Leading Her Introvert Way: Conversations about executive leadership, career growth, business and mindset for mid-life Black women.

62: Why It Takes Courage & Confidence As An Introvert Woman To Lead At The Executive Level

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 62

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What if confidence, rather than extroversion, was the key to unlocking your path to executive leadership and breaking through the executive glass ceiling. This episode explores the subtle signs of lacking confidence that may be holding you back plus learn practical strategies to strengthen your confidence too.


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Speaker 1:

Hi, lady Leader, Welcome to another episode of the Leading Her Way podcast, and this podcast is for you. If you are an introverted woman leader who is looking to become the absolute, the absolute best leader she can be, if you are looking to grow your career, move into senior leadership or the executive leadership ranks, if you are looking to make an impact, build wealth for yourself and for your family and, frankly, just slay as an introverted woman leader, then you are definitely in the right place. I am excited for you to be here and I am your host, dr Nicole Bryan. I am a executive coach, I am a career strategist, I am a psychologist, I am a chief human resources officer. I am all those things, but, most importantly, I am your thought partner as you continue to navigate your career and be the best leader that you can be. So welcome. If this is your first time here, an especially especially warm welcome, sending you lots of love, sending you lots of strength, sending you lots of introverted wisdom. And if you are a returning leader listener, then you already know you have a special place in my heart and on this podcast. So today I want to talk to you about something that was inspired by my nephew.

Speaker 1:

Now, normally I don't talk about the other gender on this podcast, not necessarily because we don't have love for them, because of course we do. They are our brothers, our fathers, our husbands, our partners, our sons, partners, our sons. So not because we don't have love for them, but because this podcast, this space, was especially curated and designed to give us, as introverted women, the undivided attention that we deserve to give ourselves and to give our sisters who are also introverted women. But in this particular instance, I bring my nephew up. Now, my nephew is a grown ass man. Okay, he is 36 years young and I bring him up because we went to dinner. I took him out to dinner yesterday evening and I hadn't seen him. I haven't seen him in probably a few months.

Speaker 1:

I talked to him all the time but didn't see him in a few months and he was telling me about his new girlfriend. I'm always excited for him when the love is fresh and the excitement is still there and you're still learning your partner and stuff. So he's sharing with me things about her and what they do together, how they spend their time and things like that. And he also mentioned that he thinks that she and I are very much alike. So I asked how, and he tells me how. But he also mentioned that he shared with her that one of the things that he admires about me is my confidence. He'd never told me that personally before, so I was hearing it for the first time. But I'm getting to hear it through the lens of how he explained it to his girlfriend, and what he was saying was that I don't necessarily talk about confidence, but that when he's with me, like he can see my confidence, he can feel my confidence and that, you know, he's never seen me in a professional environment but by the stories that I tell he, you know, knows that you know I'm good at what I do essentially. So he started actually asking me questions about how that came to be, and it made me think about you, right, because confidence is one of those things that comes up in just about every conversation that I have with a female leader, particularly those of us who are introverted. And when he talked about it, when mentioned that, hey, we you know you and I, auntie, have never talked about confidence per se, but it's one of the things that kind of you exude and that stands out for me when I talk about you to other people. I was like you know what this might be a really good topic to talk about on the podcast. So that's what we're talking about today, right, like your confidence as an introverted leader who wants to grow her career, and why being confident in yourself is so important. And it's probably the thing that we talk about confidence a lot, but we don't necessarily talk about it as that magic bean or the magic piece that you need to be a executive leader or a senior leader, whether it's in your organization or in a new organization.

Speaker 1:

This topic very much ties into what we've been talking about for the last few weeks, particularly around holistic wealth or what I call executive wealth. And, if you remember, what we talk about here in terms of wealth isn't not only financial, although that is a component of it. We talk about wealth and define wealth here from five different lenses. The first is financial. The second is social wealth, with meaning your relationships. The third is your mental and physical health, which is another form of wealth. The fourth is your time and energy wealth, because those of us who are introverts everybody listening to this podcast likely is that we know that time is very important to us, particularly alone time and our energy, how we expend our energy. We need to be very careful and very mindful about that. So the fourth element of how we define wealth here includes time and energy. And the fifth wealth is career wealth. Career wealth, meaning the way that you build your career, the way that you influence, the way your satisfaction and your happiness within your career that's all a part of career wealth. So confidence is tied to wealth as well, and it's also tied to creating change from within. So let's talk a bit about why confidence matters in executive leadership.

Speaker 1:

Executive roles means 100% accountability. So whatever you are responsible for when you become a senior leader or an executive, it means that the buck stops with you. Now, this is important to call out because I do realize and recognize that many of us think about the executive roles and all of the kind of tangible components of it, whether it be the bigger office or the corner office that comes with it, whether it means that we are responsible for a larger budget within our organization. Executive roles means that you attend the executive meetings and the board meetings and all of that stuff. But what we don't talk about a lot is that, yes, all of those physical things and physical changes come with becoming a executive or a senior leader. But what's most important is that you, as a senior leader and or executive, you are 100% accountable for everything within your span of control, within your domain. That means that even if you are not the person doing the work, somebody else is likely doing the work. As long as it falls within your span of responsibility, it is your 100% accountability. So here's an example Like I have currently a team of HR professionals of which, when they are out there making decisions and giving advice and counsel to other leaders within the organization, although they are the ones giving the advice and counsel, if that advice and counsel backfires, then I, as their executive, I'm accountable for it.

Speaker 1:

I'm not the person giving the advice, but at the end of the day, if something goes wrong, I'm the one who is held accountable. I am the one who has to make the tough decisions. I am the one who has to go apologize or go challenge something that needs to be corrected. That's the 100% accountability piece. But we don't talk about that and the burden of carrying that and the responsibility of carrying that as we become senior leaders and executives. So when you think about a senior leader or an executive being 100% accountable.

Speaker 1:

You likely can see the link in terms of why confidence is so important, or being confident in yourself and in what you're able to do as an executive or senior leader. Trust right, having the team trust you and having the team being willing to follow you. That comes from you showing up confidently in your role, being able to execute on your decision-making authority. Many times as an executive, there is a certain level of decision-making power that comes along with the title and the role, but just because you have that power, not everybody that has the power executes and makes the tough decisions that they need to make, and you only get to do that. You only get to make those difficult decisions or those widespread impact decisions when you leverage your authority, your decision-making authority, with confidence.

Speaker 1:

Another way that being confident shows up and is necessary as an executive is in all of your stakeholder relationships. We, as introverts, know that building relationships for us takes a lot of our energy. It requires us to be strategic in terms of who we connect with, why we connect with them and how we nurture those relationships with our stakeholders. However, if others around us, our stakeholders, the people who we partner with, the people who we need to be on our side to be able to get our work done. If those stakeholders don't have confidence in us, that means that the relationships that we have with them are not necessarily strong and that makes our work and our job so much more difficult to accomplish, our job so much more difficult to accomplish. And then another one, in terms of another area as an executive, where the confidence comes in is your executive presence, which is essentially how you show up, how you show up in your body, how you show up in your facial expressions, how your tone of voice is leveraged to demonstrate to other people that they should believe in you, that they should follow you, that you know what the hell you're talking about. All of those things, or all of those aspects, are just examples of how confidence is a necessity as an executive. People inherently look for confidence in leaders because, by definition, executive leaders lead. They are setting the vision, they are asking people to work on their behalf, they are asking people to believe in their vision where they're taking the team, where they're taking the company, where they're taking the company. So, inherently, people are looking for and expect that as you rise through the ranks in your organization, as you become more and more of a senior leader, that you have confidence in yourself, and the reason why you need to have confidence and show confidence is because other people need to have confidence in you as well.

Speaker 1:

I will admit that, as an introverted woman, I did not always have confidence. So what my nephew is seeing in me today, that's something that I actually had to work on and build towards. When I started out my career, I wouldn't say I was meek or shy, or even exceptionally quiet. I was quiet, but I was definitely not confident. Confidence took time. Confidence required me to really be reflective of the things that I was doing, what I was learning, how I was adding to my skill set and, over time, the confidence built to where it is now. But I definitely did not start out that way. I mean, I remember as a young career person that I would avoid situations where I had to step into the limelight, like I literally would miss meetings.

Speaker 1:

I'm laughing now and part of me should be embarrassed to talk about this, but I want you guys to know. I want you to know that if you're not feeling confident right now, that is a very common experience and anyone who says otherwise. We are not born into confidence. Nobody is born into confidence. So anyone who says otherwise about you not being confident now, and if you are even thinking that you'll never be able to be confident, that is not true. You build confidence. Confidence is and that's why that phrase exists building confidence. That means that happens brick by brick by brick. Experience by experience by experience. Skill set as you add new skills to your toolbox all of these things add to and increase your level of confidence in yourself. But as an introverted woman, I can speak for myself individually.

Speaker 1:

I did not start out that way and I would probably take a guess that you, no matter what level of confidence you personally have right now, you didn't start out with the level of confidence you currently have today, even if you know you want to increase your confidence. And then you can think about different situations. Right, in some situations maybe you are 100% confident. Maybe you are the program manager who knows the hell out of program management. So if anyone asks you any questions about program management, you are 100% confident that you either are going to answer it in the moment and be spot on, or you know exactly where you need to go to get the information and you're going to come back and be 100% spot on. But you might also be the program manager who knows everything that you need to know about program management, but you're not confident with public speaking. So it's not an all or nothing. There are different aspects of our careers, different aspects of our roles, different aspects of our responsibilities where in one hand, you may be 100% confident in one hand one area, but in another, you may not be.

Speaker 1:

As an introverted woman, I think that we have our own, we're already in our own heads about how we show up and how confident we may or may not be. And as a result of that, when we go out into the world, when we go out into our work environments, then we also take in everything that is happening around us and we put that on us as well. So we have our own voices in our heads talking to us about confidence and challenging our confidence. And then we have everything else around us that we're encountering at work and on the job that also challenge us and make us question our confidence. Now, if you struggle with confidence in overall or in one or two or three specific areas or situations, you likely already are very aware of it and in fact, you might be already working on improving that confidence, or you thought about improving that confidence and are not quite sure how to do that. But if you are someone who is listening and you are thinking, hmm, I wonder if I do have confidence issues or challenges with my confidence.

Speaker 1:

Then let's talk about some common behaviors that signal lack of confidence for introverted women. So the first one is something that's extremely common, which is hesitating to share your ideas in meetings. Now, I've talked about that a great deal already on this podcast and probably just about every episode, because it is a, like I said, very common trait or behavior of introverted women in meetings. Right, you just don't feel comfortable sharing your ideas. Now, in some cases that is because you are introverted, but most cases it is layered on top of a lack of confidence and you are hesitating to share your ideas, not because you don't think your idea is good, not because you don't value the opinions of the other people in the room and it's not worthy of further discussion and thought, but mainly because you are afraid that you will be judged by what you say, or you are not wanting you feel exposed when you're speaking and everyone is looking at you. That is a confidence issue. That is not about introversion.

Speaker 1:

Another common signal that you might lack self-confidence is when you over-apologize or use excessive qualifying statements. So that might be, you know, when you and someone else start talking at the same time and you say you're sorry, but not just sorry once you kind of overcompensate to make sure that they go first and they have the floor and they get to say what they want to say and you kind of shrink back and don't necessarily contribute as you intended. Or you ask questions. You'll make a statement or put your idea or be in a conversation with someone and you will be afraid that they don't understand what you're saying. So you will say something like be afraid that they don't understand what you're saying. So you will say something like does that make sense? When we're talking to extroverts or we're talking to male counterparts in particular, very rarely do they ask does that make sense? They either assume it makes sense or they assume that if it doesn't make sense, the person that they're speaking to or the audience that they're speaking to will ask questions. But we, as introverted women, we will assume that we're not making sense, which means we are putting the onus on ourselves and we are lacking the confidence that we are being clear in our communication.

Speaker 1:

Another common behavior that might indicate that you lack self-confidence is your body language. So we talk about executive presence and we talk about the importance of it as you become a more senior leader, and executive presence isn't necessarily just about what you say. Your presence is also means your body language, how you stand, the eye contact you make or don't make, how you're positioning in the room or at a table. Are you sitting at the head of the table? Are you sitting in the middle of the table All of these things actually matter. Your body language in terms are you standing straight or are you hunched over? Are you shrinking into yourself? Are you standing by the wall versus in the center of the room, or in a position of in the room where everybody can see you? All of these things can be strategically used to enhance your executive presence. So when you think about whether you are signaling to others that you are confident or not confident, those things matter.

Speaker 1:

Another behavior that is very common amongst introverted women is when we deflect recognition or we downplay achievements. So what this looks like is when we have colleagues or your boss, or even people who report to you who compliment your work and want to tell other people how great you are in your presence. So you're sitting there in the meeting, they're giving you a shout out, or you're standing somewhere in hearing distance of the conversation and they are complimenting your skills, your contributions, who you are as a person, and you downplay it. Oh, that's nothing. Oh, I learned how to do that a long time ago. Or oh, no, there's no need to shout me out. Shout the team out. It's the team's work that made the difference, not necessarily my individual contributions. All of those are examples of how you deflect recognition that you deserve and how you downplay achievements that you deserve or achievements that you have made, and doing that signals to other people that you lack confidence.

Speaker 1:

And then, finally, one of the biggest behaviors that indicates that you lack confidence is when you spend your time and energy waiting, waiting for permission, instead of taking initiative. So you may have this great, great idea and because no one has come and asked you what you think, you're not sharing it. So you're waiting for permission. Or or you know you are ready for a promotion, which we talk a great deal about here on the podcast. You know you're ready for a promotion. But instead of raising your hand and saying that you are ready, or asking the question, telling people, hey, I'm ready for a promotion, let's have a conversation about what opportunities there might be in the organization that could best use my skill set and my expertise, instead of making a statement like that or starting a conversation like that, you're waiting for the company to tell you when it's time for you to get promoted which, let's be honest, that may never come right. So you could be waiting for permission forever, instead of taking the initiative and starting the conversation and taking the initiative and creating change for yourself. So if you were wondering, or if you were asking yourself as we were talking, if you have challenges or issues with confidence or if there are specific areas where you could boost your confidence, if you are doing any of those behaviors that we just talked about, the answer is yes. There's definitely room for you to increase your confidence Now.

Speaker 1:

The end of the year, end of 2024, if you're listening to this, real time is quickly, quickly approaching. But there are three things that you can start doing right away to build your confidence. Like three actions you can take right now to start building your confidence before the new year. You don't have to wait until January 1st. You don't have to wait until you get back to work. These are three things you can start doing right now.

Speaker 1:

The first one is start documenting your wins and achievements. This is something that I recommend to my clients that they do on a weekly basis. I insist that they create time either on a Monday or on a Friday on their calendar 30 minutes, not even 15 to 30 minutes on their calendar where they actually start. They document the wins and achievements every week. So that is the first thing that you can start doing, and what that does is it's very easy for us to get caught up in the day to day, get caught up in our responsibilities that are right in front of us, particularly if we have deadlines on things. It's really easy to put the wins out of our mind and only focus on the challenges or the next thing that has to be crossed off our list. When you create time and space deliberately every week to pause and think about and document your wins and achievements, that helps you to keep them front of mind, number one and then two. That helps you to put them in your confidence bank, because the fact that you have these wins and these achievements should be fueling your overall confidence as a leader, should be fueling your overall confidence as a leader.

Speaker 1:

The second thing that you can start doing right away to build your confidence is you can practice strategic visibility in meetings. Now, I am a big component of visibility. For visibility's sake does not make sense. Opening your mouth and making a comment in a meeting just to hear yourself speak or just so that people see you speaking is actually more detrimental to you than it is helpful, particularly for you and me as introverts. But when you practice strategic visibility in meetings, it means that you do a couple of things. It means that you really are thoughtful about your verbal contributions in meetings, what you say, what you don't say, and it's not always coming up or contributing a unique idea. Many of my introvert clients do very, very well with brainstorming or building on ideas that are not their own, because what they do is, and what you can do, is, use your lens, your unique lens. Whether that is the subject matter expertise that you have, whether it's the position in the company that you might have, whether it's the experiences that you've had inside and outside of the company, there is a unique lens that only you can contribute from, and using that to build on ideas that may already be on the table is a strategic way for you to gain visibility in meetings. So the second one is practicing strategic visibility.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that you can do right now to continue to build your confidence, before the new year even ends, is that you can build your support network of mentors, champions and sponsors. This is really, really important and you can start this now and carry it into the new year with you and carry it into the new year with you. But we all know that who you surround yourself with is extremely important and who you share your space with your thoughts, your ideas, who you ask for input, who you ask for feedback from, that really, really matters. So you don't want to just take advantage of whoever's around you. You want to be deliberate about building your network of mentors and champions and sponsors to be able to help boost you up and give you the confidence you need and desire. You need and desire, okay, lady leader.

Speaker 1:

So this one, as you can tell by the tenor in my voice, is really really important to me, because I feel like we, as introverted women, we have drunk the Kool-Aid and the Kool-Aid on this one out here is not good. We keep drinking the Kool-Aid that we don't have what it takes, that we don't have the confidence to be senior leaders and executives, and that we don't know and have everything that we need, that's already inside of us, to be the best version of ourselves, both at home and at work. And I know that that is not the truth. So when I hear and meet people who are saying that and who are not just saying that but they actually have brainwashed themselves or they believe it I feel like I have to call that out. And that's what today's episode has been all about. The truth is struggling with confidence is normal. It is right. We've all done it. I did it earlier in my career. I had to work to build my confidence, and even the most confident people that I work with today, they have had confidence struggles.

Speaker 1:

And the other truth is, even those of us who have a good level of confidence today, there are areas still where you will question and where you won't have the same high level of confidence that you might have overall. For me, for example, if you've listened to this podcast before, you've heard me say that public speaking for me has always always been a challenge. Can I do it? Yes, do I do it? Yes, do I enjoy it? Not so much Do I still get very nervous and I worry about how I show up and what people will think. Absolutely, do I push through? You bet your bottom dollar that I do, but there is a lack of confidence there. I won't pretend that there's not, but how I deal with it makes the difference. How I deal with it is I dig down deep down inside me. For the other areas in which I'm confident, and I bring that to the surface. As I do my public speaking. You can do the same thing.

Speaker 1:

The key, though, though, is to stop ignoring. If you do struggle with confidence, holistically or in specific areas, the key is to stop ignoring it. It is extremely important to acknowledge it and start addressing it now. If this is you, if you are someone who wants to work on her confidence, you wanna work on building your confidence. If you see and understand that confidence is a major component of being a senior leader and an executive leader, and that's what you want for yourself.

Speaker 1:

If you realize and recognize that increasing your confidence will also help you increase the level of influence that you have, increase your ability to make great decisions for yourself, for your team, for the company, and increase your opportunity to build wealth, then I want to invite you to join me in my one-on-one coaching program, which is called the Elite Leader Experience. In that program, you and I get the opportunity to work one on one on your confidence and all the other areas where you feel like you need to build and grow and rise, and when we do that, we also put together a personalized strategy to get you into your next senior leader or executive role. There's a bunch of things that we will go over. We will leverage leadership assessments to collect data to help us understand and dig deeper in terms of who you are as a person, who you are as a leader, who you are as an introvert, your strengths, your development areas.

Speaker 1:

We will also do a scan of what the potential opportunities are, what you want next in terms of your next leadership role, the type of environment, the type of responsibilities you want, how you want to be making decisions, how you want to lead the team, what kind of team you want to lead.

Speaker 1:

All of that will be a part of our work as well, and then we will also, if you help you decide whether you stay in your current organization to level up or whether you put yourself out on the market, and if you decide either one that you decide, we chart out and actually take the steps to get you there. So, if this is something that you're interested in, if you are ready to take this step, if you are ready for 2025 to be the year that you step into your senior leader and executive level self, then click the link in the show notes and let's set up some time and have a conversation and we can decide together if the elite leader experience is right for you. Okay, lady leader, until next time, keep leading your introvert way and happy new year.

Speaker 2:

That's a wrap for this episode of Leading Her Way. Thanks for tuning in. If you have thoughts, questions or ideas for future topics, connect and send me a message on LinkedIn and if you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe. And please take a minute to write a quick review on Apple Podcasts. Your review will help spread the word to other ambitious females so they know they're not alone and that this podcast is a community of support for all of us. Leading her way to the top, remember your leadership is needed, your leadership is powerful, so lead boldly Until next time.