#176 What Stops Women From Breaking Through to Senior Leadership with Katy McFee

Lucy Gernon (00:01.887)

Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast. I am thrilled today genuinely to be joined by an amazing fellow executive coach. name is Katie McPhee. Katie is a former exec and we are currently in a mastermind group together, which is how I’ve got the pleasure to know Katie. Katie supports more women to break through to executive levels, specifically helping more women to become VPs. And she is here today.

 

to share all of her secrets with us around what’s blocking you, what stops more women getting into senior leadership, and to share all of the goods on what you need to do if you want to break through to your next level. So, Kayleigh, you are so welcome to the show today. How are you?

 

Katy McFee (00:42.07)

I’m great and I’m super excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

 

Lucy Gernon (00:45.917)

Of course, of course. So do you want to start by sharing with our audience a little bit about who you are and what you do more specifically?

 

Katy McFee (00:53.24)

Sure. So I had an 18 year corporate career. I worked in biotech for 15 years, then I worked in tech and eventually became an EVP. Although I always love to tell people that like my journey to get there was not a straight line up into the right. It was, there was a lot of struggle. I really struggled with that transition from manager to director to VP. And the reason I share that is that is literally why I do what I do now. So I like to help women.

 

with that transition. I’ve noticed that a lot of people struggle with that transition, both men and women, but I’m really passionate about helping to close the gender gap that we see in senior leadership. And as we know, the gap goes up as you go up in a company. And I really believe that the way that we’re gonna close that gap is actually to just get more women into leadership, which is gonna reduce the bias and create better policies and like all the stuff that we need.

 

and then we will be able to get more women into leadership. So that is my big mission. And so what I do now is, like I said, I help with that transition. If women are feeling stuck at a senior manager or director level, I really help them to learn what does it take to become a VP and then also thrive there. I don’t want to just help you wind a VP role and then struggle, feel overwhelmed, hate your life. So I also talk a lot about what do you need to do to be successful in executive roles?

 

Lucy Gernon (02:17.381)

Amazing. Okay. So let’s start with something maybe a little bit topical. Obviously, with the current administration in the US, there’s been a lot of talk about like DE &I rollbacks and, you know, we’ve seen all the big boys come out and say that they’re cutting their DE &I programs. And there’s a lot of fear around this at the moment. I’d love to hear your perspective.

 

Katy McFee (02:28.642)

Hmm.

 

Katy McFee (02:37.102)

Sure, yeah. And this is one of the things, like lot of the women in my community were coming to me being like, can we talk about this? Like we’re kind of freaking out. My feeling is this, the companies who are so quick to roll back their DEI policies and initiatives were never that bought in in the first place. The companies who really feel strongly about creating diversity and equity and inclusion at the highest levels of leadership and across the company,

 

are doubling down, they’re finding ways to continue to do that even with the current administration. The ones who are plastering on their website and maybe talking the talk but not walking the walk, they’re the ones that we’re seeing roll it back because if you think about it, and I hope that a lot of women can take this to heart, okay? For the last number of years, we saw more companies create policies and initiatives around DEI.

 

But did we see the gap closing at the most senior levels? No. If you look at the McKinsey and Lean In annual report, the Women in the Workplace report, we see that there’s like minimal progress that we’re making. And if you really look under the hood of the progress that we do see, it’s often due to like other factors as opposed to reducing bias or increasing inclusion or that kind of thing. So.

 

The policies were there, but we weren’t necessarily seeing the result. We were still seeing what’s called the broken rung, which is this idea that there was a gap in that very first level of promotion from, you know, to manager, right? Where more men are promoted than women. And this last year, that gap actually widened for the first time. It went from 87 women promoted for every hundred men to 81 women for every hundred men. And it’s worse for women of color.

 

Lucy Gernon (04:08.52)

and

 

Lucy Gernon (04:23.713)

my god.

 

Katy McFee (04:31.778)

Just to, you know, the short answer is I’m not sure that was ever the solution. And so I think there are other things we can do to help women get there. And so I still feel really positive about creating momentum in this area because although, you know, certain people do believe that, like, yes, we need to change policies, we need to change systems and that type of thing. That stuff takes a really long time. And as we’re seeing now, a lot of it is not translating to results. So

 

This is why I still kind of believe in this more ground up approach of like, let’s just help women get so freaking good at like bias or not, they’re gonna get there. And then they can create the pain from the top.

 

Lucy Gernon (05:06.281)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes. my God. I sing it sister. Like, I mean, that’s literally why I do what I do as well, because I think so often we’re looking to, you know, the top level to go help us to come up. Whereas really women have so much power. And when they see that, like everything changes. So let’s talk a little bit about, first of all, the blocks. So I know you support women to get to more, to, to executive level, more senior levels. What would you say in your experience?

 

This is going to be a good question. The top three things, if you can narrow down to the top three things that really stop women from progressing.

 

Katy McFee (05:49.356)

Yeah. So I’ll share the three things and they’re kind of like bigger buckets. So it’s not like these very specific things. So the first one is a mindset block, which might look like not believing you belong at the table. If you don’t believe you belong at the table, really hard to convince someone else that you belong there. It might look like not advocating for yourself, not sharing your big idea in a meeting.

 

not sharing your wins because you think it looks like bragging. All of that stuff I wrap up into like mindset block. You need to shift your mindset so that you’re willing to show up authentically, use your voice, challenge your boss when you think they’re wrong, all of those things. So that’s the first one. The second one is what I like to call a perception problem. And this kind of wraps into like executive presence and like these types of terms that we hear, but for whatever reason,

 

the people that matter in terms of your career progression are not seeing you as executive material. And the stuff that I kind of bundle in that bucket are your communication style, right? So are you either too direct or are you too people-pleasy, too kind? Are you communicating in like a clear, concise, compelling way? Are you credible? Are you, you know, sharing strategic insights, all of that stuff?

 

All of that stuff really wraps up into the perception that you’re creating. Because when people look, there’s certain leaders we look at and we’re like, they are leadership material. They are strategic. They belong in senior leadership. And I’m sure anyone listening can probably think of an example where maybe they’ve worked with an executive that you’re like, should they, should they be in that role? It’s like, why do you think that? Right? It’s all the perception. You’re like, yeah, how did that guy get there? Their uncle’s who? Yeah. So that’s the perception piece.

 

Lucy Gernon (07:33.538)

I know my audience are like, mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (07:42.434)

And then the third are your habits and boundaries. Because you can know all of this stuff, but if you, for example, are somebody who lets your calendar look like 16 back-to-back meetings every single day, you’re not blocking out any time for deep work, you’re not taking care of yourself, like I’m a big believer in like human first, right? So when we invest in ourselves as humans,

 

we move our bodies, we fuel ourselves with healthy food, we take time for mindfulness, we do all of this stuff, we are gonna show up as a better leader as well. So that’s the third area where like if you don’t own your calendar, your calendar owns you and you are answering Slack on the weekend and taking calls from your boss when you’re at the park with your kids and it’s gonna be really hard for you to create like the control and command that you need to get to and thrive at the next level. So those are my three big buckets.

 

Lucy Gernon (08:38.397)

Love that. And like when you when you talk about mindset, I love that you started with that because it is like foundational for everything. And I think I think it’s not until especially I know you work with you came from like biotech and tech like and I work with lot women in STEM as well and financial services in particular. And those kind of women tend to be very analytically driven and very focused in the science and the data and the numbers. So this concept of mind mindset kind of is a bit woo. But

 

Talked? Yeah, you were like, yeah, sing it. I literally just had two of my clients on my last podcast and we were talking about the whole mindset thing. And they were like, when you first started talking about this mindset stuff, we were like, what is this? So can you please validate for me the importance of mindset, what you mean by mindset and how you help your clients or students to actually shift?

 

Katy McFee (09:16.247)

Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (09:25.998)

Absolutely. And I was the same. Okay. Like my degree was in biopharmaceutical science and then I worked in biotech for 15 years. I was like trained in, you know, sort of scientific mind. I was not woo woo at all. And when I became a certified coach, I was introduced to a lot more woo than I was used to. I gotta say, you know, it pushed me outside my comfort zone, but in the best way, because I actually think there’s room for both. So

 

Lucy Gernon (09:45.407)

We’re like the same person, my god.

 

Katy McFee (09:54.478)

To address your question more directly, and this is why I’m laughing because I’m like, I have been there. I was in a peer group when I was in EVP and it was modeled after the YPO organization, the Young Presidents Organization in the United States. And I got to be part of this peer group as part of an accelerator program. It a great opportunity. It was all sales leaders, like CROs and VP sales. And I was within that group, all men, except for me because hard to find women sales leaders, of course.

 

Still was an amazing experience to be part of that. But the way they sort of taught us the flow of the meeting was you come in and then you do like, you know, a couple of minutes of breathing and then like share your one word state. And I was like, you guys want to just skip this and like just get right to the real stuff? And they were like, no, Katie. And so then and the first time I did it, I was like, wow, stopping to breathe feels kind of good. Like I think I think in the

 

At that point, I was probably like year like 17 of my career. I like never stopped to breathe like freaking one time. so I was not somebody who was easily convinced, but I start, I start my program with two mindset sessions and I got to say, some of the women come in and they’re like, I’m here to get promoted. Like, why are we talking about my saboteurs and limiting beliefs and all of this stuff? But the truth is,

 

If you don’t have a strong foundation when it comes to mindset, it is really hard to change the other aspects of your life, to build the skills you need to build. Because, know, one thing I like to always say is you can have the best idea in the world. If you’re too afraid to put up your hand and share it in the right meeting, no one’s gonna know. So you can work on skills all day long. The women that I work with, they are skilled, right? They’re super smart. They’re super competent.

 

Lucy Gernon (11:41.597)

Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (11:45.72)

Their problem is not a lack of skill. They don’t need another certification. They don’t need an MBA. They have all of the stuff they need. Oftentimes what’s holding them back is a fear around creating boundaries or a fear around advocating for themselves or a fear around, you know, I was speaking with one of my clients who has been in a director level position for a while now, like a number of years. This woman is like brilliant.

 

and is thinking about wants to move into a VP role and is thinking, I, you maybe I need to leave my organization. And said to her, have you ever created a business? Like, who do you report to? She said, the CEO. said, have you ever created a business case for the CEO, but why you should be a VP and how that’s going to add to the company and whatever. She’s like, she’s been there for like five years. So that’s a mindset thing. That’s not a skill thing. She’s doing the job, but it’s the mindset block. So that’s why I think that is so important when you really

 

can understand yourself because oftentimes we think of mindset and we think of like woo woo stuff and manifesting or we think about, we think about confidence only. There’s more to it. A really important element of mindset for leaders is self-awareness. When you can truly be self-aware, it’s like, why am I reacting this way? Why am I showing up this way? What do I really want? All of that stuff. Well, guess what? Closing the gap between where you are today and where you want to be becomes a lot easier because you know what the gap is.

 

Lucy Gernon (13:12.933)

Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Katy McFee (13:14.55)

A lot of us have never thought, I didn’t even think about what the gap was for me until I was like in my forties. What a, what a mess.

 

Lucy Gernon (13:20.213)

And you know what you just said there a second ago as well, I just thought it was really interesting is that that client that you have that you were like, have you created the five-year plan? And she was like, no, I think that’s like the value of having your perspective on that. Because when you’re in an organization and you’re so institutionalized, she clearly just didn’t even think that she was quote unquote had permission to do this because she was probably waiting for a tap on the shoulder. So I just think it’s really like, know obviously it’s the obvious thing to do to us. But for that lady, she’s so conditioned by

 

everything around her, is why it’s great that you’re able to talk about mindset and everything. And you also spoke as well about boundaries. And this is one of my favorite topics. Let’s just talk all day about boundaries and calendar and owning your time. What do you see when it comes to women and meetings and lunch breaks and all of those things? I know.

 

Katy McFee (14:10.562)

my gosh. mean, yeah. So first of all, the women I work with and former Katie, like me earlier in my career, no boundaries. it’s like, you know, working, meeting to meeting to meeting all day long and trying to like bang out work in between if you possibly can. Trying to answer all your Slack messages and emails and everything right away, not taking a lunch break. Like I would say for the first…

 

number of years of my career, I did not take a lent. It was like a granola bar at my desk type, you know. And so it’s this idea that like the harder I work and the more I do, the more worthy I am or the more useful I am or whatever the thing is. And it’s frankly wrong. It’s just incorrect. So that logic falls apart when you get to leadership early in your career, banging out more work.

 

Lucy Gernon (14:43.216)

One and Mark Hazy.

 

Katy McFee (15:10.872)

putting up your hand, doing all the things can actually benefit you. And this is where I think we get stuck because many of us are strong executors and early in our career, that’s what got us to like the manager level or even senior manager or whatever, right? Like we did all the stuff, hit, did, you know, we checked all the boxes, we put up our hand, we did all the extra, we put everyone else first. And so we learned like, this pays off when you become a leader, it no longer pays off. And often when you become a leader,

 

This also starts to coincide with the time in your life, maybe when you’re having kids, maybe when you have other things going on. like, you know, I kind of joke that I’m like having kids forced me to create some semblance of balance in my life because before I had none at all, but I like my kids. So I hang out with them sometimes. So, yeah, so this is what I see with a lot of women where I say, like, you want to know if this is an area you need to work on? Look at your calendar right now.

 

Lucy Gernon (15:43.806)

Yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (15:57.525)

Do you all of the time?

 

Katy McFee (16:09.71)

Do you have a deep work block anywhere in there? No. Like, do you have breaks between your meetings? Do you have any breaks to stop and think? Do you have time for like meeting planning or like other important things, right? No.

 

Lucy Gernon (16:23.093)

I think it’s like, can you help us maybe with the mindset shift required for this? Cause I’m thinking back to me in those days as well. And I think sometimes in corporate, there’s a culture of people wear back to back meetings and being triple booked as a badge of honor. And it gives them nearly like a sense of worthiness that I’m so important. need to attend. I would have been that girl. So I’m saying this because I was that girl, but then see all these typically males around you who were doing far less.

 

They’re skipping out the door at five o’clock to go for their cycle. You’re still there at your desk, wondering where the hell you went wrong, why he’s getting a promotion you’re not. So I’d love to know your perspective on what do you think the guys do really well that the women don’t? Because I really don’t believe in man batting and I’m pretty sure you’re the same. It’s not their fault. We need to learn from them. So what would you say they do well?

 

Katy McFee (17:13.102)

Totally. You know what they do? And I actually learned from this myself, which was a big mindset shift for me, because I remember being in a role and I’m like working my tail off, doing all the things, like just like right in it, doing all the work, going all the meetings. And then there would be like one of my male counterparts that would come and be like, I want to share this strategy I’ve been working on for like three weeks. And it’s like a one page, like visual model of this idea.

 

And I’m like, that’s all you’ve been doing? But then I looked at people’s response to it they’re like, amazing, so smart, we should do that. Meanwhile, I’ve checked 75 things off the list and I have no impressive thing to bring forward. So I always like to tell people like, you’re never gonna have a brilliant idea or a strategic insight in the two minutes between Zoom meetings. And guess what gets you ahead as a leader? Being able to share.

 

Lucy Gernon (17:44.937)

Yeah

 

Katy McFee (18:10.434)

some strategic, some really important whatever, right? That’s what we look to them. like, this person is a great strategic thinker. They belong at the next level. part of it is, for me, I like literally saw this unfolding in front of me. I’m a very observant person. I like to look at like, how do people react to things and that kind of thing and connect dots. And I saw this over and over again. And I saw it as well. Like I remember looking at

 

the product team doing a presentation. And my immediate reaction was like, man, we have like a world-class product team. Like they really know what they’re doing. These guys are like, you know, A plus. And over time I realized like they were fine, but what they were really good at was telling the story, creating these beautiful slides and this compelling narrative. And I was so busy on execution. I never took any time to do that stuff. So I really started to see the value.

 

Lucy Gernon (18:57.245)

Mmmmm

 

Katy McFee (19:08.712)

in this other type of work that was not like execution, check off my list base, but it was creating a perception in people that these people really knew what they were doing. So part of the mindset shift is the idea that like, I need to slow down to speed up. Like thinking time is actually also work. Like I think as women, we tend to feel guilty blocking out time just to think. I’m like,

 

That is the most valuable thing you can do for your organization if you’re in a leadership role. Like, it may not feel that way initially, you’re so trained to go, go. But in that time, that’s where you’re gonna be able to ask yourself, like, what are the biggest problems we’re facing? What’s the biggest blocker to hitting our goals? Like, what needs to change? Is our org structured correctly? Like, all of these big questions, you don’t ask yourself on a day-to-day basis unless something breaks, but like, you wanna get ahead of it. So that’s one thing.

 

Lucy Gernon (20:03.893)

So how do people, how do people shift that mindset then Katie? Cause that is a really big one. think what’s really valuable that you’re sharing is like nobody, spoke earlier about the, um, being stuck in execution mode, which is obviously I hear that a lot as well is how do people, because they’ve been trained, like you said, to, they get rewarded for the execution. And then all of a sudden, as you move up the ladder, it’s not the case, but nobody tells them this, right? So what, what do, what do my listeners need to hear from you today to give themself permission?

 

to step out of execution and to give themselves even just that short bit of thinking time or go for a walk and just have some space.

 

Katy McFee (20:41.654)

Yeah. Well, I would ask like, you know, how can I have the biggest impact as a leader? And is the answer to do the like 50 things on your to-do list that you delegate to anyone on your team? Probably not. Right. I would actually go so far as to say, if you are not blocking out deep work time, you are doing your company a disservice. I actually think you’re not, you think you’re doing them a favor because you never stop. You’re actually

 

Lucy Gernon (21:04.169)

Yes.

 

Katy McFee (21:10.592)

It’s the opposite of that. So I think we need to really be thinking about, you know, what do the most valuable leaders bring to an organization? Actually, think about it this way. If you saw your CEO running around frantically, meeting to meeting to meeting, crossing stuff off their list without any time to do anything, like in that kind of mode, would you be impressed? You’d probably be like,

 

What are they doing? What’s happening, right? We expect, yeah. Yeah, we expect our senior leaders to like have their shit together, right? We expect our senior leaders to have control over their calendar, to know what’s important, to be able to prioritize, to be able to focus. And when you’re doing everything, you know what you’re communicating? I don’t know how to prioritize.

 

Lucy Gernon (21:39.509)

Yeah, 100%. It doesn’t create a sense of safety or an environment for work.

 

Katy McFee (22:04.858)

I don’t know what to focus on, so I’m gonna do everything. That is the message that you’re sending. So you have to ask yourself, what is my goal in terms of my career? If your goal is to be a senior leader, being a senior leader is more about the thinking and making decisions, prioritizing, focusing, then leading a team or getting people on board with a strategy or whatever the thing is, influencing. That stuff all takes space.

 

All it takes time. And so you kind of have to act like… Yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (22:33.715)

Yeah. And because it’s the soft skills, right? Because it’s the soft skills, people, think as women in particular, they think that they’re, they’re like you said earlier, cheating their organization in some way by having this space. So what’s, what do you think is the biggest difference? Because I don’t know why the guys do it and the women don’t. Like, what do you think it is?

 

Katy McFee (22:53.4)

think they’re lazier than we are. It’s not so much that they’re lazy, it’s that they don’t feel the same pressure that as we do to do everything. I think for us, and I can tie this into some different elements, but a lot of it goes back to the way we’re conditioned growing up. our ability to accept feedback, our ability to advocate for ourselves, even our ability to be willing to slow down and say no.

 

Lucy Gernon (22:55.583)

WAH-WAH!

 

Lucy Gernon (23:06.58)

Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (23:22.178)

It’s all to be tied together because, and this is, I’m gonna share some generalizations here, okay? So if you’re listening, you’re like, that wasn’t my experience, great. However, for many of us as women, we grew up being taught to sit quietly, do as you’re told, respect your elders, be polite, all of these things. And then we’re praised when we do it well. It’s like, good girl, sit down, don’t make a fuss, don’t be too big, don’t be too loud, keep your voice, all of these things that…

 

we’re taught and we’re conditioned. And the reason this matters so much is because as humans, from an evolutionary perspective, we’ve evolved to want people to like and accept us, right? We don’t want to get like thrown out of the tribe and get eaten by a tiger or starved stuff. So we tie these things together. So then suddenly we’re like, in order for people to like and accept me, I need to do all of these things. I can’t say no, I need to say yes, I need to be polite, need to whatever. Whereas a lot of little boys, and I think it’s partly their nature, grow up,

 

you know, getting a lot of feedback as to like, stop throwing an eraser, sit on your chair, quit punching your sister, whatever. And so are more inclined to like, do what they wanna do. Like they are conditioned to act as leaders where we’re told we’re bossy. It’s like all of this stuff, right? We could go down a whole rabbit hole. But when I bring it to where we end up, you know, once we are in our career.

 

We don’t want to say no. We don’t want to let anyone down. And this goes across our life. This is also tied to to, you know, part of the reason that we tend to lack boundaries, right? Where we, we want to be able to work, you know, 10 hours a day and volunteer for the PTA and be the perfect parent and bake everything from scratch and keep a clean house and like all of this stuff. And there is a lot of social pressure on women to be perfect. So to me, it all ties into that psychology. And I just think that

 

from a societal perspective, we don’t hold men to that same standard. So we give them permission. And I think that all just, again, it’s like this subconscious stuff. I don’t think men are consciously like, I’m going to do this thing because I have permission to do it. I don’t think women are saying like, I’m gonna not stop and be strategic because I don’t have permission. This is all like typically subconscious. But I think men just don’t feel that same pressure.

 

Lucy Gernon (25:18.804)

No.

 

Katy McFee (25:41.304)

to do everything for everyone. And so they are more likely to take that time when they’re like, I’ve got this great idea. I’m gonna hash it out and put together a plan. They’ll just do it.

 

Lucy Gernon (25:41.449)

Yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (25:51.133)

Yeah, my God, 100%. I’m thinking back to when you were sharing about like one thing that comes up for me as you’re talking about the boundaries and not saying no is I hear this a lot would be guilt. So what are we like with the guilt? Women are like so bad with, you know, feeling guilty for saying no, feeling guilty when we’re working because we’re not with the kids, feeling guilty that we’re with the kids and we should be at work. And it’s just this constant guilt.

 

And I remember I used to do like walking one-to-ones with my team. We’d go for, we’d go out for a walk. Nobody else did that. And like, I used to feel guilty. I would literally be working, walking with my team, having a performance discussion. But because I wasn’t in an office in a cubicle that was gray, I literally felt guilty for getting fresh air until I kind of copped on and I went, what is wrong with you? This is like a wonderful space. It was my idea, but I still felt guilty for doing it. And so many people commented, this is the thing.

 

But those people didn’t tend to be men. They tended to be other women, which was like, oh, you’re going for a walk. All right. OK. Isn’t it well for some kind of thing? Whereas actually I was working. So in my experience, you we talk about societal conditioning and, you know, unconscious bias. I personally believe a lot of this is coming from women against other women. It’s like this competition factor, whereas in general, and this is only my experience, I don’t see men being as bitchy towards women as other women are towards other women. So what would you

 

Katy McFee (27:13.934)

Good.

 

Lucy Gernon (27:14.847)

What’s your experience in terms of women in that space?

 

Katy McFee (27:19.34)

Yeah. Well, if I, if I take a great big step back, think that oftentimes when we see someone doing something that we wish we could do, it tends to trigger judgment. And I can think about this when I, you know, started on my entrepreneurial journey and I shared with people in my life, Hey, I’m going to leave my AVP role and go become a coach. And some of the women who I expected to support me.

 

Lucy Gernon (27:28.789)

Mm.

 

Katy McFee (27:49.25)

didn’t. They were like, I don’t even know what coaching is. Like, what are you? So you’re so just to be clear, you’re going to give up your executive vice president role to go be a coach. Like it was very like it was very judgmental. And when I really stopped to think about it, what I realized was there’s probably an element of

 

I don’t even want to say necessarily jealousy because it might not be as blatant as jealousy, but a feeling of like, I could never do that. Like a fear that they have. So this is how I’ve always felt. It’s like, typically if somebody is judging, it’s because of their own stuff. It actually has nothing to do with you. And if I take it back to women in the way we’re conditioned, women are going to be more likely to feel that way. Cause men probably feel like they have permission. They’re like, if I want to go for a walk, I’m going to go for a walk. Whereas the women sitting in that chair don’t feel like they have permission to go for a walk.

 

Lucy Gernon (28:31.955)

always.

 

Katy McFee (28:46.848)

So they are like so jealous that you are doing it. So that’s kind of my perspective. When I think about, you know, I’ve been really fortunate. There have been like a couple of instances where I’ve worked with women who I really felt would like throw me under the bus or, you know, did not have my best interests at heart. For the most part, I’ve worked with like amazing women. And in the world of entrepreneurship, I’m sure you’ve seen too.

 

there’s a lot of support of women in this space, right? Women really tend to lift one another up. And it might be because we’re all on our own journey and we do own our calendars now and like all of that kind of stuff. So I think it’s a different space where people might just feel more free to be able to support one another. But what that tells me is that like we are not supporting women in corporate, if that’s what’s happening. Yeah, to me that would be, that’s at the root of it. Cause I actually know a lot of women who are like,

 

see this all the time, you know, women contact me all the time about either unsupportive female bosses or colleagues or whatever. And I just think it’s really sad because, yeah, I think that there’s so much importance in just like lifting one another up.

 

Lucy Gernon (29:47.496)

Yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (29:53.567)

Thank you.

 

Lucy Gernon (29:58.707)

Yeah, so I think, I think guys, for anyone listening to this show, that’s the message today is even if you do have somebody who is being a quote unquote BITC something, you just continue to do you, just continue to do you because that’s all you can do, right? It’s focus on yourself. So I wanted to talk to you as well then, Katie, right? So obviously we’ve been talking a lot about like, you the differences between men and women. We’ve been talking about the three things that stop women get to get that, get promoted.

 

If somebody is in their organization right now and they really want to get promoted to the next level, what would be the roadmap? Like I know obviously we can’t get into it all now, but like what would be like the first steps they need to take?

 

Katy McFee (30:38.626)

Yeah, I know it’s a big one. It’s a big one. One of things I’d be asking myself is, does my leader have visibility into all of the great things I’m doing and what I want in my career? So if you have not shared your career ambitions and you are not sharing updates and wins on a regular basis, that is a great place to start. Another thing I would be thinking about is like, what does my internal network look like?

 

with respect to other leaders. Like you wanna be a VP. I always like to tell people, like, let’s say you’re a senior director now, you wanna be a VP. And maybe you direct, sometimes depending on company structure, like maybe you even report directly to a C level person. And like, there is a great case that they could even create this position for you. They very well might say to the rest of the VPs, hey, thinking about making Lucy a VP, what do you guys think? Now, if you’ve never spoken to any of them.

 

What are they, right? Like if they’ve never even heard you use your voice in a meeting, they might be like, I don’t know, is she ready? Whereas if you have a strong relationship with them and you’ve demonstrated value to them and all that kind of like, what you want is for them to say, my gosh, how have we not done this yet? Like that’s the response you want. You don’t even want a neutral response, right? You don’t want a detractor. You don’t want a neutral response. You want like a hell yes. So that’s another thing to think about. And then the third thing I would be thinking about is, am I demonstrating that I am a strategic leader and not just a doer?

 

Lucy Gernon (32:04.149)

Okay, define this word strategic leader because I have my definition and most people have no idea what it actually means. So give us your take on what it really means to be a strategic leader.

 

Katy McFee (32:04.174)

Because like I said, that’s a big one.

 

Katy McFee (32:15.072)

Yeah, so this is a very challenging area because it’s an ambiguous term. I used all the time when I was trying to get promoted, I would hear like, you’re just not strategic. You’re not strategic. And I’m like, what do you mean? So I’ve created my own, my, I’ve got a whole framework around it, but it’s like demonstrating expertise, sharing strategic insights, demonstrating good judgment. Like you make the right calls and then your communication style. To me, that’s, it’s like a little pyramid. It all ladders up to strategic leadership.

 

But if I even simplify it further to that, it is, are you focused on the right things? Are you prioritizing the right things? You know how to do that. And are you sharing it in an impactful way? That’s really kind of what it comes down to. So it’s both acting in a strategic way, but then also conveying that to the people around you. And I think that’s really important that we do both, right? You can…

 

Lucy Gernon (33:08.543)

Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (33:12.49)

What I realized for myself in my career journey was I actually already had great strategic ideas. I just was not sharing them effectively. That was my problem.

 

Lucy Gernon (33:19.509)

This was that’s usually the block, isn’t it? Usually that’s my experience, too. Like most of the women that I would encounter are highly strategic. They’re doing it, but they’re doing it all behind the scenes. They’re not promoting themselves. They’re not sharing their wins. They’re not telling anybody. And then they wonder why Dave from down the road has just got the role that they were positioned for. Right. So how does what you recommend, Katie, in terms of how to begin to if you’re used to being a doer and

 

You know, you’re listening to the podcast now and somebody is like, OK, I’m ready to go communicate. Like what what’s a good place to start?

 

Katy McFee (33:54.936)

So used to be a doer, you want to move into being more strategic. So again, I would like tease this apart. if you already have great strategic ideas, you’re spending time on strategic work and it’s just a matter of conveying it. I love the idea of creating process around this because again, as women, we tend to struggle to advocate for ourselves for all of the reasons that we already talked about. So just walking into your boss’s office and being like, hey, I just wanted to let you know like this great thing I did.

 

It’s gonna be awkward. We’re not gonna want to do it. It may not even be received well So I’m a big believer in creating Process to do the work for you So two things I love to share with women to do first one is if you do not already provide a weekly update to your boss And if it makes sense their boss like sometimes depending on the skip level relationship, etc You might even send this to both of them. We don’t do this today start doing it I had a client who I was talking to about this and

 

She was totally not convinced. Like, it was so funny. She was like, okay, I guess I’ll do it. And then I, and then very quickly she came back to me being like, the SVP just messaged me being like, thank you so much for this. It is so useful. Right? Like we often assume that our manager and leadership knows all the great things we’re doing. They are busy. They are thinking about a lot of stuff. They might not know everything that you’re doing. So, you may want to structure this in terms of

 

you know, key projects and progress towards them. But guess what? Progress equals wins a lot of the time. When we’re sharing updates, we’re sharing progress. We are really sharing our wins. We’re sharing the exciting things that they need to know about. But the goal of this report is also just demonstrating like, I know what’s up. Like I’ve got to handle on things. This is what’s coming. These are the key problems, whatever. So that should happen every single week. The other thing that I think should happen, and I recommend this to a lot of people, is doing a 30 day check-in. So

 

If you have a weekly one-on-one with your manager, every fourth one-on-one would be this. And I also recommend people do this with the people who report to them. And essentially what it is, is every 30 days, you are going to have a more strategic conversation around what are the biggest problems I’m seeing in the business? What are we not doing that we should be doing? How can I do things better or faster? How am I developing myself? What role am I working towards? And I actually have a template that I share with people. I can share it actually if…

 

Katy McFee (36:20.288)

if we want to share that as part of this. It’s really useful because it’s great for the people who are reporting to you because you can see how they’re thinking. You can get ideas. You can see if there’s trends like, everyone thinks that this is the same problem. Maybe I should be addressing it. You can also understand where they want to go with their career. And what I always say to the people on my team is this is your opportunity once a month to like bitch and brag, right?

 

Lucy Gernon (36:21.449)

Amazing, yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (36:46.773)

I love it.

 

Katy McFee (36:46.87)

You can tell me all the problems. You can tell me what you want. You can tell me all the great things you’re doing. Like this meeting is for you. And so they would fill it out and then we would go over it together. I did the same thing with people above me. So I remember I reported, started reporting to a new CEO, very busy guy was like, you know, sometimes canceling our one-on-ones. just was doing a lot. He had a lot, a lot of functions reporting into him. And I’m like, we are not going to organically be having these conversations. So I just said to him, Hey,

 

This is a template that I use with my team once a month. I’ve been using it with everyone that reports to me directly for a while. It’s really useful in terms of ensuring that once a month we’re having a more strategic conversation. I would also love to use it with you. So it just means that I will fill it out every single month and then once a month in our one-on-one, we’ll go over it together. And of course he was like, amazing, thank you. Right? Like why would any leader not want that? You’re essentially handing it to them on a silver platter. And so what this allows you to do is it allows you to demonstrate your strategic thinking.

 

your great ideas, but also every single month, if you’re working towards a VP role or a senior director role at the bottom where it says, what role am I working towards? You’ll be like, senior director, this is what I’m doing. And then you can ask for feedback. Like, I’d love to know, like, do you think I’m on track? What else do I need to be thinking about? What are the gaps that you see that I need to be filling in order to be on the track for this? So again, it’s like, this is where process does the heavy lifting for you because the template already exists and you’re just filling it out.

 

Lucy Gernon (38:07.784)

I love you.

 

Katy McFee (38:17.182)

I will just say like, if anyone does grab this template, change it however you want, right? Like I’ve even altered it from like one company to another, but it’s really ensuring that you’re having these bigger conversations on a somewhat regular basis.

 

Lucy Gernon (38:17.212)

Love you.

 

Lucy Gernon (38:32.861)

I love that. what happens, Katie, and I’ve heard this many times where you feel like your boss does not have your back. Your boss does not want you to develop and your boss is the block and your boss doesn’t really care. We’ve all been there. What would you recommend in that situation?

 

Katy McFee (38:41.102)

you

 

Katy McFee (38:51.086)

Two things. So if you love the company you’re at, if you love the culture, if you love the rest of leadership, then I would be focused on creating additional relationships, which you should be anyways. Like, don’t put all your eggs in one basket because even if you have the best boss in the world, they might leave, they might get fired. Like anything can happen. So yes, you want to create a strong relationship with your boss, but you also want to be creating a strong relationship with the rest of the executive team and other leadership and cross-functionally and all of that stuff.

 

You know, I’ve been in this situation where I had a manager and I tried everything to win this person over, everything, and they would like dodge their one-on-ones. It was clear this person did not like me. I ended up leaving the company. And I frankly don’t regret it. Like, if you’re in a scenario where this person is going to be your manager for the foreseeable future and there’s not an opportunity for you to move within the company, or perhaps like,

 

If this person’s attitude is indicative of the rest of senior leadership, you may want to just start looking for what is next for you because truthfully, they can hold you back. Like your manager can absolutely accelerate your career and stall it. So you have to decide, you know, is it important for me to stay at this company? Do I want to consider going somewhere else? And if you do want to stay at that company, and maybe you do, then I’d be really thinking about, is there another function I can move to? Is there another…

 

Am I building my relationship with the rest of leadership? I will say if you are in an environment where you actually have a toxic boss, it is taking a hit on your confidence and your wellbeing. I don’t think there’s a job that’s worth staying for in that sense. I know that there have been layoffs and a lot of things that have happened in recent years. There’s still lots of jobs out there. The truth is that you will find something else.

 

Lucy Gernon (40:19.86)

Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (40:47.968)

Ideally before you leave, it depends on how bad it is.

 

Lucy Gernon (40:49.973)

I love what you said as well though about sometimes when you move within an organization into a different department, I’ve heard this so many times, it’s like working in a different company because sometimes we can say such and such company, it’s so toxic, but actually, every single manager has their own microculture within their team. Every department has their own microculture.

 

Katy McFee (41:01.198)

Yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (41:12.051)

I love what you’re bringing up about relationship building as well, because it’s something that women neglect so often. They literally put all their eggs in their boss’s basket, then their boss leaves or their boss doesn’t like them when you’re snookered. I love that. Guys, I really hope you’re hearing what Kayleigh’s saying here today. Can you hear the amount of stuff you need to do to get promoted that is not currently on your to-do list, which is like to network, to get the rest of the executive team to know who you are, to stop.

 

adding, you know, doing this work that’s not adding value to your company to do and all these things. So if any of that stuff is not on your to do list right now and you’re looking at it going, well, I’m adding so much value here. You’re clearly not. So I really hope today has been a wake up call for you because I’ve loved this conversation, Katie. Can I just ask you, just as we are coming towards the end, I literally I think we could talk for three hours on this to be sure to be fair. We definitely could. But if.

 

Katy McFee (41:54.392)

Me too.

 

Lucy Gernon (42:04.871)

Any of my listeners right now are listening and they’re, you know, they’ve listened to your tips and they, they really want to, they really want to get that senior leadership, but they have this mindset block that maybe they feel like they’re not ready, they’re not good enough. What’s one final tip you would give them on that mindset piece?

 

Katy McFee (42:23.416)

Great question. Yeah, I mean, I would just invest in it. So I would invest some of the things that really work. A mindfulness practice is really important for developing self-awareness and perspective. And I was a person for many years who was like, I’ve got a busy brain, meditation doesn’t work for me. And it was truthfully an excuse. It was bullshit. Like anyone can do this. You may feel like you suck at it.

 

guess what, everyone sucks at it, just do it. It has such an impact on just understanding yourself, gaining self-awareness. because once it’s this whole idea that when we shine a light on a lot of this stuff, on the drama of our own minds, it loses a lot of its power, right? So that would be what I would really recommend is deciding like what kind of mindfulness practice could work for me.

 

Other things I’m big believer in are like gratitude and affirmations. If you are like, need to shift my mindset, because I am just like ruminating and negative thinking, I can’t get out of this. Gratitude and affirmations. And again, I was a person, I was not into the woo. I was like, affirmations. I’m just picturing like Tony Robbins or Oprah like yelling, know, some affirmation about how amazing. Yeah, like.

 

Lucy Gernon (43:46.037)

I am confident.

 

Katy McFee (43:52.13)

the truth is that the science really backs this up. Because what happens is, as you say affirmations, you actually shift your sort subconscious belief system, and that impacts your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions, and then the outcome. So that’s how powerful this is. if you’re someone that’s like, the first piece is the awareness to just understand, like, where am I at? But if you really feel like I need to shift some things, those are two things you can do. And you can do these things in like,

 

Lucy Gernon (44:07.285)

Mmm.

 

Katy McFee (44:21.144)

Five minutes a day. I’m not trying to add four hours of work to all the stuff you already do. Affirmations of gratitude, you can do in five minutes before you go to bed or first thing in the morning.

 

Lucy Gernon (44:31.103)

Yeah, absolutely. Sing it sister. Girls, you’re hearing it from another executive coach as well. It’s not just me. So I’m so glad that you’re validating. I preach about gratitude as well. Finally, Katie, before we finish up, I always ask my guests these two questions. I hope you’re ready. Number one, what do success, balance and happiness mean to you?

 

Katy McFee (44:37.314)

Yeah.

 

Katy McFee (44:48.162)

Yeah

 

Katy McFee (44:53.154)

Yeah. I mean, I think to me it’s like living the life you want to live, right? Living the authentic life that is your life and not someone else’s. I think it’s that simple. And it looks different to every person. Yeah.

 

Lucy Gernon (45:07.003)

Mm, I love that. Yeah, and not like, I’m just so imagine the women in corporate, a lot of them are living their lives to please other people, whereas really living, and you’re living your best life now as an entrepreneur, right? We’re having lots of fun.

 

Katy McFee (45:19.214)

Absolutely, I accept it all the time. yeah, I feel like I’m something that people underestimate when it comes to happiness and just like satisfaction in your life is being able to show up as your full authentic self. And I feel that in the role I am now and in what I talk about and what I do, it’s like I’ve never been more of my authentic self as I am now. And that greatly impacts my happiness.

 

Lucy Gernon (45:45.469)

Yeah. And it makes you magnetic as well. You’re just, your energy is amazing. I love, I love listening to you. You’re, fantastic, honestly. Final question. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or one of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever received?

 

Katy McFee (46:01.688)

Yeah, that’s a tough question. If I look at it from a career perspective specifically, it would be learn from others who have done the thing you wanna do. And there’s both pieces of that are important. So the learn from others part is important, but the have done what you wanna do is equally important because lots of people have advice that we may not wanna listen to. And I think a lot of us believe we have to figure it out on our own.

 

Lucy Gernon (46:03.697)

I know.

 

Katy McFee (46:31.404)

whether that means how to get promoted or how to do whatever, whatever the thing is. Like even when I think about when I was, was a sales leader, right, for my career. Sometimes it would come down to like, how are gonna get into this new market or how are we going to increase our revenue here or how are we gonna do what? It’s like somebody smart has done that thing. Go find them and learn from them. And maybe you can learn from them personally or maybe you can read their book or maybe like there’s lots of ways to do it.

 

But it’s just like, stop trying to reinvent the wheel and learn from the people who have done it.

 

Lucy Gernon (47:02.589)

Amazing. ladies, if you want to learn from Katie on that note on how to get promoted, Katie has actually just launched a brand new podcast. Do you want to share about your podcast?

 

Katy McFee (47:13.942)

Yeah, super excited about this. As you guys can tell, I’m a pretty excitable human. So the podcast is called More Women Promoted, and it’s all about my big mission to get more women promoted. The vibe of it is really like real talk, right? Like all the stuff that you wish maybe you had learned in business school or in your career or from your mentors. And then with like the girl talk side of like, what is it really like to be a woman in leadership and in the world?

 

and I tackle a range of topics. Of course, a lot of them have to do with career progression, but then I touch on some other stuff as well. So yeah, I would love for you to check it out. It’s available anywhere you get your podcasts.

 

Lucy Gernon (47:53.521)

Amazing guys, if you like this show, you’re going to love Katie show because she brings so much gold and so much value. So we’ll definitely link that in the show notes for you as well. Katie, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. If people want to find you, where can they find you?

 

Katy McFee (48:08.877)

I’m on LinkedIn and Instagram. My main platform is LinkedIn. So I post there every single day. You could just search my name, Katie McPhee. yeah, there’s lots of free content there for you to consume all about being a woman in leadership and in life.

 

Lucy Gernon (48:28.051)

Amazing. So head over there guys for all the motivation. Katie, thank you so much for being a fabulous guest. I will talk to you again soon.

 

Katy McFee (48:34.528)

Amazing. Talk to you soon.