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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? Do you ever look at some of the men in more senior leadership roles and think how the hell did they get that job? This is something I hear from my clients a lot. Now these women are positive, collaborative, optimistic. Always want to do and be better. I know that you’re like them too. And you want to be helpful, ambitious, we like to be humble. And many of your male counterparts seem to get more recognition and opportunities than you do. Can you relate? You’re very welcome to another episode of the 360 leadership podcast. I’m your host, Lucy Garner. And in case you’re new here at You’re so welcome. And today we are going to be diving into why we went to leadership often just do not reach their senior leadership potential. So in this week’s episode of the show, we are going to be talking about the hidden barriers that women leaders encounter that really block your advancement in your success, the biggest factor holding you back from reaching your full potential in your career, we’ll talk about why advocating for yourself is absolutely essential for Breaking Through Barriers and achieving recognition. I’m going to share some statistics as well about the actual data that supports the detrimental effects of women who don’t own their value. And also, I have created a fantastic new free resource for you to help you to crush impostor syndrome in under 10 minutes. So if you want to find that actually, you can head over to Lucy garnon.com forward slash imposter dash syndrome, it will be in the show notes here too, you can go and grab that resource. Because in there, I’m sharing a really, really powerful, positive psychology science backed exercise that you can do in under 10 minutes to absolutely crush impostor syndrome, so that you can step into your next level of leadership and own your worth. So before we get into all of that, I just wanted to kind of share, you know, I’ve been working with women in leadership for the last few years. And I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many amazing women who know how smart it is to invest in themselves and hire a coach like me. Now I’ve got to know my clients intimately. I work with seasoned executives and all the way down to women who are trying to break through to their first director level role. So typically, I would work with female executives or women who would be at that senior manager or associate director level who were trying to break through to their first director role. And regardless of the level, there’s one common thing that I’ve noticed that really holds women back, not just from promotion, but from being seen as a great leader, and bringing people along with your vision and making a big impact in their industry and being that person who can actually implement change and make change. But before I get into that, I wanted to share some facts I came across when I was doing my research for this episode. So I’ve seen a lot in the hundreds and hundreds of women that I’ve worked with over the last number of years. And I wanted to be sure sometimes I’m a very God based person, I rely a lot on my intuition, and my emotional my feelings. So I have to make sure that from a logical perspective, I know a lot of you are analytical and you’re gonna want the science. So I wanted to do some research. And sidenote in case you don’t know, I actually have a master’s degree in its resource research master’s degree actually in science, and I have a scientific background. So while I’m very feely and emotional, I also like to verify things with my logical mind to make sure it’s not just my own biases or my own assumptions. But honestly, girls, the facts I came across are not great. So there was a 2120 21 Gale study, okay, which has shown that women are consistently judged as having less leadership potential than their male counterparts parts, which makes them 14% less likely to be promoted each year. Hello, oh my god. When I saw this, I was like, How are women being judged this way? So this particular study looked at a large North American retail chain. And it showed that even though women scored better in their performance ratings, they tended to receive low potential scores. Oh my god. Like, I want to say that again. So if you’re multitasking come back to me, the ratio research show that even though these women had scored better in their actual performance ratings, they tended to receive lower potential scores, which was a measure of how their managers believed they would grow and develop in the future. Now, deciding who to promote can be very complicated business, okay. But there’s a lot of unconscious bias that comes into play when it comes to women. So, you know, there’s that whole prove it twice theory, unfortunately, what women we do have to prove ourselves. But there’s a lot of things that I’m going to be getting into today that you can do, and it’s starting to change in the world, but we have a lot more work to do there. Okay. Now, another study that I read was their 2019 Study was almost I think, was 200 participants. They were given a fictional CV or resume for a director role at this technology company. Okay, it was like a made up study, and have highlighted the candidate’s past successes, while the other half highlighted their potential. Now, when researchers looked at the data, they quickly noticed a pattern. Participants consistently ranked their male candidates highly if they focus on their potential, while for female candidates, the opposite was true, they were held to a much higher standard, and actually, their leadership potential was generally overlooked. So why is this? Why is it that women are not viewed in the same way as our male counterparts when it comes to potential. So the data suggests, and in my experience, it’s what I have seen over and over and over again, is that women tend to undersell their work. And even in terms of their performance rating, there was another study that I read that showed that women actually rated their performance as 30 to 3%, lower than their equally performing male counterparts. Meaning that when they had to sell freight based on the actual statistics that are factual evidence, these women, and again, I’ve seen it myself or my own clients tend to under downplay and undersell themselves. So this is a big problem, because the world needs more women in leadership than ever before. So if you’re multitasking come back to me. Not only does the world need more women in leadership, we need more women who are confident in owning leadership roles, we need more women who are not afraid to, you know, speak up in a way that’s still professional, you’re not going to ruffle anyone’s feathers as a whole. You know, I’m really good. By the way, the whole communication thing is probably one of my top strengths. And sometimes I see women kind of fall down, when they get too emotional. And they you know, I often call that you can call it that, I’m sure too, we can be quite emotional beings. And it’s knowing when to tap into that emotion and that feminine energy, and when it’s useful, and then knowing when to step into that more masculine energy. And unfortunately, in the business world, masculine energy at the moment is the thing that gets results, okay, but it’s not about men and women. It’s about channeling into our energies, okay. So, really like the number one reason is, because women do not leave in themselves. And it’s often because of imposter syndrome. Research has shown time and time again that more women than men will struggle with impostor syndrome. And impostor syndrome is really that fear of being found out like you’re a fraud, like, you don’t deserve to be there. I was reading a lot of like top CEOs who are female feel that way. And honestly, our male counterparts don’t tend to feel that way. So I just want you to know today My God is listener, that you are worthy. I was like to swear there, but you are so worthy of those top roles because you see things the way your male counterparts don’t. You are really good if you’re anything like the women I work with your your people focused on the most smart leaders in the world. Think about Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Steven Barth is coming to mind just because he’s famous and he’s really cute, right? Hi, Steven, if
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you’re listening, they all talk about People First approach. Okay, all the top leaders know this. However, in the more kind of Doggy Dog companies, sometimes leaders forget that and leaders are actually promoted for the wrong reasons, ie because of their results driven mentality, as opposed to actually thinking strategically about the longevity of the company. And when we retain our talent, we actually boost productivity Do we boost morale, we create a better culture, we save the company money. Like there’s so much research out there that shows that when there’s more women at the top, okay, companies actually make more money. I don’t understand why we don’t you know, this is an advocate for more. So my invitation for you today is if you want to reach your senior leadership potential, it’s time to stop playing small, it’s time to stop staying in the shadows, it’s time to come out and put your big girl pants on and put that business woman hat on and do things your way. The whole aim of business is to get results, okay, it’s to increase value of the company is to grow your company so that you increase shareholder value, so that you know all those things, it turns to make money, let’s Let’s call a spade a spade. It’s why businesses exist. And, you know, obviously, my business exists because I need to make money. But also, I’m an impact driven business. And I hope you’re working for a company whose impact driven to which I know a lot of you are. So in summary, the number one reason that you will not reach your leadership potential is because you are not believing in yourself. It’s because you’re allowing a pastor syndrome or lack of confidence or self limiting beliefs to hold you back. He’ll know what you’re doing. Okay. And when you talk confidently about something, that is when people listen, okay, so like I said, I have created a brand new free tool for you. So it is for women in senior leadership who want to crush impostor syndrome. Now, this exercise that I’ve included in this free download is really powerful. I know how busy you are, I know you don’t have time to sit down and read a big guide, or I know you don’t have time to do a full training. This is a really powerful five step positive psychology science back exercise that it’s going to support you to instantly boost your confidence. So you can grab that right now in the show notes. Or you can go to Lucy garland.com forward slash imposter dash syndrome. And you will see the guide there. And I promise you if you do this exercise, and you give yourself the time and space before that next board meeting or before, you need to go in and you just want to feel your best. Do this exercise, I promise you it’s going to be so so helpful. So that’s the pep talk over for today. I hope I’ve given you lots to reflect on don’t ever forget how amazing you are. You have a purpose in this world, you have a lot to give. So go and shine brightly. My gorgeous girl. Okay, I’m gonna go, I have to go collect my kids from school now, actually. So I’m really glad I got this recorded, because it just felt really compelled to talk to you on the podcast about this today. So until next time, be safe. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. And please, if you find this exercise useful, or this podcast useful or inspirational, please just grab the link and just send it on to your colleagues. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast. So make sure you’re following it whatever platform you’re listening on, so that you’re always notified of new episodes which come out every single Wednesday at 7am. Okay, until then girls, I will talk to you again next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
