The Power of Speaking Up To Be Heard and Influential with Kim Meninger
You want to be heard and influential, but the stigma around women who speak up is aggressive. Speaking up for yourself is hard enough, but being a woman makes it all the more difficult. You have been told that self-promotion is not polite and you should steer clear of corporate politics. This episode will offer you tips that can help make your words count- no matter what industry or field in which you work! You'll learn how self-promotion is actually beneficial for your career (and acceptable) as well as techniques to be heard without compromising your femininity. Discover strategies for navigating corporate politics and advancing your career. These tools will help you break through the noise and make your voice heard.
In This Episode You Will Learn About:
Becoming Heard and Influential
The Benefits of Self-Promotion
Navigating Corporate Politics with Confidence
"When you want to be more influential, you have to think beyond yourself." - Kim Meninger
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About The Guest:
Kim Meninger is an Executive Coach, Host of Imposter Syndrome Files, and TEDx Speaker. With an MBA from Boston College Carrol School of Management and Bachelors' in Psychology, Kim partners with established and emerging leaders, across industries and functional roles, to help build their confidence, visibility, and influence to maximize their impact to advance their careers. She is a Guide for the private Chief network specifically designed for senior women leaders to strengthen their leadership journey, cross-pollinate ideas across industries, and effect change from the top-down.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmeninger/
Website: https://yourcareersuccess.com/
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Well, Kim, you have an incredible career journey and working in the tech industry and now working with a lot of executive women. So will you share with us a little bit of your career journey and how you got to where you're at today?
I started my career in high tech in my early 20s, it was a big surprise to me, never expected to go into high tech never expected to work in corporate America for that matter. I found my psychology background actually helped me with the people side of the business. I was very naturally good at building relationships, understanding how the politics worked, influencing others, I was extremely, I would say anxious had a lot of impostor syndrome around the business and technical side. So it took me a long time to work up my confidence in those areas. I took on increasing levels of responsibility, managing teams and got my MBA, it was through the process of learning a lot more about leadership, what good leadership looks like that I started to look around and think about a lot of the challenges that were happening within my organization and more broadly. I had reached a point where I decided I'm going to leave my corporate career, I was pregnant with my older son, I went on maternity leave and never came back. I wasn't happy with the direction my company was taking at the time. I started asking myself, “How can I put together all the pieces of my career that I had really enjoyed, that I had found most inspiring, where I felt most energized?” That's how I found coaching. I've been coaching now for about 12 years, really focused on helping people to, as you mentioned, become more confident, visible and influential, primarily women, because that's been my own story.
Well, it's an incredible journey. I can relate to where you're saying of having some time, this degree that you may not necessarily know how it's going to be used in the future. I got a degree in communications and marketing, but then also with a minor in psychology and it's interesting how sometimes your background in the education that you learn, combined, and you use it in different ways within your career through your career journey.
Absolutely. I mean, I never thought that psychology the my psychology background would serve me when I was entering this high tech world, and it ended up probably being the most the biggest advantage that I had coming in without any kind of business or technical background.
I know that you work with a lot of executives, women's and so we were talking a little bit about powerful women and the way that sometimes Hollywood media portrays women as being aggressive or hard to work with or demanding. And one of the examples that I give is, the woman in Devil Wears Prada. And so what happens is sometimes powerful women are labeled as I'm going to use this word lightly, because I know that sometimes moms are driving in with car kids in their car. So I'm going to use the word assertive or aggressive. But what advice do you have for women to create their seat at the table?
Creating your own seat at the table
I think it's unfortunate that throughout much of our recent history, when it comes to gaining influence and advancing our careers, women have been pressured implicitly or explicitly to behave more so like men. I think that a lot of those behaviors that we see portrayed in Hollywood, as you mentioned, are people imitating what they think a powerful leader should look like. So it's not to suggest that there aren't women out there who are being authentic, take in their expression of those traits. But for the most part, there are different expectations of how men and women will show up in the workplace based on very deep rooted stereotypes. So my philosophy on this is that we have an opportunity to reflect on our own about who we want to be. This is a question that we don't often ask ourselves, because we're very busy, we've got a lot of competing things going on in our lives for our attention. I highly recommend that we ask ourselves deeper questions like:
What are my core values?
What do I want people to say about me when I'm not in the room?
How do I want other people to experience me when we're in connection with one another, and that could be different for every person?
But the clearer we get on who we want to be, the more we can show up in alignment with those values when we find ourselves in situations that might otherwise intimidate us or undermine our confidence. I think we're starting to finally get to a point I'm hopeful about this, that we're recognizing the value of more traditionally feminine leadership traits, such that we won't have to pretend to be men in order to be seen as legitimate and powerful leaders. But along the way, we have the power to decide who we want to be and if we make a conscious effort in different interactions to show up that way, people will see us as more authentic. We will be given more opportunities as a result.
I never strive when I talk about empowering women to convey that women are better than men and somebody my goal is not for us to be seen as better, it's for us to be seen as having equal opportunity. One of the things I've thought about a lot is that over the course of the pandemic, study after study has shown that countries organizations led by women have done much better. I truly believe that that's a function of the fact that women are better nurturers, people who are more vulnerable in their leadership styles. Those kinds of leadership traits have met the moment in ways that traditional command and control style leadership traits that are typically more associated with men have not. So it's not to say once again, that either of us is better, but more so that we have an opportunity to really appreciate what some of those more human centered leadership traits can do, especially during times of volatility and change and not just create an environment where we have to choose or, you know, men are going to show up as men and women show up as women but that we have this collection of really great behaviors to choose from, and we can whether it's men adopting some of traditionally feminine traits or vice versa, that we find more freedom in that choice.
Being human with your team
You talk a little bit about through that pandemic, and women in leadership roles and how companies have been shown to be more successful. I think, really kind of goes into through the pandemic, women that were in leadership roles showed a little bit more empathy, and to some of the challenges of juggling, working at home with kids doing virtual learning and just the stress of navigating through not only the health of our family, but also the social impact that it's going to make Now I started to see my kids kind of get a little bit more introverted. I've noticed as I've gravitated more out in the world, they're gaining their confidence. I see in leadership with women is that nurture that empathy, that relatability, and humanizing just the everyday struggle, sometimes of balancing work and a family, it's not so much this. This, this is what life should be and work, work, work, work work. It's like, No, we're all humans, we're all trying to figure this out.
Yes, and I think we have traditionally held a mindset that, in order to get the most from people, we have to intimidate them, or we have to check our humanity at the door and just stay focused, that if we demand more time from people, we'll get more out of them, when in reality, our brains are only capable of so much, I could sit in the office for 16 hours, but you're not, you're not gonna get 16 hours of my best time out of that, right and if you treat me like a human, I will show up for you in ways that go way beyond your expectations. If you treat me in ways that undermine my dignity, treat me with disrespect, I'm going to either do the bare minimum, or I'm going to leave. It's not about just, you know, sometimes people think of this as being warm and fuzzy, you're being very fluffy in some way. But it's not just about treating people with basic human respect, it's about maximizing business outcomes as well.
I was on with a conversation with one of my clients the other day, and she was talking about sometimes the struggle that's going on in the company is the sales reps are getting really kind of discouraged with some of the internal changes that are taking place. Some of these managers are at a point where they're advocating so much for the organization. But deep down inside, they're kind of struggling with the changes as well, it doesn't necessarily align with the historical culture of the organization. And because some of these managers aren't just being honest, and saying, “Hey, you know what, I'm in the same boat, as you I am a little frustrated with these changes, you know, the reality is, is we can't change it, but know that you're not alone.We're kind of both in this together, and I'm on your team too.” It’s that kind of situation where you can really see the benefit of just being vulnerable and showing up as your authentic self and being relatable and humanizing just the everyday work.
I cannot underestimate the power of just being real with with other humans on your team.
Advocating for yourself
I want to go back to what you were saying about the social conditioning, because many of us were taught going back to our childhoods, as girls, that it's not polite to brag in ways that boys did not boys did not get those same messages. Because of stereotypes and expectations about gender behavior, we as women are expected to put other people first. So when we advocate for ourselves, we often experienced backlash because it makes people uncomfortable, women included.
We often are driven by a couple of things
Natural humility or that sense of, it's not appropriate for me to want to be recognized for the work that I'm doing.
I'm afraid that if I do, I'll be punished for that in some way. I've seen it happen to other people. Maybe it's even happened to me.
The way I think about self promotion, is that when you are hired into your role, you are hired because of your unique combination of strengths and skills and capabilities, everything that you bring to the table. If you show up and you don't share that with anybody else, you are depriving other people of an opportunity to leverage the strengths that you bring you are there to complement the skill sets of other people. When we think about it from the perspective of ego, it becomes a lot harder for us to put ourselves out there and talk about what we're doing and the accomplishments that we're achieving. But if we think about it through the lens of service, as it's not about me, it's about how can I share what I know, in order to maximize my impact in order to be of service to the larger hole, it can motivate us in ways that what we tend to associate with self promotion is that obnoxious bragging that we want to avoid will never motivate us, we don't want to be that guy, we do want to be recognized. If we come from a place of service, we get the natural benefit that comes with showing up in that way without the backlash, because when we're sharing in pursuit of service in others, people aren't thinking, “wow, look at her brag.” We get to reap the the career benefits that come with that.
It's in a sense, advocating for yourself and credentialing yourself. It's not so much of that bragging, it's talking about how did you get to where you're at some of the successes along the ways. And as a result of that it credentials you and then also opens up the conversation, when people are possibly looking for a mentor, and they heard some of your successes.
I think about it as being something that anyone could do very simply by looking at what you're working on today. Asking yourself either, “what do other people come to me for for support,” because if you have more than a few people who consistently come to you for something, you're an expert in that area, according to other people. All you have to do is take that particular thing that people come to you for and ask yourself, “How can I proactively share this with others,” because I can safely assume that if some people know that I'm a resource for them in this area, there are a lot of other people who don't and would appreciate knowing that. And so I can go out there and say, “Hey, I've been asked a lot of questions about this, I wanted to share this with you and make sure that you have this information available to you” or “I'm working on this project that seems to overlap with some of the work that you're doing” is very organic, very, service oriented ways of talking about what you're doing such that other people say, “Oh, that's good to know.” I could be used her over here and it builds its own momentum.
Thinking beyond yourself
I think that more and more men and women are probably steering away, but women especially do and one of the biggest challenges is that it's hard to navigate sometimes through the corporate politics, to break through that glass ceiling. So on one end, we're discouraged from talking about politics, however, that can sometimes help you in your career. And so while our one of the challenges I found and just my own personal experience is that often middle management is actually the most risk or at risk in the company. Because one of the things I found is, I was always almost second guessing what I was saying, because while my intentions may be good of what I was saying, sometimes the perceptions did not align with my intentions. And it got to a point where I almost second guessed so much that it affected my confidence level over the years, while in a leadership role. So one of the questions I ask is, how can women be more confidently navigate? What advice would you give for women on how to navigate through politics in the workplace?
A lot of times I'll have people say to me, “I don't get involved in politics, I stay out of politics.” And my response to that is always, obviously that's your choice. But if you choose to remove yourself from office politics, you choose to remove yourself from the influence loop, you cannot have it both ways. When I think about politics, I really think about it as the natural product of bringing people together who have competing agendas and limited resources. It is going to happen in any environment, you cannot avoid them. And the idea is not that they are inherently good or bad. It's really about the culture in which you operate. So my advice is to never compromise your values. Do anything that feels unethical to you, but to pay attention to how power works in your own organization before you take any action. So when you're in meetings, especially cross functional meetings, meetings with more senior people, where you get a broader perspective on the landscape, to look at how things get done, who makes up the informal power structure, we all know the formal power structure. So when you are listening to conversations happening within meetings, and sometimes we're not, we're not paying attention. We might miss this, to really tune into whose names keep coming up. Every time we talk about making a decision around a particular area, Who do people defer to? Who's? Who's it ideas get rewarded? And whose ideas get punished? And what is it about those ideas? Is it the idea itself is the way it's delivered? What does it have to do with the relationships that these individuals have? So there's a lot we can learn, just by watching the dynamics around us. When you want to be more influential, you have to think beyond yourself. It's not about what you want, you might have the greatest idea in the world, it might feel like a no brainer to you, you have to understand it in context, you have to understand what are the potential landmines, what are the things I cannot see. That's where your relationships can become really important. So a lot of women unfortunately, either because we're really busy and we feel like we don't have time for networking, or it feels unproductive, I want to get my to do list on I want to focus on my work. We don't take advantage of some of those more informal, you know, back in the day water cooler kinds of conversations. Now we have to do them a little bit more creatively. But that's where you get the inside chatter on. Who cares about what and what's happened in the past that you need to be aware of? Don't try to make any kind of decisions or recommendations in a vacuum, talk to your mentors. What do I not know about this? What kind of questions can I anticipate who's going to be sensitive about this, the more that you can try to do this, in coordination with the people around you that you trust who have influence, the more effectively you'll be able to navigate politics.
I found that sometimes the best conversations and the most eye opening conversations on how a company and organization works and decision making process behind different things is behind closed doors. And I like where you say, observe and look around? And who were the people that consumed the conversation? Who are the people that step back, observe, but when they speak, it's with purpose. And it's, it's well received? Who are the people that kind of are the decision makers to say yes or no. But one of the things too, is people will come with ideas, it may be an amazing idea. But it maybe not aligned specifically with the initiatives or of the organization, or also thinking of that sweet combination, where it's how is this idea going to benefit the customer, the employees, the team, but also align with the company as well. So when you can think and anticipate two steps ahead of where that idea might align with the various areas within the organization that's going to help you in coming to it and having it be received or thought of as influence.
So seeking out that insight, because not, not all organizations make that information transparent. And if you're not involved in some of these closer conversations, you might not have access to it. So don't try to guess don't try to read people's minds. My old boss always used to say don't call the baby ugly, it was one of the biggest lessons I had an influence because he would say, every time we come in with our new idea enthusiastically, we are challenging the current way of doing things, which is somebody's baby, somebody's emotionally attached to the current way of doing things. And we can't know who that is, or what those sensitivities are without doing our due diligence. So if you always assume there's more information than what you have available to you, it will motivate you to seek out more people or you know, access to different sources of information to help you put together a more compelling story.
Find a mentor
Not everybody has that exposure to those conversations that happen behind the scenes. Reaching out to your mentor, especially if you're a mentor is somebody that is involved in those conversations that creates a safe place to have the discussions of, hey, here's this idea that I'm coming from, and either that person could be an advocate for you and help bring that idea to life. He, or they might be able to provide some perspective and saying, Hey, that is a great idea. Maybe here are some things that we want to flush out and anticipate, to align with some of the things that are going on that maybe you may not be aware of.
If you don't feel like you have a mentor in that space, seek one out. And that's where listening to whose names come up over and over again, is really gives you really good clues about who would be helpful to build some relationships with.
So what are three things that you want to leave our listeners with that to help them in speaking up for themselves?
Trust that you belong in every room that you enter. I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we face, we doubt ourselves.
Advocate for yourself through the lens of how does it help others not just myself.
Don't avoid politics because you will undermine your own influence, build relationships, be out there gathering information, talking to people, even if it feels like it's counterproductive, your To Do lists will get done faster in the long run, if you have this network of powerful influencers.
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