39. Being Brilliant Isn’t Enough: How Women Leaders Finally Get Heard
High-performing women often find themselves in a frustrating paradox. They’ve earned the title, delivered exceptional results, and secured a seat at the table, yet their voices still feel invisible in rooms that matter most. This disconnect between performance and influence reveals a deeper truth about how women are socialized to lead.
In this episode, I explore why doing more doesn't make you more visible and share the core belief that changes everything. Drawing from Harvard Business Review research showing that men speak more often and at greater length in professional settings while being interrupted less, I unpack why women are overtrained in accuracy but undertrained in authority. The cost of this conditioning shows up in how we communicate
Tune in this week as I reveal how conviction is a muscle you can strengthen. You'll discover why the issue isn't how much you say, but how you own what you say. Most importantly, you'll learn a simple daily practice that helps you embody the belief that your voice matters, allowing you to lead from clarity and inner authority rather than perfection and permission.
If you’re ready to show up with confidence, presence, and authority, join me for my free masterclass, How to Be Heard In a Room Full of Male Leaders, happening on Thursday, July 24th 2025, at 12pm Eastern. Click here to register.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why high performance doesn't guarantee high influence in leadership settings.
How women are overtrained in accuracy and undertrained in authority.
The specific ways overexplaining and hedging language diminish your power.
What happens when you truly believe "what I say matters" before speaking.
How to practice conviction as a muscle through daily affirmations.
The difference between fixing how you speak versus owning who you are when you speak.
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Women, Find Your Voice - Harvard Business Review article
Full Episode Transcript:
Have you ever walked out of a leadership meeting feeling like your ideas were invisible, even though you prepared more than anyone else? You've earned the title, you've delivered results, you have a seat at the table. And yet, you still feel like you're raising your hand inside your own head, waiting to be heard.
High performance doesn't guarantee high influence, because performance is about what you do. Influence is about what people feel when you speak. In today's episode, I'll show you why doing more doesn't make you more visible. And the one belief you can start practicing today that changes everything.
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.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's episode on being heard. I have been thinking about all of you. I just came back from an amazing vacation with my husband. We went to Turks and Caicos, and it was just a beautiful place. And I spent a lot of time actually thinking about you, all podcast listeners, my clients, and how important it is to be heard, and why that's important. So, it came up for me as we were traveling because sometimes when I get a little nervous, I don't always speak with a loud voice, with as much influence and authority that I have. And I was just thinking about how much this actually happens in the corporate world.
Obviously, when you're on vacation, it's not so high stakes. I can just repeat myself, but I can also notice myself being not as intentional about my authority in circumstances, you know, when I'm not in a boardroom. But it's something that I get to practice wherever I am anyway. So, what I want you to be thinking about in this episode is why being a high performer still won't get you heard. And if this title hits a nerve with you, this episode was made especially for you, because I want to talk about the silent frustration so many high-achieving women carry.
"I've done the work, I've got the results. Why am I still not being taken seriously in rooms that matter most?" I'm going to give you one powerful mindset shift, one belief to anchor into, and one practice you can start using today. But before I do that, I want to give us more context for why sometimes in our lives we are so focused on the performance piece, the perfectionist piece, the permission piece.
So you've probably been told some version of this your whole life. "Just work hard, keep your head down, do a great job, and they will notice." And for a while, that might have worked, particularly if you're really junior in your career and you're just starting out. You're learning the basics and you're learning how to do the job. But if you're leading at a higher level or you're trying to break through to the next level and maybe become a manager, senior manager, VP, then you know the truth. Performance doesn't always equal power.
Doing more doesn't guarantee being heard or being seen. In fact, as the Harvard Business Review wrote in their article, "Women, Find Your Voice," men speak more often and at a greater length in professional settings, and are interrupted less. So it's not that we aren't speaking, it's how we speak and what we believe about our voice that often holds us back.
You might think that the solution is to be more assertive, to speak louder, to be more confident. And I'm not going to discount those. I actually, in fact, have a whole podcast that's very popular about the ways and the habits of the way women speak that keep them not being heard, right? But these are also surface-level fixes. And they're rooted in one dangerous idea: that you need some sort of fixing, that you need to feel a different way or you need to be different. But you don't. And here's what's really going on.
Women are actually overtrained in accuracy and undertrained in authority. So while the way that we speak comes out in certain overexplaining, certain softening, I'm going to go into that a lot more. It is really this underlying belief that women are trained in accuracy and undertrained in authority. We are conditioned to earn credibility by being agreeable, thorough, and likable. You learn to be a nice girl. You learn to behave well, to be ladylike, and not take up space, especially with your own presence and your own conviction.
And the cost? When your voice is stuck behind perfection, performance, or permission, people don't feel your power. They just hear your points. They might get your perspective, but it doesn't land powerfully.
One quote from the Harvard Business Review said it best. "Women are more likely to downplay their authority, hedge their statements, and qualify their contributions with phrases like this: 'I could be wrong, but...'" Sound familiar?
So here's what's really keeping the smartest, most capable women stuck. You overexplain, you repeat yourself for validation, you hedge with "I think" or "just" or "maybe" or "I wanted to say." Even when you speak up, how you speak gives away your power.
Another line from that Harvard Business Review nails it. "Even when women speak up, they often do so in a way that fails to command attention." I once had a client say to me, and she was a client who spoke in a lot of story, she gave a lot of story. And I asked her, why does she feel the need to give so much story? And she said, "I give so much context because I don't want to be misunderstood." But what she didn't realize was she was being diluted by her own disclaimers, by too many words, by too much story. It was almost like she was convincing people to believe something before she even said it. And it was like she was asking and vying for permission.
What if the issue isn't how much you say, but how you own what you say? Because this is what actually happens when you don't truly believe what you say matters. You overprepare, you wait for the perfect moment to speak, you soften your message so that it lands just right. You're trying not to come off too soft, too emotional, or too much. And so you spend more time thinking about the way you speak versus who you are when you speak these words.
So underneath it all, there is some sneaky thought. "What I say doesn't matter unless I say it perfectly." And this is where we get into that bind where we're trying to fix ourselves. Or worse, "I have to earn the right to be heard."
Right? We have these ways that we are talking to ourselves that have us second-guessing ourselves. And that second-guessing has us doing things that we wouldn't normally do.
But here's the reframe I want you to try on today. What I say matters. Say it with me. What I say matters. Say it again. What I say matters. Let's let it land together. This is really important because you could say a lot of really amazing words, you could say it in a perfect way, but it may not land. And I know it sounds paradoxical because I'm saying it doesn't matter how you say things, but it does. It matters who you are when you're saying them, the conviction in your voice, the presence, the power.
Because when you truly believe what I say matters, and this is one belief that I coach a lot of my clients on over and over again. When you truly believe what you say matters, you show up differently. You stop rushing, you stop second-guessing, you stop needing permission to take up space. And then you naturally hold that space. You take up that space. You have that energy about you, right? And it does require us to be on. It does require us to be in tune with ourselves. It does require us to meet ourselves, our highest version of ourself to be heard, to choose to know what you say matters at any given moment.
You know, at the beginning of this, of course, I gave you an example of me on vacation, not me being the coach, me being the person. But I truly do believe what I say matters. And I can always fix it, even if I don't say it right in the beginning. When I say right, if I don't say it as powerfully, I can choose in any moment to say what I say matters. And all of a sudden, I will straighten up. My voice will be louder. My voice will be more grounded. I will be more convicted. I will take myself more seriously. This is what I want for you.
I want you to practice conviction. I want you to practice meeting yourself. This another level self of you that's inside of you, this powerful woman that is inside of you that wants to be heard. But this takes practice. And here is the practice that I want you to be doing on yourself.
Pick a line of truth. You can say, "what I say matters." That's a really simple one. But say that to yourself. "What I say matters. If I believe that was true, what would happen for me?" You can also say, "My presence changes the room." Another one is, "I lead from clarity and inner authority." Again, we want that conviction, that anchor.
And here's another question. "If my voice could move mountains, how would I speak?" You want to say this phrase to yourself every day this week, before a meeting, while driving, while walking, before bed. Say it slowly, with certainty. Let your body start feeling what your mind is saying. "My voice matters. What I say matters.” Because conviction is a muscle, and the world responds to women who practice it.
There's actually a phrase that sometimes I have my clients practice. And to some of you, it could sound vulgar. It could sound like a lot. But I oftentimes feel like when we are in rooms, particularly with very senior people, we have a way, our survival brain has a way of just wanting to shrink back and become invisible. And so this phrase that I help my clients visualize is really about them bringing their whole self, their conviction, and getting in touch with that part of them that is super, super intentional. And so the phrase is, "over my dead body."
I know it sounds super intense, right? But oftentimes we need to connect to this inner authority, this conviction within ourselves, this intentionality in ourselves in order to be heard, in order to hear ourselves so strongly and so loudly that we start trusting that inner authority inside us. And when we start trusting that inner authority inside us, we end up commanding greater amounts of authority externally.
This is the inner work that will change the overexplaining, the waiting for permission. This will change not only how you speak, but how you operate and how you lead. You're going to lead with this inner authority. Let conviction replace performance. Let clarity replace speed. Let groundedness replace the need to prove. Leadership presence isn't about saying everything perfectly. It's about saying the right thing and believing it before anyone else does.
So I'm going to say it again. It's about saying the right thing to yourself and believing it before anyone else does. If we don't believe ourselves, if we're not going to go in it and truly go for it, believing in ourselves, having our own back, who else will believe in it?
And so again, that phrase, "over my dead body," you know, it sounds so abrasive and so aggressive, but sometimes we need to channel that part of ourselves so we can feel grounded in our bodies and grounded in our power and our inner authority. And if you have kids, think about that. If you really believed like "over my dead body," and I truly believe this as a mother now, like I feel in my bones that if somebody were to attack me or my children, that I would literally feel convicted in that moment to say, "over my dead body, you are not going to hurt us."
And I want you to feel that in your body because that conviction, that level of inner authority, that is what you need for yourself to be heard. Again, it's not about fixing, it's really about coming home to yourself, trusting yourself, believing your words, feeling convicted in yourself. When you feel that conviction and you feel yourself in that power position in your body, that is just going to organically show up. And people are going to start paying attention and people are going to start hearing you.
But before any of that can happen, you need to have this practice with yourself where you are practicing what you say matters, why you say it matters. So go out there and do this practice with yourself today, as many times as possible, and keep doing it and see what changes for you.
I know it's one belief, it's one thought, but the more you practice it, the more you let it inform you, the more you feel it in your body, the more convicted you will be when you show up. And when that moment comes when things really matter, you will trust yourself to speak up in a way that brings clarity, authority, certainty, confidence, and calmness to that situation. But you've got to practice this.
All right. That was today's episode. Again, it is really about being heard and practicing and cultivating these beliefs about yourself and how important your voice is. The other things will come naturally. They'll come much more quickly as you do this, as you practice and you move past those limiting beliefs.
Have an amazing week ahead. I will see you soon.
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.
High performance doesn't guarantee high influence, because performance is about what you do. Influence is about what people feel when you speak. In today's episode, I'll show you why doing more doesn't make you more visible. And the one belief you can start practicing today that changes everything.
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.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's episode on being heard. I have been thinking about all of you. I just came back from an amazing vacation with my husband. We went to Turks and Caicos, and it was just a beautiful place. And I spent a lot of time actually thinking about you, all podcast listeners, my clients, and how important it is to be heard, and why that's important. So, it came up for me as we were traveling because sometimes when I get a little nervous, I don't always speak with a loud voice, with as much influence and authority that I have. And I was just thinking about how much this actually happens in the corporate world.
Obviously, when you're on vacation, it's not so high stakes. I can just repeat myself, but I can also notice myself being not as intentional about my authority in circumstances, you know, when I'm not in a boardroom. But it's something that I get to practice wherever I am anyway. So, what I want you to be thinking about in this episode is why being a high performer still won't get you heard. And if this title hits a nerve with you, this episode was made especially for you, because I want to talk about the silent frustration so many high-achieving women carry.
"I've done the work, I've got the results. Why am I still not being taken seriously in rooms that matter most?" I'm going to give you one powerful mindset shift, one belief to anchor into, and one practice you can start using today. But before I do that, I want to give us more context for why sometimes in our lives we are so focused on the performance piece, the perfectionist piece, the permission piece.
So you've probably been told some version of this your whole life. "Just work hard, keep your head down, do a great job, and they will notice." And for a while, that might have worked, particularly if you're really junior in your career and you're just starting out. You're learning the basics and you're learning how to do the job. But if you're leading at a higher level or you're trying to break through to the next level and maybe become a manager, senior manager, VP, then you know the truth. Performance doesn't always equal power.
Doing more doesn't guarantee being heard or being seen. In fact, as the Harvard Business Review wrote in their article, "Women, Find Your Voice," men speak more often and at a greater length in professional settings, and are interrupted less. So it's not that we aren't speaking, it's how we speak and what we believe about our voice that often holds us back.
You might think that the solution is to be more assertive, to speak louder, to be more confident. And I'm not going to discount those. I actually, in fact, have a whole podcast that's very popular about the ways and the habits of the way women speak that keep them not being heard, right? But these are also surface-level fixes. And they're rooted in one dangerous idea: that you need some sort of fixing, that you need to feel a different way or you need to be different. But you don't. And here's what's really going on.
Women are actually overtrained in accuracy and undertrained in authority. So while the way that we speak comes out in certain overexplaining, certain softening, I'm going to go into that a lot more. It is really this underlying belief that women are trained in accuracy and undertrained in authority. We are conditioned to earn credibility by being agreeable, thorough, and likable. You learn to be a nice girl. You learn to behave well, to be ladylike, and not take up space, especially with your own presence and your own conviction.
And the cost? When your voice is stuck behind perfection, performance, or permission, people don't feel your power. They just hear your points. They might get your perspective, but it doesn't land powerfully.
One quote from the Harvard Business Review said it best. "Women are more likely to downplay their authority, hedge their statements, and qualify their contributions with phrases like this: 'I could be wrong, but...'" Sound familiar?
So here's what's really keeping the smartest, most capable women stuck. You overexplain, you repeat yourself for validation, you hedge with "I think" or "just" or "maybe" or "I wanted to say." Even when you speak up, how you speak gives away your power.
Another line from that Harvard Business Review nails it. "Even when women speak up, they often do so in a way that fails to command attention." I once had a client say to me, and she was a client who spoke in a lot of story, she gave a lot of story. And I asked her, why does she feel the need to give so much story? And she said, "I give so much context because I don't want to be misunderstood." But what she didn't realize was she was being diluted by her own disclaimers, by too many words, by too much story. It was almost like she was convincing people to believe something before she even said it. And it was like she was asking and vying for permission.
What if the issue isn't how much you say, but how you own what you say? Because this is what actually happens when you don't truly believe what you say matters. You overprepare, you wait for the perfect moment to speak, you soften your message so that it lands just right. You're trying not to come off too soft, too emotional, or too much. And so you spend more time thinking about the way you speak versus who you are when you speak these words.
So underneath it all, there is some sneaky thought. "What I say doesn't matter unless I say it perfectly." And this is where we get into that bind where we're trying to fix ourselves. Or worse, "I have to earn the right to be heard."
Right? We have these ways that we are talking to ourselves that have us second-guessing ourselves. And that second-guessing has us doing things that we wouldn't normally do.
But here's the reframe I want you to try on today. What I say matters. Say it with me. What I say matters. Say it again. What I say matters. Let's let it land together. This is really important because you could say a lot of really amazing words, you could say it in a perfect way, but it may not land. And I know it sounds paradoxical because I'm saying it doesn't matter how you say things, but it does. It matters who you are when you're saying them, the conviction in your voice, the presence, the power.
Because when you truly believe what I say matters, and this is one belief that I coach a lot of my clients on over and over again. When you truly believe what you say matters, you show up differently. You stop rushing, you stop second-guessing, you stop needing permission to take up space. And then you naturally hold that space. You take up that space. You have that energy about you, right? And it does require us to be on. It does require us to be in tune with ourselves. It does require us to meet ourselves, our highest version of ourself to be heard, to choose to know what you say matters at any given moment.
You know, at the beginning of this, of course, I gave you an example of me on vacation, not me being the coach, me being the person. But I truly do believe what I say matters. And I can always fix it, even if I don't say it right in the beginning. When I say right, if I don't say it as powerfully, I can choose in any moment to say what I say matters. And all of a sudden, I will straighten up. My voice will be louder. My voice will be more grounded. I will be more convicted. I will take myself more seriously. This is what I want for you.
I want you to practice conviction. I want you to practice meeting yourself. This another level self of you that's inside of you, this powerful woman that is inside of you that wants to be heard. But this takes practice. And here is the practice that I want you to be doing on yourself.
Pick a line of truth. You can say, "what I say matters." That's a really simple one. But say that to yourself. "What I say matters. If I believe that was true, what would happen for me?" You can also say, "My presence changes the room." Another one is, "I lead from clarity and inner authority." Again, we want that conviction, that anchor.
And here's another question. "If my voice could move mountains, how would I speak?" You want to say this phrase to yourself every day this week, before a meeting, while driving, while walking, before bed. Say it slowly, with certainty. Let your body start feeling what your mind is saying. "My voice matters. What I say matters.” Because conviction is a muscle, and the world responds to women who practice it.
There's actually a phrase that sometimes I have my clients practice. And to some of you, it could sound vulgar. It could sound like a lot. But I oftentimes feel like when we are in rooms, particularly with very senior people, we have a way, our survival brain has a way of just wanting to shrink back and become invisible. And so this phrase that I help my clients visualize is really about them bringing their whole self, their conviction, and getting in touch with that part of them that is super, super intentional. And so the phrase is, "over my dead body."
I know it sounds super intense, right? But oftentimes we need to connect to this inner authority, this conviction within ourselves, this intentionality in ourselves in order to be heard, in order to hear ourselves so strongly and so loudly that we start trusting that inner authority inside us. And when we start trusting that inner authority inside us, we end up commanding greater amounts of authority externally.
This is the inner work that will change the overexplaining, the waiting for permission. This will change not only how you speak, but how you operate and how you lead. You're going to lead with this inner authority. Let conviction replace performance. Let clarity replace speed. Let groundedness replace the need to prove. Leadership presence isn't about saying everything perfectly. It's about saying the right thing and believing it before anyone else does.
So I'm going to say it again. It's about saying the right thing to yourself and believing it before anyone else does. If we don't believe ourselves, if we're not going to go in it and truly go for it, believing in ourselves, having our own back, who else will believe in it?
And so again, that phrase, "over my dead body," you know, it sounds so abrasive and so aggressive, but sometimes we need to channel that part of ourselves so we can feel grounded in our bodies and grounded in our power and our inner authority. And if you have kids, think about that. If you really believed like "over my dead body," and I truly believe this as a mother now, like I feel in my bones that if somebody were to attack me or my children, that I would literally feel convicted in that moment to say, "over my dead body, you are not going to hurt us."
And I want you to feel that in your body because that conviction, that level of inner authority, that is what you need for yourself to be heard. Again, it's not about fixing, it's really about coming home to yourself, trusting yourself, believing your words, feeling convicted in yourself. When you feel that conviction and you feel yourself in that power position in your body, that is just going to organically show up. And people are going to start paying attention and people are going to start hearing you.
But before any of that can happen, you need to have this practice with yourself where you are practicing what you say matters, why you say it matters. So go out there and do this practice with yourself today, as many times as possible, and keep doing it and see what changes for you.
I know it's one belief, it's one thought, but the more you practice it, the more you let it inform you, the more you feel it in your body, the more convicted you will be when you show up. And when that moment comes when things really matter, you will trust yourself to speak up in a way that brings clarity, authority, certainty, confidence, and calmness to that situation. But you've got to practice this.
All right. That was today's episode. Again, it is really about being heard and practicing and cultivating these beliefs about yourself and how important your voice is. The other things will come naturally. They'll come much more quickly as you do this, as you practice and you move past those limiting beliefs.
Have an amazing week ahead. I will see you soon.
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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