Lucy Gernon (00:01.304)
Are you playing small in your corporate leadership career? In today’s episode, I am going to give you some tough love, lovely ladies. So if you know you need a gentle kick up the bum, please listen and enjoy.
Lucy Gernon (00:20.568)
there and welcome back to the 360 Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Lucy Gernon. And today I’m going to be asking you some questions, helping you hopefully to connect inward with yourself and really time, it’s time to get real. And what inspired me to record this episode today is that I’ve been speaking to so many ambitious, talented women who are playing small. And today I’m going to dive into what playing small looks like.
how you can catch yourself if you’re playing small and what to do about it. And the reason I think it’s so important for you to really own your power as a woman in a leadership role is because the world needs you. There has honestly never been a better time to be a female in business. There are DE &I initiatives everywhere in most organizations and the ones where they’re not, they’re starting to wake up to the fact that actually
We need that diversity of thought. know, most of your market are female as well. You know, the world is 50 -50. The last time I checked, it’s actually 49 -51 in women’s favour. But who knows what it’s like now? Side note. So, yeah, I really want to kind of talk to you about that today and give you some tips and a little bit of tough love. So let me see if you see yourself in this.
I’m talking to you if you are a versatile problem solver. If you have got great attention to detail, you’ve got great business acumen, you love building high performing teams and you have a proven track record of managing multiple projects and business areas successfully. But you struggle with imposter syndrome and self -doubt. You sometimes don’t fully own your value and your capabilities.
And you are playing small. You are like that wallflower in meetings worrying about should you speak up? Are you ready for this opportunity? You’re hesitant to put yourself forward sometimes, even though you know you have the skills and you might even be operating at the next level, but just not having the title. And you might not want to rock the boat because you want to people please. And you want to make sure everyone looks favorably at you. You might
Lucy Gernon (02:42.612)
not want to set boundaries. Is this sounding familiar? If it sounds like you, I want you to know that you are not alone. And I know that you probably want to progress in your career. You want to step up from your current level to the next level. Be that a promotion in your current organization, or maybe you want to just step into your next level of leadership and really make the impact. You know deep down that you’re capable.
But the problem is you overthink everything. You might worry. And even if sometimes you might be a mother, you might have children, I know I do, and I definitely felt like this. You might even feel the need to hide or downplay that part of your identity. But you know that you need to show up authentically. Does that make sense? Honestly, I work with so many women who feel this way.
So it’s totally okay if you feel like that, but what’s not okay is staying as you are because you do not need to play small. You see the men being promoted around you. You know you have what it takes to do the job, but you haven’t taken action yet because imposter syndrome and this ever ending optimism is there that if I just keep doing the hard work, they’ll recognize me.
Now, you might not be in a rush to jump ship yet and you may not even have clearly stated your desires to your boss and you might not even have told your colleagues or your network because you might be afraid of what they’ll think. But you need to get out of this. Please pick me energy. We need to start really helping you to own your bloody power, own your worth, because you have gifts and talents that are unique to you.
Only you can do what you do the way you do it. Now, I know the other things that kind of get in your way are you find it hard to hold yourself accountable, right? You say you want it. You say you’re ready for more. You say that you don’t want to work really long hours. You want to have time with your family, but yet you can’t switch off. And it’s this never ending perpetual cycle of being on the hamster wheel, going to work.
Lucy Gernon (05:03.372)
Working your ass off, feeling like you’re not getting recognized, not having time with your family, not having time for health and wellness. Is this landing? It doesn’t have to be that way. And that’s why I would absolutely love to invite you to book a complimentary strategy session with me. I do these for free guys to make this super accessible for you to speak with me directly because I have helped hundreds of women at this stage to step into their next level of leadership.
to build their confidence, to build a personal brand, to boost their executive presence, to take care of their mindset, to be more impactful leaders, to delegate, to prioritize, to actually do all of this and have a lot of fun along the way. And it pains me to think that you are listening to my podcast every week and you like the show and you like me if you’re listening to it, but there’s something stopping you from reaching out.
That thing that’s stopping you from reaching out is the very thing that is also stopping you from unlocking your potential. I am a nice person. I can help you. I am a multi award winning coach. I have done this and I can do this in my sleep with you right now. I want you to know that it’s OK to prioritize you and it is OK not to ask for permission and just go do something for yourself. Because I know that if you did that.
you would spend so much less time overthinking, over explaining or hiding. You’d be showing up in more areas equally instead of like being one way at home, another way at work. You wouldn’t be wearing the mask anymore. And you would definitely feel more accomplished and equal to your peers because you would be getting the opportunities. You’d be getting the respect. You’d feel like validated from the inside and feel good about yourself. And also
if you’d be happier at work, you know you’d be happier at home. So why would you not do this for yourself? I honestly would love to speak to you. If you are interested in working with me, you can grab that strategy session right now. This is for new people in my world who are ready to experience the magic that happens when you work with me and when I introduce you to all the tools that I wish I had in the corporate world.
Lucy Gernon (07:30.508)
So if you’re not already working with me and you are interested in mapping out a strategy for how you and I together can build your brand, build your confidence, and you are ready to say yes to yourself, to invest in yourself, to invest in coaching, I invite you to book your complimentary strategy session today. And I want to share a little story about one of my clients who came to me with this very thing. She’s a VP in an organization.
and she wants to get a promotion. Now, when I say VP guys, just, one thing I want to make you all aware of is there are multiple different organization structures out there. And sometimes people say to me, Lucy, I’m not sure I’m at the level of the people you work at, or you might not be sure who this is for and who I actually work with. So I want to clarify that once and for all here now in the show.
As of right now this minute, I work with women who are in SMEs, so small medium enterprises, who are usually either at managing director or reporting into the managing director. So they’re quite senior, they’re leading a team, maybe they’re responsible for revenue growth, maybe they’re responsible for strategy, strategic leadership roles in SME. And then I also work with women in the corporate space who would be…
kind of from associate director, director, VP, SVP, all the way up. And once you are kind of in a senior leadership role where you have a team, you’re responsible for strategic direction, you want to learn how to lead not only your team, but also to lead yourself so that you can be more productive, feel better and stronger in yourself and have that support around you. That’s exactly who I work with. So I hope that helps.
So I wanna tell you this story about one of my clients. I don’t wanna say her name, because I don’t have permission, but she came and wanted to work with me because she knew she had so much to give. She knew she was playing small and she was ready for the next level. Now she’s working with me just for the last probably, I would say three months. So she hasn’t quite got the promotion that she wanted yet. Sometimes it happens fast. Sometimes people don’t even want to promotion.
Lucy Gernon (09:51.0)
But what she has gained already is she is taking action and she is building momentum. She has started to reach out to senior stakeholders to position herself. We have worked on her personal brand. We have worked on how she is showing up and her executive presence. You know, in my membership 360 Leaders Club every month, we do a leadership challenge of the month. And last month, as I’m recording this, we did an executive presence challenge where
We spoke all about active listening. We did workshops. We did body language. And what’s so cool is that when I’m teaching you stuff like that, you get to workshop it with women who feel exactly like you feel, who feel like, this is a bit cringy, but I’m going to do it anyway. And then we set challenges every single month as well to try to get you into action. Because my lovely lady, the thing that keeps you stuck is not taking action. So if you want something to change, you’ve got to take action.
And I would invite you today to book that complimentary strategy session with me. If you are ready to stop playing small and start owning your worth. Imagine if it was six months from now, how good it would feel for you to get up in the morning to feel confident in your abilities. You wouldn’t be snappy anymore. You wouldn’t feel anxious. You wouldn’t be overthinking. You wouldn’t be worrying. You’d be feeling bloody amazing. And I know this because I have helped so many women to do this.
So I just hope that I’m showing you what’s possible. I hope that I’m giving you a little pep talk to get out of your own way. 2025 is coming and life is short, right? So reach out to me, book the call. We will pop it in the show notes I should have said. If you just go wherever you’re listening to it right now, you’ll see the link to book the call and book it because I only open up usually about five spots on my calendar per month for these calls because I’m a busy lady. I have lots of work on.
So if you see a spot that suits you, please grab it. But only grab the call if you are ready to take action, if you’re ready to invest in yourself. Working with me starts at 4 ,995 euro. It is not for everyone. It is only for those women who are serious and committed to unlocking their next level self, who are tired of playing small and who are ready to step in and step up into their power. And what I know for sure is that when you pay
Lucy Gernon (12:18.754)
You pay attention. You listen to this podcast passively, lovely lady. Are you really taking action on it? Come work with me and I will help you to take action. Okay, so you can grab that call in the show notes, like I said, or just DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn if you want to have a chat and I can send you the link to book. So that’s it for this week’s episode of the show. I’m going to leave you with this. You can have it all.
You hold all the power to change your entire life and all it starts with is you taking action.
That’s it for this week’s episode. I love you lots. See you again next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
