Hello everyone - welcome! Today's webinar is How to Get Promoted to the Executive Suite Before Your Next Performance Review. I am an executive coach and a promotion strategist. So, what does that mean for you? That means that it's my job to figure out why you're not getting promoted into those higher-level executive positions. I have made it my mission to get more women into the C-suite. I am doubling the number of women that get promoted into those higher-level executive positions each and every year worldwide. And I do that through things like this webinar. I have also written a book that comes out later this year called Promotions Made Easy, and my podcast - Maximize Your Career with Stacy Mayer - that you can find on iTunes; and my executive coaching programs like Executive Ahead of Time, which I will share more information with you later on at the end of today's training. 

But to get us started, I want to share with you a little story. Let's talk about Christine. So, Christine is a vice president of human resources, and she reports directly to the CEO. So, let's stop there for a second. She is the top of her line in human resources, and she reports directly to the CEO. So, she should be the CHRO. But why isn't she? I see this all the time, so why isn't she the chief human resources officer? And if you look at it from the CEO's perspective, she doesn't even merit the officer title, even though she heads up the entire HR department. 

Why? Because number one, she doesn't have a strategy. Number two, she does what she is told. And number three, she is too good at her job. Her CEO didn't want to lose her from running the entire department. In fact, he would have hired a CHRO and put her underneath this person. That is why she doesn't have the C-suite title. There is a chasm between where you are now and the leader that you want to become. A chasm that has to be crossed first, but you might not even know it's there. You sense it because sometimes it's right in front of your face. It's when you get a glowing performance review, but not a promotion. It's when your colleague's title changes, but yours doesn't. It's when you receive a special project, but no additional compensation. 

So today - good news for you - I'm going to give you that missing piece. I'm going to show you how to cross this chasm and in the blink of an eye, you're going to be on the other side. So, what are we going to fix? Let's look at Christine's challenge. If I was coaching her eight years ago when I used to work in women's leadership in Silicon Valley, there would have been three things that I would have focused on. I would have made sure that her boss knew how great of a job she was doing, so I would have reiterated and reinforced all of this hard work that she's already putting into her job. 

I would have told her how to tackle her imposter syndrome. Make sure you put yourself out there. Are you up for the challenge? All of those great things; and I would have encouraged her to speak up more. Share her voice, be louder. And all of those things would have worked. They would have helped Christine feel better. They would have helped her feel more involved at work. Maybe she would even feel accomplished. But the problem is, none of those things would have actually led to her getting promoted. She would have just become a better vice president of human resources. So how many of you have been there too? Kavita already said 'Yes, that's me right there in that spot right now'. Let us know inside the chat. MN, Pack - you guys are all right there. Victoria: Yes. Because you are an excellent manager. Your team loves you. You receive above average performance reviews. You're essentially ready for that C-suite executive position. Yet you still get passed over for promotion. So, it's clear that it's not your ability that's the problem - it's not that you're not ready for that position. It's simply because you haven't done the work to get yourself in that position, because maybe you had other priorities. You want it to be good at your job. You had your family that you wanted. You had other interests. You weren't always focused on career ambitions. 

And the other reason is - is that you didn't know what to do differently. As women, we already know that we're excluded from the conversation. That's why having communities - like even today's webinar and I appreciate how much you guys are already participating inside of the chat. That's why it's important to have communities like Executive Ahead of Time, my program, because we're connecting with other women and having those conversations about why - why aren't we getting the money and the title? What is really holding us back? 

Now, besides the fact that you deserve recognition, and you should be promoted and all of those great things, I want you to understand why now is the time. I'm really all about the practical results, and there is a very big thing that is happening right now, and it's called the great resignation. And you have heard of this, and you've experienced this. Your team is leaving. You're picking up the pieces. Maybe you're ready to get the heck out of Dodge. Whatever that is, opportunities are opening up. But here's the trend, and this is what I want you guys to really understand - is that my women, my graduates of Executive Ahead of Time have choices. They have more choices now than ever before. There are companies that are offering them more money - their company that has been promising them a promotion for years - now realize that they better step up to the plate or they're going to lose her. 

The other thing is - is that we all know that employees value diversity and leadership. This is a commitment that many organizations have, yet they can't find you. They say, 'Oh, we don't have qualified candidates', so I want you guys to take it back. We're going to take ownership of our career, starting today. If you haven't done it already, today is your day. No more. You're never going to be able to go backwards. Today is the day that we start taking ownership of our career because we're going to get ourselves into those C-suite positions. 

This is how we are changing business from the inside out - from the executive suite out. We're going to do the work. We're going to put ourselves out there in a different way. Not the same way that I talked about that we would normally do. We're going to do something different. We're going to chart our own path. And today I'm going to give you that promotion blueprint. 

At the end of today's training, you're going to know how to build outlines across your organization. You know, those people that say, 'Hey, Anisha, I need you on my team. Come work for me. And here's more money'. You're going to feel confident communicating with other executives so those people that you would never dare reach out to, I'm going to show you exactly how to reach out to them; and you're going to get all eyes on you for those promotion opportunities. 

Yes. And if you don't know exactly how to do the steps that I'm teaching you today, I'm going to give you some time for a Q&A at the end so you can get all of your questions answered. I want to make sure that each one of you feels like you have exactly what you need to get yourself into those higher-level positions. And I'm going to show you a way that we can take this work even deeper inside of my Executive Ahead of Time group coaching intensive - so that we can really apply everything that you're learning today and put it into action and catapult your career. Quite frankly, get the recognition you deserve, get paid and get the title. Ready? 

So let me tell you a little bit about what's going on for you, why you're feeling stuck - what those pieces are. So, today's women see things differently - you see things differently - you do not want to get promoted into an executive position so you can do everything that everybody else does. This is why so many of you aren't even going for the promotion because you hate the executive team already. You're like, 'I don't want to be like them'. So, don't. Don't be like them. But you have this unique skill set - what you bring to the table; but the problem is that unique skill set - that thing that only you can do - is actually keeping you stuck exactly where you are. 

So, you've heard of the glass ceiling, that invisible glass ceiling above us that we have to crash through to get into executive leadership? Well, I don't think it's glass. I think it's actually pretty dark and pretty clear, and it's called your subject matter expertise. There is an SME ceiling that is blocking you from making it into that next level of leadership. It is your unique skill set, that thing that only you can do, that is keeping you exactly where you are. And the thing is - nobody's going to tell you this. We're going to our bosses for advice about what it's going to take to get to that next level and what boss is going to tell you, 'Stop being less. Stop being so much of an expert'. What boss is going to tell you, ‘you need to be less of a subject matter expert’? No one. That's why you have to be in rooms like this, so that you can learn. Let's get real here. What is actually holding you back? And it could be that you're too good at your job. We need to start understanding that getting recognized for being good at our job is not a reward. A promotion is not a reward for your hard work. 

The title of today's webinar is Get Promoted Before Your Next Performance Review. We're going to actively take steps. We're not going to sit at our desk and try and be better at our job thinking that promotions just happen. Now, up until this point in your career, they probably did. That's what's so great about being a subject matter expert, and I'm not knocking it at all because I think this is why us, as women, are so incredible because we're just really good at everything that we do. But I want you to get paid and get the title to match. So, I talked about my book that I have coming out later this year, and I was working on my marketing campaign, and we have to come up with some hashtags and things that we're going to share about the book. And I wanted to share a couple of them with you, so it really gives you insight into my brain and what it is that I really want for you. So, two hashtags - #nokudosthankyou and #showmethemoney. Amy, actually write that in the chat: #nokudosthankyou and #showmethemoney. If you're with me, say, 'Heck, yeah!' Because you were tired of being undervalued and underappreciated. And now it's important to take the steps necessary to get promoted into those executive leadership positions. And sometimes in order to do that, we have to start acting like - not sometimes, but this is what we're going to do - Start acting like that executive leader. Excellent. Yes, lots of "heck yes". I love it. Shona, thank you. Show me the money. That's awesome. 

So, what are we going to do? It starts with managing your promotions like you manage your work. So how do you do your work? You plan two weeks out, you plan three months out, you plan six months out. If you have a quarterly target, you work on that target for the entire year. You don't show up at your performance review and negotiate for your promotion. That's like expecting to meet your quota at the last week before the deadline, and you're just scrambling. So, here's what you're going to do instead. You're going to do the three steps that I am about to share with you and break down in much detail. 

Number one, you're going to proactively build relationships with all of the executive team. Now you've heard this before, you've heard about mentors and sponsors - my process is quite different and actually much more effective. You're going to pull yourself out of the weeds. You're going to lift your head up from your desk, from your subject matter expertise and do something different. I'm going to share with you how easy that can be and how you can start implementing it this week. And you're going to have that bigger vision for your career in your life and really own it. 

So, let's break that down. Setting yourself up for an executive level promotion starts with you understanding that you can no longer rely on your subject matter expertise to get ahead. Again, I want to reiterate - your subject matter expertise is amazing. It's what got you here. I am not knocking your subject matter expertise, but what I am saying - we cannot rely on it to get to those higher-level executive positions. So, what you're going to start to do is shift perception. So right now, even if you're in a VP level role - I mean, my friends, I have had CTO's inside of Executive Ahead of Time, chief strategy officers inside of Executive Ahead of Time, all looking to figure out why they can't be the strategic leader that they want to be. So subject matter expertise does not always equal title. That's why this process is about becoming that Executive Ahead of Time. So, you can do this at whatever level you're at - start to shift perception from subject matter expertise to being seen as an executive leader. So, Christine, in my earlier example, this is why she didn't have a voice at the table. Even though she was invited to the table, she didn't have that voice because she was just seen as a subject matter expert. She wasn't getting paid and acknowledged for her ideas. She was getting paid and acknowledged for the amount of hours that she put in. 

And we're going to start to change that, my friends. Harvard Business Review conducted a survey of CEOs and how they manage their time. And you can imagine, their ability to manage their time was dependent on how effective their executive team was. And the qualities that they admired in their executive team were trust - trust that they could operate at an executive level. My clients get told all the time that they're not ready. This is because they're not seen as an executive leader. So, you have to understand what it means to be seen as an executive. Alignment - understanding that they are aligned with the company vision and objectives, having long term strategy versus short term strategy, being reactive, the status quo - what’s happening, but being able to push that envelope, go outside of the status quo. Talk about obstacles, challenges, have very open, freeing conversations. I mean, this is what you want. This is why you want to be in that higher level executive position. And we can actually start doing this now - because these qualities that CEOs admire in their executive teams are the exact qualities that the executive team admires in their executives. So, you're going to start acting like that executive by doing these things. Now I want to point something out to you here. Each one of these qualities are communication techniques. I'll say that again. How does your executive know that you have trust alignment, long term vision, think outside of the status quo? It's because of how you communicate. 

That is why you can start to shift this perception today - yesterday. You're going to start letting your boss know how your work aligns with the organization's vision. You're going to reiterate long term strategy, even if it sounds redundant. Of course, they know. No, you're going to start saying those words out loud. That is how you're going to start building trust that you're ready to succeed at that executive level and you are shifting perception. You're no longer going to be seen as the subject matter expert. You're going to be seen as the executive leader. 

So, I want to do a little communication survey with you here. Pull up your chat and let me know. I'm going to ask you this question - so think about your last meeting with your boss or your team meeting: How much, what percentage of that meeting did you communicate only about your subject matter expertise? So put a number on it - you might have to make it up, but is it 60 percent, 90 percent, 95 percent of the meeting was about my subject matter expertise. 100 percent. Oh my gosh. Yes, exactly. I'm so glad you're here. Yes, Kerry. 70 percent Ronnie. Yes. 25 percent. That's awesome. Too much. I get told to stay in my lane. Isn't that fun, Catherine? That is not what I want. I do not want to be told to stay in my lane. 100 percent. 

All right, my friends, what we're going to start to do, it doesn't matter, even those of you who are in the 40 percent and 50 percent, which is quite excellent. If you're still not getting the recognition that you deserve you are going to start shifting your communication by five percent. So, you have your number there, and I want you to change the way you’re communicating with your boss, or in the leadership team meetings only by five percent - only - only by five percent. So, this is reminding you that your subject matter expertise matters. I care about that. I want you to continue to be good at your job. But let's start doing these things. Let's start having alignment. Kavita, this is what it means. You're going to - instead of just going into the details, going into the weeds, you're going to first say, 'this is how this ties into what the CEO is working on, what the organization is working on. This is how, what I'm about to share with you - all the details, all the weeds, all of the things I'm working on - this is my long-term vision'. And you're going to do it over and over and over again. And that's why I say it's only five percent - which - five percent means a sentence. So, you're going to start to think like an executive leader. You're going to communicate strategy; you're going to communicate obstacles. Don't spend the entire meeting talking about obstacles. Just say one of the things we need to watch out for is 'x y z' then go into the weeds. That is how you're going to start to shift communication, and this is why my graduates of Executive Ahead of Time receive immediate results. They start to hear from their bosses that 'wow, that was the best one on one I've ever had with you', because their bosses are craving this. 

Now, once you start doing this level of communication, you are going to realize that you are a true and total corporate badass. So honestly, my mission is to create a world full of corporate badasses. We are changing the world. We as women are changing the world and we have to start to realize the power that we truly have. And this is how we're going to change corporations from the C-suite out - and it's working. Corporate badasses are infiltrating the executive suite. So, I want you to tell us in the chat what your corporate badass-ness is in terms of a title. So, if you have your C-suite title; so, identify what it's going to be. Catherine - CFO. Let us know. Let's all own it right now. Let's put those - that big vision - so maybe you're not even close to the CHR. Chief impact officer. There are so many CIO's - the 'I' means something different every single time. So, thank you. Excellent.

So, step number one, you are already on your way to the C-suite by naming it. And Andrea, I love it. Vice President of CS. It doesn't always have to be a C-suite title. You know what you know, you know the impact that you want to be making. I just love the C-suite titles because they're a little bit outside of our comfort zone. What would it mean - what would I need to start doing if I wanted to make it to a COO someday? I love it. 

I want to share with you the story of Janine, and why a promotion matters. And specifically, why going for a promotion really matters - like why it matters not to just accidentally get promoted, but to specifically take action steps to get there. So, Janine is the vice president of sales at her organization. She reports directly to the CBO. So again, she's a VP reporting directly to the C-suite. And she was told several times by her boss to just keep doing what she's doing. She made her professional development aspiration known. He said, 'Yep, you're doing great, just keep doing what you're doing'. Yet when a senior vice president role came up, who got it? Not her - somebody from the outside - they hired outside. And so, she goes to her boss and she's like, 'What happened? I wanted this role. Like, we talked about this role', and he said, 'Oh, don't worry about it. That position wasn't right for you. We'll have something for you soon. Just sit tight. Keep doing what you're doing'. We all know where this is headed. Years and years go by, and you keep doing what you're doing. Now, old strategy - before you came on to today's webinar, what would you have done? One of two things - you would go back to your desk, and you would focus on your family or whatever, and you'd be like, 'Okay, title doesn't matter. I'm not going to worry about it. I like my job. It's fine. I'll stay here. I'll figure it out'. Or you'll start looking elsewhere. You'll be like, 'Screw it, I'm out of here'. 

Now, I want to offer you another solution. You've already heard me say it - become the Executive Ahead of Time, focus on shifting perception. What your boss is really telling you is that he doesn't perceive you as an executive leader. So, we got work to do. That's why she didn't get promoted - is just because of her perception. So, she got clear on her long-term career goals. She made sure she was elevating those conversations. When I say that five percent, she knocked it up, she made sure that this is what was happening, and she started building allies with the entire executive team using a process that I'm going to share with you here in a few minutes called 15-minute ally meetings. So, she does this and she gets promoted. She gets promoted to a senior vice president position in just six months, not two years. And not only that - and here's what I really want you guys to hear - because she was intentional about building those relationships and advocating for her promotion; because she made it known that she also wants to become the chief business officer someday. She shared about her C-suite ambitions. She created an extraordinary relationship with her CEO. He didn't he didn't even know her name. And then all of a sudden, he is putting her in front of other teams internationally, saying, 'You have to listen to Janine. Janine has some great ideas.' So now she's presenting across the organization. And on top of that, she received a ginormous bonus. So, her boss - so she got a new boss with this promotion - and her new boss said, 'Janine, I'm going to give you a $30000 bonus. Everybody else got their regular bonus - $2000, but I'm giving you a thirty thousand bonus with no strings attached. But I want you to know the reason that I am giving you this bonus is because of your powerful executive leadership.' She received that bonus, not because she was great at her job, but because she had shifted perception - she was now a part of the leadership table because of her powerful executive presence. She received more money. 

So, I ask you, what would you do with an additional $30.000? Janine put it towards her children's education. What would you do? Let us know in the chat - if you received a $30,000 bonus - not because of the hours that you put in, but because of your ideas. First of all, I would go out and celebrate and be like, 'Dang, I figured this out. I am where I want to be'. And then, like Kavita said, I would invest, or I would go on that vacation. Celebrate! Because you are now at the table. And because you advocated for your promotion and it didn't just happen, you continue to have this voice. Yes. Save for retirement. Invest. My friends, this is a really big deal because we need to start getting paid like an executive. We need to get the titles of executive leadership, and it starts with shifting this perception. Level-up you’re learning. Yes, Sandy - join us in Executive Ahead of Time. I'll give you the chance at the end. Yeah, but there's lots of ways that we can do that. Invest in your side hustle. Yes. This is so good. 

So, you're a corporate badass. You are elevating those conversations with leadership. You're advocating. And then here is the icing on the cake. This is the piece that brings everything together, my friends. 15-minute ally meetings. You are going to build relationships across the organization with all of the executive team, with people in random areas. You have heard about the concept of mentors and sponsors. We all know that other people have to know how great we are, it can't just be us. We can't be the only ones advocating for our promotion. We already know that. And so, what we try and do - and the old, old way before today's webinar - is we go out and we find that perfect mentor. So, what do those conversations look like? They're an hour long, two hours long. They're kind of stressful because people are important and you want to appear good and smart, and then you also don't want to appear too much like a high potential. I actually don't want you guys to be seen as high potential, I want you to be seen as an executive. So, you can't be like, 'Oh, teach me', and I'm down here. You want to be the executive; you want to be peer to peer. So, these meetings, mentors are very problematic. Instead, we're going to do these 15-minute ally meetings, and it's brilliant. 

The premise is simple: you're going to meet with multiple people across your organization at regular intervals for 15 minutes at a time. That's it. Only 15 minutes and a whole bunch of people. So, let me clarify - these conversations are not about work. You're not meeting with them, about work, you're not even necessarily meeting with them, about - for advice like you would to a mentor. You are connecting with people all across your organization. One, because we don't know who's going to actually help us. We think we know, but we really don't. It's always that surprising person that ends up coming out of it. It really helps us. And the other thing is, it's only 15 minutes, so it takes that pressure off. So, if the conversation is not amazing, we are okay. We survive. We're still exactly where we were before. It's only 15 minutes. And in these conversations, these are networking conversations - they're not about work. You're not checking in with them about your projects. You're building trust, you're shifting perception, you're showing up as the Executive Ahead of Time. 

These are the qualities that matter to the executive team, just like Ronnie. Oh, you can't read this. She's shared it with the host and panelist, but she says in here, she says, 'we launched a Women in Leadership program in 2018. And then last year, even in the midst of the pandemic, launched a gender allyship program, and these cohorts engage with each other. Allyship is key to changing culture'. Yes, my friends, we want to be in an executive position because we want collaboration, because we want connection. This is all about the process so that we can be successful once we become that C-suite leader. So that's another reason. So, allies help us get there and then allies help us be successful once we get in that executive position. 

Let me tell you about Tenisha. Tenisha was a business director at her organization. She managed 200 people. She worked 60-hour weeks and weekends. She was phenomenal at her job, but she hated it. She knew that something had to change. So, she had a few mentors, but it didn't seem like she had any leverage at her company. It wasn't really working. So, she implemented this 15-minute ally approach instead. She built relationships with everyone. Her CHRO, her CMO, her boss's boss, the head of DTI. She made sure every executive at her company knew who she was and what she stood for as a leader. And she started to get noticed. People started to recognize her, and it was great; but unfortunately, it looked a little bit like kudos. She received an award, and it wasn't a monetary award. It was a vacation that she could take after the pandemic. Like, 'we'll see' vacation. And that got her fired up even more. She was like, 'No, I am looking for a VP title. I want to get paid like my peers.' She wasn't asking to get paid more - so she kept going. She kept going with these 15-minute meetings. She started showing those executives that she was ready for more, and she really became that Executive Ahead of Time. Then she received the call that mattered - the call from her CMO, the person that she had had one 15-minute ally conversation with her three months earlier. And she said, 'I want you on my team. I am going to create a role for you, and I want you to ask for everything you want, title, compensation and team'. 

She now has a higher title, higher pay, and more time freedom. She is an executive leader, and you can do that too. So over and over again, I have watched this three-step process succeed - women get double promotions with this process in a six-month period. They have received skip level promotions. Now they are senior vice presidents and C-suite executives. I believe that this is what women's leadership is. It's not just getting pats on the back and kudos. It's about being in a position to actually influence your organization in a positive way. And in order to do that, my friends, you need a title. 

Women's leadership should be about getting more women into the C-suite, not just simply making them better workers. Remember Christine? They were going to hire somebody else above her, even though Christine could do that C-suite role, and we need to change that. And the only way we're going to do that is to give Christine the tools to step up and to step into that role. To give Carmen the tools to become a CPO. Julie - the tools, Sandy, the tools. Every single one of you has what it takes to succeed at the higher executive level. And it starts with this three-step blueprint. 

So, I encourage you to put this into practice, to try it out. Get clear on your long-term career goals, to elevate those conversations with your boss, and to build allies using 15-minute outline meetings with all of the members of the executive team. When you do this, you will get recognized. You will get paid and you will get promoted. My mission is to change the way that we do business. I am bringing more diversity to the leadership table by doubling the number of women promoted into the C-suite each year worldwide. And that starts with you. You are an incredible manager. Your organization needs you in a higher executive leadership position, and now it is time to put what I have shared with you in action. 

So, here's what I want to offer you. I want to offer that you join me inside of the Executive Ahead of Time program, so that I can work with you in more than just this one hour webinar; and I can help you clear out all the distractions so that you can work on exactly what it's going to take to actually advance your career to that next level of leadership. Here's what I teach inside of the Executive Ahead of Time program - all of the skills that we have just covered: getting out of the weeds, communicating more effectively with your boss, building trust across your organization. And these fall under six specific steps. 

They're really only six things that you ever need to do to get promoted to the executive suite. You have to communicate at that higher level. You have to make executive level decisions. You have to manage your emotions so that you can build trust with the executive team. You have to build trust using 15-minute ally meetings all across the organization. You have to hold yourself accountable so that you can stay focused on your career development. And you have to think and communicate like an executive leader. 

When you join Executive Ahead of Time, you get this six-step process on demand in six classrooms, and the training is yours to keep for life. You want to go through this process and focus on two things - thinking and communicating like a senior executive leader. Manage your emotions and then communicate your value as an executive leader so that you can really build allies all across the organization. 

My client, Jennifer, has gone through this process four times. She was also most recently promoted to senior vice president, and she says every time she goes through the Executive Ahead of Time process, she approaches it with a new level of awareness, because she herself has grown to higher levels of executive leadership. And she goes out and she applies that information differently, and then she builds even more powerful relationships across her organization. Now you get this on demand, but one of the things if you're like me and this is what I experienced when I buy programs, is that I go through the steps, but I have questions, and I'm not sure exactly if this applies to me or how it applies to me and all the different nuances of it. So, I wanted to find a way that I could really give you specific coaching from me every single week so that you can figure out how this applies to your unique situation. 

So, each week inside of the program, we are all going to get together on Zoom and you're going to get direct executive coaching from me. Now, I could have made this a totally separate program, a coaching program all by itself, but I decided to go all in because I wanted you to get the immediate impact of this work. Now, as a woman, I know you don't have other women always to talk about your career challenges, to motivate you, to call you on your craft. So, in addition to the weekly group coaching for me, you'll also receive coaching from other powerhouse executives. So, we're going to meet in a weekly roundtable discussion. So, these are women who have been on this executive path with me for many, many years and been promoted to the vice president and C-suite positions. So, you will meet with these women in facilitated breakout rooms, and that is how you start to build this professional community of other women. You share what's working; you share your challenges, and you get feedback. It's the community that you've always dreamed of. 

The other thing that happens when you become the Executive Ahead of Time is that you start interviewing. So once you start to take back your career, you feel inspired to put yourself out there and to go on interviews, whether it's internally or externally. And so, as a bonus, when you enroll for Executive Ahead of Time, you get an entire Interview Mastery course - and it's a bonus supplement that you get to do. Ann - She said it seems weird to tell your boss that you want your job. It's okay, I'll tell you how to do it here at the end in the Q&A. It does feel weird, but you're going to do it. So, you're going to get the entire Interview Mastery course and you're also going to get, Be Seen as a Thought Leader, because you guys have so much more to accomplish before you retire. You guys have more - your next promotion is just the beginning of the impact that you want to be making at your organization. So, these bonuses are free to you when you join Executive Ahead of Time. So let me recap here. This is what you're going to get. You get the six-step process, and you get lifetime access to the video trainings, you get weekly group coaching from me, you get weekly roundtable discussions and a Voxer community - so that you can get 'in the moment' coaching as well as connecting with the other leaders inside of the community. And this is easily a $10.000 Program, but you get everything inside everything as I've laid it out for you for $2000. 

You will learn to think and communicate like an executive leader, and you get lifetime access so you can work on it over and over and over again so you can make more- way more than $2000. Now, many of you are ready, and I encourage you just to go to Executive Ahead of Time and sign up, go right now and register. Don't look the other way. But you also still have questions. There were some questions in the chat that I want to take some minutes to answer. We still have 10 - 15 minutes to answer any of your questions. So, start typing them in. And as we're doing that and get them ready for the Q&A. Oh yeah, and we have a couple of hands raised here, so I'll also call on you. And I want to give you some of the milestones that we hit inside of that program, which is that you get clarity on your long-term career goals. So many of you posted your C-suite role. You talked about what that would look like, but do you really believe it? Is that - what are the nuances to that? It's not just the title that you want. You also want to be making the impact. 

And so, I asked the group, how many of you now have very precise and exact clarity on your long-term career goals? And 100 percent of the participants said, without a doubt, the answer is yes - 100 percent of the participants. And if you're somebody who doesn't have clarity on your long-term career goals and you don't know the nuances of it, you know the importance of having that clarity; and then inside of Executive Ahead of Time - I have a plan to get promoted. I have an actual plan. 

Now you joined us today because it's not clear - it's not exactly clear what it's going to take to get into that higher level executive position. It might be clearer now that you've watched my webinar, but then it becomes, 'well, what do those conversations look like? Well, who do I meet with? Well, what are the nuances of my long-term career vision? Well, what if my boss says this?' And so that's why we do the six-week program together - as a unit - so that we make sure that we're actually taking action. What is the one trait you think factors into most of these women getting promoted? Thank you, Lena. That's a great question. The number one trait - so this is actually I got asked this at a networking event probably about four years ago, and it's actually the opening chapter of my book. What is the number one thing that you need to start doing if you want to get promoted into a higher-level executive position? And the answer is: deliberately manage your career and life. That is what you're going to start doing. You know that a promotion is not a reward for your hard work. And so, to answer Lena's question, it's like, 'What are we doing? We're head down. We're just doing our job. Life is just happening to us. And when I give women the tools to deliberately manage their career in life, it's like the ultimate storm. It's like the perfect storm. Because I'm not joking - you are ready for a higher-level executive position. You may not have the executive relationships that you need to succeed at that level, but the process that I teach helps you build those executive relationships. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room, and you see it all the time. They're clearly not always the smartest people in the room. You don't have to know all of the answers; but when you start to deliberately manage your career, you start to figure out what it is that you're doing that's keeping you stuck. Amy, do we have any more questions? Let's see here - I am trying to go through the questions. 'The VP of engineering is one of my new mentors. Do I actually tell him that this is my long-term goal and ask for specific advice? I just got into management last year.' Okay, so I'm going to answer Kat's question, and then somebody else had a very similar question, more like for their boss - tell my boss that I want their job someday. And actually, I did this back in the day. I remember telling one of my bosses that I wanted her job someday. And I started laughing - like when I said it - because it sounded so fricking ridiculous. And she was like, 'Oh, interesting'. And what it did is it opened up this amazing conversation about honesty. We were able to be very truthful with each other. She was able to tell me where I lacked, what I needed to really do to step up and we were able to open the door. 

Now the fact is that you don't all have that kind of open relationship with your boss. So, this is where the nuance of the coaching gets involved. So, to one person, it makes a lot of sense that you actually ask your boss for their job someday. And then to somebody else, it's going to make more sense to talk about your long-term career goals. To somebody else, it's going to make more sense to not talk about your career goals at all, but instead be that executive - to talk about the vision of what you're working on. So, we think that the only way we can get promoted is to actually go in and say, 'Hey, I want this job', but that's not actually the case. 

The way that we're getting promoted is to shift perception so that we're starting to be seen like the executive leader. So, there was a question earlier about - what if I speak up too much? So, if you're the type of person that's constantly raising their hand and saying, 'I want a promotion, I want a promotion, I want a promotion. When am I going to get my promotion?' Well, quite frankly, most of us as women are more intuitive than that, and we're not doing that. But maybe we ask once and then we're like, 'Well, they'll give it to us, or they know.' But you've heard that person who just keeps asking for the promotion, but they're not actually doing anything to show that they're ready to grow. And so, what we have to do instead is focus on becoming that Executive Ahead of Time - not just asking for the promotion over and over and over again. 

Carla said she added a question to the Q&A. 'What does it mean to think and communicate like an executive leader, especially as a woman working in a male driven company? Won't we create a problem once we get to that level, if we have trained ourselves just to act like an old male guard?' Carla - first of all, I need to thank you for this question. So often we have been taught in order to get ahead in executive leadership that we have to sound and be like the other people in the room. And I beg you, please don't do that. Don't become a white male to get promoted into a higher-level executive position. My goal is to bring more diversity to the leadership table, and that looks and acts and feels exactly like you. Now how do we do that? 

We bring the feminine to executive leadership. So, here's a really great example. Inherently - and now this is totally stereotypical - an inherently female or feminine trait is to be collaborative, that we like to involve other people, that we like to have conversations. We don't want to just have power over people and tell people what they need to do. Yet we've been approaching our promotion opportunities like that. So, we just have to go in and be more forceful, or be louder, or sound like the men in the room, or engage and get louder, get feistier like whatever it is that they're doing, and we just have to be more like them. And what I'm suggesting is collaboration. So, 15-minute ally meetings, in and of themselves, are created to collaborate. You're actually having very open, short conversations with people. The reason the 15-minute ally meetings were created is so that we could connect. 

How many of you lost your executive level connections once the pandemic hit and you started going to Zoom? Now, everybody turns their screen off and it's like, we don't even matter anymore. And so that is such a huge challenge, especially for women. So, I am bringing you - you are just having one on one conversations - the best way that you can start to become yourself. And that is what I mean by bringing more diversity to the table. We're going to get promoted in a way that works for us so that we have those real allies, so that we're building those relationships all along the way. And then at some point, if we decide that that company is not the right organization for us, we move on. I have a whole course inside of Executive Ahead of Time for you to follow the step-by-step process, to go out and find another job, to interview as that executive leader. So, Amanda asked, 'how do you approach the executives to schedule the 15-minute meetings?' So, it could be - depending on the person - as simple as 'I'd like to have a coffee chat, a virtual coffee chat.' It could be as simple as 'let's have a check in'. We don't want to make it hugely agenda driven in our request. And you also want to request to just have 15 minutes with this person. And so, you could say 'I haven't seen you for a while. I would love to schedule a 15-minute check in'. That is - this type of meeting is - a way for you to get in front of them and you're going to be having lots of these conversations. I recommend having three 15-minute ally meetings a month and they're only 15 minutes. So that's 45 minutes a month that you're doing to actively build those executive relationships. And it works wonders.

One of the biggest things is that nobody is doing this. Nobody is actively building 15-minute allies. And so, when you start to show up in that way, you get noticed, you get recognized. We had a graduate of the last Executive Ahead of Time, and she had a meeting with her general manager; and she said to the group that it couldn't have gone better. But here's the reason why. So first of all, she schedules the 15 minutes, 15 minutes with her general manager, and she was a director level, so she's not even supposed to be talking to her general manager. Inside of the meeting, he starts asking her about her long-term career goals. She didn't come in there just spouting them off and telling him, she was just connecting with him. She was asking for words of wisdom, words of advice like, 'you know, we haven't seen each other for a while. It would be great to connect and hear what you're working on.' She didn't try and solve his problems. And so, at the end of the conversation, he brings up some questions for her, which is always better. If you're in sales, you know, it's always better to have the other person ask you. So, this was amazing. But here is why that meeting was such a win for her. This is why it felt so powerful for her to have that meeting. She said to us, the reason it felt so good is because she had no expectation of the outcome. It didn't matter to her how it went. Now, normally, what she would do in a 15-minute meeting with an executive that high, is she would make it very agenda driven. 'We have to talk about these things. What's the purpose?' The purpose is to get a promotion or make sure I get in front of him, or that he starts to see me in a certain way. And she remembered my advice to her, which was just do the meeting and have no cares about how it goes. Simply doing the meeting is what matters. And she did it. She followed my process. She followed the scripts that I give you inside of Executive Ahead of Time, and she did it. And then he started asking her what she wanted next. Oh, fifteen minutes is up. Time to go. And he said, 'Can we do this again? Let's schedule another meeting.' It could literally could not have gone better.

Now I want to recognize and honor all of your time as well, and we are at the hour. Amy - keep track of all the questions. If I didn't get to your question, I will email you a response and I will answer each and every one of your questions. If you have anything that you need from me, please email me. I'm happy to answer anything about Executive Ahead of Time. Again, when you join us inside of the program, you're going to get all of the six core training modules that you can watch on your own time. This is over like 8-10 hours of course training that you get lifetime access to; you're going to get weekly group coaching from me. You're also going to get weekly roundtable discussions with the other women inside of the group, as well as the other women inside of my executive path. So, people who have used this process to get to the C-suite, you're going to be meeting and networking with them. All of this is inside of Executive Ahead of Time. I am so honored to be your guide on this journey because your organization needs you at a higher executive level more than you need them. So go out there, get yourself promoted, and I can't wait to see how you start changing organizations from the C-suite out. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Jennifer. Audrey. Wonderful. Email me your questions, and I can't wait to see you get promoted. Take care. Bye.