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Katie and Carol talk about Tip 45 from their book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
Identify a role model to aspire to. If it is a man, identify what he would look like as a successful female leader and adopt those characteristics that impress you.
Often the easiest way to see through a situation is to ask yourself what your role model would do.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you are getting some pushback from an employee. You have asked him to deal with a certain situation and he has stated that he really does not want to. Your gut tells you he is the most appropriate and capable person for this assignment, and it creates other dilemmas if he does not take it. Yet he is acting like he can make the call.
Now consider your role model for effective leadership, and how she would handle the situation. Perhaps she would allow the employee to state his concerns, then she would stick with her original decision, and firmly state how it would be. Gentle confrontation.
Replicate what your role model would do. Your voice, and your words. But with the same intent and objective as your role model.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast to help you get the support, validation and skills you need to accomplish your goals and really succeed in a male dominated world – all without having to give up your incredible female strengths.
Katie: Hi! It’s Katie Snapp…
Carol: And Carol Wight…
Katie: With your next tip. And we are on the podcast – taking you through several tips. And all these – recently happened to be from our book. Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
Carol: That’s right. And today, we’re going to be talking about something I think is very interesting.
Katie: Good.
Carol: Tip Number 45: Identify a Role Model to Aspire to. If it’s a man, identify what he would look like as a successful female leader and adapt those characteristics that impress you.
Katie: So we put this tip in our leadership bag – because it’s useful for developing the skill in action.
Many people feel that they cannot get much better or they’re stuck or they watch somebody that they think is great at certain leadership situation – like conflict management or decision making. And they think, “Oh my God! I bet he is so good. I will never be like that.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: Well, thinking it is the first piece. Just thinking about it and aspiring to becoming a little bit more like that person or the way that person does something in particular – is a huge step forward.
I’ve got this new process. (It’s actually not a new process. It’s an old process.) But I’ve been chanting it lately.
Carol: Oh, interesting.
Katie: It’s the process of – Think, Say, Do. Have you heard that?
Carol: Yes, just from you.
Katie: Oh, I’ve chanted it to you?
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: When we try to change something in our behavior or in our actions, it begins with a thought. We often think that it’s a long trail to get – actually to doing it.
But if you can think something and then say it out loud and then eventually do it, it’s going to be more likely to happen.
Carol: And it’s going to be something that is in your cadre of doing.
Katie: Exactly. So let’s say that someone is wanting to be more decisive. Let’s say that Mary is wanting to be more decisive – or Marianne or whatever.
Carol: Let’s make up a name.
Katie: Yeah. Because I know a Mary, right? Let’s just pick somebody I don’t know right now. Marianne.
So Marianne wants to be more decisive and she has come to the realization (which often happens by the way in training or in coaching or in having some sort of a mentor.) So Marianne’s head is thinking, “I want to be better at being decisive.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: My next challenge for Marianne is to say that out loud.
Carol: Right.
Katie: It’s almost like an affirmation. In fact, it is an affirmation.
Carol: Well, if she say it right. So you don’t say it, “I want to be better because I’m not.” You say, “I believe I can be better – and I am.”
Katie: Or, “I will be.”
Carol: It has to be a belief.
Katie: It has to be a belief in an affirmation. If we go as far as making an affirmation, it should be present day. “I am doing this.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: Why do you think women don’t like to do that – or what resist them from doing that?
Carol: It’s something in us that just says, “No, you can’t go that far. You stay down here and don’t try to reach.”
Katie: Yeah, a little bit. Or, “I don’t want to say so much because I’m not worthy.” But women do have those little glitches in their head – to say something out loud that’s not really true. “I’m great at being decisive.” – Feels unethical or unreal. I’m not saying it’s true.
Carol: Right, it’s not true. And I always tell the truth because I was told to tell the truth.
Katie: Exactly.
Carol: Oh, that’s it. That’s exactly it. And I know you’ve seen this video. But there’s a really funny video about women giving each other compliments.
So a woman, “Oh, man! That dress is so fabulous.” And the woman says, “Oh, this old thing? It’s nothing.” Somebody else comes up and so it goes on and on and on.
And every woman comes up and says, “Oh that looks great! You look fabulous today.” And everybody has to downplay what looks good on them.
Katie: It’s like we don’t accept compliments.
Carol: And then finally, at the very last one. She actually just says thank you. And all the other ones just like – explode. Because how can you just say that? You just broke the girl code kind of.
Katie: Right. “Oh my gosh! No, not me.”
Carol: Oh, yeah. “This old thing?”
Katie: I think women are pretty good now at accepting compliments. I think we’ve gotten…
Carol: A little bit better.
Katie: And maybe it’s a maturity thing, but we’ve gotten a lot better.
Carol: It’s hard.
Katie: But the initial reaction is definitely to say, “Oh, no! Stop!” Versus, “Oh, that’s so nice of you.” And somewhere along the line, somebody told me, “Katie, accept the compliment.” Just accept the compliment.
Carol: Right.
Katie: It’s a gift for the other person to feel that you’ve accepted it. So give them that gift of circling it around and thanking them for that.
Carol: So you were talking about beliefs. And I think you’re absolutely spot-on – that we are hesitant to affirm something that isn’t absolutely, positively, all 100% true.
Katie: Right.
Carol: And we’ve got to get over that because it makes a difference when you can do that.
Katie: The tip goes back to finding someone that’s a role model that you can aspire to. (And we’ll go back to that – Think, Say, D, in a minute.)
The aspiring to the person, doesn’t mean that you want to do everything the way they do. But there may be aspects of the way that do – something in particular.
Carol: Right.
Katie: So I can think of my friend, Ginger.
Carol: Names are changed to protect the innocent.
Katie: This is actually a compliment. But Ginger and I do some work together and she’s very good at holding me accountable. And we’re doing some step where we create workbooks together. And one week, it will be my assignment and next week, it will be hers.
But she is very good about saying, “When can you meet to talk about how it looks?” And then maybe she’ll do the draft and she’ll send it to me on Sunday night. And she’ll say, “You know, I’m getting ready to take it to print sometime before noon tomorrow. Can you take a look at it by then? Look at page 4 because I heard you say that you wanted to change this and this. Is it exactly how you wanted it?”
And I thought that’s really nice. She’s very good at following up on something, being decisive with it. And in turn, that becomes holding accountable – which we hear a lot of, these days.
So I think about her with that key skill. So let’s say that she’s my role model for being decisive and holding other people accountable.
Carol: Right.
Katie: So next time I’m in a situation where I’m looking at making a decision about a policy that I might have with Christie (our Publicist) and I’m thinking in the back of my mind, “Okay. I think I might change this a little bit. Certainly, she’ll be okay with that.” I ask myself, “Well, what would Ginger do?”
Carol: Right.
Katie: And I answer it myself with, “She would be very astute about not going forward until she’d talk to Christie.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: That’s the role modeling I’m talking about.
Carol: Right.
Katie: That’s it. So now, I act as if I am Ginger and following through on that. And Jen is good at it too. That’s a compliment, Jen.
Carol: So – Think, Say, Do. Okay. So think and belief are the same. And just to clarify. Again, the more you can tell your brain that this is the way it is, your brain will believe you. And that’s all it takes to get to the Say and Do.
Katie: Yes.
Carol: So it takes the belief first – the Think. You have to have the thought.
Katie: Yes.
Carol: The thought starts to process the Say and the Do.
Katie: I think it can even be a desire like, “I want to be better at being decisive.” But my belief system is, “I’m not very decisive. You know, I wiggle a lot of a lot of things.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: If I however – make a mental commitment, that I’m going to be better at it, then that’s going through my mind and I’m thinking it. I’ve made a commitment to be better at it.
The next step is saying it out loud or saying it over and over to myself out loud. It don’t have to be…
By the way – What other great leadership technique works well here? Goal setting. Because the saying out loud is a goal setting.
Carol: Yeah. And you’re setting a goal to be better at something. So you don’t have to do it right away. But what it does – is it brings it to you and you’ve identified a role model that you want to model yourself after. You identify that role model and you say, “She would do it this way. Therefore, that’s what it’s going to look like when I do it.” So I believe that. So I say it and I do it.
Katie: And I’m going to make it happen.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: To put this into action, not only do you think about the process of – Think, Say, Do, in order to be better at a certain trait. But also, put it in some sort of a timeline. (That’s part of goal setting as well.) Give yourself some sort of, “What do I do first? What do I want to do next? What comes after that?”
There’s another piece that comes in here – which is a mentoring that encourages that. Here’s an example of that.
When I first started teaching workshops publicly, (actually back up before that) I was – in my first career was an engineer. And the consulting firm that I eventually went on to work with quite extensively. The consulting firm was working with us. I was in their client base.
So I was in a workshop with several other people and we were developing a newer team. (And it was really fun.) I adored this consulting company. I thought they were the neatest things since frozen peas.
They were so good at what they did. And I watched these and happen to be three men. I watched them facilitate several workshops – teambuilding workshops and process improvement.
And I was just like this (I was young) so I hadn’t seen a lot of that. But I was just an, “Ah!” over what they did. They became my role models. But at the same time, my mentality was, “These guys are so good. I could never be that good.”
Well, fast forward. A year later, they recruited me into their consulting firm – which was a huge compliment. And then, I had several mentors within that consulting firm that helped with, “Oh, you’re good at this. Do this. That looks good.” And they gave me that positive feedback. So the feedback is almost like the Say part – out loud from somebody else.
Carol: Nice to have that.
Katie: Yeah. And that just moved everything forward.
Carol: That’s a wonderful example of identifying what a man looks like in that role model and then, what would a successful female leader look like – doing that same thing.
Because it’s not the same. And we talk about this all the time and I know people want to say, “Well, it should be the same.” And it’s just not.
Katie: It ain’t the same. And it’s not wrong. It’s different.
Carol: There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just people expect something different from women. You can’t be as command and control.
Katie: Right. I have a different presence in a room than one of those principal’s that was in there, one of those owners of the company, his name was Jim.
Jim was the most composed, put together, impressive man and kind of soft spoken, but firm. And I would never really look like – and 6’3’’ or something. So I would never look like Jim.
Carol: Right. You can’t get there.
Katie: So I would look different and many men would look different from that too. And I say, “It’s not that all men are different than all women. It’s that – most men are different in a certain way than most women.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: So we’ve got our own little…
Carol: Genderalization.
Katie: Yeah. We’ve got our own little style and flavor.
Carol: We do. And we talk about it all the time. We need to embrace our own feminine leadership traits and go with those.
So again, if you’re identifying a man that’s your role model, just be sure that you do it a little bit different.
Katie: And why we put that in there – was the caution of what we hear about so many women that get into leadership and take a nose dive because they change.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: For those of you that are listening that don’t know a lot about one of our philosophies. We believe that women’s natural talents come shining through when they’re most at ease.
Carol: Yes. And we don’t necessarily believe women are ease in kind of a commanding control situation.
Katie: Right. What are you?
Carol: I don’t want to say commanding, but I am. I mean, I am a leader in a lot of different arenas and I take over in a lot of them just because I don’t want to wait for things.
Katie: You’re impatient. You’ve told me that.
Carol: Yes.
Katie: But your command looks different than a man’s command. That’s the point.
Carol: It does. And I’ve got to say that I used to be less that way. And my command did look like a man’s and people resented me for it. So now that I have taken on embracing my own feminine leadership style, I am no longer getting…
Katie: The kind of pushback you did?
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: Well, I want to say something about that – because I think that’s the sign of emotional maturity to have changed that.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: I hear this a lot from not the woman that was promoted, but from somebody that is now under her. When women get promoted, many of them believe that, “Now I’m promoted, I’m in a position of authority. I need to act like I’m in authority.” And they take on – kind of a male persona.
Carol: Exactly.
Katie: And I hear over and over again – how that just went down in flames.
Carol: Well, I have promoted so many women and it’s amazing to me. You promote them because they are team builders, they’re great with people and then, you promote them and they become the whip snapper.
Katie: They suddenly have to be different.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: It ain’t good.
Carol: Well, it’s just that we haven’t really known how to model ourselves. Because the only role models we’ve had in those management arenas are male.
Katie: Luckily, we’re seeing more and more women that are in strong positions.
Carol: We are. And unfortunately, a lot of them are getting some bad press about being just too strong leaders. And I don’t mean – too strong of a leader. I mean, witchy, uncompromising.
Katie: Yeah. Isn’t that usually in their interpersonal communications?
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: Like I think of former Secretary of States several years ago – Condoleezza Rice. Who was (I don’t know.) I might say she was kind of soft spoken. She wasn’t loud. She was feminine. She was very steadfast in her opinions. (Of course, we’re talking politicians now – so kind of.)
Carol: Well, that’s okay. I mean, that’s a decent role model. I’d love to be like Condoleezza Rice.
Katie: Yeah, yeah.
Carol: But you’re right. She was very firm.
Katie: She was firm without being bitchy.
Carol: Right. Thank you for saying bitchy. That’s the word I was…
Katie: We’re not in primetime radio.
Carol: That’s true.
Katie: So the – Think, Say, Do, is a god way of getting to the role modeling. Our challenge to you might be – start someone that you… (Actually, I wouldn’t even say.)
Well, you could start with one of two things. What do you want to be better? What do you want to do differently? What do you want to tune up on? Or is there somebody that does something well?
I actually like this for the second approach better. Is there somebody that does something well that when you see them do it – you’re like, “Ah! Nice!”
Now my guess is – that’s tapping into something within you that you’re wishing you had better. Like when you look at somebody that has a nice figure – you go straight to the part of their figure that you don’t have so great.
Carol: Yes, always.
Katie: Like I would go to those thighs.
Carol: I’d go to the tummies. “Oh, man! She’s got a flat tummy. I’m so jealous. Oh, look at those firm thighs!”
Katie: Well, we’re a support role here for women.
Carol: That’s right.
Katie: Because one thing that’s different about women too – is we will talk about fashion, health, body, skincare, diet.
Carol: All of it.
Katie: All when we’re talking about business.
Carol: Role models.
Katie: That’s right. Anything else to add, Carol?
Carol: So I’d just say – We go into a little bit on the Tip Number 45. But replicate what your role model would do. Use your voice and your words, but with the same intent and objective as your role model.
Katie: That’s good. I’d even go so far as to write it down – saying it out loud, writing it down. And you’ll be on the path to greatness. We’re just a little bit finer. You’ll be a little bit finer woman.
Carol: You are on the path to greatness.
Katie: That’s it.
Carol: That’s the affirmation.
Katie: Good catch, Carol.
Carol: Yeah.
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That’s it for this episode of Skirt Strategies podcast. Thank you for joining us and don’t forget to leave a comment at skirtstrategiespodcast.com. Remember that success comes when you lead – using your natural female strengths.
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