How to boost your visibility
Our focus for Season One is ‘Being Your Best Self’ and I'm delighted to welcome Stephanie Aitken, an expert coach, as my guest today. Today, we’ll be talking about boosting your visibility.
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About this episode
Our focus for this Season is ‘Being Your Best Self’ and I'm delighted to welcome the wonderful Stephanie Aitken, an expert coach, as my guest today. Stephanie started out as a commercial media lawyer before switching careers ten years ago, and is now a highly experienced trainer and coach, supporting people to build their confidence, be more courageous and step up in their roles so that they can fulfil their potential – with a particular specialism in helping women going through leadership transitions. She has a very interesting take on gender equality that hones in on what she calls the “paradox of women's leadership”. One of the paradoxes links to personal power and visibility which we're going to focus on today.
Resources
Stephanie Aitken’s website: https://www.stephanieaitken.com/
Stephanie’s Women’s Leadership Quiz: https://www.stephanieaitken.com/leadership-quiz
Episode transcript
Joy Burnford: Our focus for this Season is ‘Being Your Best Self’ and I'm delighted to welcome the wonderful Stephanie Aitken, an expert coach, as my guest today. Stephanie started out as a commercial media lawyer before switching careers ten years ago, and is now a highly experienced trainer and coach, supporting people to build their confidence, be more courageous and step up in their roles so that they can fulfil their potential – with a particular specialism in helping women going through leadership transitions. She has a very interesting take on gender equality that hones in on what she calls the “paradox of women's leadership”. We'll be writing an article together on this topic for Forbes in the Autumn so look out for that. One of the paradoxes links to personal power and visibility which we're going to focus on today. Hello, Stephanie, and welcome to The Confidence Conversation.
Stephanie Aitken: Oh, thank you. It's an absolute pleasure to be here, Joy.
Joy Burnford: Really lovely to have you. So to set the scene for the podcast, I wonder if you wouldn't mind briefly explaining the paradox of women's leadership?
Stephanie Aitken: Absolutely. Through my work in the corporate world, I've seen that there are three paradoxes within women's leadership. There's the paradox of parity, the paradox of progress and the paradox of personal power. So the paradox of parity is that we know from countless studies, and I know you know this, that women make businesses better. When we feature more prominently at senior levels within organisations, we make them more profitable, we enable organisations to retain more talent, there are so many benefits. And yet, we still don't feature in equal numbers, despite deliberate efforts to improve this. Then we have the paradox of progress where, as women, we enter the workforce in equal numbers, and yet, there's a broken rung in the middle of the ladder, and we start to drop off quite significantly in our representation. And then we've got the paradox of personal power, which is that as women were ambitious, we want to progress our careers. And yet, there's so many ways in which we can hold ourselves back and some of those things we're going to look at today. And I really believe that we're not going to actually make it to gender parity unless we tackle each of these three paradoxes. There's actually a fourth paradox, the paradox of the patriarchy. But I think that's one we can probably explore another day or in an article.
Joy Burnford: Yes, absolutely. And I know you've identified the three main barriers that you feel are holding women in particular back in their careers. Can you briefly explain what those are? And what's stopping women from reaching their potential?
Stephanie Aitken: Yes, absolutely. Because here's the thing with a paradox, we're different people, we're working on different parts of these paradoxes. And I focus on the third paradox, the paradox of personal power. And, you know, I've been working in the corporate world for 20 years, both as a lawyer and as a coach. And in doing so, I've observed some patterns in the women that I've been working with and have seen that there tend to be three main barriers that are causing us women to hesitate in our careers or even put the brakes on. And I call them the three ‘C’ barriers. So you might notice that I like things in threes! So there's the first three ‘C’ barriers - Capability, then we have Congruence and then Confidence. So capability is the belief that I don't have what it takes to advance my career. I haven't got enough qualifications or experience and I can only go for the promotion once I've done XYZ. And you'll know the often quoted study done by HP that men will go for a role when they feel they meet 60% of the job requirements and women will only do it when they feel they meet 100% and what this means in practice is a man is more likely to assume that he can learn what's missing in the new job and go for it. So I, you know, I'm close enough, whereas a woman is more inclined to be wary, less willing to step up in those circumstances. Now, obviously every study has its fallibility, not every study is absolutely the truth for everyone. But in a general trend, I've seen this replicated time and time again, with the women I've been speaking to, I don't know if that's been the case for you and your work.
Joy Burnford: Absolutely. And I think even just knowing that about that study really helps, I think to make people, I know it's helped me actually to think, you know, if I've looked at in the past a job spec, or whatever, or a job advert and thought, could I do that? And then thought, yes, because actually, if you think about that, the difference between men and women, you think, if I just go for this, it's happened, I've gone for things. Recently, I've just been elected to a board, actually, I thought, at the time, I have these sort of self doubts, thinking, am I good enough? Can I do it? And I thought, well, you know, I'm just going to go for this, and I ended up being elected to go onto the board. And it's fantastic. And, had I not had that inner confidence in thinking about that, I might not have gone for it. And then I wouldn't have achieved what I have achieved. So it's really, really interesting.
Stephanie Aitken: I think remembering that so often, we are hired for our potential, not necessarily being able to do the full job. At the start, of course, it's impossible to do that, because you haven't yet had the experience.
Joy Burnford: Yes, I think it's important for businesses as well to realise that and actually potentially not put such high expectations on, you know, when you're writing a job spec actually being explicit about things that can be learned.
Stephanie Aitken: Yeah, that's a really good point. And even including in there, these are expectations, but also inviting women to share how they feel, they might be able to grow into that, that it's not necessarily an absolute requirement from the get go, because we want to help counter that. So then we have congruence, the second C, which is the concern that stepping up is going to cost me too much, it's going to mean less time with my family, it's going to impact my social life, it could even have negative consequences on my health. And I think that this is a concern that is not unfounded, given one study has shown that as women, we are 60% more likely to suffer job stress and burnout than men. It's particularly acute since a pandemic, where so many of us have been having to homeschool kids, working from home, juggling so much and our work life boundaries have been blurred. And so it's not surprising if many women are sitting there thinking, well, how on earth could I cope with the increased responsibility and workload of a more senior position?
Joy Burnford: Absolutely. I mean I was there, as you know, I was sort of very near just giving up at one point, because it was all these different pressures coming from all different directions, it's really hard.
Stephanie Aitken: And you have not been alone. So many women that I've been coaching, at some point, over the course of the past year have hit a level of overwhelm at the very least sometimes breaking point, you know. So it's something that's valid. And yet, again, it's probably something that's beyond the scope of our conversation today. And yet, there are ways in which we actually increase the cost...one for another time perhaps! And then we've got the final C, which is confidence. Confidence is not having the self assurance to be visible and heard, to not speak up during those key meetings with authority or on those conference calls. And we don't put forward our bold ideas and generally take up less space, make less of an impact, and then can end up feeling frustrated because of it. Because we know we have a sense of what we're capable of. We have the ideas and we think this time, I've got to do it. And yet we come away from those situations thinking Oh, goodness, you know, once again.
Joy Burnford: As you know, confidence is obviously the theme of this podcast, but it's something that I talk about a lot. And I know a lot of people struggle to promote themselves and be their own advocate, myself included. Why do you think that is?
Stephanie Aitken: Yeah, it's really interesting. I think so many of us women feel uncomfortable with this idea of self promotion, because it's like we collapse it into bragging and being full of ourselves to the point where some of the women I work with almost have an allergic reaction to it. And it's hard for me to say exactly why that is. My supposition from my experience and conversations I have with so many other women is a lot of is derived from the conditioning from our past, you know, when we were told, and the messaging was reinforced that we would be rewarded for being a good girl, for keeping quiet, for not being a tall poppy. And all of these messages that we take on from our parents, from our families, from our teachers, has settled deep into our unconscious. And then when we're asked to promote ourselves or people encourage us to do it, we're coming up against that conditioning of Oh, it's not appropriate to do that, and almost revulsion at some of the people who are really going out there and you know, talking about themselves, there's so many negative connotations that we have, when actually, I think there's a middle ground around this. Now, I have got a leadership quiz, which is a quiz that women can take to reveal whether they're ready for leadership. And it's actually assessing you against the three C barriers that I was talking about. And what's really interesting in the quiz is of the women that have taken it, 73% of them agreed with a statement, I don't want to be perceived as a show off and prefer to wait for others to notice the good work that I do.
Joy Burnford: And you'll be waiting forever.
Stephanie Aitken: Well, this is a thing. And this is a problem that we can overdo the humility under a misguided assumption that's going to make us a better person, that is better for our reputation. But we hold ourselves back in the process. Self promotion is essential, otherwise, attention is going to go to those who are more vocal, but no more valuable than you. And then you're left feeling undervalued and frustrated.
Joy Burnford: It’s really interesting. And as you know, my story was I used to just put everybody else forward instead of me, because I thought that they were better than me. Until, I launched this business four years ago. You probably won't find anything about me on social media before that, because I didn't put myself out there, because I just thought, Oh, well, you know, somebody else is better than me. And part of this whole journey for me, it's been actually just to put myself out there. And it's amazing the difference that it's made, you know, just knowing that other people are like that, as well. And it's not just you, I think really helped me to know you can do something about it.
Stephanie Aitken: Yes, absolutely. And I love that because that principle of teach what we most need to learn, you know, for you in your journey in your business, which is all about confidence. I love the vulnerability that you bring of saying I'm on this journey, too. And I'm speaking from a place of experience, when I'm sharing these things, I'm sharing what's helped what's helped me.
Joy Burnford: Exactly, I mean, some people say, Oh, you sound so confident. And I'm like, yes but I'm still I still wake up in the morning thinking, Oh, my goodness, can I do this? And am I good enough?
Stephanie Aitken: Yes, and even if we don't, even if it's not coming from a place of other people better than me, the aversion to doing it, or the belief that it's not important, that our work will stand for itself. And I'll come on to talking a bit more about this in a moment, can mean that people don't notice or believe that we want it. I remember reading the story in a book about confidence, and so forth. And it was a true story about a private practice lawyer. And she'd been at this law firm for 10 plus years. And she was just below partnership. And every year when it came around to the promotions to partnership, she was never promoted to partnership. So she got frustrated and started looking elsewhere got offered another job. And then came back to her firm to say, well, by the way, I have been offered this other job. And they were shocked and surprised. Oh my gosh, well, what can we do to keep you here? And she said, I’d like to be made up to partner. So okay, great. You've got it. And she's quite taken aback. And later on, she found the confidence to ask why is it that it took so long? It was because you never talked about it, you never said that you wanted it. So we presumed that it wasn't something that was in your ambition. And meanwhile, the other people, often men that were younger than her and that started after her had been more vocal. So they're the ones that got it. So it has real consequences.
Joy Burnford: Yes, absolutely. I think that brings us really nicely on to this whole point about visibility, especially in the last year, people have been, you know, potentially working at home and feeling like they're not able to be as visible as they perhaps would have been in the office. But putting that aside as well, even being in the office, you know, how do you become more visible? And what are your tips, I guess, and advice for those who want to be more visible at work.
Stephanie Aitken: There's a lot I can say on this. Because so much of what I do, however, I'd like to distil it into three things that I believe can make the biggest difference for somebody who is struggling with it. Firstly, it's building on what I was saying before, do not pigeon yourself as the worker bee. Being a hard worker, demonstrating you have a capacity to be really productive, get lots done, is something that will have helped you at the start of your career. But it isn't necessarily what's going to take you to the next level. And I think too many of us are still following this good student approach.
Joy Burnford: It's just like being a school, isn't it? You're taken through your schooling, exactly in that way.
Stephanie Aitken: Yes, absolutely. And it's about getting the grades and doing hard work. And the thing is, is that you do need to demonstrate other qualities to be noticed. And not only to be noticed, one of the benefits is that by being noticed it gives you more options to be able to carve out the kind of career that you want and a career that's going to be more fulfilling. Because you're not just reliant on an opportunity coming up, say there's an opening that comes in you applying, if you believe you fulfil 100% of the criterion, or that you're actually being noticed in a way where people go, Oh, I think you should be doing this and encouraging you to be moving forward. So if you want to be getting a promotion, you want to be moving forward, you need to start demonstrating the qualities of the leader before you go for the job. So demonstrating how you can be strategic with your time, be resourceful, bring insights. This allows people to see that you have that leadership potential going back to the capability piece. Otherwise, there's a danger you can be seen as a reliable workhorse, one that they depend on, and not much more. So you pigeonhole yourself. Meanwhile, your plates have piled up so high that you're constantly firefighting in reactive mode, and you never even have the time to think strategically about your career. So that mindset shift of recognising that I need to demonstrate a different kind of value beyond working hard is crucial.
Joy Burnford: Brilliant advice.
Stephanie Aitken: Are you ready for the second tip? This ties into the theme of this podcast, and into the theme of your work. And I might be a little bit controversial here, but bear with me. So instead of trying to be more confident, I believe you should focus on being more courageous. So let me explain what I mean by that. A lot of women come to me because they want to be more confident. Confidence isn't necessarily what we think it is, we have a perception of it, and also how it's defined, one of the dictionary definitions of it is that confidence is a quality of being certain of your abilities, which suggests that there's no self-doubt or fear. Now, I don't know about you, Joy, but in the things that you're really good at, are you absolutely 100% certain there is never any self-doubt or fear? No, right. There's always a point where you might, and most experts and leaders I know, including myself in my areas of expertise, they're not always certain they may feel some doubt.
Joy Burnford: You’re never 100%.
Stephanie Aitken: Exactly. But what's the difference? You don't let that hold you back. But you do it anyway. So these people that we look at. So I'm a speaker, I'm a trainer. And I've had people comment when I come off the stage you’re such a confident speaker. And I think goodness, if only you knew what was happening inside of me, before going on stage. But I did it anyway. And so when we're looking at people go, Oh, that's a confident person. It's not that they are actually certain of what they're doing, it’s just they're finding the ways to do it anyway which is about courage. So I don't think we should necessarily be aiming for what we perceive to be confidence, what we should focus on, what's going to be more helpful, is how to be more courageous. And I believe that confidence is actually a skill that is built through regular acts of courage. That’s been my experience. And so how do you do that? Start small, where the stakes are low. You know, if you're terrified of speaking up, start by giving short updates to your team and in team meetings where you feel more comfortable. And you expand your comfort zone. And then you build up to maybe some updates to other departments in the business, you build up your confidence comfort zone. And then bit by bit you get to the point where you're feeling comfortable delivering bigger presentations, that's the journey. Have you found the same thing?
Joy Burnford: What I say to people is to scare yourself. If you can scare yourself once a day, once a week, something very small, it doesn't have to freak you out completely. But you notice, because that helps in terms of the neuroscience of confidence as well. And creates different connections in your brain. So the more you do something, the more you become more comfortable and confident in doing it.
Stephanie Aitken: And that's crucial, isn't it? Because otherwise, what you're doing is you feel that slight fear and nervousness around it, you go through the experience and you learn, I didn't die. I survived. But actually, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. And you learn to slightly disassociate from that feeling. So it doesn't hold you back.
Joy Burnford: And I think it's true not to do something that's too scary. And then think actually, I quite enjoyed that. And then you want to do it again. And again.
Stephanie Aitken: Yeah, it's a balance. So for me this is about taking action, because it's definitely better than avoiding it all at all costs. But not necessarily jumping into the absolute deep end of the pool and traumatising yourself in the process and then never want to do that again.
Joy Burnford: Brilliant. And then what's your third bit of advice?
Stephanie Aitken: So it's, rounding back to this piece on self-promotion. For me, I believe this can be simple, elegant, easy to do. And important, because as I said before, unless you convey your value, and you convey that you value your contribution, why should anyone else. People are busy, they may not notice. And if we sit around waiting for that to happen, it may not happen. And that's the path of frustration. But you don't have to do so in a way that feels icky. And so I'm going to give one very simple approach that for me takes all of the pressure out of it. So firstly, let's just ditch the label promotion, because it's got too many negative connotations to it, and it jams our system when we think about doing it. So I like to think about amplifying yourself a bit like a radio broadcast, just making that signal a little bit stronger, easier to be picked up by other people. And then how you do it is having a booster share ready to go. And what's a booster share? It's a short statement about a recent achievement that you've made, however big or small. And then you utilise the question that you are always going to be asked to share it. And that question is How are you? So when somebody asks you, how are you, you can say I'm great, I've just completed a long project that's going to bring in huge revenue for the business. So I'm really excited about that. Now the power of this is in its subtlety, it doesn't have to be this big announcement with lots of fanfare, you don't have to be looking for opportunities to promote yourself, they're going to come to you because people always ask you how you are. And then in doing so you're focusing on how you're feeling and the project rather than you. And so it feels more comfortable. But it also highlights your contribution in the process. So it's just a little pivot enough for us to feel okay about it, whilst also building your reputation. Because it can really subtly sow the seeds and shift people's perceptions of you.
Joy Burnford: Absolutely brilliant. It's such a useful little thing that you can do. And it just gives you the extra confidence to think actually, I don't have to be scared when you're at a networking event or something like that. It just opens up the conversation. And you might then, you know, find an interest that somebody didn't know you were doing something and that sort of opens up a conversation as well.
Stephanie Aitken: Yeah, exactly. It could either just sow the seed in the conversation and it moves on, or it opens up a whole different realm of conversation around something that's of mutual interest.
Joy Burnford: Brilliant. And as you know, the theme for this podcast is about being your best self, which is, you know, such a big topic. And we've covered a lot today on how to be more visible, how to have that courage to be more confident, that sort of thing. And I’d just love to know, what does being your best self mean for you?
Stephanie Aitken: Good question. And I think my answer to it has probably evolved over the past year. I'll start off by saying what it isn't. And what it isn't, is perfection. And I say that because most of the women I coach, and those who are in my leadership mastermind group, have a really strong perfectionist streak, one that holds them to an impossibly high standard. And I think it's really important for us to not set us up in this way. Which means that we feel like we're failing, like holding this really high bar for ourselves. And this is especially true, given everything we've been through in this pandemic, which has tested us in so many ways where even doing the basics of showing up to work, given what we've been carrying in the rest of our lives has been a huge feat. And so I think it's important to state that there needs to be a big dose of self compassion and self congratulation involved in this.
Joy Burnford: Absolutely not comparing yourself to others, because it's really important not to compare yourself to others as well.
Stephanie Aitken: Yes, so this standard of being your best self isn't anyone else's standard, it’s you doing you, and for me, it's really about freedom. At the heart of being your best self is freedom, freedom to be who you naturally are, free of mask, free of filters, free of other people's expectations, just being your natural self expression. And this sits on a foundation of deep self acceptance that goes back to what you've seen before, not comparing yourself to others. And it may sound quite simple, but actually there's quite a lot to it because it takes work and deliberate effort to remove the things that stand in the way of your freedom.
Joy Burnford: Definitely. That's so useful. And so helpful, Stephanie. Thank you for your honest and open advice to everybody. I hope everybody listening has enjoyed that conversation. I'd love to know if people want to find out more about you, where can they go?
Stephanie Aitken: The best place is to go to my website, https://www.stephanieaitken.com/. And when they're there, they'll see I do videos, there's a leadership quiz if anyone's interested in doing that, and you can contact me through the contact form on there. I'd love to hear from you.
Joy Burnford: Fantastic. And we'll include all those details in the show notes as well. And just as a final point, Stephanie and I will be running a webinar together at some point in the next few months looking at going into more detail around this and about how you make an impact on screen. So look out for that, which will be coming up. So thank you very much again, Steph.
Stephanie Aitken: Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you Joy, will speak to you soon. Bye.
Joy Burnford: And that’s it for this week. Thank you very much for listening and I’ll be back again soon with another Confidence Conversation. If you know anyone who might find this podcast useful, please do keep the conversation going and pass on a link and it would give me a real confidence boost if you could subscribe, rate and leave a written review (on Apple podcasts here or on Podchaser here).
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