95. Why Brilliant Women Struggle to Advocate for Themselves (Self-Advocacy Isn’t Selfish)
How often do you prioritize “we” over “me”? You’re proud of your team, you care deeply about the people around you, and you want everyone to succeed. But when the “we” becomes so important that you disappear from your own story, your contribution, ambition, and leadership can get overlooked.
In this episode, I explore why so many brilliant women struggle with self-advocacy, not because they lack confidence, but because they’ve been conditioned to believe that advocating for themselves is selfish. We’ll look at why women often minimize their accomplishments, confuse humility with invisibility, and redirect recognition instead of owning the value they bring.
You’ll learn how to shift from disappearing in the “we” to owning your role in the story. This episode will help you understand why self-advocacy is not about making yourself more important than others. It’s about allowing yourself to be seen, communicating your contribution clearly, and leading with the authority that comes from knowing your own value.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why self-advocacy feels uncomfortable for so many brilliant women leaders.
How prioritizing “we” over “me” can cause your contribution and leadership to become invisible.
The difference between humility and making yourself smaller.
Why advocating for yourself is a leadership skill, not a selfish act.
How to own your value and communicate your contributions with clarity.
The mindset shifts required to stop waiting to be recognized and start making your impact visible.
How self-advocacy builds the authority and trust others need to follow your leadership.
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Episodes Related to why Self-Advocacy Isn’t Selfish:
77. How to Say What You Mean (Without Shrinking in the Room)
79. Why You Don’t Speak Up in Meetings at Work (& How to Finally Cross the Line)
Full Episode Transcript:
Today we're talking about why so many brilliant women struggle to advocate for themselves, ask for that promotion, negotiate their salary, speak about their achievements, or simply say, "This is what I need." It's not because they're incapable. It's because many of us have been conditioned to believe that taking care of me somehow threatens we. By the end of this episode, I want to show you why self-advocacy isn't selfish. It's leadership.
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. Can I ask you a question? Have you ever walked out of a meeting realizing everyone else's work got recognized, except yours? And instead of saying something, you told yourself, "It's okay. The team won. We all contributed. I don't need the credit." But later that night, it bothered you. Not because you wanted the applause, but because you wanted acknowledgment.
There's a difference. I think this happens to women every single day. We soften, we minimize, we redirect praise. We speak in we language when we've done the heavy lifting. Not because we're dishonest, because somewhere along the way, we learned that advocating for ourselves feels selfish, even scary and icky. Today, I want to challenge that belief.
All right, we are going to dive into this because I've coached hundreds of women over the years and this continues to be one of the biggest hot topics where women come to me and they're like, I am really bad at advocating for myself. I actually just spoke to a woman the other week. She was like, I'm so much better at advocating for my clients with conviction than I am for myself. And I even have some clients who are really good at advocating for themselves at work but not so good at home. So I want you to see that there are some conditionalities around it and there's probably a story you're telling yourself.
I don't think women struggle with self-advocacy because they lack confidence. Confidence makes it almost too simple. I believe that women struggle because they're deeply committed to relationships. I know it's me too, right? I actually just came from a weeklong trip in Chicago and I noticed myself. I noticed myself carrying more emotions than I needed to. I noticed myself caring about the we. I felt selfish when I took time for myself. But I've been doing this work for so long that I noticed, okay, yeah, this my brain is offering me this thought that I'm being selfish by having dinner with a friend versus watching my kids at this moment, even though they're having so much fun with their grandma, right? There's thoughts in my head that come up because of my conditioning. And it's not me, it's patterns in my head and it's society that tells women that they need to take care of everybody else before themselves.
And oftentimes there are some beautiful things about this because women care deeply, oftentimes, about connection, belonging, being part of a team, community. That is beautiful. That is wonderful. Those are great qualities to have. But we need to be onto ourselves because it's great and beautiful to have until we completely erases me. Because when we always comes first, your needs disappear, your voice disappears, your ambition disappears, your contribution disappears. And eventually so does your leadership.
I've seen this also in a lot of women that are deeply loyal to their company and they do what their company needs and they feel so loyal to it that they will be the glue and they are not actually working on the strategic work. They're really just working on fixing a lot of messes. And while that is important and needed in the company and they're helping people along the way, their colleagues are moving up and out because they're actually strategic and they're dealing with problems that are at a bigger level. There's more uncertainty and there is more the need to put yourself out there. There's more self-advocacy to say, hey, give me that project. I can do it. And so oftentimes, this sort of conditioning also feels like safety. It feels safe for a lot of us to be in the we and stand up and do what's needed. And I remember this too, growing up. I remember like, why is it so easy for me to stand up for other people? I felt so righteous and so grounded in myself and so powerful saying, like sticking up for a friend, but when it came to me, it was like really hard to do.
And this is that same work, right? I want you to know that part of this, it feels like acceptable to fight for somebody else or fight for the company or fight for something else because oftentimes women feel like I shouldn't do this. When I talk to women about their mothers, I'm like, well, what did your mother do to take care of herself or what did your mother teach you about that? And when I say teach, it's not like, you know, I had a mother who often times said, you need to do this and you need to make sure people treat you right. But as I watched my own mother, she was sacrificing, she wasn't asking for things, she was doing all of the hard work and we learn by watching our mothers. We learn by watching women in our lives do work and sacrifice themselves and burn out and put everybody else's needs first and be the caregiver of everyone, right?
So I want you to know that this is deeply rooted and that you need to understand in yourself where this comes from because that we, why are you so focused on the we and how it undermines yourself is critical, especially as you are climbing the corporate ladder, as you are trying to be heard in spaces that were not built for you.
So I want to share with you in my corporate career, I often thought if I did the hard work, if I made sure we all looked good, then I would get praised. I would get promoted. But this is not how it works. Oftentimes, people are like, oh, that team did that. That's great. But when they're thinking about the leader who actually led it, and when they're thinking about special projects or promotions, they're thinking about one person. They're not thinking about a whole team. And oftentimes women are like, this is us, we did this.
But as I was climbing the corporate ladder too, I really needed to learn how to build the self-advocacy muscle to really claim the me in all of this because if you keep going back to we, again, people won't see or understand your contribution. They won't know what you're good at. They will see a whole group of people and most likely, maybe they'll look at the man and say, well, he must have led it because maybe they're socialized to think like that man is the leader.
I remember sitting in a meeting once where this woman on my team actually said, oh, I think this is the best approach. And in that meeting, the senior leader, who was my boss too, gave credit to another man. And I was totally floored by this. I was like, why did he just give her him credit for this thing that Amanda has actually said? And in the moment, I was just like, couldn't react. I didn't know how to react and I didn't want to come in and just rescue her, but maybe I should have. When I look back, I'm like, actually, I could have spoken up and said, hey, that was Amanda's idea. But she didn't speak up for herself either.
And that doesn't excuse the thing, but this is exactly what happens often times. If we as the person in the story, as the woman in the story that's actually leading the initiative, if we don't own that for ourselves, somebody else is going to take the credit. And sometimes people do it intentionally. I have loads of women that coach with me who are like, nobody knows I'm doing this work. My boss is taking all the credit. So that's a problem. And that's a problem that we can fix together. That's a problem that I coach women through. How do you create more spaces for yourself, to advocate for yourself, to let people know what you're good at, to let people know what you've done.
So I realized that this is super important too because oftentimes when we are not reframing the story in our mind, we think that self-advocacy means that I'm better than everyone else. You're actually saying, I won't disappear from my own story. This is why it's so important to claim yourself in your own story, in your own work so people know what you've been able to do and how you're able to do it. Because the more you are leading things, the more powerful you become, the more you get to help the people around you versus if somebody else claims the credit, takes your story, takes your contribution, and everybody thinks, oh, it's Tom. Tom's doing all these amazing things. Tom is the smart one here. Let's promote Tom.
Meanwhile, you're still in the back doing all of the things, fixing all of the things, but without ever getting a path to leading more, taking on more responsibility, being more powerful, right? And I learned this lesson pretty early in my career as I saw people who were moving up, they were just so good at talking about themselves. And I think part of us as women want to judge that and we're like, oh, Brad can talk about himself all day long. But guess what? Brad is the one moving up. So maybe there's something to learn from Brad here, right?
And this is where I want to talk to you about the first shift because women oftentimes are confusing humility with invisibility. Humility isn't pretending your contribution doesn't matter. It's acknowledging it without making yourself smaller, right? You're actually acknowledging that you did something that you care about something so deeply that your name's on it. I oftentimes would share with people like, yes, I did that and I can help you more. You know, I remember I was in the Australia office and somebody came on the elevator with me and I said, hey, I'm Yann, nice to meet you. You know, we had some sort of chit chat before that. And they're like, I need to thank you. And I thought it was like kind of bizarre, but I'm like, sure, what are you thinking me for? And he's like, you created, I had created this transfer pricing policy that really helped the Australia team. And he's like, you created it.
So he knew I created it. You know, my bosses when I was in corporate were very good at helping me be seen and wanting me to be seen in a bigger way by the audience outside of it. And yes, my name was on this policy. I created it. I was the one who executed it. I was the one who would share with people our strategy and why we did it. But I would talk about myself in it. This is what I did. And so that led to more people reaching out to me, asking me for my opinion, asking me to help them on projects, asking me to move to Singapore to do work with them because they knew about my contribution. They knew that I was in charge of things. And I was advocating for myself because I was the one leading the projects. I wasn't just like, we're doing this all together. I'm like, this is me.
So learning to advocate for yourself is huge and watching the people around you who advocate for themselves and notice your own trigger. You might be triggered. You might be like, oh my God, they cannot stop talking about themselves. But I want you to ask yourself this. In that trigger that you're having as they are actively talking about themselves, what can you learn? What do you want to take away from it for yourself? You don't need to be like Brad, but you may need some of the skills Brad has because there is a way that Brad is getting in the room and there is a way that Brad is actively advocating for himself in a way that's leading him to more opportunities, to more promotions. And that's what I want you to notice for yourself to go to school on that.
So the first shift, like I said, is to stop confusing humility with invisibility. And the next shift is to know that advocating for yourself and seeing other people advocate for themselves, asking yourself what emotional triggers are coming up, will help you discern what you actually want to do. Again, there's lots of patterns that run in us, especially when we are about to do something we've told ourselves we don't want to do because it feels uncomfortable. But if we are learning a new skill and we're like, we know we have a problem advocating for ourselves, then we're going to start going to school on people who are able to do it. And we're also going to go to school on ourselves about the triggers that come up, the thoughts and emotions that come up that want to stop us from doing that, from building that muscle, right?
And the truth is that people trust leaders who can clearly articulate the value they bring. People want to know that. People want to understand that. And people feel better when you're like, oh, she's the leader and she's very open about what she's bringing to the table. She's not shy about it, right? She's just sharing it and it's grounded and it's authoritative and people are attracted to that. It brings certainty to uncertainty.
So I'll give you another example. When I had moved to Singapore to lead this team of business systems stuff, I didn't start with like, I've never done this before. Let's see how it goes. I definitely started with I've led lots of financial business system process changes. And I used that as the root. Like I was just sharing with them like I've done very big financial process changes and I'm excited to see what we can do in Asia to improve processes.
But yeah, there was a part of me was like, oh, I haven't done this before. And I wasn't the IT expert. I did it with a team of people, but I did it. I was the one who led a lot of it. And I was very good at explaining that I understood how things work. And I was very good at explaining the value that I brought to the process, which was really about helping business folks understand the technicalities related to financial system implementations. So it wasn't like I needed to say all these things to build myself up. I literally was like, they need to understand this so that they've trust me that they know that they have a leader who understands this stuff.
So that's another shift that's important because the more secure you become in your own value, the less threatened you become by other people's successes and the less threatened other people become from you because you're bringing certainty, you're bringing self-worth and groundedness to the conversation.
So this is that third shift to really own your own value to understand what that is because it creates more certainty and groundedness in yourself and other people want to follow you. This is commanding, right? This is powerful and it's attractive because you're no longer competing for worth. You're operating from worth. And when you're a leader who is grounded and knows their worth, other people will be like, oh, great. I'm so glad this person came from this part of the business to support us, to help us. They may still have their own thoughts and fears, but you're bringing that certainty because it's like, oh, it makes sense that this person's the leader. It makes sense that they are leading us. They've done this type of work before. It's leaving them feeling more certain in your ability to lead them, which makes them feel more secure in their job.
So I want to bring this back to Command because I have worked with a woman who she would spend so much time focused on we. We need to do this for the company. We need to do this for the organization. And it was like that was her chance and that was like her thing. And I was like, listen, your we keeps undermining your me, right? And that's actually why this episode came up because I'm like, so much women care so deeply. They care so much about other people's emotions, especially direct reports, which I believe too. I mean, I love my direct reports. I would do a lot for them. They would have my back. I care about them deeply. But at the end of the day, it's you that needs to command your own career and your own energy and your own boundaries and to advocate for yourself.
So one of the things I teach inside Command is that self-advocacy starts long before the conversation. It starts with inner authority. If you don't believe your work matters, you'll whisper it. If you do, you'll speak with clarity, not arrogance, clarity, and that's command energy, right? When you are convicted about something, when you feel like it's important that people know and you're clear with yourself about what that is, you're going to speak with much more grounded authority in that way.
So with the self-advocacy, I want you to sell yourself on why it's important for you to advocate for yourself. Otherwise, you have so much junk in your brain that tells you like, no, it's not good. You're being selfish, you're being selfish. You're going to have your, you know, thoughts from your childhood, you're going to have programming from society, you're going to have conditioning from maybe your workplace where a lot of female leaders are not speaking up and asking for things. So you've got to do the work on yourself. And that's why my Command containers are so powerful is because we support each other to do this work. We say, hey, what about you? What do you want? What matters to you? Because intrinsically, I believe that when you trust yourself and you lead with your own inner authority and you lead with your own values, it is better for everyone.
So when I'm coaching people, I'm always asking them, why does this matter to you? Why is this valuable? So that you can build up why you want to advocate for yourself and see the importance of the me in the conversation and you're not just autopilot, we, we, we, we, we, you know? You're actually owning that me part because when you own that me, when you are able to connect to yourself that deeply and that you articulate what you bring to the table, other people will feel it. That's that command energy. That's how people will notice like, oh, she knows what she's talking about. I want more of this. I want her to be the one leading this. She's very clearly the one that gets it. And sometimes I would go into meetings and nobody would say, you know, who the leader is, but you can tell who the leader is when they speak up clearly and when they own it.
When they're like there, right? Sometimes I'd be in meetings with people and I'm like, I just feel like this person doesn't know what they're talking about. They keep deferring to people on their team. And then I will find somebody on their team that is the amazing person. It's like the diamond in the rough. You can't see them until you start working with them and then you're like, that Sarah needs to get promoted. That Sarah is actually doing all the work for this whole team. And that like is lucky, right? It's lucky that Sarah connected with me and I was like, Sarah needs to get promoted. Sarah's the great one.
But Sarah didn't know how to articulate or communicate for herself, right? So I don't want you to be the Sarah waiting around for some leader to be like, she's amazing. Let's promote her because that's not how the world works. There's a 50/50% chance that maybe you will be discovered. But I want you to have the best chances and that is where you take care of yourself, where you learn to advocate for yourself, where you show up for these meetings, where you speak up and you own your story and you own your contribution.
So this week, listen to yourself. How often do you say, "Oh, that was nothing," and you deflect a compliment or it was a team effort and you minimize yourself or I'm just lucky, right? Again, a different way to not truly own the value you bring or say, oh, I happen to blah, blah, blah and make it seem so easy. Maybe those things are true, but don't edit yourself out of your own story because leadership isn't just helping everyone else be seen. Leadership is allowing yourself to be seen too.
And here's a question I'd love you to sit with. Where has we become an excuse to abandon me? Because I don't believe the goal is choosing one over the other. Great leadership honors both. The strongest leaders I've ever known know how to build extraordinary teams without disappearing inside of them. It's a 50/50. You've got to own your own leadership and it's important to own that team's, you know, to be able to say how that team has thrived.
But for women, I want you to hear this. This is oftentimes where we self-sabotage. We talk about we all the time and we forget the me. I want you to not ever allow yourself to disappear in that we. That's command. And that is what's going to change how you are seen, how you are leading, and how quickly you accelerate because people know your contribution. People know and see you. People understand the value you bring because you understand it so powerfully within yourself that you are showing up with it every single day.
All right. I'd love to hear how this episode is landing with you, especially if you're somebody who has used we so much in the past that you are like, oh my gosh, she is on to me. I've been undermining myself and I want out of this, right? I want to hear from you about how this episode is impacting you and how you see yourself differently moving forward from here on out.
So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and DM me directly or find me via email connect@aspire-coaching.co. That's co. Email me. I'd love to hear from you. I will personally write back to you. You can always feel free to leave a review and of course, share this episode with someone else who may be so obsessed with the we that they're undermining themselves. All right, have a beautiful week and I will see you next week. Take good care. Bye.
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.
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. Can I ask you a question? Have you ever walked out of a meeting realizing everyone else's work got recognized, except yours? And instead of saying something, you told yourself, "It's okay. The team won. We all contributed. I don't need the credit." But later that night, it bothered you. Not because you wanted the applause, but because you wanted acknowledgment.
There's a difference. I think this happens to women every single day. We soften, we minimize, we redirect praise. We speak in we language when we've done the heavy lifting. Not because we're dishonest, because somewhere along the way, we learned that advocating for ourselves feels selfish, even scary and icky. Today, I want to challenge that belief.
All right, we are going to dive into this because I've coached hundreds of women over the years and this continues to be one of the biggest hot topics where women come to me and they're like, I am really bad at advocating for myself. I actually just spoke to a woman the other week. She was like, I'm so much better at advocating for my clients with conviction than I am for myself. And I even have some clients who are really good at advocating for themselves at work but not so good at home. So I want you to see that there are some conditionalities around it and there's probably a story you're telling yourself.
I don't think women struggle with self-advocacy because they lack confidence. Confidence makes it almost too simple. I believe that women struggle because they're deeply committed to relationships. I know it's me too, right? I actually just came from a weeklong trip in Chicago and I noticed myself. I noticed myself carrying more emotions than I needed to. I noticed myself caring about the we. I felt selfish when I took time for myself. But I've been doing this work for so long that I noticed, okay, yeah, this my brain is offering me this thought that I'm being selfish by having dinner with a friend versus watching my kids at this moment, even though they're having so much fun with their grandma, right? There's thoughts in my head that come up because of my conditioning. And it's not me, it's patterns in my head and it's society that tells women that they need to take care of everybody else before themselves.
And oftentimes there are some beautiful things about this because women care deeply, oftentimes, about connection, belonging, being part of a team, community. That is beautiful. That is wonderful. Those are great qualities to have. But we need to be onto ourselves because it's great and beautiful to have until we completely erases me. Because when we always comes first, your needs disappear, your voice disappears, your ambition disappears, your contribution disappears. And eventually so does your leadership.
I've seen this also in a lot of women that are deeply loyal to their company and they do what their company needs and they feel so loyal to it that they will be the glue and they are not actually working on the strategic work. They're really just working on fixing a lot of messes. And while that is important and needed in the company and they're helping people along the way, their colleagues are moving up and out because they're actually strategic and they're dealing with problems that are at a bigger level. There's more uncertainty and there is more the need to put yourself out there. There's more self-advocacy to say, hey, give me that project. I can do it. And so oftentimes, this sort of conditioning also feels like safety. It feels safe for a lot of us to be in the we and stand up and do what's needed. And I remember this too, growing up. I remember like, why is it so easy for me to stand up for other people? I felt so righteous and so grounded in myself and so powerful saying, like sticking up for a friend, but when it came to me, it was like really hard to do.
And this is that same work, right? I want you to know that part of this, it feels like acceptable to fight for somebody else or fight for the company or fight for something else because oftentimes women feel like I shouldn't do this. When I talk to women about their mothers, I'm like, well, what did your mother do to take care of herself or what did your mother teach you about that? And when I say teach, it's not like, you know, I had a mother who often times said, you need to do this and you need to make sure people treat you right. But as I watched my own mother, she was sacrificing, she wasn't asking for things, she was doing all of the hard work and we learn by watching our mothers. We learn by watching women in our lives do work and sacrifice themselves and burn out and put everybody else's needs first and be the caregiver of everyone, right?
So I want you to know that this is deeply rooted and that you need to understand in yourself where this comes from because that we, why are you so focused on the we and how it undermines yourself is critical, especially as you are climbing the corporate ladder, as you are trying to be heard in spaces that were not built for you.
So I want to share with you in my corporate career, I often thought if I did the hard work, if I made sure we all looked good, then I would get praised. I would get promoted. But this is not how it works. Oftentimes, people are like, oh, that team did that. That's great. But when they're thinking about the leader who actually led it, and when they're thinking about special projects or promotions, they're thinking about one person. They're not thinking about a whole team. And oftentimes women are like, this is us, we did this.
But as I was climbing the corporate ladder too, I really needed to learn how to build the self-advocacy muscle to really claim the me in all of this because if you keep going back to we, again, people won't see or understand your contribution. They won't know what you're good at. They will see a whole group of people and most likely, maybe they'll look at the man and say, well, he must have led it because maybe they're socialized to think like that man is the leader.
I remember sitting in a meeting once where this woman on my team actually said, oh, I think this is the best approach. And in that meeting, the senior leader, who was my boss too, gave credit to another man. And I was totally floored by this. I was like, why did he just give her him credit for this thing that Amanda has actually said? And in the moment, I was just like, couldn't react. I didn't know how to react and I didn't want to come in and just rescue her, but maybe I should have. When I look back, I'm like, actually, I could have spoken up and said, hey, that was Amanda's idea. But she didn't speak up for herself either.
And that doesn't excuse the thing, but this is exactly what happens often times. If we as the person in the story, as the woman in the story that's actually leading the initiative, if we don't own that for ourselves, somebody else is going to take the credit. And sometimes people do it intentionally. I have loads of women that coach with me who are like, nobody knows I'm doing this work. My boss is taking all the credit. So that's a problem. And that's a problem that we can fix together. That's a problem that I coach women through. How do you create more spaces for yourself, to advocate for yourself, to let people know what you're good at, to let people know what you've done.
So I realized that this is super important too because oftentimes when we are not reframing the story in our mind, we think that self-advocacy means that I'm better than everyone else. You're actually saying, I won't disappear from my own story. This is why it's so important to claim yourself in your own story, in your own work so people know what you've been able to do and how you're able to do it. Because the more you are leading things, the more powerful you become, the more you get to help the people around you versus if somebody else claims the credit, takes your story, takes your contribution, and everybody thinks, oh, it's Tom. Tom's doing all these amazing things. Tom is the smart one here. Let's promote Tom.
Meanwhile, you're still in the back doing all of the things, fixing all of the things, but without ever getting a path to leading more, taking on more responsibility, being more powerful, right? And I learned this lesson pretty early in my career as I saw people who were moving up, they were just so good at talking about themselves. And I think part of us as women want to judge that and we're like, oh, Brad can talk about himself all day long. But guess what? Brad is the one moving up. So maybe there's something to learn from Brad here, right?
And this is where I want to talk to you about the first shift because women oftentimes are confusing humility with invisibility. Humility isn't pretending your contribution doesn't matter. It's acknowledging it without making yourself smaller, right? You're actually acknowledging that you did something that you care about something so deeply that your name's on it. I oftentimes would share with people like, yes, I did that and I can help you more. You know, I remember I was in the Australia office and somebody came on the elevator with me and I said, hey, I'm Yann, nice to meet you. You know, we had some sort of chit chat before that. And they're like, I need to thank you. And I thought it was like kind of bizarre, but I'm like, sure, what are you thinking me for? And he's like, you created, I had created this transfer pricing policy that really helped the Australia team. And he's like, you created it.
So he knew I created it. You know, my bosses when I was in corporate were very good at helping me be seen and wanting me to be seen in a bigger way by the audience outside of it. And yes, my name was on this policy. I created it. I was the one who executed it. I was the one who would share with people our strategy and why we did it. But I would talk about myself in it. This is what I did. And so that led to more people reaching out to me, asking me for my opinion, asking me to help them on projects, asking me to move to Singapore to do work with them because they knew about my contribution. They knew that I was in charge of things. And I was advocating for myself because I was the one leading the projects. I wasn't just like, we're doing this all together. I'm like, this is me.
So learning to advocate for yourself is huge and watching the people around you who advocate for themselves and notice your own trigger. You might be triggered. You might be like, oh my God, they cannot stop talking about themselves. But I want you to ask yourself this. In that trigger that you're having as they are actively talking about themselves, what can you learn? What do you want to take away from it for yourself? You don't need to be like Brad, but you may need some of the skills Brad has because there is a way that Brad is getting in the room and there is a way that Brad is actively advocating for himself in a way that's leading him to more opportunities, to more promotions. And that's what I want you to notice for yourself to go to school on that.
So the first shift, like I said, is to stop confusing humility with invisibility. And the next shift is to know that advocating for yourself and seeing other people advocate for themselves, asking yourself what emotional triggers are coming up, will help you discern what you actually want to do. Again, there's lots of patterns that run in us, especially when we are about to do something we've told ourselves we don't want to do because it feels uncomfortable. But if we are learning a new skill and we're like, we know we have a problem advocating for ourselves, then we're going to start going to school on people who are able to do it. And we're also going to go to school on ourselves about the triggers that come up, the thoughts and emotions that come up that want to stop us from doing that, from building that muscle, right?
And the truth is that people trust leaders who can clearly articulate the value they bring. People want to know that. People want to understand that. And people feel better when you're like, oh, she's the leader and she's very open about what she's bringing to the table. She's not shy about it, right? She's just sharing it and it's grounded and it's authoritative and people are attracted to that. It brings certainty to uncertainty.
So I'll give you another example. When I had moved to Singapore to lead this team of business systems stuff, I didn't start with like, I've never done this before. Let's see how it goes. I definitely started with I've led lots of financial business system process changes. And I used that as the root. Like I was just sharing with them like I've done very big financial process changes and I'm excited to see what we can do in Asia to improve processes.
But yeah, there was a part of me was like, oh, I haven't done this before. And I wasn't the IT expert. I did it with a team of people, but I did it. I was the one who led a lot of it. And I was very good at explaining that I understood how things work. And I was very good at explaining the value that I brought to the process, which was really about helping business folks understand the technicalities related to financial system implementations. So it wasn't like I needed to say all these things to build myself up. I literally was like, they need to understand this so that they've trust me that they know that they have a leader who understands this stuff.
So that's another shift that's important because the more secure you become in your own value, the less threatened you become by other people's successes and the less threatened other people become from you because you're bringing certainty, you're bringing self-worth and groundedness to the conversation.
So this is that third shift to really own your own value to understand what that is because it creates more certainty and groundedness in yourself and other people want to follow you. This is commanding, right? This is powerful and it's attractive because you're no longer competing for worth. You're operating from worth. And when you're a leader who is grounded and knows their worth, other people will be like, oh, great. I'm so glad this person came from this part of the business to support us, to help us. They may still have their own thoughts and fears, but you're bringing that certainty because it's like, oh, it makes sense that this person's the leader. It makes sense that they are leading us. They've done this type of work before. It's leaving them feeling more certain in your ability to lead them, which makes them feel more secure in their job.
So I want to bring this back to Command because I have worked with a woman who she would spend so much time focused on we. We need to do this for the company. We need to do this for the organization. And it was like that was her chance and that was like her thing. And I was like, listen, your we keeps undermining your me, right? And that's actually why this episode came up because I'm like, so much women care so deeply. They care so much about other people's emotions, especially direct reports, which I believe too. I mean, I love my direct reports. I would do a lot for them. They would have my back. I care about them deeply. But at the end of the day, it's you that needs to command your own career and your own energy and your own boundaries and to advocate for yourself.
So one of the things I teach inside Command is that self-advocacy starts long before the conversation. It starts with inner authority. If you don't believe your work matters, you'll whisper it. If you do, you'll speak with clarity, not arrogance, clarity, and that's command energy, right? When you are convicted about something, when you feel like it's important that people know and you're clear with yourself about what that is, you're going to speak with much more grounded authority in that way.
So with the self-advocacy, I want you to sell yourself on why it's important for you to advocate for yourself. Otherwise, you have so much junk in your brain that tells you like, no, it's not good. You're being selfish, you're being selfish. You're going to have your, you know, thoughts from your childhood, you're going to have programming from society, you're going to have conditioning from maybe your workplace where a lot of female leaders are not speaking up and asking for things. So you've got to do the work on yourself. And that's why my Command containers are so powerful is because we support each other to do this work. We say, hey, what about you? What do you want? What matters to you? Because intrinsically, I believe that when you trust yourself and you lead with your own inner authority and you lead with your own values, it is better for everyone.
So when I'm coaching people, I'm always asking them, why does this matter to you? Why is this valuable? So that you can build up why you want to advocate for yourself and see the importance of the me in the conversation and you're not just autopilot, we, we, we, we, we, you know? You're actually owning that me part because when you own that me, when you are able to connect to yourself that deeply and that you articulate what you bring to the table, other people will feel it. That's that command energy. That's how people will notice like, oh, she knows what she's talking about. I want more of this. I want her to be the one leading this. She's very clearly the one that gets it. And sometimes I would go into meetings and nobody would say, you know, who the leader is, but you can tell who the leader is when they speak up clearly and when they own it.
When they're like there, right? Sometimes I'd be in meetings with people and I'm like, I just feel like this person doesn't know what they're talking about. They keep deferring to people on their team. And then I will find somebody on their team that is the amazing person. It's like the diamond in the rough. You can't see them until you start working with them and then you're like, that Sarah needs to get promoted. That Sarah is actually doing all the work for this whole team. And that like is lucky, right? It's lucky that Sarah connected with me and I was like, Sarah needs to get promoted. Sarah's the great one.
But Sarah didn't know how to articulate or communicate for herself, right? So I don't want you to be the Sarah waiting around for some leader to be like, she's amazing. Let's promote her because that's not how the world works. There's a 50/50% chance that maybe you will be discovered. But I want you to have the best chances and that is where you take care of yourself, where you learn to advocate for yourself, where you show up for these meetings, where you speak up and you own your story and you own your contribution.
So this week, listen to yourself. How often do you say, "Oh, that was nothing," and you deflect a compliment or it was a team effort and you minimize yourself or I'm just lucky, right? Again, a different way to not truly own the value you bring or say, oh, I happen to blah, blah, blah and make it seem so easy. Maybe those things are true, but don't edit yourself out of your own story because leadership isn't just helping everyone else be seen. Leadership is allowing yourself to be seen too.
And here's a question I'd love you to sit with. Where has we become an excuse to abandon me? Because I don't believe the goal is choosing one over the other. Great leadership honors both. The strongest leaders I've ever known know how to build extraordinary teams without disappearing inside of them. It's a 50/50. You've got to own your own leadership and it's important to own that team's, you know, to be able to say how that team has thrived.
But for women, I want you to hear this. This is oftentimes where we self-sabotage. We talk about we all the time and we forget the me. I want you to not ever allow yourself to disappear in that we. That's command. And that is what's going to change how you are seen, how you are leading, and how quickly you accelerate because people know your contribution. People know and see you. People understand the value you bring because you understand it so powerfully within yourself that you are showing up with it every single day.
All right. I'd love to hear how this episode is landing with you, especially if you're somebody who has used we so much in the past that you are like, oh my gosh, she is on to me. I've been undermining myself and I want out of this, right? I want to hear from you about how this episode is impacting you and how you see yourself differently moving forward from here on out.
So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and DM me directly or find me via email connect@aspire-coaching.co. That's co. Email me. I'd love to hear from you. I will personally write back to you. You can always feel free to leave a review and of course, share this episode with someone else who may be so obsessed with the we that they're undermining themselves. All right, have a beautiful week and I will see you next week. Take good care. Bye.
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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