Six flavors of SO OVER it
I have a question and I would looooove if you could answer it for me. Pretty please?
I've been curating something special for this summer. I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet, but I will be soon. And before I do, I need to know which one of these sounds like your life right now.
There are a lot of ways to be a woman who is already leading a team but who also knows she's ready for the next level, bigger team, and promotion. I've drafted a few based on conversations with women in Like a Leader, chats with girlfriends over wine, and not so subtle comments from senior executives sharing "observations."
Would you read through all six and drop me an email with whichever one sounds the most like your life right now? I want to hear the actual, honest version, not the perfectly packaged one.
The Unheard Ideas You had three genuinely good ideas for improving the process before 10am. You kept every single one to yourself. Because you've been in enough rooms to know exactly what happens to good ideas when the person sharing them is the only woman at the table.
The Go-To Girl Trap You became the person everyone relies on. You are the "get sh*t done" girl. You deliver, every single time, without fail. And somehow the promotion keeps going to someone who couldn't find the Q3 report with both hands and a flashlight. You know exactly the person I'm talking about.
The Boredom You're doing fine. Your performance reviews are good, your manager loves you. And yet you are so profoundly, deeply, soul-crushingly BORED. Nobody warned you that competence could feel this empty.
The Reputation Gap You want to be seen as the ambitious, successful woman you already are. And yeah, you feel a little uncomfortable admitting that out loud. But you didn't work your ass off to hide behind your laptop with zero recognition. And yet that's exactly what you've been doing, because you've spent your whole life being told that wanting to be seen comes with a warning label.
The Money You want the pay bump. A real one. The kind that means you stop doing mental math every time you open Uber Eats. But you've seen what happens when women say that out loud. You've seen the faces. So you learned to dress it up as something more "palatable." And to accept whatever's on sale at Trader Joe's instead of asking for what you know damn well you deserve. We are so done with this.
The Anger Let's talk about the audacity. Of the men who speak first, get credited most, and lead the worst, while you sit there with better ideas, better instincts, and a perfectly maintained poker face. You're tired of it. SO f*cking over it. And ready to be part of the change, to lead in a way that actually makes the world a little better, starting with the room you're already in.
Which one is you? Drop me an email to share. If it's two, tell me both. If it's all of the above, tell me! If it's none of the above, tell me that too.
Your answers are going to shape something SUPER COOL that I'm putting together for this summer. Something designed specifically for women who are already leading and are ready for more. More soon.
xoxo
Kelsey
THIS WEEK'S THING
In my book Painted Wolves, I make a distinction between two types of leaders. Personalized leaders use power to get what they want for themselves. Socialized leaders use power to get something done for the people around them. Research consistently shows that women lean toward socialized leadership and men lean toward personalized leadership. Which, if you just read those six threads, probably explains a lot about the room you're currently sitting in.
The fact that women lead this way is one of the reasons we make such good leaders! Caring about the people around you, focusing on the problem, wanting to make the room better. Pretty good leadership if you ask me!
But here's what is also really important to recognize: none of that means you are not allowed to want the money. You are allowed to want the title. You are allowed to be bored and want a bigger challenge and want people to actually know your name. Wanting more for yourself and wanting more for the people you lead are not competing desires. You can want both.
Here's the question I leave readers with in the book: why do you want to lead? And when you look at the leaders in your life who have made the most impact, why do they lead?
For this week, sit with these questions.
Why do YOU want to lead? Get specific. Not the version you'd say in an interview. The real one you'd tell your girlfriends after the second marg.
And then: Why do the leaders you admire most lead? What can you learn from them? (And if you don't know, ask them!)
Here's why this matters. When you understand what's motivating you, you can build a real strategy around it. You stop drifting toward goals you haven't consciously chosen and start moving toward ones you actually want. And when you understand what's driving the people making decisions around you, their choices start making a lot more sense. You go from feeling like things are happening to you to understanding exactly what's happening and why.