Podcast Episode #24: I CAN'T BELIEVE CORPORATE WOMEN HAVE MINDSET ISSUES!

Listen to the Episode:

When asked, most successful corporate women tell me that they don’t have a mindset issue.
They make statements such as…” I’m confident, I’m assertive, I’m direct, I’m a no-nonsense woman, how could I possibly have a mindset issue?”

And yet…I’ve heard these same women say….

“I have a seat at the table, but I don’t speak up or no one listens when I talk.”

“It was luck that I’m here. I made the right connections yes, but I’m not sure I can go any higher.”

“I dream of ditching corporate to start my own business but I’m afraid it’s too risky, too uncertain, something keeps holding me back.”

“I’d like to work two days from home post COVID, but if I want to get to the c-suite, I can’t make that request.”

Well Ladies…every single one of these statements exposes a mindset issue. But what are mindset issues? Well, mindset issues are untrue beliefs that disempower you. Most often these beliefs are unconscious, and unless you work with them to expose their falseness, they will guide you to make disempowering decisions and actions.

Doing nothing is disempowering. Staying quiet when someone takes credit for your work is disempowering. Not asking for what you want is disempowering. If any of these sound like you, at the root of these disempowering actions are untrue beliefs you have about yourself. These are mindset issue ladies.

Here are a few examples of the mindset red flags of many successful women.

You are likely to judge yourself much more harshly than do your male counterparts. Research shows that women typically won’t apply for positions unless they have 100% of the requested skills, while men will apply if they have just 50%. So, what does that mean if we apply it to asking for promotions? Logically, you know not going for a position doesn’t make sense and yet, has this been you?
As a successful woman, there is a pretty good chance you have felt the well-known imposter syndrome, which women experience much more often than men. Back when I was a career advisor at MIT, I regularly worked with female students who were absolutely off the chart brilliant and yet, they came to me because they questioned whether they really had the skills to successfully do the work they wanted to do. Sounds crazy, but can you relate?
Now I mentioned asking for promotions, but I’m wondering if part of the salary gap is partially because women don’t ask for the money? Women tend to make the assumption that if you work really hard, take on projects, and assist others… leadership will notice your contributions and eventually suggest a promotion with a subsequent salary increase. Yet, that assumption just doesn’t seem to happen. How often have you felt a pit in your stomach because you shared your great ideas or worked hard on a project, and someone else took the credit for the idea and success and didn’t recognize or even mention your contribution?

Now let’s now talk about your zone of genius, a phrase coined by Gay Hendricks.

Gay describes your zone of genius as when you are working in your sweet spot. That place where you are using all your unique combinations of strengths, talents, and gifts. I love working in that place and I bet you do too.

But in your current position, how often do you get to work in your zone of genius? Can you imagine that if you jumped off the corporate ladder, what it would be like to create a business where you’d be working in your zone of genius most of the time?

And yet, is there something that keeps stopping you? You intensely feel the desire to create something of your own, and yet, you can’t seem to take the leap. Why?

Ladies, it is because of the big fat fear of failure. At the core of you fears, is a mindset issue or in other words, an untrue belief that you have about yourself. You may not even be aware of what it is. So, instead of diving into what the heck is going on inside of you, you’ll retreat from that something you know in your gut, you absolutely want.

Put another way, if you leave corporate and fail, it would be an epic failure and that’s just too darn risky. So, you retreat, and instead, convince yourself to play small. So small that any failure experienced is so minor that it hardly matters in the big picture.

But what’s the result of not shining the light on the untrue beliefs you are holding onto, which are creating all the fear?

You spend a lifetime playing small. I ask you, if you fast forward life ten, twenty or thirty years, will you regret playing small?

Another fear I hear from some of my clients, is the money issue. But I’ve learned that if you peel back everything you think and believe about money- what I often hear is a faulty belief that you will never make as much money as you are currently making. What that thought ignores is you might make just as much AND you could actually have a much higher income ceiling.

Now, I’m not suggesting you jump off the corporate ladder without a plan. Keep that corporate job until you’ve done all the prep work to launch your business. You’ve got to know exactly what the business is all about before you make a change and right now you might just have a long list of ideas.

We’d have to explore the ideas to find the right plan, which involves us together doing the work to find the intersection of your skills and talents, your passion, and the market need. That process alone has an energy around it, and energy attracts more energy.

What I do hope you can get from this conversation is that doing nothing other than thinking or imagining you owned your own business, is actually contributing in significant ways to your fears.

What’s so fabulous about peeling back what’s really stopping you from moving forward, is that once you know what it is, and start to talk about it, shine the light on it, remain aware of it, you can move beyond it.

In a recent conversation I had with a very successful female entrepreneur, who I interviewed for my upcoming digital magazine which by the way, I’m launching April 1^st. This very successful serial entrepreneur said she has to work on her mindset all the time.

Now Loni is a talented, assertive, well-spoken and smart woman. She launched her first entrepreneurial company while she was at university, so it came as a bit of a shock when she shared her mindset issues with me.

That conversation with Loni though, made me realize that I needed to talk about the mindset issues the corporate woman specifically deals with because frankly, it’s rarely discussed.

You get the advice to lean in, step in, speak up, shrug off the stereotypes, ask for what you want….and yet, we don’t talk about what emotions, thoughts and beliefs are causing women to even need that advice.

Boys aren’t taught to lean in or speak up. It is part of their culture. But for girls and women, it’s an entirely different message, even for the very smart and very assertive young woman.

But how do you work on those mindset issues?

First you need to expose them, get to the root of your fears. Figure out what is keeping you stuck.

You have to create energy around what it is that is scaring you in order to figure out if jumping off that corporate ladder is viable and if so, when. Action creates the needed energy to move aside whatever is in your way.

Next and just as important, is you need to embrace your accomplishments. You didn’t get to where you are by luck. There is no fairy godmother. You are where you are because of hard work and through your hard work, possibilities appeared. But you need reminders of your accomplishments all the time.

It is super easy to discount your past accomplishments and yet they are exactly what you need to embrace to address your current fears, which honestly are often worst-case fears.

So, write out that timeline of all your challenges and accomplishments. Add in things you like about yourself or most proud in having completed. Next, talk to a few of your really good friends or family members. Ask them to tell you what they most love about you. I’d be surprised if those two lists aren’t related. What you need to do is keep those lists close by. When the fears come up, open up that document on your phone and remind yourself of everything you’ve accomplished and what people think of you. This is real.

What isn’t real are the big fear conclusions you’ve made around to jump or not to jump off the corporate ladder.

I promise you, if you go through those steps, you’ll have a better idea of how your mindset is in the way of you creating what you want and begin to shift your thinking so you can get moving on your dreams. Remember, what you think about, is what you are basically programming your brain to bring you more of….so embrace the positive and possible.

And when you are ready to get to work, let’s talk. It is my mission to help corporate women decide if ditching the corporate ladder is right for them and together, we’ll get started, so you can live and work in your zone of genius.

In the next few months, I’ll be announcing a couple of new products, one is expected to be a course tentatively titled, “Design That Business You’ve Always Wanted.” This mastermind course will be perfect for any of you who are ready to ditch corporate and start a business. More information will be coming but if you are interested, let me know.

As always, thank you for listening and being on this journey with me. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe, and write me a review. Reviews do matter!

Bye for now….

À bientôt!