Beyond Competence: Building the Credibility Women Leaders Need

Most qualified women leaders still miss promotions and bigger opportunities. Here's why: credibility isn't just competence, it's trust plus belief in your ability to deliver again. In this episode, Lemon Price breaks down a concrete framework for intentionally building credibility, drawing on nonprofit leadership insights and real organizational dynamics. If you're ready to stop being overlooked and start being sought out, this one's for you.

Lemon shares insights from the Southern Women Leadership Institute at Georgia Southern and walks you through how to: get in the room and use proximity to accelerate trust, talk about your achievements with confidence (without feeling braggy), and move from vague “I helped” statements to clear, quantified impact using numbers, timelines, and real outcomes.

You’ll learn a simple storytelling framework—problem, action, result—to turn your experience into compelling credibility stories, plus how to make consistency and visibility work for you so opportunities can actually find you. Grab a pen, because you’ll be rewriting at least one of your achievements with concrete numbers and impact and then sharing it somewhere visible (and tagging Lemon so she can cheer you on).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There are people out there right now that are less qualified than you getting more opportunities. Why? It's credibility. So today we're breaking down how to build it, how to communicate it, and actually own it. So credibility isn't just what you've done. It's whether people trust you and believe in your ability to do it again. It's the perception plus the proof. So hi, I'm Lemon Price. Welcome back to the Well Lived Society, where we talk about leadership development for women. And I'm really excited to talk about credibility. This weekend I was at the Southern Women Leadership Institute at Georgia Southern, and there was a lot of conversation around credibility. There was a lot of conversation around leadership, how to get into rooms. But a lot there was, I mean, honestly, a lot of it was around credibility and how do you share your achievements. So I want to talk about what credibility really is. We're going to talk about how you quantify and qualify your impact. I want to tell you about how storytelling, all that kind of fun things. Like this will be actionable. So if you don't have a pen and paper, you're going to want to get one because I think you actually need it for this episode. So credibility, like I said, it is trust plus belief. Prime example. I may trust the step kids home alone. We may, I may trust them to be home alone. They're old enough to stay home alone if my husband and I aren't home for a few hours. Do I believe, though, that if I ask them to put away their laundry, it's always going to get done? No. No, I don't. So do they have credibility when they come to me and they say, oh, let us just stay home while you guys run out. We'll do our laundry, we'll clean, we'll do whatever. No, it doesn't actually happen because I may trust them to stay home alone, but I don't believe they're gonna follow through with what it is. So trust is built through consistency. And then belief is built through how you communicate your impact. And so you can be very capable and overlooked if people don't see or understand your value. So how do we build that trust faster? And that's where proximity comes in. So proximity will accelerate trust more than anything else. So you have to be in the room, you have to show up consistently, and being visible truly matters. So Cecilia got pregnant and she kept it a secret for three months out of fear that she would be judged or people would be disappointed in her because she had already built the credibility. And so obviously she kept her child and you know, everything works out. But Cecilia was talking, but somebody asked her about like getting into these rooms. And she said, sometimes you have to weasel your way in there. You have to play the game, you have to figure out how to get in there. And so for her, the way she ended up on the board or, you know, in these board meetings is so funny. So she works in a very male-dominated profession. And so she had asked because she was in charge of marketing, she asked to be in the room. And the person who kind of oversaw her department and a few others was like, no, no, no, I'll handle it. Okay, great. Now, what they didn't have was somebody to take them in it. And so Cecilia volunteered to take them in it. And that's how she ended up being in the room and being visible and being in proximity and knowing what was going on. And then people started fighting for her, and now she's a shareholder in an engineering firm. And so here's what I here's what I want to say is that people trust who they know. And so familiarity reduces the doubt. And so this is your reminder, right? Hiding your work is costing you opportunities. And I think as women, we tend to not want to boast about the things we achieve. I'm really bad about it. There are people who meet me, they will go and search my podcast out after they meet me because Glenn always tells people about the podcast. He's so funny about it. And so then what happens is some people will go and find the show and then they see that it's been in Forbes and then they'll come back to me like, why didn't you share that? Well, that's awkward. What do you want me to do? Say, hi, I'm Lemon. I have a Forbes featured podcast. That's weird. It's weird. And so we don't always like talk about our opportunities and things. Um, I was better about it at this conference, just so you know, I was really good about sharing it. But I want you to just think about someone you see posting insights weekly, right? You start to associate them with expertise even before you work with them. People who are sharing what's working, what's not working, what they've achieved, what they tried and didn't work. And so once you're visible, that matters, but how you talk about your work matters just as much. And we talked about this a little bit last week about visibility doesn't always mean influence. And so I want you to talk about your achievements with confidence. And so confidence, single, uh signals competence, right? So we have to stop softening our wins as women. We do this with phrases like I just or I got lucky, or it's only, it's no big deal. Stop doing that. I want you to own your results, results clearly and directly. And so if you don't position your work as valuable, then nobody else will. So I really want you to like write down after the show, go write down some of your achievement. And I want you to write down how you got there. What was the work you put in to have that achievement? And I think this is where a lot of people will drop the ball, is they don't know how to quantify or qualify your impact. Right. So I want you to swap vague statements for specifics. So I want you to quantify what are the numbers, the percentages, the timelines, like what actually happened? What did you achieve? So if you have that list of achievements, like what were the numbers? Did something change? So, like when I talk about my marketing experience, and this is something I had to do, I could quantify it. When I started at the company, we were hemorrhaging cash that I was working at when I was the CMO. They were hemorrhaging cash. That's why they hired me at 26. And so within a couple of months, I think within three, I reduced the cost per lead, right? So when I started, the average sale was like about 20,000. By the time I left, we were closing deals at$250,000 while reducing the cost per lead by 98%. So we spent less and we made more money. Guess what? The company is still going strong. So I can talk about that achievement because I have percentages. I know how long I was there. I was there like a year and a half. I know what the numbers are. I know what we were spending versus what we were spending when I left. I can't tell you what it is now because it's literally been, I think I haven't worked there in eight years. So it's not enough just to quantify, but you have to qualify it. So what changed, who it impacted, and why it mattered. So when I talk about that experience, what changed is when I started, the company told me they had three months of cash. Otherwise, they were gonna close. So I haven't been there in eight, eight-ish years. The company is still going. So it impacted all of the salespeople, the CEO, the HR people, like all the people who were there. Like it mattered. And then it also mattered for small business. So I was in FinTech, financial technology, and so we were doing loans for people who needed them like fast, right? So maybe you're a farmer whose tractor broke down, and you need that tractor to continue to run your business, but you the bank's not going to give you a loan because now all of a sudden your revenue is halted because your tractor is down. We could give you a loan for that to fix the tractor. And so that's what we did. So it mattered to small businesses who needed the money, right? Who needed to cover payroll because there was a bad week or something. Like it mattered to people, a lot of people. And so here's like an example shift, right? Instead of saying I helped grow a brand, you could say I increased brand engagement by 42% in three months, leading to a 15% boost in sales. Once you've written down your achievement, how you got there, and you've quantified it and you've qualified it, I want to turn those facts into something people will remember. And so I'm sure you've heard like facts inform, right? But stories will persuade you. So storytelling builds belief. So I want you to use a very simple structure when you're doing this. So problem, action, result. I want you to position yourself as the guide, not the hero. You are not the hero of the story. The impact and the outcome is the hero, right? The organization you helped is the hero. You were the guide. So I want you to focus on outcomes and impact. And so stories will make your credibility stick. So I want you to practice how you can define the problem, the action that you guided them through, and what the result of that was. What was the outcome? What was the impact? And then can you quantify and qualify it, which is why I'm having you write these things down. And then this to me is a long game, right? So consistency plus visibility is compounding credibility. So credibility compounds when you consistently show up and you can deliver. So I want you to share your wins, the lessons, the results regularly, including things you tried that didn't work and why they didn't work. Can you quantify and qualify why something didn't work? We talked about this a lot this weekend, but how often are we looking at another brand, another person, another leader, and we want to do exactly what they did and it doesn't work for us. Share that because maybe their secret sauce is not your secret sauce. You have to figure out what that secret sauce is for you. What makes you different? What skills do you have? I want you to also borrow credibility when needed. Testimonials, partnerships, associations, go on podcasts, right? Borrow the credibility of others who see the value in what you're doing. And again, if people don't see your work, they can't trust it. And so here's like the big takeaway I have for you guys this week. Credibility is not something that you're gonna wait for. It's something you have to build, communicate, and reinforce it daily. So I want you to start showing your work. I want you to own your impact and then make it easy for people to believe in you. And so again, this week, I want you to rewrite one of your achievements using numbers and impact and then share it somewhere visible. And if you do it on Instagram or something, tag me in it. I want to see it. If you need help trying to figure this out, reach out to me. I'm happy to help you share an achievement. People like to celebrate your achievement. They do. Because I always say if it's possible for someone else, then it's possible for me. And so you never know what sharing your results could do. And you also never know what connections it could have. You never know what sort of impact it can make. What if the result that you share is exactly the thing that somebody is looking for on your LinkedIn right now? What if you were to share an achievement of yours? And it happened to be the exact thing that a company, a nonprofit, somebody in your network is looking for, and it leads to more opportunity. That's what happens when you start sharing your wins and the trials and what you've been through and how those translate. I promise you will get more opportunity doing it that way. So I want to encourage you to do that. Share it, tag me. If you're if you're on LinkedIn, like maybe I'll leave my LinkedIn. If you share it on LinkedIn, like tag me on your post on LinkedIn. I would love to see it. I'll leave my LinkedIn in the show notes so we can connect there. If you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, come connect with me. And I just, I really hope you take this. It's one of my favorite things. And I want to continue diving deep on this. Now, if you didn't see last week or you're new to the show, I am teaching a six-week live training for starting in June because I wanted to get through finals, but it's on building this. How do you tell your story? How do you end up on a board seat? How do you figure out which is the right board seat for you? How do you figure out which nonprofit you want to be a part of? How do you effectively communicate your skills? And we we put together a full training to help you figure out where you want to be, what your next steps are so you can have more community impact. Maybe it's not a nonprofit, maybe it's a board seat with your county. Like maybe you want to be on those. Maybe you would like to get involved in your college, like as an alumni. I think that's super important. I had a great time this weekend with the director of like alumni relations and things. And it was just such a good weekend. But I'm taking applications for it, and it's not meant to be like a like a big scary thing. I just want to see what your goals are and if I can actually help you. Because if I don't feel like I can help you, then I'm gonna tell you that, to be honest. I just will. I'm not a let me just take anybody who wants to do it. I'm thinking, depending on the applications, we may put together two groups and then trying to group people based on interest and goals. So that way, you know, you guys are all kind of working together, which is the goal. So if you want to be a part of that, then there is a link in the show notes, or you could just go to my website, lemonprice.co. You will see it right there on the homepage. How to get involved if that's something you want to do. Otherwise, it's linked in the show notes for you. DM me if you have questions, send me an email. My email will be in the show notes too. You can email me and then please share this with your friends. If you like know somebody who maybe shies away from sharing their achievements, and then they're kind of wondering why they keep getting passed over for promotions or why they're passed over for more leadership roles. Send this episode to them and then please, please rate and review it on Apple, Spotify. It just helps other people find this. And I think this is important. I think this work is really important because I think women are capable of so much. And I think I just look at like prohibition. I go back to what's the movie? Mary Poppins. That's what the mom was doing. She was involved, like because she had help and she was staying at home. Guess what? She was able to get involved, and that's how you ended up with or no, she was doing the suffrage movement. Yeah, she was women's suffrage. And so because she had the time and the flexibility and the skills, she was able to be involved in the suffrage movement. And so I want to encourage you because I do think that women are extremely capable and we can make a big difference when we put our mind to something. So I hope you have an amazing week and I will see you next week. Tootaloo.