The Confidence Gap with Guest Dr. Lisa Hale

Are you doing great work, but not getting recognized, promoted, or compensated the way you should?

In this episode of Change Agent Leadership, I sit down with Dr. Lisa Hale to unpack the real reason behind the “confidence gap.”

Here’s the truth:

It’s not just about confidence.

It’s about how clearly your value is understood inside your organization.

Together, we explore:

• Why high-performing leaders (especially women) undersell their impact
• The difference between confidence and strategy
• How unclear roles and expectations create hidden leadership gaps
• A powerful tool called the Evidence Ladder to make your value visible
• Practical ways to connect your work to real business outcomes
• How leaders (men and women) can better advocate for themselves and others

This episode is packed with practical leadership coaching you can apply immediately—whether you’re preparing for a performance review, seeking a promotion, or simply trying to lead more effectively.

If you’ve ever thought:

“I’m doing everything right—why isn’t it translating into results?”

This episode is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The confidence gap is often a visibility gap, not a capability gap
• If your value isn’t legible at the decision level, it won’t scale
• Leaders often communicate effort instead of impact
• Clear, measurable outcomes build credibility faster than charisma
• Journaling your impact creates long-term leverage in reviews and promotions
• Leaders must actively define and communicate their role’s value—not wait for clarity

▶️ Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:29 What Is the Confidence Gap?

04:18 Reframing Confidence as Strategy

06:59 Case Study: Making Value Visible

20:25 How Men Can Help Bridge the Gap

21:10 The Evidence Ladder Tool

48:11 Practical Next Steps

54:11 Closing Thoughts

Reach out to Dr. Lisa Hale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaehale/

Catch full episodes of video versions and other leadership videos on my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Jonathan-Hankin

Download Free Leadership Toolkits → https://www.jonathanhankin.com/leadership-toolkit-library

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Website: www.jonathanhankin.com
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Transcript

Jonathan Hankin 0:00

Well, welcome back to another episode of Change Agent Leadership. Today we're talking about the confidence gap, why women often undersell their impact, and my guest today is Dr. Lisa Hale, who is a leadership advisor to founders, CEOs and senior executives that are navigating high stakes decisions in complex, fast changing environments, which is where many of you as listeners and myself live. And Lisa helps strengthen their judgment, our judgments under pressure to be able to see critical trade-offs. Clearly, and this is important, create the context. Organizations need to move forward with confidence when the path forward is not obvious.

Lisa Hale 0:41

Thank you. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's wonderful to be here. You put on a tremendously valuable show and I'm happy to be here with you.

Jonathan Hankin 0:50

Love it. Thank you. And I'm so glad you could join us. And you know, I know you have often spoken and continue to speak and coach on many topics, advise as well. And today I want to mention what I, what I mentioned in the introduction, which is the topic that you have is personal to you, I think, and you've helped many people with is, which is the confidence gap. Why even. women, but specifically top women undersell their impact. So what, what is the confidence gap? What is it? And maybe what it isn't, some people might be in their mind, has already made up a description. So let's start off with definition. What, how do you see that? Hmm.

Lisa Hale 1:29

Yeah, it's, it's a fantastic question and I, I wanna answer it in a two-part way. The first part is to say that this does apply to men as well. So if there are any men listening, it's really important to know that I'm not excluding you in your, uh, your experience with this. It might feel a little different or. You might talk about it a little differently, uh, and maybe it's helpful to hear that. What I really, really do is I help leaders make their impact visible so that the right work gets resourced and propagated through the organization and scaled and recognized, and what happens. Mm. Maybe in particular for top women is that we, you know, I'm, I'm gonna dip into the psychology of women for just one second, but then I'm gonna leave it behind. We may, many of us have been conditioned to communicate in a particular way, hanging out with other young people who were like us. And that can lead to not being able to identify value and the what the right decision is in exactly the way that it gets recognized in business and in organizations. And if a, if you are a leader who is sitting at the top of an organization, you might just throw that away, dismiss it right off the bat, saying, yeah, of course I know that. But let's slow it down just a minute and really understand that our default ways of communicating leak out. And sometimes we don't recognize that that's happening, right? So when, when decisions are being made by leaders, the outcomes don't always fully follow. And sometimes inside the bubble of the leadership seat, it looks like a great decision. But most of the time, value might not be interpreted inside the system the way we intend it to. And then as a result that that decision's impact doesn't propagate through the system the way we intend it to. And that can be true if you think about an individual conversation with a board member or with your, uh, C-suite team if you're, if you're reporting upwards. Or it might be true if you're looking at. You know your fellow senior leaders and how they're receiving it. So the confidence gap is really coming from the gap between how we think our impact is gonna land and. How it actually does land, or how we expect it to land and how it does land. That's what gives rise to the confidence gap. And I wanna say something a little disruptive. I wanna say it might not really be about confidence. It might just be almost a strategic issue. If we are. If we're focused on confidence, personal confidence, we're focused on the thing that's gonna undermine our confidence. But if we're instead focused on the impact, the value creation, the business impact, the way that the decision fits inside the value chain that's important to that particular organization, then we take our attention off ourselves and put the attention on the right things, and then the confidence gap starts to shrink. Does that make sense to you, Jonathan?

Jonathan Hankin 4:57

That does, I mean, what I hear is a lot of it is just where men and women are in their minds. Um, there's a gap there for what you want. Are you measuring against the ideal almost? Or are you measuring against what, um, you need to do or what is expected? There's so much going on there at the same time is what I'm hearing.

Lisa Hale 5:16

Yeah, that's right. And and I would say one really important thing that everyone listening if they can, if they're not just listening in the car or on a run or something like that, if you can write this down, I would write down, if the value isn't legible at the decision level, it doesn't scale because then it can't be communicated in a way that scales it throughout the organization. And so. What I see so often is leaders will come to me and say, you know, here's a great example actually a, a true experience I had with a senior leader. She was doing excellent work, exceptional work, and when three years in a row, she went for her annual review and was expecting a promotion and a raise, what? And then not getting it. When she came to me about that, her thought was. You know, I think I'm good at what I do, but maybe I'm in the wrong place. Maybe I'm in the wrong seat. Maybe I need to figure out something else to do. So she'd already processed those experiences well past her first thought of, gosh, are they gonna see my value the way I see it? So that would be the first iteration of confidence She'd already pass, processed it past that, because most senior leaders are very smart. They have a lot of confidence, or they wouldn't have gotten there to start with. But there was a. A kind of a background gap in her confidence, a, a background deficit in it that had her making up her mind that the reason she wasn't getting what she wanted is because the system she was in didn't value her. And what was really happening is she wasn't presenting her value in a way that was legible to the system she was in. So she came to me and after hitting this wall for three years in a row, and what we worked on were upgrades using this process that I call the evidence ladder, and we did a clarity and visibility sprint, so we really dissected. How was she understanding the value chain? From the point of view of the owner, chief of staff, you know, the people she reported to, uh, and then we dissected how to translate what she was trying to present into language that they could read. It didn't take that long, about a month and a half, and we changed, um. One update just one and into outcome language that they could understand. And in one week she was pulled into higher level decisions, so that already shrunk or shrank, I guess her confidence gap, right? She had a success and so now she was starting to see, oh, wait, what I'm saying, what I'm doing, what I'm offering actually is valued. Nothing about her CA capability changed only how it was interpreted. And then as we continued to work through this process, within six weeks, she achieved, uh, the promotion she wanted. It was a subtle one, but it was important. And here was the big one, 137% increase in salary and total comp. So more than doubled, right? It was

Jonathan Hankin 8:24

Yeah.

Lisa Hale 8:25

extremely, extremely valuable to her and her family and that. I would say that alone doesn't eliminate a gap in confidence. We all suffer from that. There's no human being alive, no top CEO anywhere. Nobody at all who doesn't have some amount of, you know, the humility that also leads into, gosh, do they really, am I really all that right? We all have that. The, the important trick is to take our attention off that feeling state that question, state that default. Background chatter and put the attention on the actual, uh, KPIs, the actual results, the actual outcomes that are linked to the actions that, that that leader has taken and, and sort of flip the script away from I enough and into where's the value creation here and how do I communicate it and make it legible.

Jonathan Hankin 9:29

No, that

Lisa Hale 9:29

It.

Jonathan Hankin 9:30

That's

Lisa Hale 9:30

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 9:30

Yeah. I guess I a follow up on just thinking in your example with this client you were working with, you were advising was the gap, um, I'm thinking from a coaching, a leadership perspective was the gap that it was a lady you mentioned. I think her right, her from her perspective, um. or from your perspective, was the gap that she didn't understand what was being expected or was the gap in her confidence that what she was doing, um. Couldn't meet the expect unknown expectations. What, so I'm missing a gap here. So what,

Lisa Hale 10:05

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 10:06

was the gap there? Because a lot of people, a lot of leaders are like, you know, I'm not getting promoted. I'm doing my job. And then I ask, well, what are your goals? And they gimme the goals and they're hitting them. In this case, was she hitting the goals or was there unclear expectations? Or was it a mindset thing? Or was it a combination of all three?

Lisa Hale 10:24

Oh gosh. It was definitely a combination of all things, all, all three of those things. But what it was more even than that, and this is really the, the big insight and, and let me just step back and put this in a little bit of context. Um. I, I've been doing leadership advisory work for a long time, and then I also have been trained and, you know, practiced as a master coach for quite a long time. And inside the coaching frame, those questions you're asking are exactly the right questions because those coaching tools are the tactical tools that help us. Get the knots out of an individual person's thinking and processing so that they can see the bigger picture of the system in which they work. In leadership advisory work, what I'm really doing is paying attention to that bigger system as well, and inside the bigger system. The gap was that she wasn't making the impact of her work and the output of her work legible as value to the business. Right

Jonathan Hankin 11:26

Got

Lisa Hale 11:26

inside her. There were a whole slew of, um, pitfalls and dead ends and default thinking and, you know,

Jonathan Hankin 11:36

Sure.

Lisa Hale 11:37

patterns that needed to be unpacked that everybody has. And we are typically as leaders blind to the way in which those default patterns

Jonathan Hankin 11:47

Hmm.

Lisa Hale 11:48

us from seeing things clearly. And when we're focused on those things and we feel. You know that I don't know if I'm enough, which, which is really what confidence is, right? Uh, when we are feeling that feeling and we're focusing on it, we're not focusing on the value creation that our, that our role, that our efforts, that our output and outcomes are really supposed to be focused on.

Jonathan Hankin 12:13

Hmm.

Lisa Hale 12:15

and that's human. I mean, I wanna say that one of the biggest, I would say biggest. Tragedies in the world of business is the stereotypical expectation that men are supposed to be goal-focused and don't get tripped up by their internal feeling state, and women are supposedly overly tripped up by their internal feel. Feeling state and not focused on goals. And n neither of those things is true. Um, we have behavior patterns that match up with the archetype we're supposed to live into that make it look that way, but it doesn't take very much sensitivity, attunement, maturity, or wisdom to recognize that that's not actually true. I've, I've worked with just as many men who, when the trust is there, will acknowledge that they have imposter syndrome or their confidence is an issue, but. That's, that's not really what the issue is. The issue is that their attention is on the wrong thing. And this isn't a soft issue,

Jonathan Hankin 13:17

Yeah.

Lisa Hale 13:18

I just wanna say it affects revenue, it affects execution, speed, and decision quality. It's not a soft issue at all.

Jonathan Hankin 13:26

Yeah, well you jumped the, you you beat me to my question, which was Well, I mean, so in her case it, it wasn't a soft issue. It was a financial issue because once she was able to, um, I'll just use my words, I don't know if you said this, but connect with the organization's desired outcome and bridge that gap that was there, different, her confidence gap shrunk it sounds like, because she was able to then, um, tie in and live out. More in line with what the organization was expecting and then they were able to see it. So it sounds like you were able to help her bridge that gap, um, in the organization, but personally, and that led to her financial gain. the end, if I heard you correctly,

Lisa Hale 14:06

the companies.

Jonathan Hankin 14:06

also

Lisa Hale 14:07

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 14:07

financial gain with an organization.

Lisa Hale 14:10

Yeah, I, and actually, I, I wanna come back to the question you asked me because I didn't fully answer it. And I think there's something really important there, which is, was this an, uh, a mismatch in the understanding of what the goals of her role were? Um, the question you asked assumes that the organization is clear what the goals are and very often. The most senior leaders are not that clear. So her role had been defined in such a way that she looked like she was meeting her organizational, her, her role expectations. She didn't, she wasn't failing to measure up or failing to communicate that she was measuring up. The reality was that her role was defined so vaguely that, uh. So this was, I'll just say what this was. It was a family office. She was this, she is the CEO still. And her role was defined with so many different activities and, and, and the stakeholder that she reported to and that she had to show value to was the owner of the assets plus the chief of staff. That was, uh. An executive position and not a member of the family of the family office. So those were her two bosses basically. And they defined her role in a way that she was performing very well. They valued her. The problem was that they were missing. Uh, they were lacking a perspective on how much value she really could bring, and because of that, they weren't valuing her role as much as they should have been. And she had the ability to bring value and she had been lobbying to bring more value and they just. Hadn't defined her role that way. So part of what she needed to do was help them redefine her role so that it captured more organizational and real concrete value to the point of, oh, I think she had brought to them. Eight investment opportunities that were extremely lucrative and they had just sort of lost over that over the years, and she had not considered bringing those to the table in a structured presentation because it wasn't part of her job description. And she wanted it to be, she had an MBA from Harvard for, for, I mean, she has one still for, for heaven's sakes. And they were just missing that value altogether. So she had a bigger hill to climb than just, Hey, I am meeting these goals. You're just not seeing it. It wasn't that, it was, she had to redefine the, uh, the value measure of her role. I had a client just last week actually, who had a similar thing happen. Now, this is, this is a man, but it's a very valuable story and it would apply to a woman just as much. He is the CAIO, uh, which is the chief a i officer, and he was hired to be the CAIO plus CTO, so chief technical officer of a, uh, of a company, a relatively small company, but it still, it had revenue, it had, um, investors, it had. Staff and. Uh, what was it? Five months into his new role as, as the new Chief AI officer and CTO, it was determined that they wanted to restructure and peel off the CTO role and add chief revenue officer. Role to his CAIO role because he was exceptionally good at that part, and they didn't redefine the role. And bonuses were tied to hitting certain metrics, but the metrics were now all askew because his role had gotten changed. And he came to me not knowing at all how to. Reorganize that, how to have the conversation, how to negotiate now for his bonus. And his concern was that he would get shorted on his bonus because he no longer was gonna be able to achieve the targets that were defined in the original role definition. And so. That seems really obvious as you and I are talking about this, Jonathan, it's obvious there needs to be a conversation with the CEO defining the new role and getting very specific about the, the revenue targets. But what was missing, and this is a very smart guy, uh, what was missing in his thinking was the connection between his, uh, role and his new. Outputs to the value chain in the organization in a way that had measurable value. And he just hadn't thought about it that way because he was, you know, um, connecting with the conversations that had led up to the reorganization, which he was completely supportive of his great relationship with all the people involved. And he just hadn't spotted that he had sort of failed to identify how to measure the value of the new role. And it wasn't clear to the CEO either. So very often these senior leaders who are dealing with this kind of issue have to make something clear to the CEO, to the boss, to the owner, to the, you know, board that maybe is their responsibility to already be clear about, but nine times outta 10 they're not.

Jonathan Hankin 19:25

No,

Lisa Hale 19:25

part of the.

Jonathan Hankin 19:26

true. I've run into this so many times. Um, thank you for those examples. Um, I'm just going to add my comment here that, uh, this is part of the podcast, but I just say from my coaching experience, so, uh, I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm so surprised how many leaders, c-suite, other leaders as well do not have an accurate job description and do not have. Clearly defined goals, and one of my first questions I've learned to ask is, so where's your job description? Are you actually doing it? what are the measurable outcomes based on what is, what's being expected of you to hit these goals? And many times they can't answer those questions because it's so fast paced and the excuse their boss gives is, well, we're still figuring it out. actually had that happen this week. And so it's like, well, you might still be figuring it out, but let's write down what you're figuring out as you're figuring out for documentation.'cause it helps bridge the confidence gap. And so let, let's move into. You mentioned earlier about, um, helping that other client, the lady assess, um, how to articulate adding value. Um, is there a structure or is there, uh, any tools that you've used or one you want to highlight that has helped not just men but women, but also might help men as well? Because what I didn't hear you say was. Um, women need to act like men. And I also didn't, that's not true. And you also, it's not true that men need to be different and more act like women. We both need, people need to be themselves, but we all need to be more emotionally aware and grow. So that was a long question too. Anything, any thoughts on a tool or something that can help people listening to this, uh, move forward in this area?

Lisa Hale 21:10

Yeah, I, I use a tool that I call the, um, evidence ladder, and it's, it's got a whole number of steps that really break down. How do you. Even, and it even actually addresses the very issue that you're talking about. And I just wanna comment on that and then I'll come right back to this evidence letter. I see it all the time too, that, uh, the founder, the CEO, the board, they haven't defined all the roles Very exactly. And I understand why. I mean, I've worked a lot in the startup world, both on behalf of the private equity and venture capital investors, and on behalf of the founder, CEO of the portfolio companies. And in all cases. The, the pace of, uh, pressure and the pace of product development and the pre even the pace of the, you know, the. The SaaS product lifecycle is so fast that they often don't, they often have a big picture of what needs to be done, and they're, and they want senior executives, founding engineers, whoever they are, to come on in and just help'em get the job done no matter what. And if that means they have to, you know, clean some toilets or, uh. Write up a p and l when their real job is software engineering or, um, you know, go out and talk to customers when they're really the, you know, operating officer or whatever it is. They're expected to do that. And so it makes sense to me why they don't define the roles well enough. And so what I tell the clients that I'm working with, no matter what level they're at, whether it's board or founder or you know, somewhere on the. Team on the leadership team. I tell them that's, that's okay. That might not be something you can fix right away, but what you do need to do is work toward convergence of clarity. So that means recording what it is you're doing. Taking stock of what you are creating the most value from and keeping that, keeping a record of it, even if it's entirely an, an entire journal devoted just to that, that you update almost daily. Then what you're doing is creating something concrete from which you can build that value chain. And that's actually an important part of what leads to being able to successfully use the evidence ladder, because the evidence ladder is. Uh, oh. Uh, an antidote to the big problem, which is that many of the leaders I work with describe their work in terms of output, ev or in terms of, uh, effort or activity rather than in terms of impact. Or output. I have another very senior leader, female client, who works in a huge organization that's been around for a long time. She's not the leader, she's not on the board. I mean, she is the leader. She's not the founder, she's not on the board. Uh, she has bosses and, and yet she's in charge of. Many, many, many, uh, yeah, I think like$180 million p and l. And she has a ton of responsibility. And when she goes in for her, and we've worked together for years. Now, when she goes in for her annual review, in the beginning she used to describe what she did. And every single time we went through it, I'd be like, and so what did, what did that do? And so now she started to change how she relates to the. Job description and for as it evolves over time, year to year, and how she gets measured for her bonuses, for her pay increases, and so on. So, coming back to this startup environment where the pace of change is really high and people have ambiguous role descriptions. That, that might be part of the lay of the land. And you, we can't con, we can't change the conditions of the game by ourselves, but we can, we have a ton of agency over how we respond to them. And so one of the ways to do that is to gather data. And I really do think daily, unless your daily activity and, and impact isn't being. Isn't changing that much. If it's weekly, that's fine too. What I, what I find leaders have a hard time with in this, which makes the evidence ladder questions, I ask them and work them through, um, really valuable is that they don't always recognize the impact. That their efforts are, is making past about when it happens. So I talked to a founding engineer, uh, wrote, uh, a protocol that disproved the business model that this startup he was working in was working toward and saved them, literally, probably saved them from failure and saved them for sure, millions of dollars of, of effort put into the wrong direction. And six months later. He recognized he wouldn't have remembered that he had done that. He just did that in a single day and he needed to write it down in his journal so that when the conversation came up about, let's review how you've been doing it. That was there for him. And so this evidence ladder is meant to support qbr, which are quarterly business reviews and impact statements and that kind of thing, so that you can build toward a more and more and more concrete and specific understanding of what your work is doing and what your decisions are doing to support business impact. So I, um, you know, we start up with, uh. Leaders don't really make decisions at the level of effort they make it at how. Um, or how, what they did or how hard it was or how many people they coordinated, leaders make decisions based on what that effort translated to in, in the organization. So we start there, you know, what are the things you did, what are the decisions you made? And then how did they propagate through the system? What impact did they have? At the next level, we get to outcomes and then that's better, but outcomes aren't even always enough. Then we translate those outcomes into changes that it made for the business. Sometimes those changes are positive, sometimes they're not. Everybody. Has to do some trial and error, especially in these fast-paced, early stage or smaller organizations. So sometimes you're gonna make a decision and it's not gonna pan out well for the business outcomes for how it impacted the business, but that's really okay. What you wanna do is record how quickly you noticed it and how quickly you pivoted, and also how you engaged the rest of the team in making that decision together. Does that answer your question?

Jonathan Hankin 28:00

it does. No, it was good. I was long, long process in my mind of like, how do we get to, um, showing the evidence. But you're, I was just thinking how often do you do it? That's was my purpose in that question. And you're right. Um, we tend to, most leaders tend to fix a problem and move on and then fix a problem and move on, and then. Eventually we get stuck a bit of, coached a lot of people where they do a lot of things, but they haven't documented what they've done. They just know they've done a lot. And yet the next question is, well, what are you going to do next year? And they forget what they did to get to that point. And so, no, I love the idea of documentation of the evidence, what that looks like. Um, you mentioned daily, weekly, whatever it is, but you're, you're not so much, what I hear you saying is you're tying that task. To evidence of the results, what was the impact? And that's the key part, is that really where you're headed with that is the impact. And what would that look like? is there a, a practical way you would live that out with somebody? Yep.

Lisa Hale 29:03

Yeah. So instead of saying we kept this project on track, which I mean you've seen this, right? Many leaders will, will express the impact that they've had that way, right? Yeah. Instead of saying that, we wanna say something more like, we avoided a two week delay because we spotted this problem at this time, and that to, and, and avoiding that two week delay protected about a million dollars in revenue. So you tie what you did. To outcome. So this founding engineer that wrote that, uh, deeply explored a, a process that was gonna be critical to the business plan that this new startup had. This new startup had$25 million in seed funding and, and a team of five. So that gave them a relatively long. Runway, but there were market pressures that made their runway pretty short. So they really did need to test and measure and, um, just make really big decisions about what direction they were gonna go in based on whether their idea of what they thought they were gonna do was gonna work or not. And so this founding engineer disproved a direction in the business model that would've saved it, probably saved them. Assuming that they would've spent two years trying to develop something that wouldn't work, that saved them, whatever, 25 divided by five. You know, times two is, so$10 million, that's a pretty big. That's one way to measure the ROI of that discovery. It could be measured in a more inflated way, really, because if that business failed and the upside of it not failing was gonna be a hundred million dollars, then that was a pivotal moment. And so what I help leaders see when they're presenting this is that you don't want to. Make it grandiose or inflate it, but show the actual real numbers and let the person you are interacting with, whether it's the entire team making a decision together, or it's your boss. Let them make, do the math on its value. But what you're doing is tying. Your decisions and your actions and your judgment under pressure to real business and outcomes. And by doing that, you're letting, you're signaling very strongly that you're attuned to the business, uh, priorities and you're signaling and attunement to your boss and your peers, um, most important. Agenda and, and that's not always ex, it's not always directly profit. Sometimes it's, you know, I've worked in the. Philanthropy, SEC sector as well. Sometimes the real impact is in impact, and I've worked in the government sector. Sometimes it's in accomplishing policy priorities. Uh, I've worked in higher education. Sometimes it's in, you know, effective enrollment and retention. So it, it's whatever the metrics are that translate into value for your organization.

Jonathan Hankin 32:15

No, I think that's great. Um. It just happened to literally, this happened, uh, yesterday in a meeting I was in. Um,

Lisa Hale 32:22

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 32:24

uh, judging another, uh, different director, um, was working on a, with a group. And, um, they were saying the person has met their goals. It appears, but they won't be able to meet future goals'cause there's change. And this kind of highlights, I I, this, I wish I would've had this yesterday, but it highlights for me in that room would've been like, well, I. let's list out what they have done because the results might actually match the results you're looking for in this new area, but you are saying they don't because you don't see them. And I think that's why it's important to make it visible. You mentioned that and, and to highlight what that looks like. Not for ourselves. Just for ourselves, which, I mean, the title of this is the Confidence Gap, but it is good for our confidence, but it also. What I hear you saying is it's also very important, the confidence in whoever our boss is to, or whoever we're coaching their boss, to be able to understand what are they competent and confident in to go to the next level.'cause the boss isn't gonna fill in that gap themselves. Well, if there is gonna be negative, right? If they don't see it's going to be negative. And so it's important to fill that gap in from our perspective, uh, in a positive way.

Lisa Hale 33:37

I, I agree with you completely, and I would say it's like this. If the signal isn't clear and it's not just a clear signal, it's a clear and aligned signal, which means. Which means understanding and attunement to what aligned actually means. Uh, if the signal isn't clear, then even well-intentioned leaders will make incomplete decisions or incomplete communications. So we've been focusing a lot on the communication aspect of it, but honestly, if the signal it, that's why the evidence ladder is good to start with right away. That journaling on your impact and on the business, the connecting the dots between. What your work is and how it impacts the overall ultimate business outcomes, uh, from a very early stage in, in your career.

Jonathan Hankin 34:30

Yeah.

Lisa Hale 34:31

I'm

Jonathan Hankin 34:31

huge. I

Lisa Hale 34:32

having a thought. John, I'm just gonna jump into a quick aside, which is that, uh, you know, Patrick Lencioni has a, a really cool fable based book on, uh, the, the best employees versus not best employees, you know, engagement and his thesis is that engagement is highest when an employee understands the impact and value of their work on the business. And I would say that's for sure true and, and. That's an important thing for senior leaders to recognize that as they build their communication plan, their culture plan, their leadership systems, their decision architecture, all that stuff inside their organization, hopefully intentionally, then they pay attention to it. But if you're a leader who's in a role and in an organization, then you can take a great deal of ownership of how that looks, by being curious about how your work impacts the outcome. Of a business and, and its success. And you can ask your boss those questions. What is the most important thing for our unit to achieve and how does my role inside this unit impact that? And what happens if it's done really well? What does that change for you? What happens if it's not done well? What does that change for you? How does that impact other parts of the organization? Asking those questions really early on actually helps you create the. The data you need to, first of all make sure your attention is on the right thing. Not am I good enough, but what do I, how do I need to operate inside this role in order to provide the most value in it? And, but it also helps you with the evidence ladder and with your own advancement down the road and when your attention is on what your, the impact you're having. And the impact that your impact has on the business and on the people around you, then your attention isn't so much on you and your confidence. It's on, there's value in what I'm providing, and then your confidence automatically increases in the gap Shrinks.

Jonathan Hankin 36:41

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And we, I don't know, we're gonna go here today, but it does highlight, there is a point when people do this and their confidence grows because they know where they are and they know where the business wants them to go. It may not be a good alignment. But you need to know that be, you need to be able to have the tools to do that. And that's what you're providing here is that framework for that. Uh, versus it's just not a good fit. So this is part of the legwork that we all need to do and all of our clients can do is to assess that with that, um, ladder. Um. So what springs to mind, you know, obviously I'm gonna go back to the title confidence gap, why women often undersell their impact. You touched on men do this as well. Um, but how can, specifically, what are ways that men, um, can spot the gap better, maybe or not that that sounded wrong, not how they spot it better, but how can they assist if the focus here is obviously women might not, might have a different gap. How can, and there are more male leaders than women leaders. That's a fact. How can men help in this?'cause they're not necessarily the problem. I don't hear you saying that. Men are the problem, they just need to get over it. not what you are saying. Uh, but what are things that they can do or should do to assist in partnering in this?

Lisa Hale 38:04

Yeah, I, I love that question because the real truth is that leaders, uh, of all. Stripes make the same mistake, which is they fail, they, they sort of take for granted that the role definition, the, uh, archetype of what their role is supposed to accomplish. All those things are in fact, what's important in the business in this case. I've had an opportunity to look at lots and lots of senior leader job postings, for example, and you know, I have so much sympathy for the folks in HR and talent acquisition who are trying to write the job posting. Uh, adequately without it being 300 pages long. And, you know, they often don't even know what the job really requires'cause they're not necessarily in that division. It, it's tough to get clarity and to get that articulated well. So the awareness that that is the case helps every leader, male and female, young and old, new in, you know, early, mid, or later career. Attuned to the fact that people. We'll have a difficult time knowing how to bring value and contribute if they don't understand what the bigger picture is and what the end game is. And it's also worth mentioning, and I'm sure you're thinking of this to some extent. People have different communication styles, they have different strengths, they have different focus. Some people are highly analytical, some people are highly sort of intuitive. People have different ways of processing and relating to information. What I've seen is that even, you know, intuitive gut feel, uh. Uh, action oriented leaders who don't necessarily think of themselves as being particularly analytical. They don't wanna spend time in spreadsheets. They don't wanna break down, you know, action into dollars'cause it doesn't feel right. I have a ton of sympathy for that. The, the reality is that even leaders who live in that kind of quadrant of. I don't know, comfortable ways of relating to information and, and leadership and work. They have the capacity to do that analytical work. The reality is that every senior leader that I've worked with who's effective has the ability to do all those different kinds of things, and we tend to default into the realm that we're best at and most comfortable in. And what I'm really saying is that even people who don't wanna. Link, uh, I don't know, link decision making to specific ROI in every single act. Act, you know, individual, discreet action. It's worth doing, even if it's an estimate without breaking your brain or boil, burning your gears because it helps you in the end be an advocate for other people. This is the question you asked if you are. A man who values the contribution of all of your colleagues. When you practice recognizing the impact of your micro decisions all the way up to your big decisions on the business, you'll also be practicing the recognition of other people's micro decisions and macro decisions and everything in between, and you'll be better at helping them identify where their value is as well. So if you're focus, if you start with, uh, parsing your own value creation and your own, uh, contributions in the way that we're describing, you're gonna be exercising the muscle of that kind of discernment that allows you to also help other people in the organization do the same thing for themselves. And if you're the boss, you'll be parsing, you'll be exercising the muscle of recognizing that value. In other people and coaching. You know, I think leaders should be practicing co coaching skills to some extent. You'll be able to coach your direct reports into recognizing their own value or maybe coach them into defining their value in a specific way. And it also helps you, of course, define what it is you want from people if you're practicing that.

Jonathan Hankin 42:32

No,

Lisa Hale 42:32

I say that too complicated, Lee? Or was it okay? Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 42:36

you're good. How would you summarize that into how do men come alongside colleagues and help them and not, uh, advocate too much or, um, it's awkward or overcorrect.

Lisa Hale 42:53

I think when you're clear. About outcomes and clear about how work translates into outcomes for yourself and for other people. It's easier for you to either encourage or identify where people are making great contributions and where they may be need to be attuned to the, the system that they're operating in a little more. I think that's probably a good, yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 43:23

Yeah. No, it's good. No. Well, you did say something I wanted to circle back. You did in your definition there, your explanation you mentioned. of the key things of the evidence ladder that what I heard you say is what's gonna come out naturally is we go through the evidence ladder or our clients go through it,

Lisa Hale 43:37

Right.

Jonathan Hankin 43:38

a leader goes through it. They're going to notice the people that help them get to those goals, and there's gonna be evidence of other people that help them. And the key there is to lean into that a little bit is

Lisa Hale 43:50

That's right.

Jonathan Hankin 43:51

is you need to not just be like, yeah, I think Lisa helped me achieve this goal. At this time versus, yeah, it was great that I did it and um, I did this, this, and this. But to actually go a little another layer deeper in the evidence ladder as leaders find out who around us do we need to maybe pull up with us,

Lisa Hale 44:11

Right.

Jonathan Hankin 44:11

over them.

Lisa Hale 44:12

Right. You know, that puts me in mind, Jonathan, of an experience I had when I was leading an organization. An organization had 350 people in it. My team was 14. I was the top dog in that particular setup, and I got a lot of credit for doing some really important things. Uh, we. We rescued that organization from collapse. It was gonna show shut down, and we turned that around in two years to have. Two and a half years of runway in the bank and, uh, a positive monthly recurring revenue. That was pretty substantial. So it was a huge turnaround and I got a ton of credit for that. And I, I remember at the time I kept saying, all I did was set the vision and the frame. Direction and work with people to figure out how we were gonna achieve it. And then they did the work. It wasn't, wasn't me, but like I couldn't have done that by myself, was how I related to all that credit. And then I started realizing that the fact that I set the vision, saw the clarity, saw the direction, saw the opportunities, and that I knew I needed a team, and that the team had to be diverse in skillset and you know. Energy and all that stuff was the asset that I brought. So it, my first reaction was to say, oh, I don't get the credit. But then it didn't take too long before I realized, oh wait, so now I shifted my. Response to that and said, thank you. I really appreciate that. And I guess I will take credit for having set that vision and seen the possibility. And I have to say that the credit really belongs to the 14 leaders that I worked with, plus the team of 50 that we had working with us, plus the rest of the people in the organization who went along with our changes and understood them and got on board. And so I appreciate that. And boy, um, this was definitely a group effort. Like that's the response. Yeah. And the, and the more, I think the more leaders can do what something like that in their organization, the more they become advocates, the more they become allies. And

Jonathan Hankin 46:41

No, it's good. It

Lisa Hale 46:42

yeah,

Jonathan Hankin 46:43

Yeah. Yep.

Lisa Hale 46:43

I think it's worth also saying just for clarity, sometimes. You're gonna spot where somebody isn't contributing, but you spot it more clearly when you're able to see what contribution really looks like.

Jonathan Hankin 46:59

My key takeaway so far through this is contribution, clarity, right? It's really is what am I contributing? What is my, not necessarily results, but contribution. They're tied to results. I get that. But it

Lisa Hale 47:12

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 47:13

the contribution and a lot of people are missing that in their mindset, um, where they are.

Lisa Hale 47:19

Yeah, and I would simple, I agree with you and I,

Jonathan Hankin 47:21

oh, go ahead.

Lisa Hale 47:22

I would, I would simplify it to accurate information and legible information. You can have accurate information that's not legible to the system, and you can have legible information. Obviously that's not accurate, and what you need is both.

Jonathan Hankin 47:37

Yeah. which comes to mind. I'll add another word, which is make it visible, is what I hear you saying. Right? We gotta

Lisa Hale 47:43

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 47:43

If it's just in my head, I'm awesome in my head, but then when I talk to others and get it out, I'm not as awesome or they're seeing things differently. So, uh, there is that check-in, so. Uh, how do you recommend people move forward in this? Is there a, a plan or an idea or something you're willing to share that people can take away from today and use in the next, I don't know, week, day, month, year? How, how could, yeah. What does that look like?

Lisa Hale 48:11

Yeah, well, um. There are a couple different ways to go. I always think, you know, uh. A conversation is a really good place to start with somebody who can walk you through this kind of concept. I'm certainly open to having, you know, short conversations with people, not necessarily leading to work, but just to kind of give them a direction. So I think that's really useful. Uh, I think that for some people, the clarity of. Recognizing the value creation in their actions and, and tracking it. It might be enough in some cases, and I would recommend you start a journal where you track your, uh, not just your activity and your actions, but also the outcome from them and also how that ties to value in the organization and. Maybe start adding to that journal. What questions could you be asking of people elsewhere in the organization and who are they and what's the intention of those questions? I think that's a really good place to start for anybody.

Jonathan Hankin 49:21

Yeah. And it sounds like, would you recommend, like if someone starts to do a 30 day, or would they, is it like a weekly, daily? How would you. Live that out as they work through that journal. Is it, um, thinking, you mentioned there's daily, but are they how often to sit back and review and reflect? Because if you did it, you reviewed after a week, it's like that's not really a trend could be is do you have a, a

Lisa Hale 49:44

Yeah, you need to, yeah. Well, it depends on how fast your business is moving. If you're in a,

Jonathan Hankin 49:49

Hmm,

Lisa Hale 49:49

know, startup that's moving hour by hour, uh. It might, it, you don't necessarily need to find a trend because it could be that you make one pivotal decision in three months, but that's still really valuable at your annual review. You know?

Jonathan Hankin 50:07

Yeah.

Lisa Hale 50:08

so I don't think I would constrain it that way. I think the bigger issue is. How often are we asking a busy leader to take time out and reflect? And that really just depends. Uh, one of the leaders I work with is in a very stable organization, and a weekly reflection may be overkill. Another one is in a startup. Maybe that's a daily reflection. And so it's really depends on how quickly things are moving through your organization. I would just, uh, warn, uh, any leader who's listening to that and thinking, oh yeah, you know, I've been here for 26 years. It's not changing that much. I've worked with plenty of leaders who've been in their role for 26 years and it's changing more often than they recognize. And if you're the kind of person who tends to go pretty meta and. Uh, collapse stuff into general generalities and vagueness. Then a quick daily, five minute review of what did I decide today and what difference did it make, um, might be worth doing for, I don't know, three weeks, and just see how much more significant your day-to-day activities are than you were really registering. That's probably a good place to start.

Jonathan Hankin 51:29

Yeah, it sounds like, um, start this week is what you hear you saying.

Lisa Hale 51:33

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 51:34

take time, but also you're looking for, um. Function, not just function and performance. You're looking as far as, you know, clarity, consistency, moving forward and then evaluating, right? Part of that is evaluating after say, 30 days, what, what has changed? What am I, what impact am I having?

Lisa Hale 51:55

Right.

Jonathan Hankin 51:55

need to adjust, who do I need to bring along with me? You've mentioned that as well. Like, are there leaders that are under me that I am not recognizing, um, are. Uh, using the best of their abilities,

Lisa Hale 52:08

Right. Or that you're overutilizing or underutilizing. And we all know that story too, right?

Jonathan Hankin 52:15

That's

Lisa Hale 52:15

Yeah.

Jonathan Hankin 52:16

Yeah. Well, any, any closing thoughts as we go here? Closing out? This has been great. Thinking of the confidence gap, um, message you have specifically to women, but also to men, um, how to. Make this happen this next week to actually start and to understand that maybe you've been measuring things the wrong way or not taking, I'll go positive. Maybe you haven't been taking everything into account that you should. So yeah. Lisa, any closing thoughts on your part?

Lisa Hale 52:46

I would say, you know, this isn't about self-promotion. It's really about giving your, the system that you're operating inside of accurate information and scalable information. And so weekly I would keep track of here's what moved, here's what was avoided and here's what changed. And then maybe monthly here was the business impact of those things. And then always frame. Uh, your asks as outcomes. If you're making a request of the system for something, whether it's resources inside your department or, uh, a shift in your compensation, or maybe headcount changes. Connect those to the concrete value creation, and I would say that consistency changes perception faster than the outcomes by themselves, or no, I'm, let me say it this way. Consistency changes perception faster than charisma does. So people who use sort of a charming, and you should do this'cause you like me, and gosh, we're buddies, approach that doesn't work and outcomes do work, but they're often not seen as quickly as they need to be. So consistency and accurate data are really your best friend.

Jonathan Hankin 54:11

Yeah. Awesome. I want to thank you for being on. It's been great having you speak into this and, um. Some very practical tools today. I really appreciate that. Sharing that. I also heard that everyone wins when the proof is visible, right? That's the key here. I heard that. So thank you so much. as you can tell from this episode, Lisa has a wealth of information and is available to help you bridge this gap, um, as well as other leadership challenges that you might be facing as a coach or as an advisor to your group. She's available. Um, Lisa's contact information is in the show notes, so don't. Be afraid to reach out to her. Please do check out her information, reach out for next steps. She would be happy to schedule a call with you. If this episode added value to your day, please do hit like and subscribe, drop a comment. This helps all of us move this channel forward. If you're looking to grow as a leader. Uh, there's also a link in the show notes to reach out for th. Free 30 minute discovery call. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Hankin, your change aging coach. Keep leading with clarity, grow with courage, and change what really matters. Have a great day.