So the kids were just so excited. You know, for them. It’s a massive occasion when there’s somebody’s birthday in the house. I don’t know about yours if you have them, but they were all excited and had my family over and we had some birthday cake and I don’t know if I told you last week. But I’m going to land Herati in a couple of days for a business retreat with my coach and my business bestie and we’re staying in a beautiful five star luxury resort. So if you don’t follow me on Instagram, you’re gonna want to come over because on LinkedIn, I do a little bit more professional content where is on Instagram you’re gonna get to see the real Lucy Garnon behind the scenes warts and all. No makeup, greasy hair, hoodies and then you’re also going to see the the luxury trips that I like to treat myself to as well. And so yeah, we look really, really looking forward to that. Because again, guys, life is too short. And I just love traveling. So if you haven’t booked a break for yourself yet, or if you don’t know when your next holiday is going to be, can you please do that for yourself, look at your calendar now book something in and make it a priority because life is too short. Life is too short. So go and enjoy it. So this week on the podcast, I was talking to a couple of my listeners in DMS after the the episode I shared last week about my client who got promoted to senior director. And I was talking to somebody who was let you know a couple of levels below that. And she was like senior director is so far off for me like necessarily like VP level. She’s like, I just want to get a director. And she’s like, is it possible for me? And like, what do I need to do? So it got me thinking about a client of mine who literally is one of my star students, I would say what she did was follow everything that I taught her. She did the mindset work, she did a strategic work, she put herself out of her comfort zone, she did so much. And as a result she it always paid off. So today I’m going to be telling you the story of my lovely client, again, I’m not going to be named this lady’s name, where she managed to get an 11% off cycle pay increase with an amazing long term incentive grant, she got permission to build a new team around her and a solid path to Director where she has been named as her boss’s successor. So I know you’re going to find the story super, super inspiring. And I want you to know that there was nothing special about this lady in a sense that there’s nothing special about any of us. She didn’t have like, you know, she wasn’t any more educated than you. She didn’t have, you know, loads more money than you or anything like that. She is just like us, okay, she’s a hard working amazing woman trying to build a career for herself trying to reach her potential, trying to raise her family and do all of those things. She was as busy as you are. She didn’t have time in her calendar. But she made time to do this work for herself. And as a result, everything changed everything paid off. Okay. So when I say she’s not special, she actually is she’s actually a wonderful, wonderful person. And she is actually pretty special as a person. But I just mean she doesn’t have any other advantages over any of us listening. But what she did that’s different is she put in the work. So we’re going to back up a little bit and I’m going to tell you about my client have to be careful. I don’t say her name, but she knew that something needed to change But she said that she didn’t know what to change or how to change it. She said that her her life, including her career was being led by others. And she was just following along. And as she said herself, she was an observer and not the captain. And so she found me on social media. And she said that she thought that I was somebody who understands the corporate business, the working mother, the Gale to the chase, and your tail, the fight and the inner critic. And she liked my messaging, because it was always positive and encouraging. And she just knew that I’d be a great fit. But she wasn’t sure at first, you know, she had to get to know me, obviously, because trying to talk to a stranger on the internet can be a little bit weird. But she listened to her got, and we had a breakthrough call. And we started working together. Now she said she didn’t know what to expect. But she knew she was all in. And I remember, like, we started first of all in a one to one capacity. And she said, this lady, by the way, worked in the STEM industry. Okay, so she’s highly analytical she had done, I think she even had a master’s degree in science, if I remember correctly, very, very technically competent, seen as amazing technical expert. And I started talking to her about mindset, and manifestation and meditation. And she was like, what, but it was actually a lovely welcome, surprise. So I asked her to trust me, I asked her to trust me, I said, Look, I know your world. I know. You know, I worked in quality. I worked in microbiology, I led capital projects, I was involved heavily in finance, I was involved in all of those technical details for so many years. But when I found all of this other stuff, which is what I teach in terms of people skills, how to manifest how you know how the importance of self care, all those things you hear people say, that’s when my life change. So I love to teach that. So it really wasn’t something she’d ever done. But now it’s the foundation to her positive mindset, she started to look at her inner critic, and why she had them and how to tame them and encourage that sage part of herself that was part of herself. And one thing, one thing she said was that she didn’t realize that how she was feeling was so common among career females. And knowing that she had all these feelings, and sorted other women was a Tolka relief to her. Because I was able to give her tools, I was able to give her support and tactics to be able to focus on her mindset, and ultimately be kind to herself to build her confidence and get her into her most powerful, strong self. Now, when we were obviously looking at leadership skills and career to so obviously, when you work with me, whether it’s privately It depends, if that’s very bespoke, or whether it’s in 360 liters club, it doesn’t matter, I will always support you with mindset, because it’s the foundation for getting what you want. And I’m really, really good at it. So
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when she started shift her mindset to all the practices that I shared, she started to really look at her own worth. And I’m all about you, ladies, I mean, I get so frustrated with the gender pay gap. And while corporates have a lot, society has a lot of things to answer for in terms in terms of the gender pay gap, we do to is women. Because if we accept what we’re always given, you’re always gonna get that. And so I want you to adopt a more masculine attitude to it and be more business like like you’re a business woman, okay? You’re not a little girl anymore, your business woman. And once she started to really own that, and embody her next level, self, okay, she discovered that she was at a lower grade and being paid less than her male counterparts who had less responsibility, but they might have a similar title. Now, she was livid when she found all this out, and obviously very frustrated, but then she started to pull on the tools I gave her so she started gratitude. She started thinking more strategically, she started, you know, being able to control her emotions. And I, what’s one thing I love to teach is like how to handle conflict, how to handle those recheck tricky situations at work, you know, that they might arise what your team that might arise, which appears I have so many different tools and different I suppose techniques that I will teach you to be able to handle those emotions, because they really can be the thing that kind of stopped us moving forward. But anyway, so she did this work on herself and we developed her skills, her people skills, she really, really built her confidence. And she had the confidence to have a discussion with her boss. Now, what transpired in this particular situation, is that her boss was completely oblivious to what others were paid in their grades. And then she met with HR and she put a case forward. So again, she got strategic and obviously I have her with that in terms of you know how to put that case forward and she ended up getting a promotion of cycle. She got an 11th percent pay rise. And a restructured AIP program, including LTI is our long term intensive and long term incentives. She was beyond thrilled, and she really really couldn’t believe it. Now, she joined. First of all, when I have my mastermind, which was like my, my very first before I launched 360, I did this group was my mastermind group, and she was in that one. And then she transitioned into 360. Leaders club as well. So we were working together for about 18 months. And she said that when she joined the group situation, it was just really, really inspiring because she got to be around a community of like minded women, who were there to support her, who all wanted what she wanted, who all had the same people and leadership challenges that she was having. And as a result of having that support, and obviously having me in her pocket and learning from all of my amazing guest experts.com inside 360, which is all about 360 degrees success, meaning I have guest experts in on like emotional intelligence, I could have a guest expert come in on how to be more strategic leader when I have done how to empower your team. But I also had a nutritionist come in. So I tried to make sure that whatever you are learning, it’s not like a boring leadership development course not that they’re boring, but some of them might be a little bit too heavy. I try to give you tools when you need it and focus on that 360 degree success. Because when you’re your best, you’re actually a better leader as well. So since that, she’s not only got the promotion, she has held and LED industry wide conference events that had massive publicity with her name all over it, she wouldn’t have had the competence to do before she set up one to ones with key VPS, she has regular one to ones with hates, or she’s going nowhere. She’s confirmation that she’s in the succession plan for her boss, she’s had a very important face to face with her VP and other stakeholder VPS on how her role can support the business and be progressed to a director level. And what she’s really getting. Since she’s got all this newfound confidence, apart from the promotion and the money and all of that. She’s getting massive recognition and support and advice on how to actually progress. She’s helped she’s support to request headcount. She’s got approval for a new team to develop her team to support the business and as well as her career. And what’s even better is even though she’s just got the off cycle adjustment, and all of that, she just knows the next promotion is coming. She’s doing the mindset work, she’s doing all the stuff, I taught her around visualization, manifestation, all that good stuff. And every single day in every single week, she’s taking steps to get there. And I’m so excited to see where this lady ends up because she is, oh, she’s just amazing. And it’s been my absolute joy to support her. So she’s continuing to get out of our comfort zone. And that’s what I invite you to do is that if you want to get results like this, if you want to get all psyched up adjustments, or if you want to get equity in the company that you’re in, or if you want more recognition, or you want to promotion, or you just want to change, you want to learn more about other areas in the business, it all starts with one thing. And that one thing is getting out of your comfort zone and pushing forward. Okay, confidence comes from taking action, it does not come before it. And the mistake most people make is we wait, we think we’ll wait until we feel confident enough and then we’ll do us. But that never happens. Confidence comes after you have evidence that you can do the thing that you were afraid to do. Okay. So that is one thing that I want you to take from today is that it’s time to get out of your comfort zone. Okay. You can have anything you want in your life when you are ready to put yourself first when you are ready to take step forward when you’re ready to take yourself out of your comfort zone. And if you are ready to do that, I would love to be that coach for you. It is not too late to join 360 leaders club if you are listening to this live, I told you last week, I opened up five spots to join. And I am so so excited to welcome some new members. But you’ve got to apply before the end of February. Okay, you’ve got to have your application in before the end of February. If you want to have a chat with me about how I can support you. That’s absolutely no problem. I’ll pop the link to my calendar. We’ve opened up a few spots this week. But again, you’ve got a book and a call this week, okay, because I’m off to launch it next week. Don’t procrastinate on this anymore. If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, or even if you’re new here and you’re like I really feel like this is the person who can help me to submit your application to school to 360 liters club.com forward slash apply or you can just wherever you’re listening to the podcast right now, you can look in the show notes and the link will be there to apply. And like I say It’s always willing to book a call if you’d prefer to chat through it first. But I promise you, I promise you if you’re ambitious, so I only work with, let me just explain who I actually work with. I only work with people, first of all, who are ambitious, who want to become something, okay? I can’t change other people, but I can help you become the best version of yourself, okay, I can help you give you the tools to deal with other people. I can’t work with people who are negative. And we’ll just blame everyone because I can’t I can’t change that, okay. But if you’re ambitious, and if you’re ready to unlock your potential and unlock your power, if you’re ready to learn new skills and tools, to be a better leader, to be more productive, to get more strategic to accelerate your career progression, your impact, to have that recognition as a thought leader and industry leader, just like my client I just explained, I promise you if you if you are ready to do this, if this is what you want, if any of those things are what you want. And as well actually work life balance, obviously, that’s like a no brainer when you work with me. So, so important. Please, please don’t miss this opportunity. Right now. If you’re listening to this live, okay, so honest to God, I don’t want you to fall behind, I really, really don’t. So these results are possible for you. So if you’re ready, you can come up with a call. And if you’re not, I want you to go back and listen to another episode of my Podcast, episode number 99. And if you’re ready to unlock your potential, and you feel like you can do this on your own, this episode might help you, it is unlocking your leadership potential. Five reasons you might be falling behind. Okay? So in there, it’s going to give you the five reasons if you are in a bit of a stagnant period in your career, and what you can do about it. Okay, so I invite you to go and listen to this episode. And if you’re like, No, I don’t want to do this on my own anymore. Lucy I really just need your support I want to be in community I want to I want to shortcut to get to where I want to be pleased to either submit your application now or just book a call with me before I jet off to lander RT, and I look forward to talking to you now if all the call spots are gone, because I really don’t know how quick they’re gonna go. I know we have very limited availability, you can just send me a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn or if you’re on my email list or just contact me anywhere you can. You can find me anywhere really. And we will try and fit in some time if I can squeeze you in, but honestly, I
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have so much on right now. I hope you can get a spot but please DM me if you can find if the spots are gone. Okay, so just a quick recap on all of that. You can become anything you want. And your desires are your desires. You are here for a reason. We are here for a short time, not a long time. And it’s time for you to get out of your own way. Stop allowing everyone else to lead you and start leading yourself. Get excited about the common the best version of yourself this year. Get excited about being that role model for your team get excited about unlocking the best of you and being the best leader just get excited because you deserve it. And if I can ever do anything to support you, you know where to find me. So that is it for this week’s episode. I hope you found my client’s story inspirational. She’s an inspiration to me and all the girls in 360 leaders club too. I know she inspired from all a lot as well which is the beauty of being inside the membership is seeing other people take an action makes you take action to so if you’re listening my lovely clients I know some of you are I love you all dearly. I cannot wait to see what you all do next year. And I look forward to hearing or talking to you all on the podcast again. Same time, same place next week. Bye for now
Want more actionable tips?
Have a listen to episode #86 - How to Ask for a Salary Increase and Actually Get it