35. Beyond Likability: The Power of Strategically Managing Your Perception
Managing your personal brand perception as a leader is more complex than just "being yourself" or "making a good impression." It’s far more complicated than a formula for how you show up, and it’s most definitely not about shrinking yourself to be liked by others.
This week, I explore how high-achieving women can strategically navigate how others experience their leadership presence without compromising their authenticity or power. Through candid stories from my own leadership journey and my experience coaching other women leaders, I share critical insights about the disconnect that often occurs between our intentions and how others perceive us.
Join me in this episode to learn my four-part framework for conscious perception management that helps you understand how you're being experienced, decide which perceptions matter most, align your desired and actual impact, and make powerful strategic choices about how you show up. I also examine real situations where perception misalignment created career challenges and reveal the strategic approaches that turned these moments into opportunities for growth.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to identify when your leadership intention doesn't match others' perception.
My four-part framework for conscious perception management.
Why building trust matters more than likeability for career acceleration.
Understanding which perceptions truly matter for your strategic goals.
How to use feedback about your presence as data rather than criticism.
Strategic approaches to building relationships that support your career growth.
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Full Episode Transcript:
You can be brilliant, passionate, and visionary and still be misunderstood. Not because you did something wrong, but because how others perceive you isn't always what you intend. And here's the thing, you won't find a lot of research or leadership books on this because this is cutting edge, complex, and uncomfortable. But I'm here to tell you the truth about it.
This episode is not about shrinking, code-switching, or posturing. It's about strategic empowerment, learning to see yourself through others' eyes, not to change who you are, but to position your power with clarity and discernment. If you're a high-achieving woman who's ever felt misjudged, too bold, not enough, this conversation is your reframe.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
All right, welcome podcast listeners. This is episode number 35 and we are diving into how to strategically manage your brand perception without shrinking. So, I'm going to just start off with talking about what your personal brand perception is. I think sometimes people are like, is that my brand? How I show up, who I come across? It's not just your title or your resume, but it's how people experience your presence, energy, tone, and leadership choices. This isn't about being liked. It's about being understood, trusted, and respected in a way that advances your impact and your career.
So, I'm going to give you lots of context for this because it's not just a, I'm going to learn a tactic and it's easy, but it's really a way of how you think strategically and how you approach this idea of managing your personal brand perception.
So, I just want to start off with acknowledging that you are not going to get a ton of research in this episode because this isn't being studied in traditional spaces. This is lived leadership. It's nuanced, it's powerful, and it's rarely talked about, especially for women navigating high-stake environments.
So this isn't a conversation about blaming yourself or fixing who you are. It is truly about using awareness, choice, and discernment as strategic leadership tools. So, I am actually going to start off with really talking about some experiences that I have had in my life that have taken me some time to truly absorb, digest, and as I coach other women, I am able to impart what I've learned, how I've grown from the situation, and how to think about the context of how people perceive you in a more expansive way.
So, let's dive in. The trap: when intention and perception don't match. So this is actually, what happens to a lot of people, but let me share my personal experience. So, I had a situation with a senior female leader that did not leave a good impression on the senior female leader. I actually left the meeting thinking that things were fine. I thought that we were on the same page. I thought she was very welcoming and open. But when I came back from this business meeting, my boss at the time told me that I need to be careful with my networking.
And he said it in such a strange way. He, was both protective but also kind of warning me, but I wasn't really clear on what it was. Like he was kind of elusive in it because I was like, "Can you tell me more?" And he was like, "You just need to think about this." It's almost like he didn't want to spell it out for me, or maybe he didn't want to. I don't know. Part of me thought he didn't really know what the crux of it was, but he knew that this woman did not have a good impression of me. And this woman was actually his boss, so it's like my boss's boss.
And so I was like, "Oh, what happened here? I don't know what happened." And of course, I had lots of emotions. I felt lots of fear, I felt upset about it, I felt like people were thinking about me in some weird way. And then I tracked back to the conversation and I thought, "What happened?" And I asked myself some questions. So, I'm going to share the facts of what happened in the conversation and then I'm going to share how I felt about it. And then also what this other person felt about it, the senior leader.
So, what happened was I was at a meeting and I was there to explain and connect with the local team. And somebody was like, "Why don't you meet the senior female leader because she actually has you coming here." And I was excited to meet her. And during our conversation and me thanking her for inviting me here, I also told her how excited I was about this women's network program that I was running in my company. She was sort of the parent leader in this bigger division and I was saying, "Oh, I'm really excited about this." And I had asked her who was in charge of it for her group, for her business unit. And she had shared it with me. And I think I had, when I think back to what I had asked, "Oh, could I get an intro to this person?"
So, right off the bat, actually, when I think about it now, being a more senior leader, I was thinking, "Oh wow, I was like so naive at the time." And this is where we have compassion for ourselves. But the way that I believe I came off to this very senior leader was that I did not have enough trust and rapport with this person. I was transactional, I was presumptive, and I was expecting her to help me without creating this, connection with her yet.
In my mind, I thought I was just being, this woman empowerment leader, caring about community, seeing her as a female leader. I made this assumption that she must care and have the same values as I do. And by the way, she could have. Like she might actually have the same values. But the way I came across to her might have been like too abrasive or too aggressive or whatever it is.
In thinking back to it, I could see where she might have told my boss like, "Wow, she is really into networking," or had said something slighted like that. Like I could see how that would have come across. And then I could see how my boss would want to give me that information and say, "Hey, this is something you need to be aware of." Even though he didn't know the full context because she probably didn't give him the full context. It's weird to say, "I felt hurt by this young woman who wanted to get something from me," or "I felt upset by it."
She might have said something more, I don't know, high level like, "Yann's really into networking. We need to watch that side of her," or, "She needs to build more rapport with people before asking for things." It could have been something more, I don't know if it would have been that direct. But in any case, I felt super hurt. I felt like I was being judged for wanting to do something that was helpful to the organization, to the community. But yes, it was also promoting myself in that way. And I felt really hurt by it and it actually bothered me for a while. And I learned from it actually, when I zoom out instead of zooming in. This is the power of looking at your brand perception.
Of course, you have your feelings and those micro things that happen in the moment. And I know I felt bad, I probably felt embarrassed, I felt ashamed, I also felt angry. Like how could I be judged by this way? But when I zoom out and I'm like, "Okay, she's a senior leader." She knew me from the past, but she didn't know me deeply. I'm having this one-on-one with her and I am coming across transactional. Like that's not fun for her either.
And instead of blaming myself and being mad at myself, I'm like, this is just a learning experience. And this situation doesn't need to define my relationship with her going forward. This is just a piece of data that I can have about how I was perceived by her at a moment in time. And I'm going to have many more moments in time, and now I'm going to be even more aware of it. And I'm not going to make the assumption that just because you're a female leader, that you're going to care about the same things that I care about or you're going to care about empowering females.
This is something that I coach my clients on too, because I think often times as women leaders or women who care about empowerment, we sometimes assume all women do, but that's not the truth for everyone. And that could be that they do care about it, but they don't care about it as much as you do. And they, don't like the way that you came across asking for help when you hadn't built that trust with them.
Part of the work here is to acknowledge yourself, notice yourself, and then zoom out and see that bigger picture. And instead of shaming yourself, you're just like, this is more data. So yeah, she became my boss later and we had a good working relationship and I had other ways of creating that trust and rapport with her and understanding what matters to her and figuring out what values that we actually shared together instead of making assumptions.
So, this is the power of understanding that you can strategically manage your brand perception, but it may take some missteps before you learn that. And again, this isn't about me being like, "Oh, I should have never asked her about that." It was more, let me learn about the situation and let me understand the emotion behind it and having that self-awareness.
Let me share another example so that again, we can ground this into real examples and you want to notice for yourself, has this happened? Has somebody walked away and said, "Gosh, Sarah, you are, so scary to people," or like given you some sort of feedback where you're like, "That is so off of who I am. How did they think that I came across that way?" This is again, like having that space for you to notice the emotion behind the feedback before jumping to the answer. Because if you jump to the answer with all of those emotions, those emotions are going to have an impact on the way you view the whole situation.
Here's another one. So it's self-awareness without self-blame. You might have felt sadness, anger, or even disappointment, but also chose growth. So, this was another piece of feedback that I got from one of my leaders, my bosses. He basically said to me that in a performance review, he's like, "I love that your team is so proud to be on your team, that they're so pro-team Yann, and that they're high performing. But what I want is for you to lead that way with all of our finance department, not just your team."
So I was just in charge of like the decision support, basically the team that was working with the leadership teams to drive commercial decisions. But I wasn't in charge of the accounting team or other transactional pieces of our organization. And people have this feeling like Team Yann is tight-knit, it's high performing, but it's also exclusive. And basically the feedback he gave me was like, "I want you to have this energy for our whole functional area, not just your own circle."
And of course, you know, I felt a little bit like, "Okay, so now you're blaming me because my team loves to be with me and people want to be on my team." But then I could see a bigger vision for myself. This is that zooming out. This is the part where I'm like, you know what? If I'm thinking about strategic brand perception of me being a bigger and bigger leader, this is about me being more inclusive. This is about me leading at a bigger level.
And instead of taking his feedback to mean I did something wrong or I'm bad, I actually took his feedback to mean like, I'm doing something right. Like people want to be in my team. They're proud of it. And I can expand this to other parts of the organization. And I could be more pro this organization versus just my team.
So again, taking that, it's really about zooming out and seeing that strategic brand because if he wants to support me and he wants me to be on to taking on more and more opportunities and more and more responsibility, this perception of Team Yann doesn't help that. It makes it limited. It makes it seem like I'm exclusive versus I'm an empowering leader for whoever comes into my office, whoever I work with. I am caring about the whole organization, not just a piece of it.
Managing that brand perception is about zooming out, understanding my place in the sort of ecosystem of things and making discernment and making choices of how I show up when I show up and using that feedback to benefit me, not to make myself wrong, not to beat myself up.
Part of this thing about showing up with your leadership presence and being more bold and brave is that you're going to get more feedback. People are either going to love you or they're going to hate you, right? And I always tell people the job is not about right or wrong, it's about discernment. What is going to help you get to where you want to be?
And this is so important because we do work in an ecosystem. We do work in systems. And we might have a feeling about ourselves, but we also need to have relationships with other people in order to succeed. We're not on an island alone. You know, we might feel great about ourselves, but we need to be able to influence and we need to use our leadership in that way.
So let me share another story. This is actually comes from my client, but this also gives you a view of how other people might be threatened by you that you might not even know. So I have a client who is very high performing. She is strategic, she's execution focused. She has a very strong business consultant mindset and she holds people accountable. She is very good at not allowing people to give her excuses. And so her CEO loves this about her, right? She's able to do these things.
But what happens is that she also has this, sort of her peers feel like she is controlling. They feel like she steamrolls, she undermines their authority. And she leads with a lot of logistics and technical expertise, but misses a lot of those relational touchpoints, which is really what I work with clients on, learning how to have trust and rapport with people and learning how to build those connections because no matter what, the world is built on relationships. And so managing your brand perception and understanding how you come across to people is an important and strategic tool for you to empower yourself.
And so as we work together, one of the things that I do with my clients too is I get pretty in detailed about their family of origin and how they grew up. And what was very striking about her is that she was clearly the golden child in her family. She was the oldest, her parents relied on her. They wanted her to be part of the authority group there. And she got a lot of goodies by having this role of self-sufficiency and independence. And the impact was also from, her siblings and she's kind of recreating this again at work. This jealousy from the siblings, this jealousy and this resistance, like can they really trust her, right? She's the golden child. She's a special one.
And so this actually caused her to have a lot of issues accelerating because even though people were like, "Okay, we get that she does good job. We just don't really trust her." She was not able to accelerate as quickly and she was more threatening to people than she even realized. So it was important for her to notice these things because the goal is not about likeability. It's about trust, access, and impact.
And even though she was highly trusted by the CEO, the peers made a difference. They had a say in her next level of acceleration and those relationships mattered. And so this is why emotional intelligence and the ability to be aware, connect with yourself and connect with other people makes such a big difference.
So shining a light on that and her understanding the way that she's perceived by other people made it so that she could understand how to zoom out of this and to create connections. And when her CEO asked her to do things that might have been in the lane of another leader, instead of just going to do it, because the CEO asked her to do it, she learned how to connect directly with that functional leader and say, "Hey, listen, this is what I've been asked to do. I want to talk to you about it. I want to have a relationship with you. I want you to understand where I'm coming from. I want to see how we could work together."
So there was she started building those bridges because she started managing that brand perception. Instead of just having people feel these certain ways towards her, she was taking ownership and she was diving into it and having these conversations that historically she didn't have. And when she didn't have these conversations, there was a lot of whispers, there was a lot of people talking behind her back. There's a lot of mistrust and misunderstanding of who she is, what she stood for, and how she wanted to lead.
And so by doing this, by creating these relationships, she became more impactful, way less threatening to her peers, and more part of the team. People wanted her help, they trusted her. They didn't see her as this controlling, undermining person that was going to backstab them. They saw her as, "Hey, somebody who's doing a good job and giving them context and sharing where she's coming from and why."
So, this is again, the power of owning and managing your own brand perception. You want to know how people are feeling and thinking about you. And listen, this is not again, about likeability. You're not going to want everybody to like you, but you will want certain people to trust you. And often times it's going to be certain peers and certain senior level leadership because this is part of managing strategically your career acceleration and your impact.
All right, let's talk about how you do this so that you can take this into your own life and so that you can start learning what it could be like to strategically own your own personal brand and create empowerment for yourself. So, this is a four-part lens for conscious perception management. This is a framework that I teach my clients and what I want you to be thinking about, especially when you are navigating complicated relationships between your peers or your senior level management or other people.
So first is awareness. Know how you're coming across. Get feedback, watch reactions, read the room. You want to understand how people might be threatened by you. Is there some information you have? Is there some background you have? Often times as women, we think that we are not so threatening. I mean, I definitely felt like this. I was like, when people would say, "You're super intimidating and you're really powerful and scary." I would be like, "What?" But that was me not being fully aware of my presence, my title, my background, how people would be introducing me. And the more I became aware of that, the more I was like, "Oh, I could see that. I can understand that." And the less I became like surprised by it. I'm like, "No, I have a big title and I could see, even though I don't agree with it, why people might see my intentions being one way or another." So the first part is awareness. Again, knowing how you're coming across.
The second one is discernment. Not all feedback is created equal. Decide which perceptions matter in the context of your goal. This is so important. You're not walking around trying to be liked by everyone, but it does matter. When I was talking to my boss's boss, it really mattered that I understood at least how I was coming across so that I could take control over that. So that narrative wasn't just out there in the world or I wasn't just sinking in my own emotions. I chose strategically how I wanted to approach my relationship with her and how I wanted to take that feedback. This is the power of discernment.
The next one is alignment. Ask, is how I want to be known matching how I'm actually being experienced or how I'm actually being perceived. You want to just give yourself space as you zoom out and you see yourself this way. You know, I want to give you some just sharing from my own experience. You know, I became known for my soft skills. I became known as a highly emotional intelligent leader, but often times, especially in the context of the company that I worked in, that could be threatening, especially if it's very masculine, very technical. People want those technical skills and they could feel very threatened by those soft skills.
And so I could say from a zooming level of that level where people were like, "We want somebody who's, both technical, probably more technical because we feel more safe in that space and we know what that looks like than more soft skill related," that my perception in the finance community was more I was too soft. But my perception at the leadership level with my CEO was that I was balanced.
So the alignment really depends on what your goal is. For me, I eventually decided to become a coach, so it was more authentic for me in the long run zooming out for me to be more focused on the soft skills because that is what I'm helping women to shift in their own careers. But in looking from that finance lens, I could see, wow, they want me to be way more technical. They're, it's threatening. We don't want a bunch of people just having lots of feelings, but they also don't know it as deeply as I do how these things come together.
So it's having that context to understand that alignment and at which level. This is why strategic brand empowerment, understanding your brand perception is more complicated than just this is how you show up. It's really about aligning in the moment if you want to be, the CFO of this particular group. Like if that was my goal to be the CFO then, I would share more about my technical experiences. I would lead more in that way, in that style because it would help me get there. It's not me pretending to be someone I'm not, it's me choosing consciously to show up in a way where my perception is embraced more by the people that are making those choices or having that power to decide if I'm going to be, the successor to another finance leader for example.
And then lastly, it's strategic choice. Choose how to show up. Not from fear, but from grounded intentional power. That strategic choice. Just like I was just saying, like if I wanted to be the CFO of this group and I know the context and what really matters to them, then I would shift my perception or the way that I spoke to them about certain things to match that. So your perception isn't your prison. It's a positioning tool. You get to adjust and refine without apology. You get to decide who you are.
So when I got feedback that I have really great soft skills, but I need to focus on technical skills, I could understand it, but I could also say for myself, "Okay, but I also authentically want to be this type of leader." And it actually helped me get clearer on the shift that I made out of corporate and creating my own coaching practice. So, this is important because you want to look at these different lenses and consciously choose, make that strategic choice for yourself.
And then the next thing is redefining power as strategic visibility. Visibility isn't just being seen. It's being received. You don't have to play small to be palatable. You don't have to shrink down to belong. But you do have to understand how power lands in rooms filled with humans who carry stories, fears, and judgments. True power is relational and strategic.
And what I want to leave you with is that, sometimes you're going to choose to show up in ways that make people feel uncomfortable. And this is part of the process. This is part of growing, expanding, and that's okay. I showed up with my boss's boss in a way that made her feel uncomfortable, and it didn't define my career. It didn't stop me from, becoming her direct report someday and accelerating in my career.
The key here is consciousness, knowing why you're doing it, being clear on your values and standing by your choices and learning from it. Like I get to just learn from all of this stuff. This is just data. You're not defined by just one thing you're doing, but it is data and it can help you grow and learn and manage that strategic brand perception.
So strategic leaders don't aim to avoid all missteps. They choose the right ones, they learn from the missteps and this is part of that growing and learning. So I want you to, allow yourself space to be in this and to come from it from a learning space, not a shame or self-beat up.
And so here's my call to action for you as you think about your own brand perception, particularly, like I said, in the context where people are potentially sponsoring you, whether they're your boss, whether they're your peers that have a vote of confidence in where you go and how you excel. You want to ask yourself, where might your perception not align with your intention?
And, this often times happens when you are connecting with people that disagree with you or feel super threatened by you. You want to also ask yourself, where are you being powerful but not yet strategic? So where do you take up a lot of space but you don't feel like you're strategically shifting it in the way that you want to? And then lastly, what one shift could you make in how you show up, not to please, but to increase your influence and clarity?
All right. So those are three questions that you could be thinking about, but also using the framework that I shared earlier to filter and to understand feedback that you're getting or a relationship that you're like, "Wow, I don't think my brand perception is that great with this person." Sometimes I even ask my clients from a scale of 1 to 10, your brand perception, how you're perceived by someone aligning to where you want to be in the organization, you know, 10 being it's right on point, one being it's way off. Let's dive into that.
So you can also ask yourself that question and start teasing out where are things out of misalignment and where can you start influencing strategically, the way that you want to, that you choose to, that will help you get to creating more of that brand perception that aligns with where you want to go and creating that trust and rapport with that person.
All right, so I want to leave you with a couple of thoughts and an invitation. Firstly, you are not too much. You are powerful, complex, and needed. And your perception in the world is not something to be feared. It's a tool you can wield. And if you're ready to sharpen that tool, elevate your leadership, build a legacy you love, I'd love to help you.
I do complimentary 45-minute coaching consultations. And if you are ready for your next level of impact, then I invite you to join me on this. You can find a booking link on my LinkedIn page. It's very easy, and I'd love to connect with you.
All right, until next week, go out there, own your brand perception, understand it, and use it strategically. All right, have a great week ahead. Take care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
This episode is not about shrinking, code-switching, or posturing. It's about strategic empowerment, learning to see yourself through others' eyes, not to change who you are, but to position your power with clarity and discernment. If you're a high-achieving woman who's ever felt misjudged, too bold, not enough, this conversation is your reframe.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
All right, welcome podcast listeners. This is episode number 35 and we are diving into how to strategically manage your brand perception without shrinking. So, I'm going to just start off with talking about what your personal brand perception is. I think sometimes people are like, is that my brand? How I show up, who I come across? It's not just your title or your resume, but it's how people experience your presence, energy, tone, and leadership choices. This isn't about being liked. It's about being understood, trusted, and respected in a way that advances your impact and your career.
So, I'm going to give you lots of context for this because it's not just a, I'm going to learn a tactic and it's easy, but it's really a way of how you think strategically and how you approach this idea of managing your personal brand perception.
So, I just want to start off with acknowledging that you are not going to get a ton of research in this episode because this isn't being studied in traditional spaces. This is lived leadership. It's nuanced, it's powerful, and it's rarely talked about, especially for women navigating high-stake environments.
So this isn't a conversation about blaming yourself or fixing who you are. It is truly about using awareness, choice, and discernment as strategic leadership tools. So, I am actually going to start off with really talking about some experiences that I have had in my life that have taken me some time to truly absorb, digest, and as I coach other women, I am able to impart what I've learned, how I've grown from the situation, and how to think about the context of how people perceive you in a more expansive way.
So, let's dive in. The trap: when intention and perception don't match. So this is actually, what happens to a lot of people, but let me share my personal experience. So, I had a situation with a senior female leader that did not leave a good impression on the senior female leader. I actually left the meeting thinking that things were fine. I thought that we were on the same page. I thought she was very welcoming and open. But when I came back from this business meeting, my boss at the time told me that I need to be careful with my networking.
And he said it in such a strange way. He, was both protective but also kind of warning me, but I wasn't really clear on what it was. Like he was kind of elusive in it because I was like, "Can you tell me more?" And he was like, "You just need to think about this." It's almost like he didn't want to spell it out for me, or maybe he didn't want to. I don't know. Part of me thought he didn't really know what the crux of it was, but he knew that this woman did not have a good impression of me. And this woman was actually his boss, so it's like my boss's boss.
And so I was like, "Oh, what happened here? I don't know what happened." And of course, I had lots of emotions. I felt lots of fear, I felt upset about it, I felt like people were thinking about me in some weird way. And then I tracked back to the conversation and I thought, "What happened?" And I asked myself some questions. So, I'm going to share the facts of what happened in the conversation and then I'm going to share how I felt about it. And then also what this other person felt about it, the senior leader.
So, what happened was I was at a meeting and I was there to explain and connect with the local team. And somebody was like, "Why don't you meet the senior female leader because she actually has you coming here." And I was excited to meet her. And during our conversation and me thanking her for inviting me here, I also told her how excited I was about this women's network program that I was running in my company. She was sort of the parent leader in this bigger division and I was saying, "Oh, I'm really excited about this." And I had asked her who was in charge of it for her group, for her business unit. And she had shared it with me. And I think I had, when I think back to what I had asked, "Oh, could I get an intro to this person?"
So, right off the bat, actually, when I think about it now, being a more senior leader, I was thinking, "Oh wow, I was like so naive at the time." And this is where we have compassion for ourselves. But the way that I believe I came off to this very senior leader was that I did not have enough trust and rapport with this person. I was transactional, I was presumptive, and I was expecting her to help me without creating this, connection with her yet.
In my mind, I thought I was just being, this woman empowerment leader, caring about community, seeing her as a female leader. I made this assumption that she must care and have the same values as I do. And by the way, she could have. Like she might actually have the same values. But the way I came across to her might have been like too abrasive or too aggressive or whatever it is.
In thinking back to it, I could see where she might have told my boss like, "Wow, she is really into networking," or had said something slighted like that. Like I could see how that would have come across. And then I could see how my boss would want to give me that information and say, "Hey, this is something you need to be aware of." Even though he didn't know the full context because she probably didn't give him the full context. It's weird to say, "I felt hurt by this young woman who wanted to get something from me," or "I felt upset by it."
She might have said something more, I don't know, high level like, "Yann's really into networking. We need to watch that side of her," or, "She needs to build more rapport with people before asking for things." It could have been something more, I don't know if it would have been that direct. But in any case, I felt super hurt. I felt like I was being judged for wanting to do something that was helpful to the organization, to the community. But yes, it was also promoting myself in that way. And I felt really hurt by it and it actually bothered me for a while. And I learned from it actually, when I zoom out instead of zooming in. This is the power of looking at your brand perception.
Of course, you have your feelings and those micro things that happen in the moment. And I know I felt bad, I probably felt embarrassed, I felt ashamed, I also felt angry. Like how could I be judged by this way? But when I zoom out and I'm like, "Okay, she's a senior leader." She knew me from the past, but she didn't know me deeply. I'm having this one-on-one with her and I am coming across transactional. Like that's not fun for her either.
And instead of blaming myself and being mad at myself, I'm like, this is just a learning experience. And this situation doesn't need to define my relationship with her going forward. This is just a piece of data that I can have about how I was perceived by her at a moment in time. And I'm going to have many more moments in time, and now I'm going to be even more aware of it. And I'm not going to make the assumption that just because you're a female leader, that you're going to care about the same things that I care about or you're going to care about empowering females.
This is something that I coach my clients on too, because I think often times as women leaders or women who care about empowerment, we sometimes assume all women do, but that's not the truth for everyone. And that could be that they do care about it, but they don't care about it as much as you do. And they, don't like the way that you came across asking for help when you hadn't built that trust with them.
Part of the work here is to acknowledge yourself, notice yourself, and then zoom out and see that bigger picture. And instead of shaming yourself, you're just like, this is more data. So yeah, she became my boss later and we had a good working relationship and I had other ways of creating that trust and rapport with her and understanding what matters to her and figuring out what values that we actually shared together instead of making assumptions.
So, this is the power of understanding that you can strategically manage your brand perception, but it may take some missteps before you learn that. And again, this isn't about me being like, "Oh, I should have never asked her about that." It was more, let me learn about the situation and let me understand the emotion behind it and having that self-awareness.
Let me share another example so that again, we can ground this into real examples and you want to notice for yourself, has this happened? Has somebody walked away and said, "Gosh, Sarah, you are, so scary to people," or like given you some sort of feedback where you're like, "That is so off of who I am. How did they think that I came across that way?" This is again, like having that space for you to notice the emotion behind the feedback before jumping to the answer. Because if you jump to the answer with all of those emotions, those emotions are going to have an impact on the way you view the whole situation.
Here's another one. So it's self-awareness without self-blame. You might have felt sadness, anger, or even disappointment, but also chose growth. So, this was another piece of feedback that I got from one of my leaders, my bosses. He basically said to me that in a performance review, he's like, "I love that your team is so proud to be on your team, that they're so pro-team Yann, and that they're high performing. But what I want is for you to lead that way with all of our finance department, not just your team."
So I was just in charge of like the decision support, basically the team that was working with the leadership teams to drive commercial decisions. But I wasn't in charge of the accounting team or other transactional pieces of our organization. And people have this feeling like Team Yann is tight-knit, it's high performing, but it's also exclusive. And basically the feedback he gave me was like, "I want you to have this energy for our whole functional area, not just your own circle."
And of course, you know, I felt a little bit like, "Okay, so now you're blaming me because my team loves to be with me and people want to be on my team." But then I could see a bigger vision for myself. This is that zooming out. This is the part where I'm like, you know what? If I'm thinking about strategic brand perception of me being a bigger and bigger leader, this is about me being more inclusive. This is about me leading at a bigger level.
And instead of taking his feedback to mean I did something wrong or I'm bad, I actually took his feedback to mean like, I'm doing something right. Like people want to be in my team. They're proud of it. And I can expand this to other parts of the organization. And I could be more pro this organization versus just my team.
So again, taking that, it's really about zooming out and seeing that strategic brand because if he wants to support me and he wants me to be on to taking on more and more opportunities and more and more responsibility, this perception of Team Yann doesn't help that. It makes it limited. It makes it seem like I'm exclusive versus I'm an empowering leader for whoever comes into my office, whoever I work with. I am caring about the whole organization, not just a piece of it.
Managing that brand perception is about zooming out, understanding my place in the sort of ecosystem of things and making discernment and making choices of how I show up when I show up and using that feedback to benefit me, not to make myself wrong, not to beat myself up.
Part of this thing about showing up with your leadership presence and being more bold and brave is that you're going to get more feedback. People are either going to love you or they're going to hate you, right? And I always tell people the job is not about right or wrong, it's about discernment. What is going to help you get to where you want to be?
And this is so important because we do work in an ecosystem. We do work in systems. And we might have a feeling about ourselves, but we also need to have relationships with other people in order to succeed. We're not on an island alone. You know, we might feel great about ourselves, but we need to be able to influence and we need to use our leadership in that way.
So let me share another story. This is actually comes from my client, but this also gives you a view of how other people might be threatened by you that you might not even know. So I have a client who is very high performing. She is strategic, she's execution focused. She has a very strong business consultant mindset and she holds people accountable. She is very good at not allowing people to give her excuses. And so her CEO loves this about her, right? She's able to do these things.
But what happens is that she also has this, sort of her peers feel like she is controlling. They feel like she steamrolls, she undermines their authority. And she leads with a lot of logistics and technical expertise, but misses a lot of those relational touchpoints, which is really what I work with clients on, learning how to have trust and rapport with people and learning how to build those connections because no matter what, the world is built on relationships. And so managing your brand perception and understanding how you come across to people is an important and strategic tool for you to empower yourself.
And so as we work together, one of the things that I do with my clients too is I get pretty in detailed about their family of origin and how they grew up. And what was very striking about her is that she was clearly the golden child in her family. She was the oldest, her parents relied on her. They wanted her to be part of the authority group there. And she got a lot of goodies by having this role of self-sufficiency and independence. And the impact was also from, her siblings and she's kind of recreating this again at work. This jealousy from the siblings, this jealousy and this resistance, like can they really trust her, right? She's the golden child. She's a special one.
And so this actually caused her to have a lot of issues accelerating because even though people were like, "Okay, we get that she does good job. We just don't really trust her." She was not able to accelerate as quickly and she was more threatening to people than she even realized. So it was important for her to notice these things because the goal is not about likeability. It's about trust, access, and impact.
And even though she was highly trusted by the CEO, the peers made a difference. They had a say in her next level of acceleration and those relationships mattered. And so this is why emotional intelligence and the ability to be aware, connect with yourself and connect with other people makes such a big difference.
So shining a light on that and her understanding the way that she's perceived by other people made it so that she could understand how to zoom out of this and to create connections. And when her CEO asked her to do things that might have been in the lane of another leader, instead of just going to do it, because the CEO asked her to do it, she learned how to connect directly with that functional leader and say, "Hey, listen, this is what I've been asked to do. I want to talk to you about it. I want to have a relationship with you. I want you to understand where I'm coming from. I want to see how we could work together."
So there was she started building those bridges because she started managing that brand perception. Instead of just having people feel these certain ways towards her, she was taking ownership and she was diving into it and having these conversations that historically she didn't have. And when she didn't have these conversations, there was a lot of whispers, there was a lot of people talking behind her back. There's a lot of mistrust and misunderstanding of who she is, what she stood for, and how she wanted to lead.
And so by doing this, by creating these relationships, she became more impactful, way less threatening to her peers, and more part of the team. People wanted her help, they trusted her. They didn't see her as this controlling, undermining person that was going to backstab them. They saw her as, "Hey, somebody who's doing a good job and giving them context and sharing where she's coming from and why."
So, this is again, the power of owning and managing your own brand perception. You want to know how people are feeling and thinking about you. And listen, this is not again, about likeability. You're not going to want everybody to like you, but you will want certain people to trust you. And often times it's going to be certain peers and certain senior level leadership because this is part of managing strategically your career acceleration and your impact.
All right, let's talk about how you do this so that you can take this into your own life and so that you can start learning what it could be like to strategically own your own personal brand and create empowerment for yourself. So, this is a four-part lens for conscious perception management. This is a framework that I teach my clients and what I want you to be thinking about, especially when you are navigating complicated relationships between your peers or your senior level management or other people.
So first is awareness. Know how you're coming across. Get feedback, watch reactions, read the room. You want to understand how people might be threatened by you. Is there some information you have? Is there some background you have? Often times as women, we think that we are not so threatening. I mean, I definitely felt like this. I was like, when people would say, "You're super intimidating and you're really powerful and scary." I would be like, "What?" But that was me not being fully aware of my presence, my title, my background, how people would be introducing me. And the more I became aware of that, the more I was like, "Oh, I could see that. I can understand that." And the less I became like surprised by it. I'm like, "No, I have a big title and I could see, even though I don't agree with it, why people might see my intentions being one way or another." So the first part is awareness. Again, knowing how you're coming across.
The second one is discernment. Not all feedback is created equal. Decide which perceptions matter in the context of your goal. This is so important. You're not walking around trying to be liked by everyone, but it does matter. When I was talking to my boss's boss, it really mattered that I understood at least how I was coming across so that I could take control over that. So that narrative wasn't just out there in the world or I wasn't just sinking in my own emotions. I chose strategically how I wanted to approach my relationship with her and how I wanted to take that feedback. This is the power of discernment.
The next one is alignment. Ask, is how I want to be known matching how I'm actually being experienced or how I'm actually being perceived. You want to just give yourself space as you zoom out and you see yourself this way. You know, I want to give you some just sharing from my own experience. You know, I became known for my soft skills. I became known as a highly emotional intelligent leader, but often times, especially in the context of the company that I worked in, that could be threatening, especially if it's very masculine, very technical. People want those technical skills and they could feel very threatened by those soft skills.
And so I could say from a zooming level of that level where people were like, "We want somebody who's, both technical, probably more technical because we feel more safe in that space and we know what that looks like than more soft skill related," that my perception in the finance community was more I was too soft. But my perception at the leadership level with my CEO was that I was balanced.
So the alignment really depends on what your goal is. For me, I eventually decided to become a coach, so it was more authentic for me in the long run zooming out for me to be more focused on the soft skills because that is what I'm helping women to shift in their own careers. But in looking from that finance lens, I could see, wow, they want me to be way more technical. They're, it's threatening. We don't want a bunch of people just having lots of feelings, but they also don't know it as deeply as I do how these things come together.
So it's having that context to understand that alignment and at which level. This is why strategic brand empowerment, understanding your brand perception is more complicated than just this is how you show up. It's really about aligning in the moment if you want to be, the CFO of this particular group. Like if that was my goal to be the CFO then, I would share more about my technical experiences. I would lead more in that way, in that style because it would help me get there. It's not me pretending to be someone I'm not, it's me choosing consciously to show up in a way where my perception is embraced more by the people that are making those choices or having that power to decide if I'm going to be, the successor to another finance leader for example.
And then lastly, it's strategic choice. Choose how to show up. Not from fear, but from grounded intentional power. That strategic choice. Just like I was just saying, like if I wanted to be the CFO of this group and I know the context and what really matters to them, then I would shift my perception or the way that I spoke to them about certain things to match that. So your perception isn't your prison. It's a positioning tool. You get to adjust and refine without apology. You get to decide who you are.
So when I got feedback that I have really great soft skills, but I need to focus on technical skills, I could understand it, but I could also say for myself, "Okay, but I also authentically want to be this type of leader." And it actually helped me get clearer on the shift that I made out of corporate and creating my own coaching practice. So, this is important because you want to look at these different lenses and consciously choose, make that strategic choice for yourself.
And then the next thing is redefining power as strategic visibility. Visibility isn't just being seen. It's being received. You don't have to play small to be palatable. You don't have to shrink down to belong. But you do have to understand how power lands in rooms filled with humans who carry stories, fears, and judgments. True power is relational and strategic.
And what I want to leave you with is that, sometimes you're going to choose to show up in ways that make people feel uncomfortable. And this is part of the process. This is part of growing, expanding, and that's okay. I showed up with my boss's boss in a way that made her feel uncomfortable, and it didn't define my career. It didn't stop me from, becoming her direct report someday and accelerating in my career.
The key here is consciousness, knowing why you're doing it, being clear on your values and standing by your choices and learning from it. Like I get to just learn from all of this stuff. This is just data. You're not defined by just one thing you're doing, but it is data and it can help you grow and learn and manage that strategic brand perception.
So strategic leaders don't aim to avoid all missteps. They choose the right ones, they learn from the missteps and this is part of that growing and learning. So I want you to, allow yourself space to be in this and to come from it from a learning space, not a shame or self-beat up.
And so here's my call to action for you as you think about your own brand perception, particularly, like I said, in the context where people are potentially sponsoring you, whether they're your boss, whether they're your peers that have a vote of confidence in where you go and how you excel. You want to ask yourself, where might your perception not align with your intention?
And, this often times happens when you are connecting with people that disagree with you or feel super threatened by you. You want to also ask yourself, where are you being powerful but not yet strategic? So where do you take up a lot of space but you don't feel like you're strategically shifting it in the way that you want to? And then lastly, what one shift could you make in how you show up, not to please, but to increase your influence and clarity?
All right. So those are three questions that you could be thinking about, but also using the framework that I shared earlier to filter and to understand feedback that you're getting or a relationship that you're like, "Wow, I don't think my brand perception is that great with this person." Sometimes I even ask my clients from a scale of 1 to 10, your brand perception, how you're perceived by someone aligning to where you want to be in the organization, you know, 10 being it's right on point, one being it's way off. Let's dive into that.
So you can also ask yourself that question and start teasing out where are things out of misalignment and where can you start influencing strategically, the way that you want to, that you choose to, that will help you get to creating more of that brand perception that aligns with where you want to go and creating that trust and rapport with that person.
All right, so I want to leave you with a couple of thoughts and an invitation. Firstly, you are not too much. You are powerful, complex, and needed. And your perception in the world is not something to be feared. It's a tool you can wield. And if you're ready to sharpen that tool, elevate your leadership, build a legacy you love, I'd love to help you.
I do complimentary 45-minute coaching consultations. And if you are ready for your next level of impact, then I invite you to join me on this. You can find a booking link on my LinkedIn page. It's very easy, and I'd love to connect with you.
All right, until next week, go out there, own your brand perception, understand it, and use it strategically. All right, have a great week ahead. Take care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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