If you want to own your ambition to advance your career, how can you do that while bringing your boss, boss’s boss, and coworkers along? In this episode, Stacey and Lisa offer strategic tips and resources so you can update your self-talk, and build your skills and confidence you need to control your career and deal with the inevitable and pesky pushback along the way. 

Laura was the VP of client success for a startup. She wanted to land the lead role, yet she was coming up against pushback — the same kind she’d faced all her career: “you’re too hard-charging. Too loud. You dominate the conversation.”

It’s feedback that will sound familiar to many women: you’re too much. 

So Laura left the startup to start her own consulting business, joining the droves of women, especially women of color (WOC), leaving corporate to start businesses. But what if you don’t want to leave corporate? What if your ambition is to have your eye on the C-Suite? 

How can you unapologetically own your ambition to reach your goals and your organization’s, so everyone wins? 

That’s the subject of this episode of Inclusionomics®. Grab your notebook, because this episode is full of strategic and practical tips and resources you can use to own your ambition and catapult your career.

What’s the narrative running — or ruining — your career? 

What story are you telling yourself about your career? In this episode, Stacey and Lisa explore how you can change your story so you control your destiny — not your boss, or supervisor, or boss’s boss, but YOU. 

Stacey shares her experience getting a hard “no” for a promotion, and reveals how to prepare to ask for what you want, to avoid the big mistake she made. She also reveals why it’s critical to arm yourself with facts and data, and to ask for facts from others. Get the receipts! You can’t control anyone’s bias or discrimination, but you can insist that you steer your career and ambition with facts, and Stacey tells you how. 

How to build presentation skills without selling your soul

Lisa had a coaching client whose voice would squeak with excitement. So of course, she was constantly told to “calm down.” Lisa shares the practical, physical solution to this situation that helped her client control her energy without losing her enthusiasm.

But as Stacey points out, women are always being told how to change. Why can’t we just walk into a room as ourselves? So Lisa explores the crucial difference between building your presentation skills, and compromising on who you are.

The pesky self-promotion gap

If you’re struggling to get promoted or ahead, the self-promotion gap might be part of the challenge. Stacey shares a powerful networking principle that is perfect to apply internally — one that upends the myth that women are competitive and “back-stabby.” Lisa also shares how to harness storytelling to promote yourself. In other words, how to and why you must wrap the quantifiable results you deliver in stories.

Confidence: nope, it’s not like an outfit

As you own your ambition, build your skills, and advocate for yourself, you will naturally increase your confidence and influence. That’s great! Part of owning your ambition is embracing that you have influence, and there are concrete ways you can increase your influence to support your career. Lisa shares two practical tips to build your influence: four powerful questions to ask in an “Influence Interview,” and how to practice “mirroring.” 

Stacey points out another layer to practice that builds your confidence: external gratification. She shares how to build external reinforcement into your career for greater results, connection, and influence. 

Your ambition is one of your greatest strengths. Click play above to discover how to hone this strength now, or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you felt the need to hide your ambition? What’s your experience with self-promotion? We would love to hear your stories. Leave us a comment below, or reach out to us on social media. 

Show Notes:

• Women of color account for nearly 90% of the new businesses opened every day over the past year. Women of color are starting new businesses faster than anyone else
• On building your influence: Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence – Explanation and examples
• Why are women leaving corporate in droves? This article offers some insight: Why More Women Are Turning To Entrepreneurship
• On the “competitive women” myth: The Persistent Myth of Female Office Rivalries
• To learn more about Stacey, visit ReworkWork. Connect with Stacey on LinkedIn and Twitter

To learn more about Lisa, visit Story Happens Here. Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn and Twitter