001. Get Promoted in 6 months: Part 1 - Assessment & Goal Setting

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Transcript

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Hello. Welcome. You are listening to the Latinas in Leadership podcast, where we empower Latinas with the guidance, knowledge they need to get promoted into leadership, increase their salary, and step into their purpose. I'm your host, Alejandra Thompson, leadership coach and first gen Latina, on a mission to see more Latinas in leadership. Inside of my one on one coaching program, the Confident Latina Leader. I've helped Latinas increase their salary by 000, and even 40, 000. I've helped them get promoted into director level positions, quit toxic jobs, and change careers without taking a pay cut. In this podcast, you can count on me to share strategies, tools, and knowledge to help you break into the next level of your career. Let's go.

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Hello, and welcome to the series on getting promoted in six months. This is the Eve Fishel first podcast episode. Of Latinas and leadership. And I am so excited. I wanted to kick off the podcast with a series on how Latinas can get promoted into leadership because duh it's eight podcasts literally called Latinas in leadership. I just want to say before I jump in I'm so glad that you are here. I have been thinking about this podcast since January. This has been on my mind and I've had to overcome my own insecurities, my own imposter syndrome to get to this place, to officially launch. So just know that as we go through these concepts, as I share with you tools and strategies, that you can build your confidence, that you can do things that you don't feel like right now, you have the confidence to do in order to speak. Speak up and get promoted and get noticed and get the salary you deserve. Just know these strategies are things that I use on myself to be able to build my own confidence, to do things that seem a little scary to me. So this is information and tools and strategies that I use on myself and on my clients to help them grow and do things they have been putting off because they are too afraid or they don't know any better. So we're getting started on eight podcast series. It's going to be three parts. Today is part one, and it's going to be a series on getting promoted in six months. So over the next three weeks, you're going to get a breakdown of every step you need to take in order to break into leadership. Every step you need to take, if you are trying to break into leadership, but you're struggling. Many of my clients come to me and they have been in their position for years. They have been a high impact individual contributor for 6, 7, 8 years. And they have not gotten promoted into their first manager job where they've been a manager for again, 5, 6, 7 years. And they still haven't figured out a way to break into that director level role. Many of my clients come to me at that point. And one of the biggest problems, especially as Latinas. And if you are a first gen Latina, like myself, is we're going into the corporate. Space and we're under-resourced and we're under mentored. We don't have guidance. We don't have parents that are telling us the game of corporate America, how to play the game, how to advocate for yourself, how to negotiate your salary. And it feels really lonely and confusing, especially as Latinas. The more that we rise Latinas in leadership, the lesson less, we see other Latinas and it's lonely Latinas and management. Roughly the numbers they're saying is 4.3%. Hear me. 4.3%. My goal with this podcast series and this entire podcast really is about how do we increase that number so that more Latinos not only have the roadmap to get into leadership, but also aren't feeling as lonely aren't going into a room and constantly being the only Latina in the room. So many of my clients. Are the only Latina in the room. And so being able to handle not only the challenges that come with that, but also how do we get into that room? Over the next three weeks, We're going to go over three parts. Part one is today, and we're going over self assessment and goal setting. Part two is going to be skills, the skills that you need to develop and self-advocacy, and then part three, we're going over networking and personal branding. Each of these are going to build on itself. I encourage you to listen to it in order. Because it will be important for you to know. Okay. Step one, step two and step three. And how do they build on each other so that I can create my own plan. All right. Let's jump into it. Let's start with self assessment. You want to assess your skills? You want to be able to know what your strengths are and what your skills are. So many. Oh, my clients, when they come to me, struggle to answer this, I'll ask them the question. And so I'm going to ask you right now. What are you great at? What is your experience? And when I asked my clients that usually it starts with the sigh, like, oh my gosh, Ugh. I can already see them score, meaning they're stressed at the answer. And I want you to consider, is that the same thing or off the cuff right now? Can you tell me, Hey, these are my strengths. This is my experience. This is what I'm looking for. If you cannot answer that question, first of all, just know that that's very common and. You got to make some changes. You got to know what your strengths are. You have to know what your skills are and know how to answer this question easily. Again, these are going to build off of each other. So it's important that you start with assessing your own skills. One of the things that I give my clients very early on in our coaching together is an assignment where they go through their work history and they do an audit. Many of my clients described this as a very hard exercise, but they always say that it was so helpful for them because they forgot so much of what they had actually done. And it helped them to see clearly their experience. And so I want. You to really think about these two questions when you go through your work history and let's say you've had a long history prioritize the last 10 years, I encourage you to do. Your entire work centuries since you graduated college and started your fuller, your first full-time job. But let's just say you go over the last 10 years. I want you to go through each job. And this is a great way to assess your skills. Go through each job and look at two questions. What are two words my manager would use to describe me and why. Number two, what was your greatest achievement in this role? The exercise I give my clients in my one-on-one setting is more in depth. The exercise that I have has. I think it's total of seven questions, but for the sake of this podcast I'm going to give you these two for you to get started. What are two words my manager would use to describe me? And number two, what was your greatest achievement in that job? When I have my clients go through this time and time again. I've gone through this exercise with dozens and dozens of clients, and it is. Shocking how similar the experience is, even though we're all unique and we all have different work experiences the way that my clients. Process, this exercise has been shockingly similar. I had. Uh, client we'll call her Angela. And she had gone through the work history form and when we were going through it together in our one-on-one coaching session. She realized that she had completely discredited. One of her first full-time jobs out of college. She didn't even have it on her resume because she was so embarrassed about the experience. We did some coaching on it. Like what happened here? Why didn't I know about this? Why haven't you talked about it? Why isn't it in your resume? And as she was going through it, she told me that this was a job that was incredibly toxic. Her boss had bullied her. She was in a heavily male dominated industry and she. Felt. Out of place like she did not belong. So she left this job before the project that she was working on within this job was even done. And because of that, she saw this as a complete failure and she completely forfeited the entire experience. This was a job where she managed people. This was a job where she did. A ton of budget management. A lot of. Cross collaboration. And as a woman in a male dominated industry, she had to be tough and take no BS from people. And it developed her in so many different ways, but because of her perfectionism, because she saw this as, okay, well, I quit before the project was done. So this is an embarrassment. This is a failure. I need to scrap the whole thing. She couldn't even acknowledge all of the experience that that job had given her like people management. Sharp communication. Wearing multiple hats. Overseeing a budget. This is what I mean. When you start to go through your work history, you're going to find places where maybe you discredit to yourself. You're going to have to actually think, okay, what was my greatest achievement? That's probably one of the hardest questions on this exercise for my clients. I've had clients literally be like, I can't think of anything and we'll go through it. Cause I'm just not going to let you get away with it. If you're in my one-on-one goji, I'm not just going to let you get away with, oh, I don't, I don't think I had any, like, no, there was something. And so we're going to figure it out and we're gonna think about it. That has to be one of the hardest questions on this questionnaire. And when it came to this job, that was an example. My client was like nothing. There was no great accomplishment. And so when we dug into it, And I was like, this is one of the few jobs where you have people management. We have to talk about that. And you did well in it, but you were in a toxic workplace with a male boss that bullied you. That said mean things to you. That told you, you weren't thinking big enough. That question why you were wearing what you were wearing. These are unacceptable behaviors as so many of my clients have to face and it's okay to leave jobs like that. And it's also. Important. That you don't disqualify the role in its entirety. So go over this. Talk about what are the two words your manager would use to describe you and why don't skip that part? My clients also like to skip that part, there'll be like creative and hardworking, but then won't tell me why. I want you to really push yourself to think. Why would my manager have described me as creative? Why would my manager had described me as hardworking and give examples again, this is going to cause you to think hard. It's going to be a hard exercise, but it's so good when it comes to self. The self-assessment and identifying what your strengths are, what your skills are, what you're working with here. That is self-assessment. The second part of this is goal setting. You want to identify five key areas of growth. That's why it's important that you do a self-assessment first because you got to know what you're working with. And then you can go into identifying five key areas of growth. If you currently are an individual contributor and you're looking to break into your first manager role. Then look at 10 manager job postings for the roles that you are looking to break into. And as you look at 10 of them, Write down the qualifications you are seeing over and over again, you want to analyze the theme that you see in these job postings, let's say over and over again, they are looking for someone with people management you have to find these themes so that you can begin to see where do I need to grow? Where is the gap between what I currently possess in my skills, talents, strengths. to what I need to have in order to break into my first manager role. Same concept. If you're looking to go from manager to director level, you want to look at 10 director level jobs that you would be interested in applying to. Next year and write down what qualifications are you seeing over and over again? Analyze the theme. One of the things that you can do is you can copy and paste these job postings into chat GPT, and you can ask it to highlight what themes it's seen for skills that are necessary in candidates who want these jobs. Or you can copy and paste and use a word cloud. I used to go to tech, crowd.com. Where you can paste all of these job postings, and then you can see which words are being used the most. And that can help you in a visual way. See what words are popping out. Those are two different ways you can do that. You want to identify five key areas of growth. If you're individual contributor looking to get into a manager, look at manager roles. If you're a manager looking to get into director, look at director level roles and highlight themes. This is also important by the way, just as a leadership skill, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. I'm going to talk about this more and the next episode. Skills that are critical for all leaders to develop in order to be able to be strong leaders. One of them is being able to see the bigger picture that is a. Leadership skill. When we are in our entry-level jobs we're oftentimes thinking day to day. Uh, leadership skill is looking at the bigger picture. And this is an exercise in which you do that as well. You need to see the bigger picture. What is it that people are looking for in the grand scheme of things, when it comes to your first manager, low level job, or your first director level job? And so in the next episode, I will go over the top five skills that every manager that wants to become a director needs to develop. You don't want to miss that I want you to look at what is personal to you? What are the, what's the gap that you're seeing in the next episode, I'm going to break down the skills that all of you really want to start thinking about. Developing. If you want to go from manager to director level. Now, when it comes to goal-setting, the problem is, is if you don't know your strengths, then you don't know what you bring to the table and you don't know. How you can actually improve in the areas that are important for you to break into leadership. And when we don't know you focus on weaknesses and you focus on what you lack. this causes us to feel insecure. And that is. Not the most productive or effective way. If you can look at something and go, okay, this is where the gap is. I'm going to work on this. So I can get to this goal that I really want breaking into my first leadership role. That's going to produce better energy from you than, oh my gosh, I need to do this because I'm not good enough and I don't belong. And they're going to find out that I don't belong here. Even that energy just feels heavy. It feels. Uncomfortable. so you want to be able to set goals, but you have to know what you're bringing to the table. And you have to be clear about what those gaps are so that you're working on the appropriate things. And then when you do set goals, I'm a fan of smart goals. If you have never heard of the acronym smart as M a R T smart goals, it stands for. S is specific. M is measurable. A is achievable. R is relevant and T is time-bound. Smart goals is a way that you can set up your goals that are going to be very clear and very. Simple to follow. Big issues when we make goals is that we don't make them clear specific enough. So examples would be like, Negotiate my salary. That's a goal and it's okay. Well, how are you going to do that? How are you going to get there by when are you going to get there? It's important that we add specificity and time to these things. So I like to smart goals so start with S specific. You want to think about what is a specific thing that you need to work on? An example can be act as a project leader by taking the initiative to lead a cross-functional team and achieving a specific project goal or milestone. Let's say you realize that one of the gaps that you have is that you don't have a ton of experience with cross-functional communication or leading other people. Playing a big role in a project, actually getting done. Versus just being the person that's checking the boxes. You're actually making sure that things are getting done. that is an example of specific now measurable. Measurable, for example, ensure that the project team successfully achieved the stated goal or milestone and receive positive feedback from team members on your leadership and guidance. So, how do you measure this? Well, you would make sure. Okay. Did we achieve the project goal? What was the project milestone? What was the project goal? Was that measured? You can look at that and say yes or no receive positive feedback. You can look at that and say yes or no. in our next episode, I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do with this feedback. Because I've had many of my clients who have been told. That they are amazing. That they're awesome that they, they just get great feedback and results and all these things, but then they don't get promoted. So if this is you, if you're like, okay, But I do work my butt off and I do have goals and I do get all this feedback that I'm awesome, but I'm not getting promoted then you definitely want to make sure you check into the next episode because I'm going to be talking about self-advocacy in that episode. now achievable. You also want to make sure that your goal is achievable and this really isn't an issue for most of my clients. If anything, I usually have to encourage my clients to kind of stretch a little bit more with their goals, but you want to make sure that your goals are achievable. So let's say you've been a manager for one year and you're like, I want to become a director in the next, you know, three months. I may be like, all right. You know, just based on my experience, I think you are going to need a little bit more to work with before you go into director level position. And that always of course varies. Like how long have you been managing people? How long have you been in a leadership position? Is this manager role? The first manager role you've ever held. And so there are going to be different things, but just make sure that your goal is achievable. Like what you put down in specific and measurable. Is that something that is achievable for you? The next letter, r is relevant. And this is where you really want to make sure that the goal that you're creating here under smart goal, is that relevant to ultimately the direction you're looking to grow, which is break into leadership. So you just want to make sure that it is relevant. And then the last one is time-bound. So you want to make sure that you actually put a time limit on this, that you actually put a timeframe on it. So it may be something like lead the project and achieve the goal or milestone within the next six months and receive feedback from. My leadership team. The month after that. So you actually have a time in which you're going to. Achieve this goal here. That's smart goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. I highly recommend that when you are creating your goals, that you put it in this format, if you literally just Google smart goals, you can find. So many resources on it, plenty of documents on it that are going to tell you how it breaks down and how you can create your own goals. So you can definitely Google that after this, to be able to have a way to create your goals. All right. We have gone over self-assessment meaning, assess what strengths you have, what skills you have. This is where you really paint the clear picture of what you bring to the table. And I gave you one exercise that I usually give my one-on-one clients. And that's the work history audit. You want to go through each of your jobs and you want to answer these two questions. What would be two words my manager would use to describe me and why. And you also want to go over, what was my greatest achievement in this role? You want to write down your skills and strengths. What are you seeing after you do this assessment and review it? What are you seeing? What are the skills and what are the strengths that you're recognizing? And also, I encourage you to try to think about any type of quantifiable measurements when you're going through that as well. So let's say one of your great achievements was saving my company. Time, because I improved this process. My clients will tell me something vague like that and I'll be like, okay, do you remember where there less meetings? Was there money saved, how much money was saved? to think about how this can be quantifiable. That was self-assessment. And then I went over identifying five key areas of improvement. And the way that you're going to do that is after you have your self assessment and you see where you're at, you're going to look at 10 jobs of where you're looking to break into and then see what are the themes that you're seeing there. And what's the gap between what you currently have and what you need to have in order to be able to apply to those jobs. And then after that, you're going to set smart goals. So let's say one of them that you saw. Was project management. You need to strengthen your project management skills. Then, what you could do is you could set as smart goal that in the next project, you are going to act as a leader, you are going to take the initiative to handle all cross-functional communication that you are going to make sure. Timelines are being met and that you are going to receive feedback from the people on the team. Those are examples that I gave you want to set smart goals. Based on your self-assessment and the gap between that and where you want to be in order to apply to the jobs that you want. This is your first step. It is. Critical. One of the things you're going to hear me say a lot on this podcast is clarity. Build confidence. Many of you right now, lack confidence because you're not remembering who the F you are. You're not remembering that you're awesome you have worked hard, you are resilient, you have preservered you are ambitious, you are kind and you are giving. You're forgetting who you are. And you're focusing on your weaknesses. You're focusing on what you do not have. So this is a critical, critical step. Do not skip it. I know personal branding might sound a little bit more sexy. But you do not want to skip this step clarity, build confidence. You want to be clear about who you are and what you bring to the table and how you can help. All right, friends. That is everything I have for you today. I am so excited to jump into the next episode and go over skills that every single person who desires to be in leadership needs to develop. And self-advocacy. I hope this was helpful and I will talk to you soon. Bye.

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If you are ready to get promoted into leadership and get the salary you deserve, I invite you to book a sales call with me. This is a one hour call where I will assess your career, your obstacles, your goals. I will tell you exactly the way that I can help you. And we can talk about whether the confident Latina leader program is the best fit for you. The link to book your sales call is in the show notes. Talk to you soon. Ciao.