#187 4 High-Impact Tips to Gain Influence & Get Buy-In at Senior Levels for Women Directors and VPs in Male Dominated Fields

Lucy Gernon (00:01.206)

One of the biggest pitfalls I see with women leaders when I speak to them is they say things to me like, find it so hard to influence and get buy-in at senior levels. Can you relate to that? If you can, in this week’s episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast, I am sharing four proven high impact actionable tips that you can literally implement today to improve your leadership, to gain respect and to be able to increase your contribution. If that sounds like something you want, stay tuned to the podcast.

 

Lucy Gernon (00:35.374)

Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast. I am Lucy Gurnon and today I’m sharing something that I’m very, very passionate about. So first, let me just start by asking you, did you know that according to McKinsey, women in leadership are 1.5 times more likely to have their judgment questioned in their area of expertise than their male counterparts? And that statistic literally stopped me in my tracks when I first read it.

 

I was chatting to a brilliant client last month. She is a senior director in a pharmaceutical company. And she told me something that might sound familiar to you. Let me see if you can relate to this. So I’m this particular lady said to me, she was like, Lucy, I have so many great ideas. And sometimes I’m just feel like I’m not listened to. I’m trying to influence this.

 

room full of dominant male leaders. She is one of the only women in the room. And they just seem like they’re just not on her agenda, right? They’re just like, they’re not listening to her. She’s come to our coaching call. She tried all the strategies to actually influence them. And, know, I’m all about self leadership and not blaming other people. She tried everything. She’s been working with me for ages. And so she came to one of our 360 leaders club coaching calls and I asked her a question and I said, do you think that

 

It’s actually the fact that they’re not listening or is it that your ego is hurt because they’re not listening? Like what’s more important to you? And she told me that that question stopped her in her tracks, which is what I love about this particular lady. She’s actually now I’m saying I said she’s a director. She’s not. She’s actually more senior than that. And she said it stopped her in her tracks because I made her think. Right. So that’s what I love to do. I love to try to challenge you because sometimes we are blaming other people when a lot of the time it is actually

 

coming from our own ego, the reason that we’re getting upset and frustrated about things. And that’s totally normal, guys. I’m the same. Sometimes I want you to know that I’m exactly the same. Even though I’m an executive coach and I have all these awards and all these clients and all this experience in pharma and psychology. Like, hello, without my tools, I would not be able to survive. So basically, what I want you to know is that…

 

Lucy Gernon (02:51.69)

After 17 years of working in corporate leadership and now as working with an executive as an executive coach, working with women leaders, I’ve seen this pattern play out again and again where women are not being listened to or you don’t know, you don’t necessarily have the tools to be able to really influence. And sometimes it doesn’t happen immediately as well. So today, though, I am going to share four high impact tips specifically for women directors and VPs and executives in male dominated fields who want to gain

 

real influence and get real buy-in at senior levels without working yourself into the ground or pretending to be somebody that you’re not, which is worse. And as a mom of three who’s navigating these waters myself, I do know deeply what it feels like to be stretched thin. And then you’re trying to make an impact too. And that’s exactly why these strategies focus on working smarter, not harder. And so before I get into today’s episode, I just want to say one thing.

 

is that the doors to 360LitersLob, my membership, I’m getting so many messages since our last promotional campaign when we opened the doors, but when we’re opening up spots again, et cetera, et cetera. And I want you to know that the membership has grown rapidly, guys. Like my little 360LitersLob, like we have almost 50 members in now and I’m capping it at 100. We have a really strong retention rate and we have grown 40 % since last year. When I get to my 100 members, that is it. will be never, nobody will ever get in unless the spot opens up.

 

So we’re looking at capacity increases now to how we can actually serve that number of members, which is so, so exciting because I still want to always maintain the intimacy. But with that being said, if you’re a podcast listener and you are not on my 360 Leaders Club wait list, I invite you to just jump on it because you’ll be first to know when the spot opens up and we always give you some extra bonuses on the wait list too. So to get in the wait list, you just have to go to 360leadersclub.com forward slash wait list and pop your name down.

 

Okay, now let’s get into what we’re going to talk about today, which is getting that buy-in. Let’s be honest, the path to influence really does look different for women in male-dominated fields like STEM, financial services, FMCG and law. This is a lot of women that I work with and it’s not just my observation, right? Because we have a lot of data that actually backs that up. There was a really fascinating study from Yale University.

 

Lucy Gernon (05:14.274)

that showed that both men and women are more likely to credit men for successful outcomes and ideas, even when the contributions are identical. So I’m going to say that again. This study from Yale showed that both men and women are likely to credit men for successful outcomes and ideas, even when the contributions are identical. Like I remember in my own corporate career sitting in meetings where I’d make a suggestion.

 

that would only be met with silence only to have a male colleague make the exact same point 10 minutes later to rounds of, my God, brilliant idea. Let’s take that. Let’s go do this. But here’s the good news. Once you understand these dynamics, you can completely transform how your experience, your expertise is actually received. And side note, it is absolutely not about changing who you are or masking or conforming to a certain way of leadership. It’s about owning your brilliance.

 

And it’s about strategically positioning your idea in a way that lands with your audience. So I’m going to get into the tips. The first tip is about shifting from likeability to strategic clarity. The second tip is about designing your communication for the executive mind. The third tip is to create credibility echoes, which we’ll talk about later. The fourth is about leverage strategic thinking time and how to do it. And then finally, I’m going to talk about at the end.

 

how you can move forward with this. Does that sound good? Okay. So tip number one, it’s all about shifting from likability to strategic clarity. I can’t talk today. So apologies. I’m mumbling on my words. Now, the first tip might feel a little bit uncomfortable initially, but honestly, it’s been transformative for my clients. It’s stop prioritizing being liked over being heard. So if you’re multitasking,

 

please come back to me. Stop prioritizing being liked over being heard. Don’t worry about if you think your idea is quote unquote stupid or maybe if it won’t land. You have got to try and that you will never know. Okay, it’s not failure if your idea is rejected. It just might mean it’s the wrong time. Now early in my career when I was the only woman running a quality department in my very first job, I’ve told you guys this before.

 

Lucy Gernon (07:32.288)

I was made quality manager over in a meat factory, like large enough. was a couple of hundred people with a huge audit and I was literally just 21 years old. That was my second leadership kind of Before that, I was actually leading teams in fast food, and bars. So I always led teams. But this particular time, I was a lot of men, right? I was working on a meat factory for God’s sake, right? It was literally so male dominated. There was a lot of chauvinistic ones as well. So I just want you to know that like

 

What I learned even back then is you can’t dilute your message, right? And I used to dilute my messages with things like, I was just thinking that maybe, you know, or I’m not sure if this makes sense. I always said that a lot when I worked in pharma until I realized all about the power of language. And meanwhile, if you look at your male counterparts, they simply state their views directly and then they get taken seriously. So we’re here kind of second guessing doubt in ourselves, whereas

 

our male colleagues don’t tend to overthink as much as we do. And the data shows this, right? This is generalization, but the data shows it. There’s actually research from Stanford that shows that women often face a likability penalty for direct communication. That is absolutely real. But here’s what they don’t tell you. At senior levels, indirect communication erodes your credibility far more than direct communication affects your likability. So I’m going to say that again. At senior levels,

 

indirect communication, discounting language, erodes your credibility far more than direct communication affects your likeability. Now, one of my clients in 360L Slope, let’s call her Catherine, she was a director who struggled with this exact same issue. She shared with me that she would leave meetings feeling frustrated that her expertise wasn’t being recognized despite her 20 plus years of experience.

 

So when we looked at her language and we had an amazing, as part in 360 Leaders Club, deliver advanced leadership training and CPD accredited leadership training. And one of the modules is all about NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. the, my God, my brain is gone. This is a mental moment. It was all about clean language, mastering clean language for credibility, okay?

 

Lucy Gernon (09:51.694)

And we had the amazing John Fleming, who was a master coach and NLP expert, in and deliver this training. And one of the biggest things that the girls took away from it, like we had so many, we always rate everyone to rate the trainings was rated as a nine out of 10, 9.5 out of 10, think it was so powerful and you cannot underestimate the power of your words. So with this particular client, right, we were working through this and

 

we identified what I call credibility killers. So she was saying things like, sorry to interrupt, but and unnecessary qualifiers like I might be wrong because you feel like you’re actually protecting yourself if you are wrong. But actually, it’s the confidence around the idea is actually what people remember. You don’t want them to remember that you didn’t have confidence in your idea. Right.

 

This particular lady was also saying things like, would it be okay if I added just a point or minimizing language like just and only, I just thought, or it’s only a small point. This is a huge guys, like absolutely huge. Just become super aware if you start hearing yourself using disqualifying language to really double down and get rid of those words. Just take a breath if you have to, okay?

 

Now, within a couple of weeks, literally, she she didn’t even realize she was doing it. And she sent me a message to say that her CFO had approached her after her meeting to say how impressed he was with her new confidence. And nothing had changed about her expertise, just how she presented it. And side note, this particular CFO was one of those stakeholders. She was kind of having trouble influencing and kind of, you know, kind of to hear me kind of. Did you catch that? That’s discounting. OK, she was having issues with him.

 

and the relationship because he built more trust in her because of her confidence in her communication. The second tip is to design your communication for the executive mind. Now, as a busy mom running my own business, I’m dealing with executives all the time with my clients and also in the corporate space as well. I’ve become really fascinated with cognitive efficiency and how we can actually achieve more impact with less effort. And this next tip is all about that.

 

Lucy Gernon (12:12.088)

So if you think about senior leaders for a moment that you admire, research actually shows that they pick an average, your mind is gonna be blown guys. How many decisions do executives make in a day? Like 35,000 decisions, okay? And their cognitive bandwidth is precious currency. Yet I see brilliant directors and VPs presenting their ideas as if they had unlimited time and attention.

 

starting with the background and the context, slowly building to conclusions and burying their key points and detailed explanations. One of the most powerful shifts you can make is to design your communication specifically for the executive mind. This isn’t about dumbing down your message, it’s actually about cognitive efficiency. And I call this the executive communication framework. Are you ready? Number one, lead with your conclusion or recommendation. We want to have an executive summary at the start of everything.

 

I literally had this conversation with my team recently as we were looking at our business monthly KPI meeting. I was getting overloaded with information and I really couldn’t ascertain what the actions were, who the owners were, what the problem was, like how the impact. So I actually went to chat GPT with our slides and I asked it to be a top presentation coach. And I asked it to analyze what my team had prepared and help me to draw out the conclusions.

 

And I wanted to do this as a learning for my team so they could understand how to present data to me in a way that understands. Now, every leader is different. I’m a give me the big picture and I’ll ask for more detail kind of gal. And then you do have other leaders maybe in like, say, for example, a CFO role, for example, or a really finance orientated CEO might be the same. So you’ve got to know the communication style, but typically you always start with the bottom line first and work your way backwards.

 

And that way you’re answering their question upfront and then you’re filling in the blanks. Okay. So that’s one tip that I would absolutely say is number one, you lead with your conclusion or recommendation. Then you follow it a couple of supporting points and then you have your background ready, but only share it if you’re asked because the less information you can give the better. Make sense? All right. Let’s move to tip number three, which is to create those credibility echoes.

 

Lucy Gernon (14:32.152)

Now this is addressing something that I personally found super frustrating in my corporate career, where my ideas attributed to others are simply forgotten. And research from Harvard shows that women receive 37 % less credit for collaborative work and spoken contributions. And that’s not a small gap. And I see this play now all of the time. And this is where we have a lot of unconscious bias. It’s usually not malicious, but it happens. And a lot of it is because of how

 

We are communicating. I see this play out in 360 all the time. Women sharing brilliant ideas telling me that they somehow get attributed to their male counterparts and it’s just not good. Okay. So what we want is we want to create what I call credibility echoes. And here’s how it works. Are you ready? Build strategic alliances before the meeting. I’ve shared this on the podcast before. So have a pre-meeting in terms of an important meeting. Get your stakeholders.

 

and create those chains during the discussion. So what you want to do is you want to be linking back to John, who’s now your ally, and you’re trying to get him involved to echo and support what you’re saying. Now, please don’t say, echo that. Maybe that’s just me. It’s a total pet peeve of mine. I wouldn’t ever say I echo. I would say to build on that, because if you’re echoing somebody, you’re literally saying exactly the same thing as them. Whereas if you want to build on a point,

 

You’re taking their point and you’re making it better. So from a psychology perspective, that’s just a side little tip for you. All right. So that’s what you want to do. You want to be creating those strategic alliances and you want to be trying to get them involved, get their buy in, you know, moving over to them and get them to echo back your point and build on it and help amplify your impact. Makes sense? OK, great. Now we’re on to tip number four, which is all about leveraging strategic timing.

 

and selective expertise. Now, as a recovering perfectionist, I tell you guys this all the time in the podcast, this next tip was a game changer for me because I used to believe I needed to demonstrate my expertise at every opportunity, sharing everything I knew to prove my value. Can you relate? Or is that just me? But what I’ve learned through research and experience is that influence isn’t actually about how much you say and when you say it. It’s about how you say it. Okay?

 

Lucy Gernon (16:57.878)

It’s about when you say it and how you say it, not actually how much you say. So I call this approach when you’re doing this, a strategic timing and selective expertise. And it’s particularly powerful for women who are often interrupted or spoken over. So here’s what you’re going to do. Always number one, speak first.

 

So get your spoken first, because again, from a psychology perspective, you’re already engaged in the meeting and it’s nearly like you’ll be the reference point. Then you wanna observe the first, maybe 20 % of a discussion before contributing and just listen for the gaps in the conversation where you can add value and choose moments when energy or attention is high, right? So you wanna be getting in there early, do not wait till the end when people’s heads are fried and nobody, you know, you’ve gone round in circles.

 

And then deliver your insight concisely and stop talking. Right. We’ve talked with a strategic pause before and that’s really, really, really going to happen because the magic happens when you speak in these strategic moments. So after problematic assumptions have been voiced or when people are, you know, when you’re going around in circles and people are confused, that is the best time to come in because you will be seen as the person who got the meeting back on track. Right.

 

or when senior leaders express specific concerns, cue you, right? This is when people are seeking answers. You wanna be the one who’s given the answer. Don’t be the one talking hot air, which I used to do. Pause, watch, observe, and you will become a trusted colleague in the room. So here’s your challenge. In your next three meetings, I invite you to number one, speak first.

 

All right, get your contribution in early, sit back. And if you are a talker, try to speak about 20 % less, but make your contributions 50 % more strategic by using this framework and just notice how people respond differently. So just to recap on our four tips, I hope you found them valuable. Number one is shifting away from likeability to strategic clarity. Remember that stats.

 

Lucy Gernon (19:12.632)

that you’re far more likely to actually damage your credibility if you are out there to make people like you rather than going in with confident communication. Tip number two, design your communication for the executive mind, which is all about starting with the bottom line, the conclusion, and then working backwards. Less is more. Tip number three, create those credibility echoes and have those strategic allies in the room with you, having the pre-meeting.

 

And tip number four is to leverage strategic timing and selective expertise. So try to just talk when you can really add value, when you can be seen as the hero without actually flying in with your cape, unless you want to, because, you know, why not? So if these strategies resonate with you, I would love to tell you a little bit more about how we support women in 360 Leaders Club.

 

So 360 Leaders Club is my membership for women in senior corporate leadership from associate director, senior manager, all the way up to executive level. And 360 is all about helping you to lead with more confidence, communicate with more presence and live with more balance. Now, what makes us different is it is totally no fluff, totally no BS. If you love the podcast, you will absolutely love 360 because…

 

While the podcast is fantastic and I do give a lot of free value on this podcast, I’ve had so many of you come to me and work with me and say, Lucy, I thought I could just listen to your podcast. But really what you’re missing is the advanced tools. Like this is just the how to guys tip of the iceberg free stuff. So can you imagine when you’re in 360 and you’re in the community and you’ve got the support on demand of tools, access to me, access to the CPD training?

 

you’re going to gain a wealth of momentum, right? Because you can possibly listen to things, but when you pay, you pay attention. And when you show up, you pay attention. We have members from pharma and tech and financial services and FNCG and brilliant, brilliant, brilliant women who want to lead with impact without sacrificing their wellbeing. And what really makes 360 different is our holistic approach. It combines advanced CPD accredited leadership training, executive coaching, a supportive community,

 

Lucy Gernon (21:25.92)

and practical tools like this that you can implement immediately except for you get all the handouts, all the downloads, all the guides and all the training that you have access to for the entire duration of your membership. OK, now we are currently at capacity like I shared earlier on. And usually when we open up spots, it’s when new members transition or when I can build in a bit of capacity to support extra members.

 

So for example, recently we just had to start a third tier in 360 for our executives, right? So we have three different tiers now. So we’ve created a little bit capacity, which is now full, but we will be opening up doors again super soon. So if you would like to be first in line when spots open up again, I would love to invite you to join the wait list. Now, because we are growing so rapidly, we are going to be a lot more selective about who actually gets accepted to join.

 

So just because you submit an application, it does not mean you will automatically get a place in the membership because the women in here are high achievers. They are totally sound. They are high vibe. They are ready, ready to work on themselves and they are not coming in, giving out, blaming others, bringing the tone down. I only want to work with women who are ready to develop themselves so that you can be the best leader, so you can be the best mother, so you can have more time.

 

you can increase your impact and just feel amazing in yourself. And I really believe that every woman deserves to have her brilliance recognized and valued. And I would be so honored if it’s the right fit to support you to make it happen. So to join the waitlist, you’ve just got to go to 360LeadersClub.com forward slash waitlist. And then when a spot opens up again, I will send you a personal email with your invitation to apply. And then if you are submit your application, we will review it. And if we think you’re the right fit.

 

versus the other candidates who have applied, you will be offered a place and you will basically start basically straight away, which is so, so exciting. I cannot wait because I know there’s so many amazing podcast listeners who are on the fence half the time. And I would love to have you join us because we have so much fun learning and developing. All right. So thank you so much for joining me today. I really hope these four tips have given you some practical ways to ensure your expertise is recognized and your ideas are implemented. And remember,

 

Lucy Gernon (23:44.63)

Your influence isn’t determined how hard you work, but how strategically you approach your leadership. Because I know you already have the expertise. Now it’s about communicating it in a way that others understand. OK, so I really hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the show. Like I said, please, you want to join 360, it’s going to be a little bit more challenging as we’re growing so fast. So please pop the name on the waitlist if you’re offered an opportunity to apply.

 

take it with both hands, don’t procrastinate, you totally deserve this. So until next time, be safe, be well, and I’ll talk to you again. Same time, same place. Bye for now.