Hello and welcome to another episode of Maximize Your Career. I'm your host, Stacy Mayer, and super excited to be here with you again this year. This is my first live episode that I'm recording in the beginning of 2022, and I am so thrilled to welcome you into another powerful year as a total corporate badass. If you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you have clearly made steps in the right direction; not only to get yourself promoted into a higher-level position, but to really start making that bigger level of impact that you want to be making at work. 

And if you're new to my podcast - welcome, we are so excited to have you here. This is going to be an absolutely fantastic year, not only for the work that I'm doing inside of women's leadership. I call it Women's Leadership 2.0 - really asking for that promotion, making sure that we set ourselves up to have success once we get into those higher-level positions because nobody wants to be promoted into the C-suite just to be pushed aside and not have a voice at the room. So, I am so excited to have you here and you're going to be getting so much out of this podcast. I'm thrilled for you. 

Now in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about decisions. Decisions that you've been making in your career, but also how you can start to articulate those decisions to other people. Now, in terms of my philosophy of getting promoted into executive leadership, basically everything that I teach you - inside of this podcast, in my book Promotions Made Easy, and also in my executive coaching programs - is all about how to shift perception; so that executive leaders at your organization start to see you as one of them as somebody who can really command that voice at the table, as somebody they can trust to put in front of the CEO or their board of directors, or to make powerful decisions for the organization at a higher level.

And one of the ways that we're going to do that is by shifting how we communicate. And one of the ways that we're going to do that is to show our boss and the executive team how we think, because you are already making powerful decisions at your organization. But I believe chances are good if you're not in the role that you really want to be and you're not able to make the impact that you want to make - you're not actually showing your work. You're not showing the leadership team how you think about things. You're taking it for granted and you're keeping all of that good stuff to yourself. 

And so, in today's episode, I'm going to show you how to actually begin communicating about how you think, how you're making decisions for your organization, how you think about higher level problems and how you problem solve at that executive level. Because once you're able to communicate in that way, then other people will start to see you as that senior executive leader, hence Executive Ahead of Time. So, I'm going to be talking a lot about decisions today. 

Now, the first thing that I want to point out is that you've probably been told before - especially if you've been in a women's leadership program or read a lot of books about women's leadership - that you need to share about your accomplishments. And maybe you've even had some success doing this. And if that's the case, fantastic. But I like to take everything one step further, and I think that it's very difficult - as women in particular - to share about our accomplishments. And the biggest reason why that's so challenging is because that's not how we're wired. We're wired - and this is a generalization - but for the most part, it feels uncomfortable to talk about ourselves. We're used to talking about other people. We're willing to brag for our team. We're willing to go to bat for our team. But when it comes to ourselves, it just doesn't feel - we don't feel motivated to do that. So, we're told in a program that we needed to speak about our accomplishments, and we try and do it; but it feels very awkward and strange, and maybe it doesn't produce the result that we want. Our boss is like, 'Okay, that's great - so what?' And then you're like, 'Oh my god, I'll never do that again.' Because it doesn't feel good. 

And what I always teach is that instead of sharing about your accomplishments, what we're going to do is have conversations with executive leaders. And in these conversations, they're really free flowing. They're organic, they're natural, and you're talking about things that you care about, things that matter to you. And perhaps it's an accomplishment, but when you're sharing it, you're doing it in a way that's very conversational. It's talking about something that you're proud of, that you accomplished over the last six months; a surprise that perhaps happened for you, something that you want to do more of. And another way that we're going to get to being able to share about our accomplishments in a more organic or feminine way is by talking about how we make decisions. And the first place that you're going to have to start is understanding that for yourself. So, we do a lot of things inside of our brain and we don't even realize how or why it happens. And if you're somebody who's incredibly intuitive and you just kind of know how to do it, but you never had to actually articulate it to somebody else, then this is going to become a challenge at higher executive levels. It's becoming a challenge because you won't be able to get promoted into those higher-level positions because they can't read your mind. 

But it's also a challenge because you can't mentor others. You can't communicate down as well; and you can't tell your team or lead your team in any way because you are not sure how you're actually coming up with these decisions. And so, I have been thinking about this a lot, as a lot of the women inside of my programs are writing performance reviews. And in my higher-level Leadership Table and Boardroom masterminds, I actually review the performance reviews ahead of time so that I can give feedback and really tell the women: Are they speaking to executive level challenges and thoughts? Are they communicating that story - that 'I am an executive leader' on their performance review; or are they just talking about their accomplishments? And so that's a pretty common thing for women to wait until their performance review and then do a bulleted list of accomplishments because, well, that's the format. And so, you think that that's what you're supposed to do. But it's so much more powerful if you can really talk about the decision-making process behind those accomplishments - what led to those accomplishments. 

So, I'm going to share with you in today's episode a couple of questions that you can ask yourself to really get to the bottom of it. How did I create this accomplishment for myself? And then you're going to test it out. You're actually going to put it on your performance review. You're going to test it in conversation with your boss or the executive team. You're going to schedule a 15-minute ally conversation with one of the members of the executive team so that you can really connect with them on a deeper level - so that they start to see you as that peer, as that other executive leader, as somebody that they want to bring into the conversation. 

So, I asked this question inside of my Executive Ahead of Time private community, I asked the women, 'what is the most powerful decision that you made last year?' And I also asked them to write out what the decision behind that decision was; and I'll get to the second part in a minute. But the first thing that I want you to start to identify is - what is the most powerful decision that I made in 2021. So really answer that question for yourself. And usually, it's pretty obvious. It's a huge milestone. It was a huge shift in your career, so it'll be something like - I made the decision to take a role at another organization. Or it might be - I made the decision to join Executive Ahead of Time. Or it might be that I made the decision to move; or I made the decision to start my own podcast and put my own thought leadership out into the world. And those were initially some of the answers that I got inside of this Executive Ahead of Time group. A lot of the women were sharing about their experience to step up to that higher level. 

And then I posed the question - What was the decision that led to that decision? So, I'll give you an example from my own life - is that I obviously wrote a book in 2021, so when I look back at 2021, it's very obvious to me that the most powerful decision that I made last year was to write that book. And as a result, I'm going to be able to impact thousands of women in the process of writing this book. It's huge. In terms of my 3X vision, it is basically everything that I needed to do to set myself up to reach that 3X vision of doubling the number of women promoted into senior executive leadership positions each and every year worldwide. So that's very clear. And you should be able to come up with that answer pretty quickly.

Now here's where you're going to have to challenge your brain to think a little bit harder and really look inside and say, 'what decisions did I have to make to make that decision possible?' And for me, I had to think about this and say, 'Well, what was it that I actually had to do or let go of that allowed me to be able to write that book?' And there are a bunch of things that come to mind, but I specifically go back to April 2021, and my husband asked me how the book writing was going, and I was like, 'Well, not so well.', I had to admit that I didn't really have anything on paper yet. I just had the desire to write the book. And he said, 'Well, what are you going to stop doing in order to make this book happen?' And I realized that what I needed to do to be able to focus on this book in 2021, is cut back on some of the execution part of my business. I had to pull myself out of the weeds so that I could do that higher level work of really writing the book and making sure that this book gets out into the world. And I made the very difficult decision to pause enrollment for Executive Ahead of Time for about four months of 2021, and this was difficult on a couple of levels. One is, the obvious fear that comes up when you say, 'Oh my gosh - the program is going so well, and women are getting such huge results.' And I want to make sure that I continue enrolling women. And when they show up and they're ready to make that leap into executive leadership, I want to be there for them to guide them along the way and make sure that they have these tools. And I really had to sit with myself and remind myself that I was in this for the long game that my goal of my 3X vision is going to help not only the women who aren't able to enroll in April of 2021, but really be able to impact so many more women in the process. 

And I had to trust that those women would still get the support that they needed, even if I had to pause enrollment and get them enrolled later on in the year. I had to trust that I would be able to bring the program back at the end of the year; and that I had this inkling that possibly the program might be better and stronger than ever if I took that step away to be able to write the book, to focus and put my energy into the book 110 percent. So that then, when I came back in August of 2021 and reopened enrollment into the program, then I was just basically on fire. And that's actually what happened. I was unstoppable. I made huge decisions to the program - to get my clients results even faster. 

We had so many more promotions in a shorter period of time. As a result, my coaching was so much clearer. What I was offering in the program was so much more powerful, and I felt like I was on top of the moon. And so basically what I did, the decision behind the decision was - I had to focus on the long-term vision. So, if you're thinking about your own career or you're working on your performance review, and you're thinking about some powerful decisions that you made at work last year and you want to write them down, I would suggest, first of all, noting that powerful decision that you made in 2021 and put that down. But that's going to sound a little bit like an accomplishment - similar to 'I wrote a book'. 

And then you're going to want to ask yourself, 'what was the decision behind the decision?' So, there's a great example from one of the women in Executive Ahead of Time who answered the question, and I'll read it for you. But she said that the biggest decision that she made in 2021 was 'deciding to take a risk and pay for your program' - a.k.a. Executive Ahead of Time - that she was uncertain about shelling out the money, but it was worth it. 'I haven't been promoted yet, but I feel like my future is bright and I feel less stressed about my career.' And so, I asked her what was the decision that she had to make? What were all of the small micro-decisions that she had to make that allowed her to take this risk, to be able to step into this higher level of leadership? 

And basically, what her answer came down to is that she had to get comfortable with taking care of herself first - prioritizing herself. So, one of the reasons why it felt risky to her to pay for this program herself is because she just wasn't used to doing that for herself. She would do that either for other people or her house, other, more urgent problems. And so, when you really make the decision to take your own career development seriously, to make yourself and the impact that you really deserve to be making a number one priority, everything else shifts. That's why she's able to say in this comment that she hasn't been promoted yet - yet basically what she's saying is I know I will be. My path is so clear. I know I will be promoted, and I know I'll be in a better position in the short term because I have so much clarity, have so much more confidence in where I'm headed, and I am going to make the decisions necessary to get myself there. This is huge. This is huge. And if she doesn't share - if she only shares about the accomplishment and what she did, which is: I joined a program. 

'Oh, Okay, great, you joined a program. That's awesome. I'm so happy for you. No! I got over myself and started focusing on my long-term career goals and my confidence, and I took ownership and I figured out a way to come up with the money so that I could join this program and never have to look back again. That is a powerful executive level decision. So, if you can find a way to articulate on your performance review how you made the decisions that you made, that is when you are going to gain respect, that is when you're going to turn heads, that's when your boss is going to say 'Wait a second - what? You did what?'. 

Here's another example that's more of a work-related example. I have a woman who is inside of the Leadership Table, and she was working on her performance review at the end of the year and her numbers - she works in finance - and her numbers were way below target. And so that was something that was very obvious. And one of the big decisions that she had to make in her role was to cut some of the dead weight. So, she had to look towards the long-term vision again and cut some of the dead weight so that she could actually lose money in the short term but the long term - they were going to make so much more money. And so, she kind of already knew that she had to articulate this in her performance review, because if you're going to say that 'I was below quota - I have to explain why that is.’ And so, she kind of already knew that - that she had to share that information. 

But the one step further is that she had to articulate how she came up with that decision. She couldn't just say - well, she could - she could just say, 'Well I decided, looked at the numbers and I said if we can cut this dead weight, then I can.' But no, she really stepped up her leadership and made sure that she was impacting long term. So, what she's going to do on her performance review is she's actually going to restate the long-term goals for the organization, or for her group. She's going to remind her boss or whoever else is reading her performance review of their stated long-term goals. Then she is going to state all of the micro-decisions she made along the way that actually go more towards that long term vision; and how she decided on each of those short micro goals, how she decided and made all of those decisions possible. And one of the things that she had to do was cut this large amount of current income stream in order to reach the bigger goals for the company. 

So, this is actually what was going on in her brain anyway, but she needed to be able to send that out, put it on paper to share that with other people. So do you see where I'm going here - how we can start to make more powerful decisions and really communicate at that executive level when we share the decisions that led to the bigger decisions.

So, I want you to start to think about this for yourself. So, you're going to go back and look at last year and think about the biggest decisions that you made. And then I want you to write down all of the little micro decisions that led to those decisions. And then the third piece is, I want you to actually try and articulate that somewhere. So, whether it's in your next one-on-one, or a 15-minute ally meeting, or in your performance review, or even just shooting me a note and letting me know what you came up with - I would absolutely love to hear from you. When you can begin thinking about and communicating at this higher executive level, then you will not only start to get the recognition that you deserve, but you'll have more success once you get there. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Bye.